(In response to story titled "Texas School District Partially Backs Teacher in Controversy Over 'God' Question):
So, one atheist complains and libraries remove all Christian texts, crosses and memorials are removed, the Ten Commandments and personal prayers are banned from school grounds and Christian teachers are terminated for some imaginary offense!
21 comments
When has Christian texts been removed from a Library? I can't see atheists supporting that. Christian hell all religious texts deserve a place in every Library.
Atheists WANT people to read religious texts as that's the best way to create more atheists.
I doubt that any library, school or public, would remove all Christian texts, any more than they'd remove all Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, or any other religious texts. As to removing the Ten Commandments, you obviously missed the "Thou shalt not lie" one.
How many times do we have to remind you that "religious rights" do not mean your religion gets to be in charge.
For those who can't be bothered following the link to the story, it is that a teacher gave an assignment asking pupils to categorize certain things under certain criteria. One of those things is the statement 'There is a God.' Some students categorized that as 'fact', and this got marked as being wrong, and corrected to 'commonplace assertion', which was defined as 'a statement many people assume to be true but which may or may not be true'. However, the failure to say that God exists is an objective fact caused hysterical crying among some of the students from religious fundie families, and immediately got seized upon as being the latest infringement of the religious rights of Christians and another sign of 'Christian persecution'.
> For those who can't be bothered following the link to the story, it is that a teacher gave an assignment asking pupils to categorize certain things under certain criteria. One of those things is the statement 'There is a God.' Some students categorized that as 'fact', and this got marked as being wrong, and corrected to 'commonplace assertion', which was defined as 'a statement many people assume to be true but which may or may not be true'. However, the failure to say that God exists is an objective fact caused hysterical crying among some of the students from religious fundie families, and immediately got seized upon as being the latest infringement of the religious rights of Christians and another sign of 'Christian persecution'.
I hate to be the one who says it, but was that teacher trying to cause a controversy? Because there are plenty of examples of commonplace assertions that people don't literally feel a moral obligation to defend, like the superiority of brand-name pharmaceuticals. And I just can't believe that the teacher didn't see the controversy around this example coming a mile away.
Name one instance. Just one, where the teacher wasn't being a fucking wally about shoving Gobbles the Magical Delusion down the throats of the students, in a venue that was wholly irrelevant to religion. Just one.
Several years ago, all books by L. Ron Hubbard remotely related to $cientology (basically all of them) were removed from all of Hull's libraries by Hull City Council.
$cientology has tried a few times to apply for the necessary permissions etc to set up an Org in Hull. Every time without fail, they've been refused.
$cientology isn't legally recognised as a religion here in the UK, thus all their Orgs etc have to pay tax on their income.
The Peoples Glorious Socialist Republic of Kingston-upon-Hull is now the new Shining City not on a hill, especially as we're the City of Culture in 2017.
A city fortunately free of fundie culture, as we're one of the Top 5 least religious cities in the UK. The last specialist Christian bookshop here closed several years ago.
So yes indeed: something imaginary is offensive. Why aren't you campaigning for $cientologists' rights in Hull then, as - according to your logic (and 'Teach The Controversy') - L. Ron Hubbard must therefore be God - The Last Fart...?! [/hyper-paradox]
If this is the case I think it is the issue had to do with a critical thinking lesson. The students were presented with a number of statements and they had to categorize them as "a fact," "an opinion" or an "often expressed assertion."
One of the statements was "there is a God." The correct answer of course was either "an opinion" or an "often expressed assertion." The student answered "a fact" and was marked wrong. This led to the student and her mother alleging she was being forced to accept that there was no God.
Of course saying "there is a God" is an opinion is not the same thing as saying God doesn't exist. The level of stupidity here is pure southern US.
Those things were never supposed to be there in the first place AND Y'ALL KNOW IT.
Let's put this in a context you can get.
Your preachers been molesting a kid since they were five, they're now ten and he was caught: Can he keep doing this wrong thing since he's been getting away with it for years?
Worse thing about this question is about 15% would say yes and another 20% would say no preacher would ever do that.
@Anon
Exactly, you seldom see religious figures or organizations defending others rights and the fundies in America have been totally brainwashed to believe freedom of religion ONLY applies to Christianity and that it's preaching has no limits.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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