Current Events > Hot take: religious texts should be in school libraries and should be taught in

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not in literature.

Gilgamesh once went on a quest to solve mortality. Eventually he finds the gods who give him a tree that produces fruit that people can eat and live forever. He puts it down for a minute to go take a bath and while his back is turned, a snake eats it and it's gone forever.

Sound familiar to you?

Teaching the Bible actively encourages ignorance by obfuscating the original literary inspirations throughout history.

Except the Bible is the literary inspiration far more than Gilgamesh is.

Teaching the Bible actively encourages ignorance by obfuscating the original literary inspirations throughout history.

You are arguing for doing something wrong because the wrong thing is more "popular" than the right thing.

I'm not arguing for anything wrong. Something influenced by the bible was influenced by the bible, not Gilgamesh.

That is wrong.

Yes because as I've said earlier:

You are arguing for doing something wrong because the wrong thing is more "popular" than the right thing.

Nor is the Bible's influence limited to literature.

1. As a literary resource, it isn't influential as it merely repeats ideas that have already been told.
2. Being inspired by the Bible to write something isn't the same thing as being influenced by the Bible. The story contained within the Bible is agnostic and generic. You're inspired by that story to write it, but the Bible didn't influence the story, it merely copied it, and you copying the Bible just means you're copying the copy.
3. I specifically singled out literary influence as societal/cultural influence can be directly pinned on the Bible and the Bible exclusively as it's determined purpose of keeping people ignorant facilitated. The crusades weren't influenced by Gilgamesh. The Salem witch trials weren't influenced by Hammurabi. There is no disputing that and I never tried.

It's weird to argue that a religious text is derivative and therefore has had little influence on society. I can name many derivative things that have had a bigger impact on society than the things they reformatted.

That is wrong. The amount of literature influenced by the Bible is pretty small. Most literary works are influenced by more contemporary literature which was influenced by other contemporary literature and so on going back and back hundreds of years at a time until you eventually get to something like The Divine Comedy which was influenced by the Bible. Then arbitrarily ignoring the influences the Bible had for no reason.

You're skipping over vast amounts of historical wealth of influence and then stopping just short of the beginning. Again, for no reason other than the Bible is more popular than Gilgamesh.

God damn that's like a fucking industrial strawman factory.

Sometimes CE is very rigid and aggressive about things for almost no reason..........getting gaslighted....

1. As a literary resource, it isn't influential as it merely repeats ideas that have already been told.

2. Being inspired by the Bible to write something isn't the same thing as being influenced by the Bible. The story contained within the Bible is agnostic and generic. You're inspired by that story to write it, but the Bible didn't influence the story, it merely copied it, and you copying the Bible just means you're copying the copy.

Things such as religion have no place being in a place of learning.

Like bringing up religious text being taught in school (no matter how you spin it) when we actively have a large number of lawmakers pushing for Christian scripture, and values in school? Then playing dumb why the entire board isn't supportive of an idea you support?

Do you have any issues with the point TC is actually trying to make.

I went to a secular private school and we had an elective Bible class that was as TC described. The old and new testaments were read and analyzed as you would in English or History classes. It was really interesting, if not especially popular.

If their exposure to the idea comes from the Bible, the Bible has clearly influenced the author. You could argue the source material had an indirect influence on the author insofar as it more directly inspired the Bible, but pretending the Bible has nothing to do with the author's exposure to the idea is dishonest at worst, silly at best.

We cannot pretend that religion never existed and never has any influence.

We don't lend our support when people want to remove the bad parts of history from study, do we?

I think there is some confusion here. Learning about religion and its effects is not the same thing as religious instruction.

Because at least from the time of moses there are historical events that actually happened. Jesus is a maybe though. A man named jesus who had a religious sect, yes. The miracles? Going to say no on those

Yes, many issues.

The point he's is trying to make does not change the point others are trying to make and why we disagree with the TCs point.

The TCs point being argued is not enough reason whatsoever for me to ignore what would actually be taught in schools.

