What’s with Texas and crazy fundies in education? Now it seems fundies want to teach children that “that there would be no United States if it had not been for God.”
Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state’s history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America’s moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue….
One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that “there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature”, that “there is a creator” and “government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual”.
Barton says children should be taught that Christianity is the key to “American exceptionalism” because the structure of its democratic system is a recognition that human beings are fallible, and that religion is at the heart of being a virtuous citizen.
I just don’t understand these people. They idolize the American founding fathers, and yet few of them were Christians in the way they would use the term today. Most of the prominent founding fathers were deists and did not believe that Jesus was God.
Then they assert that “religion is at the heart of being a virtuous citizen” — which, I admit, can be quote-minded from people like John Adams — but that doesn’t make it true. There is no evidence that religious people are more “moral” and better citizens than non-religious people.
That kind of bullshit needs to be kept out of schools. They can teach their intolerance and revisionist history in their churches, but not in our secular public schools.
I married into Texas. It’s a scary place. We should encourage them to secede.
As a born and raised Texan, I must say that aside from these crazies that somehow get elected into our government I don’t see much evangelism going on here compared to stories from the deep south.
I do wish that this wacko didn’t get appointed to the chair of the school board, but IIRC when he was trying to push creationism into the curriculum it got shot down by the rest of the board. They did pass some weird revisions of the language, but I know (randomly) a few Texas biology teachers and none of them have changed anything.
Hey! I’m from Texas. Shut it. :(
I hope the curriculum includes a section that lets the kids know we killed the natives because they were godless savages.
Word.
I was just about to say that.
Plus, Jesus also loved the slaves…at least, he loved 3/5ths of them.
I’m native-born and raised, yet as an engineer (and later attorney) I couldn’t take the obsession with trying to smush religion-and-science, religion-and-schooling, or religion-and-government together (we live in Illinois now – not that that doesn’t have its own issues, but still…)
The State is not without hope, mind you, but it is an obsession with a lot of people. Per a previous post of mine, I am convinced that some people just want to live in a Theocracy. I don’t get it, but “they” want it. Very badly. Never mind the fact that history (and the Bible) have shown it to be a bad idea.
If I wanted to live in a theocracy, I’d move to Iran. We have a state constitution here that prevents that, no matter what the fundies say.
Didn’t the founding fathers flee England because of religious perscution (they were persecuted by the church)? So in that sense, without Christanity there would be US.
Oops – I meant “without Christianity there would be no US.”
God works in mysterious ways.
Er, no! Wrong on every conceivable count! For a start, the PILGRIMS fled Europe, not because they were being persecuted – but because the European powers wouldn’t let THEM persecute everybody who wasn’t a Puritan. Such an incredible piece of history re-writing from the US, it’s amazing. The founding fathers were NOT the same people as the Pilgrims.
Custador, are you claiming the Pilgrims were Puritan? Quite the opposite: the Pilgrims were separatists, who separated from and hoped to dismantle the Church of England, while the Puritans were conformists, who maintained allegiance to the Anglican Church and hoped to reform it. They weren’t really persecuted, but they were penalized in a number of ways, ridiculed, and not granted any of their numerous religious demands. Both left England, and ultimately Europe, to establish colonies in America where they felt they could practice their beliefs in peace. These were some of the first permanent European colonies in North America.
The thing is, there aren’t really any Pilgrams or Puritans anymore, but there are Anglicans, which makes saying “There would be no America without Christianity” a bit like a german saying “There would be no Israel without Germany–it’s true, but it was NAZI GERMANY that caused its formation, so this is seriously shooting yourself in the foot. The Anglican Church can only be credited with driving these breakaway religious groups out of England and to America.
Then there’s the issue of English religious persecution in the colonies playing a major roll in causing the revolution, but I won’t get into that.
And the rest of the world is quite used to seeing the US re-write history through Hollywood. Just more of the same, I guess.
Don’t even get me started on U-571… A Royal Navy mission which captured an enigma decoder and which was the primary factor in convincing the US to send troops to Europe to fight Germany (i.e. because they would do it with allies who could decode the enemy’s secret orders), but according to Hollywood, the Americans did it. W@nkers. They’re talking about doing the same thing with the Kolditz story now. Phuck you Hollywood, keep your hands OFF of my country’s history!
Lolwut?
Because Alan Turing totally didn’t exist, right?
