Required readings would include passages from Old and New Testament for students in middle school
The conservative-majority Texas State Board of Education is considering adding at least 15 passages from the Bible to a required reading list as part of English lessons in public schools – the latest push from conservatives to implement Christianity into school curriculums.
Beginning in middle school, Texas students could be forced to read stories from the Bible including Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath, and Lamentations 3 in addition to passages such as The Definition of Love from the New Testament, according to the list reported by the New York Times.
The new proposed changes have raised concerns from advocacy groups and academics who believe the changes will teach children a one-sided history lesson and “indoctrinate” students.
Time for the Satanic Temple to do its work.
What Would Jesus Do? Flip every fucking table on the planet.
Jesus says they are wicked, meanwhile, He promises to kill everybody on Earth who won’t bow to Him.
That’s kinda creepy, don’t you think? His promise is to be the greatest murderer of all time (again)
I grew up in Texas in the 90s, in their public schools and going to church every Sunday. I’d be fine with Christianity if they all actually read the teachings of Christ and acted accordingly. But… Nah…
And even then, if that fantasy were reality, it shouldn’t be forced in public schools
Christ teaches that He will return, and murder EVERY non-Christian across the globe, billions will die. The lake of blood will be miles wide, according to Him, and as deep as a horse’s bridle!
Not only that, the murdered can’t even have peace in death. Christ will banish them all to Hell, for an eternity of torture, with infinite wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Why do you want to teach this? Just wondering
Fair point. I wasn’t really thinking of the book of revelations when I made that comment. Or the concept of hell. I’m agnostic/atheist now and don’t really care what people think the afterlife or end of times may look like (as long as they’re not actively trying to start the apocalypse or some shit). I more meant the teachings about loving your neighbor and feeding the hungry and helping the poor.
Pretty sure he also taught about false prophets and not trying to predict the end of times, but they seem to be ignoring that too, at least the extremists. I’d be on board with people living their daily lives how Christ taught is what I meant.
I just joined Lemmus today. This is the very first post I see and this being my first comment. I think this is gonna be fun.
Welcome!
Based on the law of unintended consequences, this is one of the best inoculations against religion.
It’s the fundamental flaw of Protestant theology. Hand out ten bibles, absent any further religious instructions, and you get ten different religions. Leave people to stew too long and they just start making up their own Apocrypha - a la Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Texas is already a melting pot of faiths, quite a few of which aren’t even Christian. You’re going to be demanding teachers read from the Bible to such a wide range of denominations, all with their own priors as to what any of this stuff means.
Like, as a kid, I remember my dad explaining to me that the Sermon on the Mount and the Loaves and Fishes miracle was a lesson on the power of sharing. Jesus took a bit of bread and fish, passed it among the crowd, and then everyone in the crowd helped to pitch in with what they’d brought for themselves. And in the end they had more than what they began with. I’ve sat in class with people who seriously believe “No, Jesus just magicked up more fish and bread, because DUH it was a miracle”. And that’s firmly within the Christian spectrum. We’re not dragging in Muslims or Hindus or outright born-and-raised Atheists to weigh in.
They need to make them read the entire thing
Texastan
Do it. Forcing students to read the Bible will create a loooooot more Atheists. Better than “believers” who don’t even know the source material, which is what we have now.
There’s a reason they choose specific passages, and they’ll come with specific interpretations as learning goals.
I mean, that’s what they tried to do with me and my fellow students at my private christian school, but it just raised questions, and when the adults didn’t like our questions it was very insightful. Most of the people I went to school with are no longer evangelicals, in fact I don’t think a single one is.
My kids’ mother’s family are Muslim, so the kids were offered Islamic instruction when they were young. When they were teaching about the 99 prophets who preceded Muhammad, my daughter said “hey, wait a minute, this can’t be right, none of them are women.” So the school called me, I had to take her home from class early, and she never went back.
They also told her that her Barbies had djinn living in them, which she immediately realized was ridiculous.
My other kids also figured it out, but in a lower-profile way.
