"God needs to be back in our schools" says Texas...

[Twisted Crow]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/21/texas-bill-ten-commandments-public-schools-religion/

Granted, I've been raised down here for most of my life. So this being news isn't exactly surprising for most people. But this made me think a lot about even more cringefest arguments that I've lately been observing on mainstream social media. Twitter, especially.  ::)

Bleh...

I am not one that would claim to be especially religious, but I have also been of the "live-and-let-live" sort for many years. 'Who would I be to take away the hope or faith from another?' Generally speaking, I would typically let organized religion do its thing as long as it knew its role and left me alone. But I could not ignore this one.

To me, stuff like this strong-arms ideals like 'needing a bible in every classroom'. And I would argue that this already does just that. Cherry-picking on our appeals to tradition and how we opt to remember history is how our nations has (dubiously) harbored other immigrated cultures and religions? It doesn't sit right with me. And I make this sentiment while being generous about glossing over much of our nations' dark historical chapters.

So, anyway... Why The Ten Commandments? Specifically which bible needs to be in schools? Which God? Which canon and ethos of that incarnation belongs in the classroom? Because they still have had trouble coexisting in the world for ages, now. And this is just focusing on the scope of the Abrahamic God and (and for a moment) suspending the fact that many other religions exist. Which version belongs in school? Protestant God? Catholic God? Jewish God? Allah? Jehovah?

Of course, I believe this to be within the spectrum from foolishly ignorant to agressively flexing an arm in the interest of religious assimilation. I feel to support this is naivety at best and devious at worst. Not that I'm surprised, just disappointed that people still believe that something like this would 'fix everything wrong' with our country, these days.

[GloomCookie]

This is an old argument that's hung around since the 1962 Engel v. Vitale decision.

https://www.thefire.org/supreme-court/engel-et-al-v-vitale-et-al/opinions

The long and short of it is that Justice Hugo Black, who penned the majority opinion, basically acknowledged that the Federal government had no authority establishing the particular type of religion and that it should be left to the people and to avoid creating a union between church and state.

The reason for such arguments today are the same as back then. People who want to believe that their particular brand of Christianity is right, beyond acknowledging that the Abrahamic religion has three major sects (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), with each sect having its own major divisions within.

Focusing entirely on Christianity, there are numerous types of Christianity within that, depending on the particular beliefs of the person and the role of the church within their lives. Catholicism believes heavily in the power of the church, while a Baptist believes it is a person's choice to allow Jesus into their hearts. The two are incompatible. Yet somehow there's a belief that the evils of the world would be cured by having a litany of prayers each morning to a deity that most children wouldn't understand. Those connections, Black commented, should be reserved for discussion with parents and preachers, not for a teacher.

The reason for the Ten Commandments is because it's hard to argue necessarily against. All three religions share some version of the Ten Commandments and most people in the United States understand the Ten Commandments through the lens of the King James Version of the bible. There is a genuine belief among some that it is the one true word of God, and were raised to accept this truth and no other. They don't know that there are different and more accurate translations, and even go so far as to write them off as being inaccurate and in some cases wrong. This is usually a case of ignorance because unfortunately, areas where religious fervor is highest also tend to lack in education spending, and almost never by choice.

Which is just one reason I find it hilarious that the Church of Satan loves to park a statue of Basphomet in Little Rock sometimes after a dude ran into the Ten Commandments erected in front of the State Legislature and the court said there was nothing prohibiting the Basphomet statue if the Ten Commandments was allowed. Strangely, there's less outrage over the Church of Satan XD

[Sara Nilsson]

Satanic Temple. Not Church of Satan Gloomy.

We always get confused with the Church of Satan. Not the same thing in the slightest. Sorry, pet peeve. They (CoS) believe in magic, we don't. For instance. So there are quite a few differences. :)

[GloomCookie]

Satanic Temple. Not Church of Satan Gloomy.

We always get confused with the Church of Satan. Not the same thing in the slightest. Sorry, pet peeve. They (CoS) believe in magic, we don't. For instance. So there are quite a few differences. :)

Sorry bun.

But yeah, it's always sorta amused me.

[Greenthorn]

Mind you, I am simply going off the subject because I'm not putting my email in to read the actual article.