Uhu. He was also English. My great uncle worked with him a Bletchley Park.
So what was your point?
Well, you know, we figured you guys wouldn’t claim him, since he was gay and all. That meant we were free to pick him up.
Anyway, I’m waiting for the American conservatives to lay claim to Churchill. You know they want to.
Little known Churchill facts:
1) As Minister of War during the first world war, Churchill was the first man to ever order the use of chemical weapons – he gassed the Germans.
2) During the Boer War, Churchill was an early pioneer of Concentration Camps.
3) Churchill’s method of making an extremely dry gin martini was to pour the gin into the glass then to briefly glance at a bottle of vermouth the other side of the room.
4) My favourite Churchill quotes are: “Golf is the best way to spoil a good walk” and “The Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted every other possibility”.
#1 and #2
So? “I’m waiting for the American conservatives to lay claim to Churchill”
I thought the golf quote was Mark Twain. Anyway best Churchill quote has to be the one along the lines that Nancy Astor said: “If you were my husband I would put poison in your coffee,” and he replied: “If you were my wife, madam, I would drink it.”
Lol, I know he was british – I was refering to the fact mentioned about Enigma and that the Americans seem to totally disregard British contribution (such as Alan Turing’s existence).
Actually, assuming that you’re American, thanks for backing up my point that Americans know f-all about history that Hollywood didn’t tell them. At least READ about Bletchley Park and the Enigma decoders before you come out with a lowut at me!
We know all about you guys.
You’re the ones with bad teeth and soccer hooligans, right?
At least that’s what I saw in a movie.
Yeah, I’m not communicating well. I meant that ignoring British contribution on what refers to Enigma is so presposterous (and I didn’t know Americans did that – ignore the British, that is) that, well. It’s absurd. Ridiculous.
On the other hand, Poe’s Law.
(By the way, I’m not American and I used Turing as an example because he’s one of the many British people I admire greatly. I also misspelled preposterous. Damnit.)
My bad. Sorry for being all “RAAAH!”
‘Tis OK. I didn’t communicate properly, after all.
Now join hands and sing Kumbaya.
I said sing, dammit! ;-)
I also believe there were many polish decoders who were also instrumental in giving Bletchley park a head start, even after their own country had been overrun.
The Americans were still on the whole “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” kick and really didn’t do anything mentionable with codes.
Well, I’m sure that Jesus riding a Raptor approves of this…
What a bunch of fucktards! My in-laws live in Texas, and even as theists (more on the Deisitc view though) they are embarrassed by this bullcrap.
They’ve butchered the teaching of evolution already, unfortunately. I guess they just decided that since they’re not allowed to teach creationism they’d throw a sulk and not teach darwinism either.
I think I’m the only certified, Texan teacher here, so it’s fairly safe to say that not all teachers are required nor want to follow the school board’s recommendations (many of us teach primary sources and hold kids to a high standard). In addition, many of us are fighting like hell to undo their damage (I’m a former teacher, but I still write my state congressman regularly). Yes, Europe has a better education system, but you don’t deal with the problems of a “pluralist” country the way we do. You don’t have a constant influx of people who couldn’t give a rat’s a$$ about education (because the Catholic church says that if manual labor is good enough for Jesus it’s good enough for you), nor do you have willfully ignorant people whose whole lives are invested in a literal interpretation of the bible– to the point that they have started a culture war. That is the price of a pluralist society. If we lived in a more homogenous society, we could enforce enlightenment on people. But we don’t, so we can’t.
Europe is also a pluralist society, and they’ve been dealing with an influx of muslims for a couple of decades now who don’t give a rat’s a$$, as you put it, about Europe or it’s customs and laws. They do, however, seem to place a slightly higher value on education than American Xians.
Somehow Europe doesn’t strike me as pluralist. Not when the vast majority of its population is caucasian. England is 92% white:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=273
Here are the stats for Texas and the US respectively:
Black persons, percent, 2007 12.0% 12.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2007 0.7% 1.0%
Asian persons, percent, 2007 3.4% 4.4%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent, 2007 0.1% 0.2%
Persons reporting two or more races, percent, 2007 1.2% 1.6%
Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent, 2007 36.0% 15.1%
White persons not Hispanic, percent, 2007 47.9% 66.0%
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48000.html
Oh, by “pluralist” you mean “multi-racial”? Not even multicultural?
