Out of the Hotels and Into the Classrooms

Why are people so afraid of the Bible?

You know, if rather than being afraid of it they actually started teaching the Bible in schools here in the U.S. kids would understand right away how nutty the damn thing is and we’d speed up our secularization process. When I was a high schooler you could study the Bible as literature. I don’t recall anybody getting converted by the class. Knowledge of the Bible is deadly to faith.

there are several terrifying, yet common themes that kept popping up in the comments:
1) the complete non sequitur argument that Prayer out of public schools = the reason guns and drugs are prevalent. Even if it wasn’t an a priori falsehood, it’s still a Post Hoc, Ergo, Propter Hoc fallacy. “A happened, B followed, therefore A caused B.” Bull.

2)America is a Christian theocracy and if you don’t like it, leave.

3)Geri Weaver just wanted to right a wrong and value the establishment clause, and she is VILIFIED.

4) The context of the peacemakers in the thread is for the most part, misguided. “The non-believers are just as much fundies as the people threatening Weaver” Some of them claim it to be about providing equal information. About Books. Allow the Bible, and other texts as purely historical. Well the Koran, Talmud, and Bhagavad Gita could be considered equally historical. But really, in North Carolina, in THIS community, in this American Context, would we really blindly just assume and trust teachers to provide these materials and NOT be preferential to the Bible? In this context, if the instructors were to be unbiased, wouldn’t many of the parents and commentors on this article be outraged that equivocating the Bible with these and other religious texts constitutes a grave denigration of Christianity?

I just see the all-inclusive option as a pretext for prosetylization in the worst way. In a way, it can be compared to equal time laws for TV with political candidates. Every candidate gets their fair share of time allotment, however, the MSM can and does construct a media narrative and a conventional wisdom that is preferential and often flies in the face of truth, but the narrative is so permeating and dominant that it sinks into the memory of the collective audience and then cements as believed history.

Just my thoughts,
Oh yeah, and Forget ever moving to NC! (and I thought Nebraska was full of ‘necks, pshaw!)

Nick

Knowledge of the Bible is deadly to faith.

As a christian who has read the entire Bible, I’ll have to go ahead and disagree with you there. Knowledge of the Bible is crucial to preventing STUPID faith, because if you ask most fundies if they have read the entire Bible they will say no…they’ve read the important parts (ie. what their pastor told them was important) and the rest is just details. So if anything, I think a more thorough understanding of the Bible and it’s times would contribute to less fundies, but not necessarily less Christians.

As a North Carolinian, I’m not suprised by this article but please don’t assume we’re all like this. There’s a huge disconnect between the urban and rural areas of North Carolina and the Fayetteville area is predominately rural and military. Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area especially are well educated (we have the highest number of PhDs per capita than anywhere else in the country). That isn’t to say that we’re not still in the Bible Belt, but there would have been no confusion about if it were legal or not here.

BTW, if this were a high school then it would be completely legal. Case law says that religious texts may be distributed to high school students only.

Reading comments like these makes me wonder if everyone who responds, “You poor lost soul, I’ll pray for you” really make that effort or if they are doing that to sound so sympathetic and pure.

I live in NC(originally from TX) and this state definitely has its fair share of backwoods country bumpkins. That being said, I graduated from a university here and there are very many intelligent, rational people here as well. (My comment sounds as though I am defending NC, I am not. I have been here for 10 years and eagerly anticipate the day that my wife and I are able to leave.) Back to the original point, I hope that the separation of church and state becomes more clear in the future as our commander-in-chief leaves office in ’08. I have voted in the past and will continue to do so in the future in the hopes of placing less insane people in office(locally and nationally).

But that’s what they were doing in this case. QED. Pwned. Strike three,. you’re out!

Stogoe; you’re starting to sound like a fundy Christian….

SIRUMRN, there might be a small cross-section of fundies that are likely to use Latin, gaming slang, and a sports metaphor in the same sentence, but my guess is it’s pretty small.
Though I think the unacknowledged belief that there is someone/something out there keeping score and that we are all going to get our final report cards someday is harder to shake than belief in God…

Knowledge of the Bible is crucial to preventing STUPID faith

To be honest, I find people who have read the whole Bible and are still really psyched about the whole thing to be a lot scarier than folks who simply believe that its all hunky dory based on a brief scan and whatever they want to believe.

And hey: didn’t the Gideons sort of cool off their hotel room campaigns? OR at least, hotels have sort of increasingly killed it off for them, is what I read.

Just to clarify, I know that there are many smart and reasonable people in NC. I live in a very small town in Eastern NC and am surrounded by fundamentalism, so if my view of NC seems a little skewed that is because it probably is.

I’m afraid I agree with the poster elcid89:
“I think at this point in my life I’ve decided that it’s pretty much an all or nothing battle in which we can defend what we believe or we can lose it. As such, I’ve lost patience with trying to find a middle ground that I no longer believe exists where religion is concerned.”

I don’t trust anyone to teach anything on religion in a public school, because so many have agendas and slants that they really believe in and can find “evidence” to support. Yet, if someone does try to teach religion objectively, they get harassed everywhere they go; it affects your entire life as the offended feel they should take every opportunity to spit in your face and make you miserable. I took a class on the first works of literature which included Genesis, strictly from a sociological/historical point of view, at a black college. About a quarter of the class walked out and dropped the class when they realized what this meant, and several others stuck with it but fully hated every minute. Everyone who values their religion or lack of it should be fighting hard, now, to keep religion and government separate – and not just in cyberspace. Financial support for those who bring legal cases, discussing the cases with friends and family, adding your voice of support to the defendants to balance the flood of hate mail, and getting involved with politics from the local level on up (both in letting candidates and elected officials know you opinions and in voting – keep the pressure on all year!) is the activism necessary to help us all stay free.