I have a very solid opinion on public schools and religion. Religion does not belong there. As stated, although some religions share the same core beliefs, there are probably hundreds of factions of each larger religious group. How do we choose which particular faction, or even larger group is represented? IF we allow the larger faction of Christianity in, what is that saying to Islam/Buddhist/etc students... that their religion doesn't matter or is not important? If we do this, then we are giving the impression of superiority of one religion over another, and that is unacceptable. Funniest thing is that a large number of religions call for accepting those who are different.


I believe if a parent wants religion put into their child's education full time, they can utilize Catholic/Christian/Islam/etc focused schools or send their kids to "Sunday school". And this is coming from a hardcore Roman Catholic.

[Oniya]

I was going to hit on the main points of this article (which requires no registration), but realized that I'd be hitting most of the article.  Perhaps some enterprising Texas educator might run a course on the works of Pierre Bayle.

If I had to TL;DR it, I'd have to use this quote: 

It is no stranger for an atheist to live virtuously than it is strange for a Christian to live criminally. We see the latter sort of monster all the time, so why should we think the former is impossible? - Pierre Bayle, 'Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet' (1682)

[TheGlyphstone]

I've always greatly disliked the way 'freedom of religion' has become synonymous with 'Christian supremacy' in certain circles, because I think the Founding Fathers wrote the 1st Amendment - literally the first line of said amendment - the way they did for a reason. I've read a little bit about the wars between faiths that pretty much devastated Europe on and off for the better part of a millennia, and as educated men for whom that was much more recent history they would have as well. Especially how many of the bloodiest faith conflicts were between divergent sects of one faith. The moment you place a specific faith at the top of the totem pole, you start the process where it can leverage the power of the state to suppress its competition - they didn't want American to repeat the mistakes of its European ancestors, and so they flatly equalized all faiths across the board under the law.

[GloomCookie]

The compromise is simple! Today, everyone brings a Star of David. Tomorrow, a statue of Basphomet, then a colander for our noodly lord...

We'll let everyone have a go!

[Greenthorn]

The compromise is simple! Today, everyone brings a Star of David. Tomorrow, a statue of Basphomet, then a colander for our noodly lord...

We'll let everyone have a go!

That would be the only acceptable solution!

[Oniya]

Little Oni's high school had a 'World Religion' class, and they actually did that sort of thing.  They spent a certain amount of time on quite a number of the major religions.  I forget if the polytheistic ones were covered, but she was prepared to contribute if they had been.

[Greenthorn]

Little Oni's high school had a 'World Religion' class, and they actually did that sort of thing.  They spent a certain amount of time on quite a number of the major religions.  I forget if the polytheistic ones were covered, but she was prepared to contribute if they had been.

That's actually really cool. I've never known of a school to actually delve into multiple religions, hell I've never known a high school to even have a World Religion class for that matter.


My own children are both baptized Catholic, but I stopped there and let them choose what they wanted to believe. One is atheist and the other is spiritual but not religious. On topic, I would not have been happy had their public schools had Christianity "built-in".

[Oniya]

We're in a fairly diverse area - one of her lunch-friends was Islamic, so she'd learned about Ramadan etiquette on a social level even before taking that class.  On the other hand, it was an elective, so the kids taking it were at least passably interested in such matters.

[Sara Nilsson]

Little Oni's high school had a 'World Religion' class, and they actually did that sort of thing.  They spent a certain amount of time on quite a number of the major religions.  I forget if the polytheistic ones were covered, but she was prepared to contribute if they had been.

In Sweden we have a subject in school called Religion where we do judt this. 7 8 and 9th grade, 40 mins a week apart from  8 th grade when it was 80. At least thats how it was for me, might have changed a little. Spent a few weeks on all the major religions, who they believe in, the history snd practises. I wouldnt say it was fun but it was useful. Lot of my classmates where questioning if they believe or not, iwasvone of the few outspoken atheists. But i think this is good to know, so when you meet someone you have an idea.

[The Lovely Tsaritsa]

If I still live in US, and go to school, that asks this? I would pray, very loud, to Odin Allfather, to smite my enemies in vengance. :-)

[Greenthorn]

In Sweden we have a subject in school called Religion where we do judt this. 7 8 and 9th grade, 40 mins a week apart from  8 th grade when it was 80. At least thats how it was for me, might have changed a little. Spent a few weeks on all the major religions, who they believe in, the history snd practises. I wouldnt say it was fun but it was useful. Lot of my classmates where questioning if they believe or not, iwasvone of the few outspoken atheists. But i think this is good to know, so when you meet someone you have an idea.

