The Texas Board of Education Plans To Force Kids To Read the Bible in Public Schools
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82 replies
I was forced to actually read the bible in school. It successfully converted me to atheism.
To be fair, the story of the three daughters that get their geriatric father drunk and repeatedly gang rape him until they are all pregnant was particularly enlightening.
The Song of Solomon is also pretty well naughty.
Lotsa porny sex talk in that.
I prefer when a man calls bears to kill all the first sons in a village because he was called bald.
Totally normal reaction though, how dare they? He was not bald, he was temporarily optimizing for vitamin d production.
Average druid behavior.
Same but the priest was actively telling us which chapter to read and which to jump. I never remembered which to jump or read so i just read everything, and i became an atheist... My mother kept telling me that to ask the priest when noting anomalies or having questions. The priest finally told me that the bible was written by humains so it doesn't have to be read exactly and is full of mistakes. My great mother told my mother that if you don't teach the bible properly you become an atheist like me... I think she mean that the priest not hitting me when asking question was a mistake XD
I also had to read the bible in school, although importantly this was highschool english class, we read basically the whole thing, and it was treated similarly to other literature, it was overall very educational and important context for understanding western society. From the article it sounds like a lot of what they're planning in Texas is to show kindergartners religious propaganda about the bible and small passages rather than giving students an unfiltered look at the full text, which seems less useful.
Where is that in the bible?
It's the second story of Lot and his daughters, Genesis 19:30-38
The first one is in Sodom where Lot offers the selfsame daughters to people who want to rape two angels that are visiting at the time.
That family was REALLY not big on consent..
Wow. Isn't that highly inappropriate reading material for young kids?
Yeah, but so's anything to do with religion, really 🤷
They get revenge by raping their dad and having incest babies.
Pretty early into Genesis.
Right in the fucking beginning
i like the part with balaam hitching his ass to a tree and walking a mile. also old baldy elisha and his mastery of the spell summon bear swarm. poor guy could never figure out how to cast
Yeah I feel like this may have the opposite effect, making kids see it as some boring school/old people stuff rather than ignoring its existence and learning about it from "tradcon" memes on social media, which may make it look "cooler" to them
That's so blatant a constitutional violation we might not get a 6-3 ruling on it.
5-4 it is, then.
Sounds about right.
reading the bible made me aware that 100% of all american christians aren't following jesus's teachings and way of life, and more follow the biblical satanic ideology
The only people that think it’s a good idea are people who’ve never read the Bible.
Song of Solomon is no substitute for proper sex education.
Even if it is “enlightening”
You just gotta love how these Christians, always ready to show the world their virtue signalling, always ready to paint themselves as the best people that people can be, also always cheat and fraud to get ahead and get their religion shoved down the throats of little children, and you always have to be thankful that that's all they try to shove down your own child's throat.
Fuck everything about religions in general, but Christianity specifically
"Your religion is like a penis. It's fine if you have one, as long as you don't try to shove it down my kids' throats."
And don't flaunt it, too
Whoops.
I've experienced reciting the pledge of allegiance and the lords prayer.
It's all indoctrination
Ask very innocently: which version.
it's always the KJB, or some later evangelical even more bastardized version of the KJB
That's a great point. They may want to nail down exactly which version is the correct one, to avoid any issues...
So you mean the state will make a decision about ...dogma? 😈
I think it's crucial that the state of Texas make a ruling on which exact interpretation of Bible is the correct one. Everyone should weigh in on it passionately at the next opportunity.
I think it's such an important issue that the implementation of the law should be delayed until a consensus opinion is reached.
That's a great point! They should start discussing who has a right to chime in, as soon as possible, and then take however long is necessary to reach full agreement.
If they read it and comprehend how crazy it is, how Christians pick and choose what they follow, and the discrepancies and inconsistencies in it. Sure. Let it backfire on them.
We had a super Christian lady in my first job, always smiling and happy and telling us how gods got a plan for us all. I tried reading the bible to see if I could get some of that blessed happiness. In the first 10 minutes of reading god makes everything, sees its shit, spakes "whoopeth" and fireballs everyone to ash and starts again.
Thats the being they truly believe is in charge of everything and they're happy. Scares the shit out of me.
That is what I was thinking. They consistently pick out extremely short peices of passages to quote. In context, most would push people away from religion. Maybe other states should force kids to read the entire bible. That would cure todays youth of any religous intentions.
My favorite is the story of Sampson. Who has magic hair.
And a mean woman cuts it off after he was post nut sleeping and then he was turned into a slave.
But over time his magic hair grew back and then he killed all the haters.
Also reading the Bible will
That's what solidified it for me.
What would that continent be like without that book...
Probably would have replaced it with something else equally bad
Can't wait for the Satanic Church to chime in on this one.
The Satanic Temple is the more activist organization. Church of acts more like a conventional religion.
Christians don't read the bible. These kids will see how stupid it is. I see a backfire coming.
Separation🤣of🤣church🤣and🤣state🤣
Yup, they're separate classes. Church class and state history.