Europe is a set of different countries, each one of them with a different -or more than one- language, and different cultures. Internal wars. Part of those countries being communists not so far from today, others not being yet “developed” at all. As a whole, european union is much more politically “pluralist” than US is: in every country we have parties on either side of your “republican” and “democratic” ones.
Yes, but within each of your countries, you have a fairly homogenous population. In Texas, we do not.
What I mean is that what’s really different comes from socioeconomic differencies, not ethnics. Most of the asian and black people there are grandsons of american people, too. A lot of hispanos, and others come from countries that are not that far culturally speaking.
I’m not afraid of muslims coming to europe, I’m afraid of social exclusion against them. When you “force” them to live in ghettos, they won’t be part of society and they won’t accept your rules
Right– I have no problem living in a pluralist country at all. But since we aren’t homogenous, we tend to have differences of opinion on so many many issues and it affects things like education. My mom is from Venezuela and my dad is from Texas (Scottish descent)– the two cultures are very different from each other– starting with the fact that most Christians in Texas are protestant, while most Christians in Venezuela are Catholic. Add to that the fact that Venezuela doesn’t have a strong middle class the way Texas does. People from there value very different things from people here. It’s that way for each of the cultural/racial groups living here. It makes for a complex society (which isn’t bad at all… in fact there are many advantages to it, but it poses a unique set of challenges that make comparing us to homogenous populations a bad idea).
Frances, while I understand your point, most European countries are fairly homogeneous in terms of race and income (obviously there are income classes, but there is no comparison to America), which are perhaps the most important indexes, and are not nearly as religious, so differing religions are much less important. It is true that there is a real problem with discrimination against muslim immigrants, but I would be quite surprised if that happened to a larger scale than discrimination against Mexcian immigrants in the U.S. Add on centuries of racial discrimination against blacks and persecution of Native Americans, and the U.S. is really trying to dig itself out of a hole. Now the big issue is discrimination against LGBTQ, which, if I understand correctly, is also not such a big problem in Europe (probably the religion thing again).
Basically, the U.S. has a long history of marginalizing smaller or weaker communities in violent and horrifying ways, and its citizens are unwilling to stop. If you aren’t a rich, straight WASP, it sucks to be in America.
That said, we do have a looot of money.
LRA, integration of different social groups are -or should be, at least they learn about it- a very important matter for any teacher here. Of course it’s not easy.
Michael, I don’t know -I can only guess- how is the discrimination of mexican people in US. A lot of muslims -and african people in general- in europe haven’t documents, too. They have few rights, and employers offers him illegaly low salaries. But indeed, even if they could be send to their countries, their sons have access to a pretty good public education and public healthcare. Sometimes they don’t use it out of fear.
Anyway, don’t believe that in europe we don’t discriminate. Even the “cool” France does, with most immigrants living at “les banlieues”. And if that discrimination is not higher, it’s because a stronger public system.
So, this is totally off topic, but would you actually be in favor of enforcing enlightenment on people, or was that facetious?
JJ- for me education is never a waste. I think that children should go to school to learn the most up-to-date, current information we can teach them. Not some bronze age mythology that is unprovable. So, yes, I would “enforce enlightenment” on people by exposing to the facts. If they choose to turn away from it as adults, fine.
Ah, i think i misunderstood what you meant by ‘enlightenment.’
carry on!
To further clarify:
When you said ‘enforce enlightenment,’ you seem to have meant something along the lines of compulsory education (which I have no problem with.)
I thought (for some reason) that you were talking about ensuring that people were educated in the Enlightenment tradition, which I feel could be construed as culturally imperialistic.
The difference between ‘e’ and ‘E’…
geez…
Gotcha! :)
Barton says children should be taught that Christianity is the key to “American exceptionalism” because the structure of its democratic system is a recognition that human beings are fallible, and that religion is at the heart of being a virtuous citizen.
Boy, are they gonna be pissed when they find out that most historians are pretty much anti-American Exceptionalism.
We’re, uh, we’re not an exception. We just think we are. America might be based on one of the greatest political documents of all time, but Americans have been busy trying to screw that up ever since…
Not only our most historians anti-American exceptionalism but most of the rest of the world is too. Much of the world believes our American exceptionalist thinking led to American imperialistic behavior.
Most of the rest of the world is well aware that there are some exceptional Americans, but we also know that the average American IQ is somewhere below piss-poor, thanks to your dire educational standards and schemes like “No child left behind”.