Again, I think this is a great thing for schools to do. I know in my area of the US, the only time you get any in-depth education on all major religions is in college/university, and it is an elective class. Perhaps if it were a required class, at any level, more people would be more accepting of others.

[GloomCookie]

It wouldn't be that hard to integrate, not really. Most religions are a byproduct of history and culture, and history is already being taught in schools. Showing how religions form and how their formation impacts beliefs could be integrated rather seamlessly. But, most schools will actively avoid doing so because there's already a huge stink made about teaching sex education in schools, how do you think something other than Christianity would go?

[Greenthorn]

It wouldn't be that hard to integrate, not really. Most religions are a byproduct of history and culture, and history is already being taught in schools. Showing how religions form and how their formation impacts beliefs could be integrated rather seamlessly. But, most schools will actively avoid doing so because there's already a huge stink made about teaching sex education in schools, how do you think something other than Christianity would go?

Off topic kinda: Sex education is a joke, at least the classes my kids had were. It was mixed in with "health" classes and there was only about a week's worth, so about 3 1/2 hrs, focused on actual sex education. I thought the world would be more progressive than it was when I was a child. Hell, I went to Catholic school back then and we got about a month's worth of sex ed classes. They were full of abstain, abstain, abstain, but we learned about anatomy of both sexes and how it all worked.

[Oniya]

I have to say that history in US schools (before college) is kinda crap as well.  Among other things, it is typically 'US-centered', so anything before 1492 is glossed over, the bit between 1492 and today is repeated in each grade (often with a focus-lens on 'this state' out of the 50), and even the 'World History' classes end up trying to compress the rest of human civilization (Egypt at the earliest) into about nine months.  US classes that mention the Crusades at that level are basically 'knights are good, Saracens are bad', compared to the more nuanced treatment given in the mere four episodes of Terry Jones' documentary.  (Yes, that Terry Jones.)

The most attention that would likely be paid to religion in a history class would possibly be that the Massachusetts colonists were Puritans, fleeing religious persecution, and the idea that the Spanish explorers that landed were 'spreading Christianity and civilization'.  (This would then raise an entirely new set of pearl-clutching from the Christian Nationalists as the utter white-washing of that portion of history was justifiably challenged.)

[TheGlyphstone]

And it'd likely entirely leave out that the Puritans were just as oppressive to everyone else once they got to be in charge instead.

[Iniquitous]

And it'd likely entirely leave out that the Puritans were just as oppressive to everyone else once they got to be in charge instead.

Please understand that the Puritans were NOT persecuted. They were pitching a fit because they could not be the majority in Parliament and decided to leave England. They felt that the Anglican Church was too permissive, too worldly, and too excessive. 

When you realize the truth and not the bs they passed down through history, it makes sense how they treated everyone else.

[TheGlyphstone]

That's sort of where I was going, yeah. Heck, Rhode Island exists because they were executing Quakers for not adhering to their own creed.

[GloomCookie]

The history of religion in the United States is a very complicated affair. It has left a lasting legacy that affects policy even today, and is one of the reasons that the United States is still very conservative compared to Europe, which is ironic given that the United States was at one point one of the scientific leaders of the world after World War 2. That would quickly drop off, but Operation Paperclip definitely helped push science to new heights. I just hope that we don't start sliding backwards.

[TheGlyphstone]

The way anti-vaccination sentiment seems to be metastasizing into other fields of scientific study, I'm not confident on that one just yet. Heck - I've brought it up in other discussions, but the idea that religion and scientific progress are somehow diametrically opposed is also a uniquely American phenomenon. Many of the most famous scientists and philosophers we can still name today were devout men, often literal priests or monks, who saw science not as going against their faith but reinforcing it by understanding how and why the world operated.

[Dice]

There is a quote from my History professor that I adore on this topic. (Australian History)

"Australia got the Convicts, America got the Puritans, Australia got the better end of that deal."

As an Aussie, that is more or less how I view the US as well. Your nation is built on a bunch of crazies as its foundation, then add the history of slavery, your body politic being quite right of centre (Your "Far left" seems pretty tame by EU standards.) and this culture of supressing anyone that does not conform to the norm and bullshit like brainwashing kids in schools hardly shocks me.

[Greenthorn]

There is a quote from my History professor that I adore on this topic. (Australian History)

"Australia got the Convicts, America got the Puritans, Australia got the better end of that deal."