If your instant reaction is to ignore the counterpoint because it's uncomfortable to discuss, you are proving my point in why I'm against the TCs and your idea.

I'm not assuming you are talking about anything. I'm against what the TC has said in the OP because fundamentally it can and will be abused to push more Christianity onto children. Christianity is already touched on in schools, we don't need even more.

There's no confusion, I simply don't think there would actually be a complete separation between learning about religion and its effects and actual religious instruction, especially in certain parts of the US. You would immediately have tons of people abusing this to push their religion onto children, and tons more people throwing a fit because their children are learning about Islam or whatever. There's already real life stories of people getting mad about stuff like that.

Like I said, I don't mind the idea in principle, but to act like it would all go down perfectly fine with no problems is laughable.

Was literally part of my high school history curriculum to learn world religions.

I don't know how you could even begin to teach history without teaching about religion.

I didn't say it had nothing to do with it. If the Bible is your gateway to the flood myth then it just is, but the flood myth is way older than the Bible and the influence is of the flood myth. The Bible just has its own version of the flood myth. The story still exists independently of the Bible.

Dude, classes like TC is talking about already exist. Educators across the country already think it has value.

Reread my post, I literally said they already exist. I said we don't need more.

Educators across the country also think literally teaching Christian values to children has great value. Saying a bunch of people think it has value is not saying much at all to counter why we are not supportive of the TCs idea.

I'm not at all confident what people claim to be "secular" and not indoctrination, is actually secular. As most of the country supports Christianity, and almost half of the voters supports a party that WANTS Christian values to be pushed on children. At a fundamental level I absolutely do not trust this idea in the slightest.

No, I'm saying classes exactly as tc has proposed are dedicated extracurriculars in many high schools and represent a valid field of study in academia. No, not at religious colleges. All universities, state run universities.

Yeah, this shows that you just don't have the background knowledge. Do some googling, go to some university websites and read their description of the majors/minors.

I have 0 trust whatsoever those existing classes are secular classes in the slightest.

as soon was they start teaching science and evolution in church while also teaching how wrong religion is about the world

I have 0 trust whatsoever those existing classes are secular classes in the slightest.

I'm not at all confident what people claim to be "secular" and not indoctrination, is actually secular. As most of the country supports Christianity, and almost half of the voters supports a party that WANTS Christian values to be pushed on children. At a fundamental level I absolutely do not trust this idea in the slightest.

Pretty sure the guys who have taken those course, in this very topic, are agnostic.

I am talking about grade school, not college. Also, I don't trust anyone in this topic claiming they are so called atheist or agnostic.

Unless you have any sort of evidence to doubt us, that's a MASSIVE red flag.

Friends,

REALLY??? have you read the bible from cover to cover. I just about have, its long and complicated. its not like you can just focus on ONE religion, you have to do them all. We are talking like 6 years of study.

and you are going to force this on people, thats not going to work. we have "freedom of religion"

If we have to ban books about two boy frogings kissing, because it MIGHT turn our kids gay. I sure as hell can ban all the religions books, because it talks about murder after murder.

read them at home.

I wrote a 25 page paper on the compare and contrast of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. How much fun does that sound????

Unless you have some supportive evidence it's useless to even bring up.

How in the hell would we prove we don't believe something?

You can say whatever you believe, I certainly cant stop you. Im not asking you or the TC to prove they are so called agnostic. You are even welcome to express what you claim you are.

Just don't expect that be some kind of proof or authority to the conversation. It doesn't prove you are some authority figure on the subject or unbias. Nor does it mean the person who already disagrees with your idea, should just agree because you claim you are unbiased.
The common fundamental problem people against the TCs idea is the abuse that would follow. So telling the people here who already disagree with you and the TCs idea being implemented, that you are agnostic doesn't add anything to the conversation to prove to me you are unbiased about the idea presented in the OP. You can virtually say whatever to sound unbiased to make yourself sound unbiased, it's not helping against where we have expressed the fundamental issues we have with the idea being implemented in grade school.

Risk of abuse is not a compelling argument.