I’ll give you an example from my own experience: I have a friend with dual nationality. He was raised in the UK by his American father and Welsh mother, then moved to the US at age 18. He did okay at his GCSEs (exams we take at 16, usually take 8 to 12 subjects), but not amazingly, and did an A-Level (exams we take at 18, most people to three subjects) in Art, and again got by but didn’t soar above the average.
Then he moved to Seattle. He took the SATs and came in the top two percent of every student that took their SATs that year in EVERY subject. He didn’t even study for them. So he went to college. He tells me that his college degree was significantly less work and easier than A-levels. He equated it to doing three or four GCSEs.
American K-12 education does stink but when people refer to American exceptionalism it is more about believing God has a special purpose for the US in the world (like to bring democracy to the Middle East or whatever). IMO, that’s why we have Sarah Palin’s who don’t value book learnin’ – cause they don’t need to when they are doing God’s work.
So sad, yet so true. I have an example as well.
My wife and I hosted a foreign exchange student from Germany about 2 years ago. He was an average student at best (by European standards at least), but still quite bright. One of the required classes for all exchange students in the Clarke County School District was U.S. Government. Early in the school year one of the in-class activities was to fill in the names of the States in an outlined map of the US. The sad part is not that he was a Junior in high school, but that in this activity he received the highest score in the class. The exchange student from Sweden received the second highest score in the class.
And one of the students in the class WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN THE U.S. was quoted as saying “Which one is Alaska?”
All I could do was shake my head and tell my wife that America was doomed…
Come now, at least he didn’t say “Alaska is part of USA?”.
There is still hope for America.
American Exceptionalism as used by the author refers to Americans who believe the U.S. is great because, it’s a Xian nation. It has nothing to do with intelligence. However, U.S. public education is definitely pure shite. I’m an American who went to school in Germany for a few years. When I returned to U.S. public school, I was years ahead of my peers. The education in this country is partly screwed up by religion, which marginalizes education and human intelligence, and also by teacher’s unions, who care more about their salaries and benefits than what kids learn in school. It’s virtually impossible to fire a teacher who performs poorly. And the schools here treat kids’ minds like a box to be filled instead of as a tool to be used. It’s really quite pathetic.
There are no teacher’s unions in Texas. In fact, there are NO unions in Texas at all. They are illegal here.
And thank God for that! Have you ever lived up north where you have to call some guy to plug in your computer at a convention cuz its literally illegal for you to do it? It’s craziness. Also note that our TX, unlike other states has a strong economy, a lower cost of living and super friendly people like LRA!
Yes, it’s much better to allow the business community to informally organize (through groups like the Chamber of Commerce) and act collectively to depress wages and benefits for the people who actually do the work, while preventing workers from organizing to fight back.
Much better for the working man to get screwed, right, John C? I mean, as long as *you’re* not inconvenienced in any way, that’s what’s important. How do you think Jesus would feel about that?
John C’s Jesus would feel just fine about that…because John C’s Jesus is a warm and fuzzy, but very vague and high falutin’ FEELING inside John C that just happens to agree with everything John C believes. Conveninetnly enough.
@Wrath of Oliver Khan…The problem with unions and unionizing has nothing to do with workers rights, fair wages, etc which I am in wholly in favor of but rather the sense of entitlement that is part & parcel of the mindset of unions and portends toward a welfare state and a lack of personal accountability, responsibility.
@ John C
mark: John C do you think that Texas having an extremely high rate of uninsured people is consitent with the with the message of Jesus Christ and god?
Do you think its moral for the elected officals in your state to have insurance while some children and babies dont?
Do you think Jesus would have felt that? Im asking becasue I am curious about what your response will be.
So John C, your preferred solution to a “sense of entitlement” that you detect – because said sense of entitlement offends you – is to prevent working men and women from organizing to ensure that they get fair treatment and to protect themselves from the (potentially, at least) exploitative behavior of their bosses and the rest of the CEO class. Got it.
This tells me more about you and the way you think than you may have wanted to reveal.
Unions are most certainly not illegal in Texas. To the best of my knowledge they’re protected under Federal Law, and even the State workers for Texas have a union (TSEU). Perhaps it’s illegal in Texas for Teacher’s to unionize, but I can’t comment on that since I’m not an expert on Unions.
Michael, I assure you there are NO unions here. None.