All my kids were also given the opportunity to be instructed in Christianity and to attend Jewish services, and all but one took that opportunity, but didn’t buy what they were selling either. All are now atheists.
You’re anecdote is nice and all, but it’s an anecdote.
I couldn’t find much data specifically on rates of students of religious schools leaving that religion, but what little data I found says more people stay in the religion when enrolled in religious schools than not.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4621974
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073805932500238X
Most students in religious schools have very religious parents who indoctrinate them from early childhood, and my anecdotes are different from yours. Few students decide that losing their friends and support system are worth leaving the religion, and remain in it even if they have doubts. The more you force religion to be a part of a person’s social support system, the tighter you hold them in.
I agree that if they start reading and studying it honestly the more disillusioned they’ll become, that’s my personal experience also. But most people in my experience do not have the critical thinking skills or the ability to study independently to come to those conclusions, they rely on the religious text being interpreted for them, and they accept a figure head (priest or pastor or Imam or Rabi) to answer difficult questions and reject anything that makes them “question” their faith, because they’ve been warned about the evil world that will try to get them to question their faith their whole life. They don’t begin engaging critically with counterarguments because religious apologetics give them comfort.
Cult members might be fooled, but cult leaders aren’t stupid, they know what they’re doing. They’re targeting people who aren’t in religious schools, and don’t have religious indoctrination already, so there’s no effect on “leaving” the faith to consider here, any hooked student is a success.
Forcing students to read the Bible will create a loooooot more Atheists.
Forcing students to pretend to be Christian in order to get educational perks and avoid harsh discipline will create a lot more implicit segregation and cliches of Mean Girls who can harass non-confirming students with impunity.
Check out The Third Wave
Those kids would be furious if they could read.
I was finishing elementary school in the late 1960s, in extreme right wing Anaheim, California. Twice a month, the (public) schools had something called “released time religion.” Two trailers would pull up to school, one for the Catholics and one for the Holy Rollers. The kids whose parents had signed a release would spend the afternoon learning Jesus things. The rest of us were expected to sit quietly, reflecting on our moral inadequacy for not being in the trailer.
As you might imagine, the majority of students who did go to the trailer, took umbrage at those who did not. And even then, I noted that there was nothing for the Jewish or Muslim or Hindu kids.
we had a few things like that back in the 90s when i was in HS. I went to every available one. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan (we actually had a Wiccan club!). It got me out of class and was fun to learn about other cultures.
Kids, there’s plenty of verses to read from if you’re called upon. Try this one first:
NIV Ezekiel 23:20 “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.”
Or how about an abortion ritual?
Me too, thanks.
I don’t mind them reading the Bible, if they are able to read the whole thing, one end to the other. For many people, a thorough reading of the bible beginning to end is what causes them to question Christianity and realize that it is a population control tool for those with power (and riches), not the word of a God. It is such an incoherent mess that cannot literally be followed - if you follow one edict, you break another. Reading it destroys the idea that an all powerful, all knowing God was it’s roundabout creator. If there was a God surely it could have done a better job, even using inadequate humans to produce the product. So, after reading, you know it was a man made project. The Koran and Torah yield similar results. I think that is the main reason why religions try, or have tried in the past, to restrict reading to a select few leaders and try to keep the propaganda to what they want it to mean at any given time in history.
The Koran and Torah yield similar results. I think that is the main reason why religions try, or have tried in the past, to restrict reading to a select few leaders and try to keep the propaganda to what they want it to mean at any given time in history.
Regarding the Koran, your statement is verifiably false. It was widely read and memorized by the masses so that a select few leaders couldn’t control what they want it to mean.
Quite a large number of those masses, in non-Arabic-speaking countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia, memorize the Qur’an without knowing what it means, which is a piss-poor way of preventing elite capture. More effective is that fact that, in Sunni Islam, there’s no formal religious hierarchy, and each congregation operates independently (like the Christian Congregationalists used to). Though social conformity squeezes out the diversity of beliefs, and there are respected institutions and scholars such as Al-Azhar university that are widely respected, but there’s no Sunni Pope. Sufis are structured similarly. Shia’s, on the other hand, have a hierarchy of authority that puts the Catholics to shame.
