I am a conservative, churchgoing Christian, in favor of separation of church and state, and I know many who feel as I do. As for its place in the schools, well, I have separate feelings on the state of our public school system anyway, so it'd be too much of a thread hijack for me to insert my opinion on THAT side of things.

thanks for providing a great example of why government and religion need separation.  you dont think hes a cleric.  when he--or garner ted armstrong or bob tilden or david koresh--decides gets involved with local politics and starts teaching your kids songs and prayers, who is ultimately going to rule on the issue?   the courts?  if they rule against him, they the government is truly persecuting what may well be a legitimate religion.  if not the courts, then a council of religous scholars?  like the ones they have in iraq and saudi arabia?  

as to your original article, what kinda study about the effect of religion on health involving 550 people includes only 64 subjects who arent religious churchgoers? 

it occurs to me that this sentence (which isnt part of the article you quoted but your own belief) is most telling:

rather than depend on the vagaries of science (especially junk science) why not just kill us all off now?  what kinda conservative advocates empowering government to make church going or religious belief mandatory...especially in the 'best interests of society'?  

thank you for your honesty.  at least youve shown what's really going on here.  for a long while ive felt the people who are constantly searching out some new outrage against christianity in the us have been motivated by much more than protesting the incidents they cite.

consider how many of these weve seen here at ju alone in the past month.  all have been shown to be inflammatory exagrerationss (doi is BANNED is a good example).  at that point, the author drops out of the discussion and posts a new claim of outrageous insult to his or her faith.

yall really wont be satisfied until youre able to force the rest of us to believe as you do.

there are only so many hours in an educator's day and so many years of education available to most people.  in a world where technology and science are so crucial to both an individual's standard of living and a nation's economic future, how does it make sense to use even a portion trying to prove or disprove whether noah actually built an ark and filled it with 2 of every species.  or that the universe is older than 6000 years?  you may not have been alive when the russians successfully launched the first manmade object into earth orbit, but those who were will never forget the shock of discovering wed fallen that far behind soviet science.  two generations from today, the nation that expends the most time teaching kids real science is going to have a definite edge over the one thats still arguing about why there couldnt have been dinosaurs.

youll forgive me (i hope) if i find this a bit difficult to accept at face value.   

in this article, you make a claim that religion should be mandatory and imply it would be a good thing if those who dont agree were to die off sooner rather than later.

in another previous to this, you claimed the declaration of independence had been BANNED by a school in cupertino california.   there was a followup to your article which used the same misleading title.  the comments for both (and im not saying you should be credited or are culpable for the other article) provided considerable evidence that not only was the doi not banned,  the teacher in question was very likely attempting to preach to rather than teach his students.  

here's further proof the doi wasnt/isnt banned.  its a pic of the doi hanging in that schools library as posted on the school's parents organization website. 

by using the most inflammatory headline possible without qualifying it as possibly inaccurate, youre not furthering tolerance.