Here is the website for TSEU:
http://www.cwa-tseu.org/PUBLIC/TSEU_INFO/about_tseu.html
I’m not sure how they’re getting around it, but they do call themselves a union. From what I understand, unions are not allowed here. And even if they call themselves a union, they cannot strike here… unless the law has changed recently.
LRA,
The right to unionize anywhere in the US in most industries is protected nationally by the National Labor Relations Act and the National Railway Act. There is simply no way that Texas could make unions or unionization illegal, no matter how much it might want to. Industries unprotected by those acts (professional unions, like for teachers or police officers) could be made illegal by Texas (or restricted from some practices, like striking) on public policy grounds, though I really find it hard to believe that police officers aren’t unionized, even in Texas.
Here’s what I could find about it: fewer than 5% of workers in Texas are in unions.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-labor_16bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4a6b245.html
I know this has something to do with our laws here. Perhaps it is not illegal, but it is difficult here. I don’t know any more than that.
Wow! Unions are a constitutional right for us. I didn’t knew that!
If you had ever worked with a Teachers’ Union, you would be relieved that they do not exist in Texas. They are an enormous part of the educational problems in Ohio right now, because the Union has insisted on higher pay, shorter schooldays, fewer extracurricular teaching requirements, and shorter school years, while making it virtually impossible to fire a teacher for incompetence. They also have so many rules, that millions or tens of millions (I could probably throw up some accurate numbers if you needed me to) are wasted annually on ridiculous demands, while actual education is stunted.
I have no problem with most workers’ unions–they are probably important to workers’ rights, but teachers really are a different matter.
As a teacher, I say don’t blame the teachers, blame the parents. I have no power to enforce education on anyone. If a kid fails, there is nothing I can do about it. The parents have power in this system, not the teachers.
I didn’t mean to imply that all teachers don’t care about teaching children. I do, however, think that teacher’s unions focus on the needs and desires of their constituents (teachers). Teacher’s unions don’t exist for the purpose of improving education for kids. They exist to improve salaries, benefits and working conditions for teachers. So the union and the church both contribute to the problem by either marginalizing education or by not addressing children’s educational needs. Who’s left, then, to tend to the kids? You hit the nail on the head: Parents. Guess what? 75% of them are religious people who undervalue intelligence and education. Sadly, it’s the kids who lose.
I’d say teachers’ unions are actually a good thing for the quality of education, or at least potentially so. Right now there isn’t much in the way of a tangible reward for being a teacher below a university level. Teachers’ unions at least have the potential to ensure certain basic benefits for teachers. If tangible rewards for being a teacher were greater, there would likely be more teachers, and more competition for teachers’ jobs, which would tend to root out the bad ones…
Perhaps that’s pie-in-the-sky, cause i have no evidence to back that up, but i like to think that if we got good teachers, even in a school system where their power was limited by crazy parents, it would be better for the kids overall than a school system with bad parents *and* bad teachers.
Exactly. The way I see it, teachers get as much right – if not more so – for a good salary and benefits as anyone else. It’s naïve to think teachers will cope with lower standards out of the goodness of their hearts – after all, they’ve their own families and kids to raise. If they’re underpaid, or have no benefits, they’ll simply abandon the job for something more profitable.
In fact, the lack of such a cohesive effort can be quite counterproductive – underpay a class of professionals and you almost guarantee the only people doing it are those unqualified to do anything else. I don’t know whether that is the case over there, and of course there will always be some merciful, selfless people, but it certainly is over here, where schools are in shambles because their pay is crap and nobody in their right mind would like to be a teacher.
I know that teachers unions in the UK are fighting like hell to get the right to discipline kids back, and that can only be a good thing.
You’re right JJ. Someone as highly educated as me (read: tons of student loan debt) has no incentive to say in public education. The pay is crappy, the kids are bratty, and the parents are self-righteous about their precious angels. Few people understand the sacrifice it is to be a teacher (my first job had a starting salary of $24,000!!! A college educated person working for less than what a garbage man makes!!!)
So, I’m pursuing a PhD… because you are right, at the university level at least I’d be better compensated (and more intellectually stimulated as well).
Me too!
*high five*
The problem with your logic is that you assume more competition alone will result in higher standards. That might be the case in industries where you can be fired for poor performance, but the union contracts make it virtually impossible to fire anyone for anything less than gross misconduct. That means all you have to do is get tenure and they can’t let you go for being a poor teacher. You have to screw up huge.
