Teach the Bible? ALLL of the Bible?

 https://www.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/1duwkzi/oklahoma_teach_bible_w_malicious_compliance/

 

Oklahoma Orders Schools to Teach the Bible

How to Truthfully Teach History Now that Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters Orders Schools to Teach The Bible:

Oklahoma Superindentent Ryan Walters Orders Schools to teach the Bible so students will learn the “substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution. Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” the memo noted. Walters continued at a state Board of Education meeting Thursday, saying, “We’ll be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma.”

Teaching the Bible in Oklahoma:

Ryan Walters must be a true Consitutionalist and believer in education. How grateful we should feel that we now are required to teach our children the role religion played in our nation’s founding–Specifically: how the Founding Fathers, many professed Deists, wanted a strict separation of Church and State. By examining their own words and writings, Ryan Walters might cause students to learn about how:

*George Washington assured a Jewish Congregation there will be no mandated Christian state-religion. *Jefferson wrote his own Bible removing supernatural elements and pens the Act for the Establishing Religious Freedom. *Benjamin Franklin reflected on the loss of his faith and the importance of religious tolerance in The Parable Against Persecution. *James Madison requested that state funds not be used for religious institutions. John Locke combined his religious faith and religious tolerance from the empirical methods of the Age of Enlightenment. *John Adams assured Muslims that America and Islam were friends and not enemies. *to Compare and Contrast the American Constitution and The Ten Commandments to see which laws appear in both, and which don’t, while also comparing ancient laws like Hamarabi’s code to see the development of morality and laws through the ages. *And so much more

The Separation of Church and State:

There’s no need to fear teaching the Bible as a Historical Document. Students will learn that The Founding Father’s never intended America to be a Christian nation. Students will learn how differing Founding Fathers had differing religous beliefs and created the laws of the Constitution to protect freedom of religion. Surely this is what Ryan Walters intends by his edict: To educate the future of America as to the true history and beliefs of The Founding Fathers: The Christians, The Deists, The Atheists, the Unitarians, the Undeclared. Because Ryan Walters is an honorable man, as are they all honorable men. Surely, no honorable man would be intending this edict in an attempt to be un-Constitutional or for nefarious ends? Only the ACLU knows…

Malicious Compliance:

In the event that Ryan Walters intends to force one religion over another in the United States of America, there is no need for any Roman knives in the senate. We, as teachers, can teach The Bible. Teach how The Bible demands the death penalty for wearing mixed fibers in Leviticus (Sorry, Timmy, your cotton/nylon blend P.E. shorts condemn you to eternal damnation). Teach how Thomas Jefferson said, “Every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty … they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon.” So teach honestly about the founding fathers and The Bible and see what happens. The Sun is the greatest disenfectant. Ryan Walters: Come towards the light…

Freedom from and for religion

 

Freedom from Religion

 

In the name of all that is holy

 

The separation of church and state is there for a reason.

 

All about Amy

 

Amy Coney Barrett belongs to a religious group called The People of Praise: "The highest office a woman can hold in the community is "woman leader" (formerly "handmaid")."

Trump’s Supreme Court pick has a problem with the Constitution

Why Amy Coney Barrett’s Religious Beliefs Aren’t Off Limits

Amy Coney Barrett's Catholic faith, People of Praise ties likely to gain scrutiny in Supreme Court confirmation

Full cartoon here.

Fears for Obamacare if Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to supreme court

Judge Barrett’s writing criticizes the Supreme Court decision upholding Obama-era health law

Update 10/5: More than 1K alumni from Amy Coney Barrett's undergrad college sign letter of concern

The point we have been making all along

Republicans seem to want to go back to the good old days... even though there never has been any good old days.

Debtors prisons were so nineteenth century...

How socialism has helped the United States.  And how Merikans don't know it.

People Finally Realizing For-Profit Education Is A Scam — University Of Phoenix Loses Half Its Students

Medieval medicine still works today... and works better than some modern medicines.

Breathe deeply.  Save our oceans.

Separation of church and state.  The US is actually NOT a Christian nation.

Jeb Bush thinks Governor Mike Pence did the right thing.  Do not forget the Terri Shiavo case. These indicate clearly where Jeb would go as president. Odd how the Republicans have hijacked the term, "religious freedom" so they can make it mean whatever they want it to mean.

Benighted, bigoted, burka'ed

If only all our political arguments were this simple.

Or religious ones.

Atheists more Christian in behavior than Christians

High School Student Stands Up Against Prayer at Public School and Is Ostracized, Demeaned and Threatened. When a high school atheist tried to stop prayer at his graduation, he was harassed and kicked out of his house. But the atheist community stepped in.

Proving again why we must have a clear separation of church and state. And no public prayer in schools. Or else include EVERY type of prayer imaginable.... reformed Druid, Pastafarian.....

Blog sprinkles

Instant anti-depressant from NTodd.

JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie has a fascinating argument going on her post about the nun in an Arizona hospital being automatically excommunicated for helping to save a woman's life... because the woman had a life threatening pregnancy.

Headline to gape at: Texas schools to teach kids that ’separation of church and state’ not in Constitution or how about this one? Deepwater Horizon survivors allege they were kept in seclusion after rig explosion, coerced into signing legal waivers

How to kill Social Security by ignorance explained by Gaius Publius of AmericaBlog.

Being skeptical about skeptics about global warming.

British bees are leaving their hives as well.

Steve Bates' laptop has been attacked by an 'interesting' virus. Can anyone identify it?

Karl Rove projects his own style of governmental 'control' on to the Obama administration.

And the oil meter still rolls on...

Extremism

Morse of Media Needle makes a video:



Juan Cole:

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

McCain pledged to work for peace based on "the transformative ideals on which we were founded." Tolerance and democracy require freedom of speech and the press, but while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin inquired of the local librarian how to go about banning books that some of her constituents thought contained inappropriate language. She tried to fire the librarian for defying her. Book banning is common to fundamentalisms around the world, and the mind-set Palin displayed did not differ from that of the Hamas minister of education in the Palestinian government who banned a book of Palestinian folk tales for its sexually explicit language. In contrast, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."

Holy shit!

Really.

JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie has the link:

"Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

Hovering at the edge of the Dark Ages

One in eight U.S. high school teachers presents creationism as a valid alternative to evolution, says a poll published in the Public Library of Science Biology.

Of more than 900 teachers who responded to a poll conducted by Penn State University political scientist Michael Berkman and colleagues, 32 percent agreed that creationism and intelligent design should be taught as scientifically unsound. Forty percent said such explanations are religiously valid but inappropriate for science class.

However, 25 percent said they devoted classroom time to creationism or intelligent design. Of these, about one-half -- 12 percent of all teachers -- called creationism a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," and the same number said that "many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory." (The full study makes for interesting reading: Evolution and Creationism in America’s Classrooms: A National Portrait.

Well, MY God is better'n YOUR god....

The fight for the soul of the nation, the very fount of federal funds for the faith-based initiatives, the right to speak down to the masses atop the pillar of righteousness....

The battle to decide which church is the right church has begun.... battles that Europe fought, won, and lost centuries before. Which church will be able to claim that its translation of the Bible is the proper and only correct version?

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee: Round One.

Pastor Bush is pleased:



This is what you get when the wall between church and state is broken: bizarrely ridiculous unsolvable arguments about God that devolve into pointing out the peculiarities of the opponent's religion.

This is why Europe is littered with thousands of dead throughout history from thousands of wars fighting over which religion is the right one.

This is what the Bush administration has so carelessly activated.

Update 12/14:
And since we're talking about peculiarities of each of the candidate's religions....
Mormonism

Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian

A commenter responded to my post involving the separation of church and state here, and cited Thomas Jefferson's buying of bibles for the Washington D.C. schools as proof that the Founding Fathers would have supported the teaching of 'intelligent design'.

Ok, ignore the amazing leap of logic, but look at what else Jefferson said about religion. I've lifted my response in full:

Where to begin?

I don't know if you should rely on Jefferson for your 'intelligent design' theory.

Doing a quick google of Jefferson brought up these quotes:

"Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786."

Religious freedom. That means being able to practice your own religion and not have someone else's religion forced upon you, right?

And:

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
— Thomas Jefferson

"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian God is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, 1823

Bibles have been included as reading material in many schools. I took a Bible class in college. But it was just that: a BIBLE class, not a science class. Classical scholars read the bible because literature is saturated with references and quotes from the book. Using a bible as a reference book or a book to teach reading or as a book to teach Christianity does not make the leap to 'intelligent design' in science classes.

Science is different than faith and has an entirely different process. 'Intelligent design' belongs in the church, not in a school.

Besides...which 'intelligent design' do you assume will be taught in the public schools? Hindu? Muslim? Catholic?

Why on earth do you presume the religion that would be shoehorned in with the 'intelligent design' concepts would be yours?

Do you know how many religions we have here in the United States? Once you've opened the door to a state sponsored teaching of religion, we will have struggles for power between the churches to claim their version is the correct one. Europe is a standing example of such battles.

Do you really want to activate that? Do you realize the separation between church and state has allowed all Americans to live side by side in harmony?

Is that what you really want, a holy war? Don't answer. It's obvious.

Amen!

We can only pray this is true

We've been on the brink of a theocracy in the United States these last few years: a government that has no wall between church and state, controls women's bodies, controls scientific research, controls what was taught in schools, declares the Iraq war a crusade and eggs on Israel to activate the Rapture. Yet now there seems to be a lessening of focus on a grab for governmental power and a shift by some to other things:

With the GOP having controlled the White House and the House for the previous six years — and the Senate for the previous four — social conservatives expected much more progress on their agenda in Washington. Although they are happy that Bush has used his veto power to stop an expansion of federal stem cell research, signed a law banning the procedure opponents call “partial birth” abortion and won confirmation of two solid conservatives to the Supreme Court, the Christian right’s rank and file say they’re frustrated that Washington has not pushed for more-sweeping restrictions on abortion and gay rights.

Meanwhile, the president’s support for granting a path to citizenship for those who entered the country illegally has further strained the GOP’s relations with the evangelical base — a voting bloc Perkins estimates as one-third of voters in the GOP primaries, enough to make or break any candidate. And the past year’s trio of Republican A-congressional sexual scandals — centered on Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and Sen. Larry E. Craig of Idaho — has only fed the climate of disillusion. “Certainly,” Perkins said, “there is reason to be concerned about the future of the relationship” between social conservatives and the Republican Party.

And that has led Perkins and other religious leaders to push for the closer-than-usual examination of the GOP aspirants. “What I hear and see is that if you were a Republican candidate in the past, you got a pass on close scrutiny on key issues,” Perkins said. “I don’t think that’s going to be the case anymore. They are going to have to verify their credentials in order to gain the support of social conservatives.”

While these leaders hope that a consensus candidate will emerge, they are also openly concerned that evangelicals are now in danger of fragmenting at various points on the political spectrum. That’s because more than the composition of the Republican field has changed; evangelical voters are changing as well. Some, while still traditionally conservative in their beliefs, are weary of what they see as a pattern of disrespectful treatment from GOP candidates: lip service during campaigns followed by a dim interest in their agenda once in power. But other religious voters are embracing causes not traditionally identified with American conservatism, such as global warming, human rights and poverty relief.

For those faithful who still see a theocracy being achievable, their demands are a cause for rejoicing:

Now then, your evidence of a new hope? Your reason for rejoicing? Right here: It seems the remaining core of politicized evangelicals, far from realizing its diminished influence and far from realizing the GOP has largely imploded and far from sensing, therefore, that it might perhaps be time to dial down some of its more unpopular, virulent agenda items, this group is actually aiming to step up its dogmatic demands from various GOP candidates this next election.

That's right. They want more. Or rather, less.

Apparently, Bush's GOP has let them down. They have not been content with BushCo's anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-sex, pro-abstinence, anti-women, anti-science, pro-war, God-hates-Islam stance, nor have they been content with having their trembling hands around the throat of the preceding Republican Congress for half a decade and clearly they have been insufficiently humiliated by the happy slew of right-wing preachers and politicians who've been revealed as meth-loving, restroom-lurking, boy-fetishizing gay hypocrites.

According to the new plan, any current GOP candidate who now wants the valuable evangelical vote will have to prove himself not merely guided by conformist religious zealotry in all things (Hi, Mitt!), but will have to prove his unflappable support for the GOP stance in key issues across the evangelical board, primarily regarding the Big Duo: abortion rights and gay rights. Or, more specifically, the total annihilation of both.

Do you see? This is exactly why we can now rejoice. Because this is the delightful thing about the fundamentalist worldview (and, for that matter just about any strict religious worldview you can name), the thing that absolutely and forever guarantees its frequent and eventual downfall: It can never be sated.

It's true. No matter how clamped down we as a culture become, no matter how much misinterpreted Biblical dogma we're forced to swallow, no matter how many insidious laws are passed limiting behaviors and restricting independent thought and repressing sexuality and banning dildos in Texas, it will never be enough.

And the faithful are disappointed in their choices:

It definitely is a moment of crisis for the Evangelical Right. When you style yourself the GOP's ground army (and they are), yet your presidential forum attracts only Huckabee, Brownback, John Cox (who?), Alan Keyes Ron Paul, Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, you know you're getting the dredges of the GOP field.

They're not just losing the ideological and "culture" war (yes, people love Queer Eye and Gay-Straight alliances are popular in high schools these days) in broader America, they are losing it from within as they bleed activists to progressive causes. Some of their highest profile leaders have been brought down by scandal -- Ralph Reed and Ted Haggard (former head of the National Association of Evangelicals), as well as political allies like Sen. Larry Craig -- while also losing one of their biggest champions, Jerry Falwell, this year.

It's a movement in disarray and their increasing disenchantment with politics may prove yet another headache for an already-reeling Republican Party.

Praise the Lord!

Update: Rook of Rook's Rant observes:

In terms of the Republican party, they pretty much charted a path towards destruction when deciding to take advantage of the political power of the conservative Christians. It was in direct conflict with the corporate arm of the Republican party.

In many ways, It seemed an act of desperation. The major political players in the Republican party could not attract a majority with their policies and stances. Co-opting the divisive and destructive policies of the conservative Christians was a quick fix, towards a quick grab of power.

But it was bound to burn them in the end. Hatred always creates a wall, resulting in isolation. Eventually the hatred, having no target, turns inward and creates self-loathing. This is what we are witnessing with the Republican party -- and the conservative movement. The policies of the last 6 years has caused the once powerful Republican minority to become isolated, with the country moving away from them. All they have left to focus their hate on is each other.

Depends on where the poll was being held...

One state, two state, red state, blue state:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 There has been a decidedly fundamentalist religious shift in U.S. public opinion in the annual "State of the First Amendment" report published Wednesday.

The poll by the First Amendment Center found 65 percent of people said they believe the country's founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation and 55 percent said they believe the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

The right to practice one's own religion was ranked "essential" or "important" by 97 percent of respondents but just 56 percent believe the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme. That's a drop of 16 points from 72 percent in 2000, the center said.

The center's senior scholar, Charles Haynes, said there's some misconceptions obvious in the results.

"The strong support for official recognition of the majority faith appears to be grounded in a belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, in spite of the fact that the Constitution nowhere mentions God or Christianity," Haynes said.

The survey of 1,003 respondents was conducted by telephone Aug. 16-26 and the results have a 3.2 percentage-point margin of error.