Absolutely. To parents who really really want their kids to study the Bible a lot, they have the freedom to do it outside of school hours or select a private religious school.
Czarcasm,
Thanks for the link.
From that page:
“Students explore the biblical accounts of the creation of the universe,
beginning of the human race, disobedience and consequences,
sibling rivalry and murder and the origin of cultural differences.
Students also study the call of Abraham and they trace the Abrahamic
covenant throughout the book. Key lessons include a longitudinal study
of how the covenant with Abraham is called into question, Abraham’s
doubts and God’s ultimate fulfillment of his covenantal promises.”
That is religious dogma not the study of the Bible as a history text.
Crane
Is there anything at all in the Bible about tricking people into being indoctrinated vs. being entirely truthful and letting them decide what to believe for themselves?
Czarcasm,
No. The Bible is basically a document of history that promotes partisan points of view.
Crane
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Agreed. However, I see no right of the minority that is being denied because of this program.
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Disagree. There is nothing in the First Amendment that requires an active hostility towards religion to say that you cannot use our buildings. I let my crazy uncle sleep in my house when he comes into town. That doesn’t mean I agree with his opinions. As long as the school would allow another religious group to use the public facility, I think the First Amendment is satisfied. In Mercer County, I don’t think that they should be required to ship in Muslims, Wiccans, etc.
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What right are these people asserting that they are being denied? They remain free to practice their own religion. The leader of the local church is not also the head of government. The lone Wiccan or Muslim in Mercer County is not subject to civil or criminal penalties for his or her beliefs. What right is being violated?
Living in the UK this is something that I find really disturbing. I mean the number of people in the US that are trying to get religion into schools by any way they can, even if it’s underhand. They detest the part of the First Amendment that concerns religion, which I believe is one of the greatest things in the Constitution. I wish we had it over here!
I don’t know just how many Americans are pushing for this but I try to convince myself that they will never be a majority for if they were to become one the consequences would terrify me. Christianity worming its way into every subject in school, history, social studies, and, worst of all, science. I watched an excellent documentary on Youtube last week called Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial (warning, link leads to Youtube video) which followed the suit brought by the Dover Board of Education to force Intelligent Design to be taught alongside Darwinism. I’m happy to say the champions of Darwin won the day and in gaining their victory they revealed the sheer dishonesty of the other side. They proved that Intelligent Design was just a bullshit term to cloak Creationism and that the textbook the Board wanted to use was just a farrago of half-truths and downright lies.
It’s a very uplifting documentary but at the same time it’s a scary one. It was great to see so many intelligent Americans talking good sense and defending real science but the people on the other side were Americans too and they were frightening. I know the SDMB is mainly American and I’d like to believe that you guys are representative of your country and those other people aren’t.
Is it possible that the US could ever fall prey to these religious fanatics. There seem to be an awful lot of them out there. And where is Trump in this equation? That’s beginning to worry me too. I didn’t think he was hostage to these lunatics, now I’m not so sure.
Sorry if this is a little bit of a hijack. Let me know, mods, if you’d prefer this in another thread.
This type of fear towards the teaching of Christianity astounds me. Clearly I do not support the aspect of this curriculum that talks about Adam and Eve playing with dinosaurs. If that is part of the curriculum, it does a terrible disservice to the schoolchildren of Mercer County.
However, I am not a member of the school board, and I still fail to see how having an optional Bible class, not paid for by public funds instills so much terror in some people. This is the furthest thing from a state establishment of religion as the founders would have recognized it.
The majority should have the right to have these classes. As noted above it may not trounce on the rights of the minority if it: 1) forces the minority to adhere to the religious views of the majority, or 2) establishes a state church whereby the head of the church is the head of the government. It has not done either here, and the decision of whether to have these classes should rest with the people of Mercer County, not with the federal judiciary.
During school hours, yes. But is it during classroom time? My Bible club was during the “advisory” period which we had just before lunch, which was also when any other club would meet. If you weren’t in a club meeting on that day of the week, you’d go to your homeroom class.
That’s what I thought they were doing with this. If not, then I agree that is a violation.
And I must’ve missed the credit issue. That is definitely a violation. That’s the school sponsoring it directly.
Having teachers do it from outside I’m still not sure about, as long as they aren’t school employees. It would depend on fair treatment, I believe.
I know my school let youth pastors visit during lunch time in junior high and high school. They just got a visitors pass. They couldn’t proselytize or anything–they could just hang out with their students. I know parents did this, as did sometimes graduated students who were back in town for a little while. So I’d assume any organization leader could do it.