I think I read an article about teachers in NYC who were not allowed to teach students anymore due to incompetence, but couldn’t be fired either. So they put them all in one place and they all sit around all day doing nothing and getting paid for it. I’ll try to locate the article.
I hate to be contrarian, but the primary purpose of a union is to look after the members’ interests. Why should that be any different for a teacher than, say, an autoworker.
Now…we can legitimately argue about tenure and removal of incompetent teachers, but keep in mind that one major reason for this difficulty is the political nature of public education. Teachers should NOT be easy to fire, or every conniving administrator and insane parent convinced that it is the teacher’s fault that little Thugula can’t read but spends his time beating up th nerds would be after teachers’ jobs constantly.
Note…I am not a teacher myself….but I just hate these knee jerk reactions which are often taken directly from right wing talking points, even when we don’t realize what memes we are parroting.
That’s a very good point you make, Brian, but the bad teachers get protected under the same umbrella. Shame we can’t count on the administrators to stand up to the nutjobs, but half the time they’re scared shitless about getting sued.
I’d like to add at this time that I had teachers virtually every year who I thought went above and beyond what was required of them to motivate and teach students. There are some real gems out there who teach because they love it and they want to do something good for their communities and children. I feel it’s important not to forget about them, their hard work and their sacrifice.
Interesting how the “moral” side propagates itself through lies, deceit, and dishonesty.
One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders,
Barton has a lousy reputation, based on his tendency to traffic in false quotations from the founders. He’s been corrected, and he may have backed off of some of them, but it seems pretty clear that he wants a whitewashed history taught in the classroom.
Last I heard, Barton was back to using those made-up quotes again, claiming that they’ve now been confirmed. Of course, he still offers zero to back that up. His pathetic reputation seems pretty clear to me & I don’t see why school boards keep using him. (Naive on my part.)
Here in Michigan, two districts barely escaped being infiltrated by Barton and the “National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools”.
Oh, great! So, God is reprehensible for Europeans virtually wiping out the Injuns?!
Do you mean “responsible”?
Either works, frankly.
shouldn’t it be “americans”? (yes, they were much fresher from europe I guess, but still I’m sure they would have called themselves american already) (maybe make it “new-american” if you refer to indians as “americans”.
Vorjack, you made me laugh. thanks!
Another of the experts is Reverend Peter Marshall, who heads his own Christian ministry and preaches that Hurricane Katrina and defeat in the Vietnam war were God’s punishment for sexual promiscuity and tolerance of homosexuals.
Marshall is a pastor with no formal training in history. But despite this he’s written a history of the founding of America, The Light and the Glory. It’s popular among the homeschool set. Apparently it reads like a fusion of an American history textbook and the Book of Joshua.
Neither Barton of Marshall are more then amateur historians, yet they are being asked to pass judgment on history standards that will affect the entire country.
The Book of Joshua?
I think I’m going to vomit…so this must be where the Americans got the idea of manifest destiny:
Why did the Old Testament god condemn those who murder in the Ten Commandments yet simultaneously order the genocide of thousands at Jericho (Joshua 6:21), Ai (Joshua 8:2), Libnah (Joshua 10:30), Lachish (Joshua 10:32), Eglon (Joshua 10:35), Hebron (Joshua 10:37), Debir (Joshua 10:39), the Negev (Joshua 10:40), and the northern royal cities (Joshua 11:14)? Why did he allow the destruction of the Anakites (Joshua 11:21-22)?
Why did Yahweh harden the hearts of the kings of some of these cities so that his people could wage war against them so that they “might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy” according to Yahweh’s commands (Joshua 11:21)?
It seems but a short hop from Jericho to Sand Creek…
They were evil unbelivers and therefore according to the bible, the only source for morality (Vomit), not truly human which make killing them, raping their women and steeling their stuff a virtue rather then a sin.
I’ve actually heard people justify it that way. “The pagans were so, so, SO evil! Besides, God knows it isn’t the end. Dying is totally better for them, because it helped them escape their evil, evil, E-V-I-L peers.”
Violently killing without mercy all those infants – as well as the innocent unborn – was clearly the act of a merciful God. Why can’t atheists understand this?