Not knowing the language is a problem which doesn’t fully eliminate the issue, you’re right, but it does eliminate the possibility of changing the written scriptures. As a result there will always be thinkers who can return to the original text and come to their own conclusions, challenging the prevailing thoughts of their region or era, something that has repeatedly occurred in Muslim history.
Your claim of their statement being verifiably false is in itself verifiably false.
Their claim was the works do not inspire a belief in God (for them), and they know it was a man-made project. Since they know themselves so much better than you, they are the only ones who can give their opinion.
Yes, people memorized the Koran, Bible, Tanakh, throughout the history of each faith. However, there are many examples (legions!) of those same works (in whole or in part) being protected by a variety of sects… not one of those faiths was consistent throughout their history.
Remember, God hates liars! Don’t call others liars just because one of their points isn’t all-encompassing. Recall, they said “I think”… this means it’s an opinion. Don’t lie, Allah would be ashamed of you if He was real.
I was responding to the text I quoted, not the full post 🙄
Do you know how long and boring that is? This would be like just a dozen pages.
you really don’t need to get to the end.
But you do! The ending is the very best part, it renders everything before it into an absurdity.
It’s the punchline
Well maybe this will do something to increase their reading levels. And as they say, one of the best ways to lose your Christian faith is to read the Bible.
Yes, a lot of Christians never read it and just assume it is full of profound wisdom. If fact, it is mostly boring bullshit that hasn’t aged well. People are used to better writing nowadays, and even children today are less ignorant about the nature of the world than the average adult from the period when the Bible was being written.
It. Is. Soooop boring. And vague. There’s a reason an entire priesthood exists to elaborate on and interpret it.
Ezekiel 23:20
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
It’s not all boring!
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.
And
Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them.
It’s not all boring!
Too much kink-shaming though.
Omg yes. I had an AP English teacher, who is an atheist, but felt like snippets of it had relevance to the other literature we were reading and the few bits I read completely turned me away from it.
Granted, one of the chapters was literally and (name) begat (name) who begat (name), and I was genuinely baffled by how one could read such a dryyyyy medium.
Also, it didn’t help that God seemed like such a jealous Zeus type. It’s hard to be on God’s side when humans do human things like, long for a home that’s forever lost, etc.
Less than 10% of surveyed Christians have read 🙄 The Greatest Story Ever Told
They’ll start with sanitized versions of select excerpts and build up tolerance and indoctrination.
Its clear their choice of old testament nonsense they don’t intend to teach them anything interesting.
Yeah, this isn’t going to be a free-for-all. Little Suzy isn’t going to be able to write an essay on any part she chooses. This will just be bringing Sunday school into public schools. Lessons that are happy and further indoctrinate, avoiding any sort of critical thinking.
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More of the atheists I know have actually read to Bible compared to the Christians I know who read some of the new testament maybe part of some gospels, some acts, revelations and psalms. It’s pretty vile & gross to force religion on people, but I don’t think this is going to have the impact they expect it to without also allowing clergy to lie about what it means when it says you should stone people to death for working on the Sabbath or all the pro slavery laws and parables.
Good, the best way to get more atheists is to force students to read the Bible.
it’s ridiculous tripe
Texas recently passed a law preventing books that involve sex from being in libraries. The story of Lot and his daughters, and the famous quote in Ezekiel mean the bible should be banned under that law.
Also Noah and his sons, and probably a whole bunch more. But god damn is it puritanical to pass such a law in [current year]
Wasn’t there a ruling that the Bible is exempted because it’s “culturally important” or something?
Naked Lunch is also culturally important.
At this point I’m surprised they haven’t started rewriting the Bible to bring it inline with their version of the faith. You know, drop the commandment about not committing adultery and swap it with “Thou shalt not abort”. Instead of Jesus feeding the masses and preaching neighborly love he says “get a job you fucking poors” and “hate the gays”. Moses frees his people with the power of the 2nd Amendment.
That would exempt basically most banned books