But I also know that schools seem to be much more paranoid about adult visitors these days. And my school did run into other challenges, like invocations at football games and praying over a school board meeting (which may be legal, but only if it’s not led by the school itself and is set up in a non-sectarian way, ala legislative meetings.)
Neither of those is the problem. The problem is a school showing favoritism to a particular religion. The problem is that this is apparently a class that students can get credit for. There is no corresponding class for students of other religions or no religion.
Assuming it is going on during normal class hours, this would also mean that the school is allowing only Christians to opt out of having to go to a state-funded class and instead get this other class. Other students would have to still go to a state-sponsored class. That is also unfair treatment.
And, as I’ve mentioned many times–does the school regularly allow people to come in who are not state-sponsored teachers and teach classes? If not, that’s also favoritism to the Christian students.
I say all this as a Christian myself. But, as one, I also realize that favoritism is wrong.
I in fact would have a problem with my (hypothetical) child going to this class. What if they teach the Bible in a way I don’t approve of? Sure, I can pull my kid out, but then it’s unfair that my kid doesn’t get the advantage these other kids get.
Plus, well, I can easily see what would happen if it were some other religion that had this advantage. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The founders would not have believed that a “favoritism” towards Christianity was wrong. It is a mere reflection that Christianity is the preferred belief of the overwhelming majority of the population.
Imagine if you or I, as Christians, were in a society where 98% of people were Wiccans. Wouldn’t it be beneficial to our children to have an optional class where they could learn of the majority’s beliefs? Our children would be growing up around people with these beliefs, eventually working with them, going to social events, etc. Would it not help our children transform into adults to have an understanding of that belief system? Again, we, as parents, would have the right to say “Hell, no” and remove our children from the course if we felt it went too far. Our children would not be required to adhere to Wiccan philosophy.
I am simply not seeing the terrible, horrible issue here. Nobody is forced to do anything. The scant governmental support is merely a reflection of the will of an overwhelming majority, the same majority who is the government in a representative democracy.
Jefferson’s admonition about having angels in the form of kings who lord over men seems to be apt when we want judges to thwart the will of the people.
“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
- Mark Twain
This is a popular view point but not fully held as an absolute truth like you are claiming.
While being an Atheist at the time would have been unheard of so was the establishment of a nationstate without direct invocation of a higher power.
“unalienable rights endowed by our Creator.” Is intentionally and explicitly vague and required lots of work from Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson also rewrote an entire bible removing all of the magical parts.
Or to quote from Thomas Paine - The Age of Reason:
The claim that the anti-establishment clause and freedom of religion protections are there purely to protect Christian sects from one another is absolutely not supported by history.
I’m afraid it’s the Constitution thwarting the will of the people, as it was partiality intended to do.
Up to a point, yes. Slow it down a bit, allow time for cooler heads to prevail, yes. It was not intended as a bulwark to prevent progress.
And if it was, then I say it’s spinach, and I say to hell with it!
I think if men like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson could see the Constitution as it is interpreted in 2017 they would rest satisfied that the country was developing just as they hoped that it would. The Christian extremists of the Discovery Institute came up with a plan they call the Wedge Strategy. It’s very clear what that means, just get the thin end of the wedge in somewhere and the rest will follow. That’s why these school Bible classes are so dangerous. They can seem quite innocent and people will say where’s the harm in that. The harm is that if Christianity is allowed even the slightest privilege in state schools that is denied to other religions then you narrow the separation between church and state and Christian fundamentalists will do all in their power to further narrow and eventually eliminate it altogether.
I, for one, don’t care much one way or another what a few of the the Founders would think if they were here today. I’d listen to them, of course, but I would not consider their opinions to be determinative. Why would they be? There were, literally, hundreds of Founders, all who voted on the Constitution and all who had slightly different ideas of what they thought the text would mean. We’re left with the text (which can be confusing enough as it is).
Not in the slightest. The Bible as we know it today is a collection of fairy tales, ridiculous stories, impossible events, religious precepts, magical relations, sacrificial requirements, ignorant claims, offensive tribal fables, schizophrenic fantasies, xenophobic diatribes, and genocidal manditories.
And that’s just the first few chapters.
In many western states high school students are given the ability to take a free period throughout the school day during which they travel off campus, usually next door, for religious schooling. They don’t get any school credit for the classes they take. The big difference here is that the class takes place on school grounds. If the classes paid some sort of rent to use a school room for the class would that be enough to make it ok?
So, it’s literature. Nothing wrong with a course on the thing as literature in a public school.
What is the purpose of your posting this? After all the different times in this thread people have shown you that it is definitely not being taught as literature, but as fact, are we supposed to pretend that your’s is the first response to the OP and that the links provided never happened?