The subtext is that if you’re not a x-tian (either atheist or a beliver in a religion other then x-tianity) then you are by definition not a good citizen who can’t be trusted and therefore for the good of the country you should not be allowed to vote or be elected. If this proposal get through it bring the US scarily close to a Taliban like government.
Do you really think there was a difference between W Bush and Ahmedinajad? I don’t.
Different countries, for starters… :)
W doesn’t have a beard.
Ahmedinajad sees evil Zionists everywhere, Bush sees evil terr’rists everywhere. Complete opposites.
I’ve always wondered why more Evanglicals and Fundamentalists (Christian groups who emphasize the Bible as God’s Word) use the Founding Fathers argument so frequently, especially when there’s stuff like this.
I think most of the “Fathers” were deists of some sort, which is radically different from today’s Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Why the latter rallies around the historical former is puzzling, given the vast differences in perspective between the two groups.
In other words, deism isn’t enough for salvation, according to these two contemporary groups, but it’s good enough as the foundation for the country.
Because those two groups love appeals to authority?
Yeah, but appealing to an “authority” who doesn’t agree with your fundamental premise (such as Jefferson dissecting the Bible and producing his own version when the bible is viewed as inerrantly God’s Word) is an odd way of doing that.
I didn’t say it was a logical reason. :)
In fact, appeals to authority are generally considered logical fallacies to begin with.
But those evangelicals do love their authority figures. It’s why making Darwin out to be a bad guy is considered a refutation of evolution.
ITA about authority. As much as I think religion propagates harmful things, so much of it is
just personalities too. Personality X is going to be attracted to dogmatic religions by his
nature. Some people really want there to be an ultimate rule book, a final arbiter, and feel
better believing in such a thing.
We call them “sheeple”. Baa-aa-aa!
Pingback: The House of Zot » Blog Archive » Texan conservatives want to revise US history to give more credit to God
And where, praytell, does the bible say things like “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”?
The First Amendment clearly refers only to God-Fearing Amurrikan Christians who believe in the Baby Jesus and the ability to go to your church potluck without someone from First Baptist God Loves Everyone Except You Church sneering at you.
Or something like that.
Dear Daniel– “Texas” does not want to revise standards… a few idiots at our school board do. Since I am part of Texas, I don’t want to be lumped in with these IDiots!!!
You clearly do not represent the people at which most of these comments are directed, LRA, so you get an automatic pass! lol
Oh, but I do! I’m just as Texan as the next Texan. I love my state and I get insulted when people talk bad about it. I grew up in Houston, Dallas, and Odessa. I have family in Tyler and Longview (in East Texas). Small town Texas is very different from the metroplexes here, and political opinions vary as well. I live in a state that elected a democratic, female governor (Ann Richards) and a creotard like Perry. Yes, we have huge Baptidome-style churches (a la Joel Osteen), but we also have amazing universities, museums, and architecture. FYI, 48% of Texans voted for Obama. We are more complex than people like to admit. For most, we are cowboy-hat wearing, horse-riding, shoot-em-up gun-toting, death penalty-supporting, racist, ignorant, fundies. But that is just not true at all. Not at all.
I second LRA’s analysis. I get a lot of (mostly good natured) joshing in Chicago for having the “Texas Card”, but LRA is right. Like anywhere else, you just have to watch out for the, shall we say, overly-zealous…
Like in Houston (pop. 4,000,000 of whom Born Again 3,000,000)?
No- Houston is way more secular and international than that…
I’m not hating on Texas. Lived there 7 years and I loved it. If I ever move back, it’ll be Austin or Round Rock and I’ll be hooking up with the Atheist Community of Austin.
hating on texas is my job
>:|
I suppose more accurate would have been “Texans,” because the state does not have wishes. But I can qualify everything in the headline, otherwise the headlines would never end! ;)
How ’bout “Texas School Board want to…”? :)
My aunt and uncle are from Texas. They are both liberal Democrats, so I often wonder how they keep sane down there.
As a history major, I find this to be extremely disturbing. I spent enough of my formative years learning misconceptions about American history without being taught outright lies.
Part of the suggested changes involve replacing the term “democratic” with the term “republican” when referring to the U.S. government. Although the U.S. is indeed a republic, this name-switching obviously has a more blatant reason.
Another change involves removing the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall from the curriculum. The reason? He apparently is “not a strong enough example” of an important historical figure. Also on the curriculum chopping block is Cesar Chavez.
I really wish that Gov. Perry would leave the schools alone and go play in traffic.