I’d have no problem with that were it done critically, comparative to “christians”, and analytically. Dissecting the Bible would create a lot more atheists.
But we know that’s not what they want. The talibangelicals want unquestioned dogma.
Let read Bible, then Quran, then all other religion!
I feel like texas is doing this because the people just aren't going to church anymore
Fuck off with that nonsense! Gosh they are despicable.
Honestly, at this point I'd be happy if American children were capable of reading anything.
“Dur dur dur, ‘Muricans dumb!”
If you’ve got nothing more pathetic to do than demonize an entire nation online, I suggest you go outside and touch some grass.
Literacy rates are at historic lows. It’s a deadly serious problem that cannot just be ignored.
Considering 40% of 4th grade kids in US cant read, this is going to be interesting
My great great aunt forced me to read the Bible. I am now a half feral Neo-Pagan, hail Odin fuck that trash, Jesus is kinda chill and Sampson gets overlooked too frequently.
Yeah Jesus was chill. The issue is the other half of the bible and also that people who force others to read it usually don't even follow what Jesus taught so whatever.
Yep, honestly I'm kinda surprised that there doesn't seem to be any major Christian sects who said fuck it and either cut out or simplified the old testament kinda like what Islam did or at least better separate it all out.
Yeah, there are many variations but it's taboo enough that the closest to a major sect I can think of is that Catholics have additional books.
But fun fact, one of the founding fathers (I think Ben Franklen) made a very short version that took out all the history or magic and just left being the laws and rules to follow
You're thinking of Thomas Jefferson
I totally am, thanks
I think that was Jefferson? But ol' Ben was also a wild child, for sure.
That's the wrong kind of Pagan. Go hug a rock and think about what you've done!
But I don't want to hug a rock, I want to raid churches and rip the copper from their walls!
The heroes we need & deserve. 🥰🤘🏽
Maybe someone should hint them on the ... interesting ... bits. Things their boring preacher usually leaves out. Song of Salomon, Lot's daughters, etc.
hell, even just the sermon on the mount. lotta holier than thou capitalists hate reading that one
all of Ecclesiastes too, basically about how $ is evil and corrupts everything iirc
Coming soon to all 50 states. We are one Insurrection Act away from Gilead.
In school we only did their creation myth. There were so many other myths in the world that we didn't have time to learn the whole thing.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with this, so long as the lessons aren’t dictated to be from a religious perspective. I think the Bible and the Quran make sense as required reading as historical works. They’re tremendously important cultural and historical documents. As long as they’re taught from that perspective, I don’t have a problem with them being required reading texts.
The problem starts when they’re being required as texts to legitimize the religions they’re associated with. Then, you’ve got the state supporting some religions over others or no religion at all.
actually examining all the contradictions in this stuff is a great way to build critical thinking skills though but actually reading the bible is something most of the fundy types really have a hard time with, their religions as a whole have been built around unquestioning top-down pushed faith for so long that (ime) they almost seemed scared to actually think for themselves
Of course they are, in the debate of skeptics vs. believers, the skeptics are right every time.
Who wants to believe in a world with no magic? A world where there is no God to save the soul you don't have?
I don't want to be an atheist, but I have no choice to be one, because I live in a materialist universe where magic doesn't exist.
This is the shit hole south.
Of COURSE they're going through turn it into a fucking 5 day Sunday school session. Ripe for indoctrination and they cannot even leave
You can try to force them but most of them probably can't even read to begin with
I'm pretty sure if there is a hell the god bothers outnumber the devil worshipers.
You WILL get on board with pastoral expansion
Isnt the christian bible pretty antisemitic? Have they ever bothered to read their bible? Jesus talked trash about the Jewish authorities of the time pretty much nonstop. Thats not even going into the events that led to his death. If politicians want to keep servicing Israels bribes I recommend that they DONT advocate that anyone read the bible. They should probably ban it.
Similarly for Jewish holy books, Talmud passage Gittin 56a goes into details about how Jesus the Nazarene should boil in excrement for all time for mocking the Jewish sages. Thatd be another inconvenient thing to come up in school discussions, wouldnt it? We should probably ban that book too.
Heck with it, at that point maybe we just keep religion out of schools entirely, how about that. Extremist idea, I know.
Oi, don't conflate dislike of Jewish authorities with dislike of Jewish people in general. That's the argument being used to call criticism of Israel antisemetism.
I dont think I did.
Isn't the bible pretty antisemetic > Jesus talked trash about the Jewish authorities + the events that led to his death.
That certainly reads to me like you are making a connection between those two statements. If that's not what you meant to do great, but I refuse to believe I am the only person that will interpret it that way.
https://youtu.be/hePRA9yVdQE
i learned to read off an old king james version (probably 1920s edition somewhere. my oldest sibling inherited it and their kids learned similarly) when i was 4. honestly, it taught me to read challenging verbiage and stick with uninteresting texts. i think only my parents thought it was literal.
Start with Ezekiel 20:24-26
24 Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers' idols.
25 Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;
26 And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord.