Christianity is creeping back into public schools

There’s a problem here in the US with teachers thinking they can proselytize their Christian beliefs in the public school system. Especially since I’m an Atheist / Antitheist.

My daughter came home yesterday and said one of the teachers will usually have small talk with some of the Christian students about it. She knows how I feel about it. She said she doesn’t like it and has lately be declaring herself an atheist. We both agreed that was crossing a line. But, the issue isn’t just with my daughter. It’s going on every where. I would like the Separation of Church and State to be upheld. No religion in schools, period.

And the Christians doing it don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. So I have a major problem with teacher’s proselytizing their beliefs with other children or to my kids. I don’t want religious fairy tales being taught to them by a religious idiot. I have a tough time already dealing with it from my ex wife and her family who is trying to indoctrinate fairy tale beliefs onto our kids as it is.

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I’m certain that, without the Establishment Clause in the first amendment to our Constitution, the U.S. would have been a theocracy from the time hardcore Protestant settlers began arriving to set up a Christian utopia to prepare for Armageddon.

I’m also certain that there are many people in the U.S. who, absent a vigilant defense of the legal framework of this clause, would happily lead an aggressive charge to have it repealed.

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The clause also helps to keep the peace because I’m sure there’d be open warfare as different sects all vied to have their own version of christianity in the ascendency.

Freedom OF religion also means freedom FROM religion. That last bit is often overlooked, if not outright ignored. Freedom From Religion Foundation has excellent resources for anyone dealing with both in the public sector. Give them a look.

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Welcome @Dtss ! :grin: Hope you enjoy your time with us.

Howdy, Dtss. Truer words were never spoken. A favorite saying of mine, as a matter of fact. Good to have you with us. Come on in and make yourself at home. By the way, if Cog ever starts ranting at you, simply smile, look interested, and just nod your head politely now and then until he tuckers out. If you need to shut him up quicker, distract him by showing him a banana and then act like you are throwing it over his head. Then duck out the door real quick while he is trying to figure out where it went. Works every time.

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I guess we are lucky in the UK, we have a “state religion” that the reigning monarch is head of, ever since Henry VIII was refused a divorce by the Pope.

It seems to be slowly killing religion off quite nicely. :sunglasses:

Maybe the more competition there is, the more aggressively religions market themselves?

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You are close.

The more freedom of religion there is, the more every dip-wad with an idea can start his own religion. It’s my understanding that this is what the Catholic Church battled against during its beginnings.

I have heard it said that the variety of Christian faiths were more diverse prior to the proto-Christians, than they are today. Christians believed in 1 god, two gods, a pantheon of gods, and even hundreds of gods. There were secret sects burried under secret sects. The Church came along, with the power of Rome behind it, and simply butchered anyone who did not go along with the official program that was established in Rome.

The Church changed religion from a string of Christian personality cults to an official religion run like a bureaucracy. Like a business, personality no longer mattered. You worked your way up the corporate ladder until one day you could become Pope.

Protestantism is a return to the "personality cults’ of ancient times. Anyone “moved by the spirit,” or self-centered enough to think the all-powerful god of the universe is talking directly to him, can start their own religion. And if he has the personality to pull it off, he will be successful. $$$$$

We have the same issue today. No one in control,

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If only there were a deity, to sort it all out. :laughing::joy:

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Not just Christian.

Fuck…

A worldwide fucking issue? Have religious folks gone totally bonkers??? What the fuck is so hard about keeping religion out of schools and EDUCATION???

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Here in Serbia parents make a decision for their kids, they can either have “religious studies”, of course not the secular one but the orthodox church indoctrination (actual translation of the word is closer to study of belief), or you can have them studying “citizen rights”.

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Private schools can offer their particular “religious values” :roll_eyes:. Public schools can offer “Religious Studies” (of all religions and how they’ve influenced societies both pos/neg). Ethics courses …. BUT the shit they are trying to peddle into Public Education is just Religious Nationalism

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Facts should only be taught in schools. Not religious superstition and propaganda.

When my mom put me through Catholic school in the 6th grade, I flunked “Bible and Religious Studies” and as a result, the school flunked me over that one class because it counted a grade in all of my “other” classes. Fuck that. I don’t ever regret it to this day.