Whoa. These people want to remove Thurgood Marshall from the curriculum? And he’s “not a strong enough example” of an important historical figure. The first African American Supreme Court justice…one member of the legal team who argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka…nope, he’s totally a non-important historical figure.
Hm. I’m sure they want to keep Martin Luther King, Jr. (he loved the baby Jesus and freed the slaves along with Abraham Lincoln in the year 1865), but probably not Malcolm X (who did not love the baby Jesus and led a few slave revolts before being killed by Louis Farrakhan, who also does not love the baby Jesus).
rAmen, Arrakis! (BTW, cool name!) Anyhoo, we just put up a Cesar Chavez statue here on the campus of UT. How embarrassing is it that our stupid governor wants to remove this important American from our public school history books? I’m definitely going to vote for Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary (you don’t have to be registered with any political party to vote in primaries here).
There are Democrat candidates in Texas?!
Yes! And we even have independents as well (like Kinky Freidman). Ann Richards (our second female governor) was a democrat.
If you recall, Ross Perot was an independent candidate for president from Texas.
So you can vot for the candidat in the other party??
And you are voting the “best” candidat, not the worst to be sure they can’t win?
You can vote in the primaries… that means you can vote for the Republican that irks you the least (if you are a Democrat) and vice versa. I tend to be a swing voter (but mainly Democrat). I’d vote for KBH to keep Perry out of the final race for governor. If there was a Democratic candidate running against her that I liked better, I’d vote for him/her in the final race.
That means that the final candidate can have some more non-affiliated votes and then gain the elections. But if you choose the most radical one, he/she could lose them. A hard decision!
I al a bit upset, since those creationists are crossing the ocean to get foot in Europe.
Both in The Nethelands and the Flemish parts of Belgium they want to distribute a folder “Evolutie of schepping, wat geloof jij” trying to convince you that Darwin is wrong an that Eveolution is wrong.
Please keep this shit in the US!
The UK is already victim of these creationists. Science education dropped to a lowest level in centuries and then they are wondering why they need foreighn scientists to help them build technology stuff.
The good news is that in Belgium and France, scientology is beeing watched, and it appears that althui more muslims are coming to Europe, they also seem to erode their faith (Saw numbers from the Netherlands) so if we could keep those extremists out then maybe we could live together peacefully.
Um, dude, it’s not like anybody in Britain takes creatards seriously. Come to think of it, it’s not like Britain doesn’t still produce more and better engineers, inventors and scientists than…. Well, everywhere, really, taken as a per capita figure at least!
“The UK is already victim of these creationists. Science education dropped to a lowest level in centuries ”
Though I would like to believe that, ya know, correlation does not imply causation. Probably there a lot of causes for this dropping, if there is a real dropping
As much as I hate religious education, I hate false education far more, and this curriculum is chalk-full of outright, blatant, objective lies. There is no other way to see it.
These politicians want to teach the preposterous lie that the “Founding Fathers,” presumably referring to the notable politicians in charge of the American Revolution or the resultant government, were Christian. They were not in any way Christian. Most well-known “framers” (men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hancock) were either deist, agnostic, or atheist, and not even any of the Christians wanted their religion to influence the government in any way (some, most notably Thomas Jefferson, but also Thomas Paine, Bejamin Franklin, and others, actively denounced Christianity, in all its forms). Not only that, but ALL were extremely secularist–that is, they believed that religion was always a personal matter, and that it should never influence government or law. There is a reason the president cannot be given a religious test (though this is a de facto requirement in the status quo), and that religious freedom and lack of a national religion are guaranteed in the first amendment. In fact, when clarifying the purpose of the religion clauses, Jefferson explicitly stated that he intended them to create a (say it with me) “wall of separation of Church and State,” an interpretation which has been promoted by the courts in countless cases.
But the knife in the heart is the famous article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (1797), which states: ” . . . the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” That’s not out of context, and it’s pretty definitive. Many of the “Founding Fathers” were involved at least to some extent with this treaty, and there is no evidence that article caused any controversy at the time (in fact, according to Dawkins, there might be evidence that it specifically did NOT.
It’s like Sniper said, the religious right is again trying to push its beliefs by using lies and deception.
I figure one of the problems with the efforts here is that christians would only talk about the positive that they supposedly did. They would ignore that it was their beliefs that allowed slavery and the destruction of many cultures.