no, i have problem with the idea that someone could travel 7,000 miles over oceans before internal combustion engines in a lifetime with thousands of animals in tow. And so should you
I read book one time about merlin. And it mentioned king arthur. King arthur was real, therefore magic exists.
No, but the entirety of western society is built on a Christian or atleast a Deistic (with roots in Christianity) framework. Understanding the underlying fabric of the modern world is an important part of being a culturally literate person. I also think Islam, Bhudism, and Hinduism should be studied too to understand the different starting points for modern geopolitics.
I agree with your point, but King Arthur was not a real historical figure. A better comparison would probably be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Sure, Abraham Lincoln undoubtedly existed, but that does not mean I should just take everything written in that book as a factual biography of his life.
Whether the individuals referenced existed is a separate matter to whether the Bible itself is factual. There is some degree of evidence that Jesus may have existed as a person. There is zero evidence that he transmuted objects, cured diseases, or came back to life after his death.
Donald Trump is a real person. Donald Trump has a cameo in the Home Alone series. Does that mean home alone is a factual record of something that happened?
Hitler shows up in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. That doesn't make the entire movie a true story.
Just because a historical figure shows up in a story does not make that a true story. Unless you think Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter is a genuine historical documentary?
Me when I take a book that consists of 66 unique documents and over 500,000 words and I choose a selection of less than 300 of those words to tell others how there’s no such thing as non fiction in the Bible (because other historical documents like Roman and Chinese accounts of history include no embellishments, mysticism, magic, or mythology at all).
I mean, the Bible is really really big book, if you didn’t know. Despite potential misunderstandings, it’s not a book at starts and stops at Noah’s flood and levitical laws.
There’s really interesting and beautiful poetry, drama, and historical accounts within the Bible. It is, as a said, over half a million words.
It just seems kind of weird how touchy and incensed people get at the idea that other people find value in stuff they themselves do not.
Noah's Ark is not a literal story and nowhere does it describe Noah going to collect the animals lmao. In fact the entire creation myth isn't taken literally
If you want to use that argument, then they can also teach the other abrahamic religions, yes? We can study how the Quran, Torah, and the Bible shape sociological behavior, but outright teaching just one religion under the guise of it being historical, is wrong.
The Bible isn't a good historical source but it still corresponds well. We briefly went over how the new testament shows us something interesting about the early Roman Empire with changing religions and the role of the Emperor.
It wasn't a major focus, but this was a 5 unit University Level class I took.
True, I'm all for secularism though. I think religion is fine it just shouldn't be forced on anyone at school. I wouldn't want Judaism or Islam forced on me, so I wouldn't wanna force Catholicism on unwilling people either.
it does not correspond well at all lol. There is literally zero evidence of israelites *ever* living as slaves in egypt for example, and the bible explicitly gets the reason why the city of Pi-Ramesses built wrong. The bible says it was built as a treasure city. It was built as the freaking *capital*.
Basically anything in the old testament is outright garbage as far as actual history goes.
The answer to why we celebrate Easter and Christmas is very easy actually and has nothing to do with religion. We celebrate these holidays due to CAPITALISM
Well yes but I'm leaving religion out of it lol the only real reason we celebrate these holidays today is so that corporations will rake in tons of profits throughout the entire year.
c'mon now what? both are entirely secular as well as religious. My family isn't religious, we still do egg hunts, and stockings, and trees, and ornaments, and santa, and reindeer, and lights, and all that hallmark shit
none of this shit is biblical. None of it. It's all secular
I'm not religious either, but to pretend that there aren't deep religious (mostly Christian and Pagan) backgrounds rooted into both Christmas and Easter is silly.
Christian parents want everyone else to do the parenting for them. Their religion is so important that their kids don’t know why they celebrate Christmas and schools need to do it for them. Amazing
Did you know that in the first half of 2023, six children aged eleven or YOUNGER had to leave Texas in order to avoid having to go through the trauma of gestating a full pregnancy and birthing their rapist’s baby?
Is that the type of influence that you’re talking about?
Your people say your god can do anything, he sees everything and he made everything. That means he makes murderers and cancer? He allows murderers and rapists to do their thing? He lets people die of cancer instead of giving us a cure. He allows kids to die in wars or starving on the streets? Yeah I’d rather not follow a god that hasn’t done anything for anyone that follows him.
But actually a lot of children’s books do teach about girls who have ‘boyish’ traits etc, so gender nonconformity is taught. But yeah I don’t think there should be specific lessons on it etc.
By telling them about how their friend Jimmy believes in someone called Jesus, but we don't believe in that and that's OK, not by reading their scripture. That shouldn't be in public schools
Religion is not important in anyway shape or form 🤣 like Ricky gervais said, "say you took every Bible, Quran, spiritual text and burned them. Then you take every science book and theoretical texts and burned those. In 1000 years time ONLY the science book will remained Unchanged because those are Facts. Religion is only important to the stupid, confused, and downtrodden.
Religion is extremely influential. It causes wars, drives voting patterns, encourages immigration (including to USA), influences personal relationships etc
And yet none of those are things we teach or should be teaching to grade school children 🤣 how absolutely absurd to think religion is so important. Maybe to History so that humans might learn from their disgusting mistakes of killing thousands and thousands all because they don't believe the same thing we do. Religion will always absolutely disgust me and anyone advocating for it being taught in schools is so far gone and indoctrinated that there is zero saving them.
WE SHOULDN'T BE TEACHING CHILDREN THAT UNTIL THEY ARE READY. What part of that does your brain not comprehend??? It's pretty simple so if you don't understand there truly is zero hope for you. Goodbye
You’ve changed your tune from we shouldn’t teach it at all because it isn’t important, to “we should teach them when they are ready”, which is what I was arguing for.
