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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.
They'll start with sanitized versions of select excerpts and build up tolerance and indoctrination.
Time for the Satanic Temple to do its work.
I could honestly see this backfiring in a really funny way. Not only will they actually try harder to get them to learn to read, but in my experience kids tend to hate books they are forced to read. In the setting that is church there's more of a peer pressure from all the other kids and adults to learn the bible. In high-school/middle-school there's peer pressure to not read the books you are supposed to read save for those that love reading. The only books I remember reading from those years are the ones I chose to read while the ones I was told to read had left my brain almost entirely by my mid 20s
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.
Wasn't there a ruling that the Bible is exempted because it's "culturally important" or something?
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.
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."
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.
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.
Based on the law of unintended consequences, this is one of the best inoculations against religion.
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
I hope they study James 5....
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
I think that would make an epic face tattoo
Shouldn’t the bible be subject to that age verification thing that’s going around? You know, to actually protect the children.
Exactly, the Bible talks about donkey dicks and horse cum!
Also child slaughter. Some kids made fun of a dude for being bald, and god sent a bear to tear them apart. Wholesome story.
When I was a kid, my best friend's dad liked to cite those verses when we made comments about his receding hairline.
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.
Texastan
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.
Like others in here, I have a lot of concerns about indoctrination and separation between religion and government. However, I can see a serious argument for Jonah and the Whale and especially David and Goliath as cultural touchstones that are regularly referenced in modern media. Other stories may be a harder pitch, maybe Cain & Abel?
Yeah, if I set aside my deep seated hatred for religious people undermining the Texas public education system-
I do actually think some of those stories are relevant literature to have read, alongside beowulf, epic of gilgamesh, the Iliad, arthurian legends, etc.
Good, the best way to get more atheists is to force students to read the Bible.
it's ridiculous tripe
Those kids would be furious if they could read.
One of the biggest mistakes resulting from the Protestant Reformation's push for the proliferation of Bibles was the belief that one can just pick the thing up and read it like it's any other book, divorced from the tradition that wrote and shaped it. The whole idea that God assembled 66 books and bound them up in leather and dropped it from heaven is both foreign to the vast majority of Christian thinking throughout history AND grounds for a very dangerous heresy (turning the Bible into the "ultimate" revelation of God, rather than Jesus being that or at the very least redefining the Trinity as "Father, Son, and Holy Scriptures").
The funny thing is, is that the same people who hold to an idea that if everyone read the Bible the world would be better are the same who offer selective readings and ignore/downplay the parts they don't like (as we see in this proposal).
It is funny when you see one theocracy (Israel) in alliance with another (the US is a de facto theocracy, not a de jure one) bombing a third theocracy (Iran) killing indiscriminately. And they all believe in the same God, practicing similar methods, only their rituals of worship are different. Is there a more obvious fact that religion is the source of all evil in human history?
They gonna be real angry when they get to Leviticus and find out what foods they can't eat...
Lol, jk they'll skip the inconvenient sections.
And wait until they find out that their mixed polyester/cotton clothing is an abomination.
One of my own deeply held beliefs is that any religion that bans shellfish and carnitas cannot possibly be divinely inspired.
There’s a lot of….interesting sexual things in there. Anyone thinking of the children here!? 🤣
I really am tempted to walk into a bible thumping school and read every single sex related verse just for kicks. but I'm trans so chances are they would shoot me and claim I had a bomb.
There are some passages they could read to open their eyes about religion. Those that their pastor never uses in church...
I grew up Southern Baptist, was in church EVERY Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening. I also went to the school attached to our church from first grade through high school and was extremely involved in our youth group. I wound up having a bit of a messy break-up with the Southern Baptists and, after about two years of relative spiritual aimlessness, I found the Episcopal Church (which is quite different from the Southern Baptists, what with our women and Queer clergy and openness to a variety of things now deemed "woke"). I remember the Sunday when I heard both the reading and a sermon from Matthew 24 (the part where Jesus talks about His return and says "what you do for the least of these you do for me") and, I swear, I'd never heard that part before then. If I had, we must've just glossed over it. But it was like hearing from a completely different religion and made me really excited about being a Christian.
Beautiful, the bible is full of stories about murder, incest and adultery is a bestseller through the centuries.
Adjusted dozens of times so that the lies are more in line with the times.
New International Version
^30^ Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. ^31^ One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. ^32^ Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
^33^ That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
^34^ The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” ^35^ So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
^36^ So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. ^37^ The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab^[a]^; he is the father of the Moabites of today. ^38^ The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi^[b]^; he is the father of the Ammonites^[c]^ of today.
I always took that story to mean, Lot raped his daughters but then changed the story. People were pretty messed up back then.
Force them to read the whole bible. Nobody who actually reads the bible remains a theist.
I don't know about American politics much but I thougt mockery of Christianity in the Show The boys was just an edgy joke, but holy shit they talking real shit lmao.
Meanwhile I was forced to read Bible by my parents and didn't really help much rather than fuelling the fire of hate of for a religion being forced on me.