As an Aussie, that is more or less how I view the US as well. Your nation is built on a bunch of crazies as its foundation, then add the history of slavery, your body politic being quite right of centre (Your "Far left" seems pretty tame by EU standards.) and this culture of supressing anyone that does not conform to the norm and bullshit like brainwashing kids in schools hardly shocks me.

The far left is not as tame as it may seem to outsiders. The far right are just really outspoken and sometimes overtly ridiculous, which makes for better news topics. This also applies to the suppression topic, it makes better news headlines.

[Dice]

The far left is not as tame as it may seem to outsiders. The far right are just really outspoken and sometimes overtly ridiculous, which makes for better news topics. This also applies to the suppression topic, it makes better news headlines.

Sorry, that's on me. I meant "Your far left politicians." Burnie is just a run of the mill tankie in EU circles. In the US he's some kind of Boogeyman.

[stormwyrm]

These Religious Right folks, for all their talk of God and all resemble much more the people whom Jesus himself condemned most harshly in the Gospels. The disconnect between what they say and do and what the Gospels themselves actually say and prescribe one to do is rather startling. I imagine that someone could write a tract in the vein of Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor and put Jesus on the streets of middle America, and he'd be derided as a commie pinko wokester.

[Missy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnQGz7BdfI

[stormwyrm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnQGz7BdfI

Jesus literally told a rich young man to do exactly that: "One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me." Mark 10:21 The response was, well, pretty much the same.

[Oniya]

Followed by 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to enter heaven', if I remember right.

[Hades]

On the one hand, I'm reminded of a quote from Issac Asimov: 


The more people are exposed to what the bible actually says and not just what their preacher/priest/insert other fancy-smanchy title here tells them that it says, the more you see belief in it decline.  A Gallop poll from 2022 found that 20% of Americans believe the bible to be the literal word of god.   And while that number has declined by half since Gallop started asking the question back in the 1960s, I say that's still a depressingly high number in this age.  So the more exposure unfiltered by someone else's interpretation is a good thing, especially for young minds.

But, this is Texas we're talking about.   There will be no impartiality involved.  Hell, if they were being impartial they'd be talking about setting up a comparative religions curriculum for the state instead.  This is a blatant attempt to indoctrinate by a dwindling segment of the population that knows it's declining and is desperate to hold onto power by any means possible.

[GloomCookie]

Something I think should be pointed out is that, as far as the literal word of God, the Bible is not it. As a source of parables and guides on how to live your life as a good person around the time Jesus lived? Absolutely. And some of those parables and stories do stand up. I saw something many years ago about how a volcano eruption might have caused the events in the Exodus from Egypt, such as ash falling and turning the waters of the Nile red. For people who had no idea that these events were occurring, they could seem like miracles. Books like Deuteronomy are about keeping food clean in an age when refrigeration didn't exist and people had to be very careful about spoiled and rotten meat and seafood.

Something also I find interesting is that the Bible is supposed to be taken literally, while in Judaism, it's treated similar to a book of laws and is thus open to interpretation. That's why there is a stereotype of Jews becoming lawyers, because they learn from an early age to read texts and develop interpretations of the words similar to how we practice law today. Christianity, meanwhile, has almost since its beginning held various councils to determine what is and isn't correct (or canon) per the text. Many early Christian thinkers were actually expelled from their communities and labeled as heretics for having such radical ideas that God and Jesus are two separate entities, or that Jesus was a mortal man until his death when he became divine. Such thinking means the Bible is treated as a hard truth instead of being open to interpretation.

To further muddy the waters, there have been a lot of religious warfare over the centuries as different groups developed their own interpretation of how much authority the church has compared to the Bible. Most churches, even Baptist churches that place the power of the church itself extremely low, put the Bible as the ultimate authority when it comes to how they practice their particular flavor of Christianity. The Pope was also for many centuries following the collapse of Rome himself a major player on the political stage of Europe as an equal to emperors and princes, hence why technically the Papacy is an elected monarchy since the Pope is literally the king of the Vatican, but his power is ordained through the Holy See, basically the Office of the Pope.

Explanation of the politics of Rome in about 5 minutes

https://youtu.be/OPHRIjI3hXs

Religious reformations happened long before Martin Luther nailed his 95 complaints to the door of a church, but what set his reformations apart was the invention of movable type by Gutenberg, which allowed his ideas to be spread rapidly across Europe. It's a common misconception that most Europeans were illiterate. Most could read to some degree, but they couldn't read Latin, which was considered the bar by which everyone measured literacy. By printing pamphlets in the language of the common man, suddenly people could realize that the fancy words being said by the priests for all these years didn't always line up with the actual Word of God, which is why a lot of protest-ant (hyphen to point out the name) place far less emphasis on the power of the church itself and more on the Word of God.