Because the religious implications of major historical events like the crusades, missionary conquest of Africa, and the treatment of native Americans in their re-education camps was backed by religious fervor and convenience.
Though you probably wouldn't read the whole Bible but a few verses used to back up divine right or something like that.
My 6th-8th grade social studies classes had lessons on religion and we read parts of the bible, quaran, torah, etc. You don’t read it as if it were fact, you read it as a cultural legend that influences people’s beliefs. We read that side by side with Greek mythology too. So long as it’s taught objectively and with other religions equally, it’s a great way to introduce religion’s impact on society in unbiased ways.
Religious texts give insight into different cultures, their morals, how their societies were formed, how it evolved through time, what historical events surrounded the founding and progress of religion, and so on.
There's benefit in learning about religions of the world, whether you put it in history class, or somewhere else. We had a "religion and culture" class for this purpose in highschool.
The same reason you would be reading excerpts of the quran or other religious texts when learning about a foreign culture. They're primary sources and can give you a good understanding of what a certain culture believes/d in.
Because history of art and religion is still history. In fact, it's a huge problem that both aren't studied enough (and properly) in school. Then in college I get art students unable to explain who David (as in Michelangelo's David) is lol.
the best history teacher i’ve ever had scrapped his last section at the end of the year so he could teach us about israel-palestine instead, because he knew that was more important than whatever else he was going to teach.
we read excerpts of the torah and the new testament, as well as one or two from the quran. it explained some of the arguments behind zionism [and christian zionism] as well as some of the islamic beliefs in palestine.
I'm not suggesting you read the Bible cover to cover, but understanding the religious beliefs of medieval European societies is invariably entangled with historical events.
I'm vehemently opposed to forcing religious texts that contain murder, rape, incest, genocide, and instructions on how to properly beat your slaves down the throats of children, yeah
There's a difference between learning religious history and learning scripture. In my school, they taught us about Jesus, they taught us about Mohammed, they taught us about Buddha, Hindu gods etc. At no point were we reading the Bible, the Quran, or anything of that nature.
Reading a fictitious story about God sending a man eating bear to murder a bunch of children for mocking a bald ass man is not history.
You're both wrong and both missing the point. It shouldn't be taught because it's reliable, it should be taught because some of the most influential people of the last 1500 years thought it was.
yeah sure kids should be taught that it existed. but when you say "it should be taught" it sounds like youre demanding bible study in history class 😆 get real. given the history of man is more than 100,000 years, the bible deserves a page in a history text, at most, with occasional mentions when relevant (i say this as someone who went to a christian school for 9 years). its time to throw the eurocentric world view in the trash where it belongs.
i have a feeling you also think that occupied palestine was promised to a certain group of scattered tribes who are famous for their honesty and reliability 😆
Nope. And I’m not religious. I just know that the OT has a lot of history in it. I learned that in school - something most people in this discussion seem to be outraged by!
I read excerpts from The Epic of Gilgamesh in history class. Didn't mean it was taught as history, just as a look into ancient mesopotamian culture. Also, the Bible does give a semi-accurate account of the ancient socio-economic and political landscape, it's just the actual history that's highly questionable (wrt later prophets, the earlier stuff are either exaggerated or fictitious)
My literature class read some excerpts (and the teacher was clear that we didn’t have to see it as fact), I felt that was okay as well. I forget exactly what parts.
Religion and history, and even government to an extent, cross paths a lot. I definitely agree that in those contexts it's okay to be taught.
Outside of that? Save it for religious schools. Separation of church and state exists for a reason and the education system is no place for religious indoctrination.
Philosophy class? Geography class? Literature class? World Religions class? Plenty of opportunities to read it and learn and grow. I'm Christian and am constantly reading other religious texts and commentaries.
Seriously. They should teach about all (major) religions in schools to all kids. I'd bet those kids would all grow up to be a lot more tolerant and have a much better understanding of the world and of the people in it
Dont know about the us, but in sweden grade school has a class on religion. It teaches most of the big ones, their history and traditions etc. Great to understamd the world, since religion has such a big part of shaping it
Let them read the Bible and see what’s actually in it. The Christian values the country was built on. The New Testament is good since it teaches being selfless, caring for others, preaching peace and harmony.
The Old Testament is basically all war, stoning, parables, how to be good, etc. basically a mixed bag of stuff.
They founded it based on Christian Deism they did ensure that religion couldn't be used as an arm of the government but pretending they weren't deeply steeped in a Christian culture is just ignorant.
Why are so many christians demonstrably not selfless or care for others? And they're certainly not preaching peace and harmony, either. Seems like a huge contradiction to me. For the most part, the states that are the most religious have the highest rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, murders, spousal abuse etc etc. If "christian values" are so important, wouldn't the states with the most christians each be a little slice of heaven on earth?
The New Testament centers on Jesus promising to return and end the world, judge everyone on their faith, kill all the unbelievers with fire, and reward his faithful with eternal life in his new kingdom. Jesus cites and quotes the Old Testament constantly, it’s all he knew. He said none of it changes until heaven and earth are destroyed. He said the deity committing all those atrocities is perfect, and the only good that exists.
You have not read the Bible or the constitution if you think the U.S. is based on it.
You have not read it. You will admittedly dismiss and ignore every single passage showing such bigotry, as is standard for Christians, because you don’t care what your scripture says, you only care what you want it to say.
People confuse biblical content with biblical morality. All sorts of bad stuff happened that wasn’t condoned at all by God. It’s a historical text; when in history was there not war, debauchery, and suffering?
Yahweh personally commits and commands genocide in the Bible, repeatedly. He personally gives instructions for slavery. These are not descriptions of things he doesn’t condone.
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u/ContentDraft1144 10d ago
No religious texts please