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Here’s something that occurred to me that will likely keep you awake at night…

It’s only been within the last five years or so that I finally made my full escape from religion. Even prior to that, however, I was never really fully vested in the whole Christianity thing in the first place. Though I was raised in a Baptist/Methodist family and baptized at age 8, the whole bible/god/satan/heaven/hell stuff never really made any sense to me. I just went along to get along, basically. And my later years after childhood simply left me stuck in an ever-confusing world of Pascal’s Wager, long before I ever knew what that was. Anyway, long story short, I never had a strong faith, and the concept of prayer always seemed ridiculous to me. Now, with that in mind…

I remember a few decades ago (my early adult years) when it was first mentioned that prayer would be taken out of schools. (By the way, from grade school through jr. high, every morning before classes started we said the Pledge of Allegiance, and a different student each day would lead the school in prayer. And there was a prayer before every school sports event.) Anyway, when the controversy started about removing prayer from schools, I remember getting very angry about it. “How DARE ‘they’ attack Christianity like that! This is bullshit! What right do ‘they’ have to dictate nobody is allowed to say a prayer before a school event?” It actually pissed me off, DESPITE the fact none of the stuff I was taught in church ever made sense to me. Moreover, at the time that “battle” over prayer was happening, I did not even like being around or discussing anything having to do with religion. Always made me uncomfortable. And, yet, it STILL made me angry that somebody was trying to get prayer out of schools. Hell, I probably would have even fought somebody over it then.

Therefore, if I could get that upset about it even with all the doubts and uncertainties I had about religion, IMAGINE the fervour and the passioned mindset of those whose entire lives are SOLIDLY built around the bible and the god that resides therein. Eeeeek! :dizzy_face:… (shudder)…

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“And as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible as doubt about one’s own existence.”

  • Arthur Schopenhauer -On Religion: A Dialogue
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That guy nailed it. :+1:

From the earliest “church moments” I can remember, I was always taught, “Never question God.” Wrong thing to say to a naturally curious child, because my first question to that was, “Why not?” :joy: I think I questioned just about everything, especially once I started school and began to learn more. Now, as long as my questions remained in the realm of general knowledge about a bible lesson or something similar, all was well. Adults were positively eager to expand my knowledge in those areas. On the other hand, when my questions touched on morality and such (i.e. “Why does god say it is wrong to kill, but then he sends armies of men to slaughter other people?”), the “answers” became more and more vague and deflecting. (I should mention that questions like that from an eight/nine year old child makes adults uncomfortable. Or so I noticed at the time.) Anyway, when the typical answer of, “God works in mysterious ways,” failed to satisfy me, the supreme fallback answer was always, “If we question God, it makes him angry, because you are allowing The Devil to put doubt in your mind and lead you away from God. And then God will have to send you to hell.” Hear that enough times as a kid from the adults you love and trust, and that shit can stick with you for a loooooong time. I know this from personal experience.

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I can relate.

After my grandmother wore down (guilted) my parents about me at least attempting Catholic Sunday school, they relented and agreed to a one-off visit when I was eleven years old.

One of the subjects of the day was ‘Rituals we observe in mass to honor God,’ or something to that effect.
On the subject, I candidly asked why Jewish people chop off parts of a boy’s penis in a ritual but Christians don’t. And I actually said “penis.”

The teacher and head holy honcho told my parents to not bring me back until I was taught to avoid saying evil words. And they actually said “evil words.”

I was (am) a kid who knew the value of conflict, so I’d be very surprised if my parents weren’t quite aware what the outcome was going to be. My sympathies we’re with the kids left behind getting their minds manacled by who knows what.

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At the Kingdom Hall we had an up stairs and downstairs. The downstairs had the janitor closet and two bathrooms. A little hallway so new mothers could walk back and forth to quiet their babies. Anyway, I was about 8 and bored. So my mom gave me some paper and a pencil so I’d stay “quiet” (a huge rare treat). I started to draw people. Naked people. Women and men in great detail in all their glorious nudity.

My mom, after some time, looked and saw my drawings. Holy shit!!! Did it hit the fan! I got pulled downstairs and my ass whooped in the bathroom (a regular thing that happened at meetings to kids). I, like most kids, cried LOUD. It echoed upstairs. Every meeting you’d hear some kid scream or cry up stairs because “we” weren’t quiet enough or were “fidgety” or drawing naked people …

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Hmmm :face_with_raised_eyebrow: could be a factor for the “push” for religion in public schools…

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