And then along comes King James, also known as Jamas acaca (James the Shit), who was a Catholic in England at the wrong time. While he wasn't very popular, he did commission something unique: the first translation of the Bible from Latin into English. While James would eventually be run out of England by his eldest daughter's husband William of Orange, the King James version of the Bible survived, and in so doing introduced a lot of parables into the Bible that are unique to that version (Video for quick info). And, because it was the first translation most people had that they could actually read, it became insanely popular, so much so that people forget that it's a translation and thus not the Word of God directly (which would have been in Hebrew or Greek anyway, not Latin).

History of English, the Bible

https://youtu.be/kN7-EvgKAsk

Religion is super complicated because it does not exist in a vacuum. Like the nation states that adopt religion, religion spreads and shrinks, waxes and wains, and all based on the cultures and history that take place around it. You have documents that are misunderstood both in their own time as they are now like the infamous Malleus Malificarum (The Hammer of Witches) that was denounced by church leaders in its own time but is still held up as a textbook example of why religion is bad and dumb because they burned people at the stake for witchcraft, which is ironic because the church's official position is that magic doesn't exist because it would not be in keeping with God's rules.

So, where am I going with all this. I think that a lot of modern Christians don't have a firm grasp on the history of their own religion and how it was shaped and molded by history. They're content to point to a book as a justification for countless idiotic ideals and beliefs for no other reason than they can, which has been the case of both religious texts and non-religious texts for thousands of years. I don't think it's as simple as saying "Religion is dumb superstition" when the Bible has also formed a foundation just as strong as the Roman Empire did in shaping modern Europe and the Americas. But, it also shouldn't be accepted blindly as a source for events that may or may not have happened thousands of years ago and could simply be interpreted as a narrative of certain events with a dash of fables and stories tossed in for flavor.

[Beguile's Mistress]

When something is presented to you there is the option to choose to believe or not to believe.  You are also given the chance, if you wish to take it, to pick it apart and study it and fact check it so it can be interpreted in your own "what they really mean is" thinking.

What you can't do, no matter who you are, is force someone to agree with you or fault them because they don't.  We also have the responsibility to study religion from a historical perspective as comparative religion studies teach.  Comparative religion lets us look at all religions in a way that allows us to find common ground.

[stormwyrm]

And then along comes King James, also known as Jamas acaca (James the Shit), who was a Catholic in England at the wrong time. While he wasn't very popular, he did commission something unique: the first translation of the Bible from Latin into English. While James would eventually be run out of England by his eldest daughter's husband William of Orange, the King James version of the Bible survived, and in so doing introduced a lot of parables into the Bible that are unique to that version (Video for quick info). And, because it was the first translation most people had that they could actually read, it became insanely popular, so much so that people forget that it's a translation and thus not the Word of God directly (which would have been in Hebrew or Greek anyway, not Latin).

That's not what I remember. The translation of the Bible to English from the Vulgate, St. Jerome's 3rd century Latin translation of the Bible, was the Douai-Rheims Bible, and predates the King James Version by a few years. It is somewhat harder to read than the KJV because it seems to have been a much more slavish translation that includes many Latinisms that are no longer common English vernacular. From what I know the King James Version itself was translated direct from the Hebrew Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) and the original Greek New Testament, with only fairly minimal input from the Vulgate or the Septuagint (3rd century BCE translation of the Tanakh into Greek). This is not to say that either was a particularly accurate translation.

Also it doesn't seem that the KJV introduced any new books into the Bible, in fact the reverse is true. It in fact reduced the number of books in the Old Testament to what was included in the Hebrew Tanakh canon. Catholic Bibles, including more modern translations that go to the original languages such as the New American Bible Revised Edition, tend to include such books as the Maccabees (the omission of this is a little curious, since the events chronicled there are the basis for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah), Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Baruch, etc., which are only included in the Vulgate and the Septuagint.

That leads to the question of which books should be included into the Bible. It's a thorny one, hotly debated since at least the Ecumenical Councils of the 4th Century, and had even led to wars. It definitely was not as clean a process as people seem to think.