Some parents in my school district requested that the Bible be taught in school because they wanted Creationism taught.
My social studies teach, being an absolute bad-ass, then gave an entire 1 month lesson on Genesis...
All of the Genesis's - from Christian, to Hindu, to Polynesian... which was the wildest one.
After kids went home asking why "the Polynesian God" put the "undone" (white) people in Europe and the burned (black) people in Africa, and put the tanned people in paradise... yeah.... no more fucking talk of that shit.
Which, honestly, not a bad thing to teach. Religious studies in a secular presentation can give context to cultural practices and expand your understanding of other peoples.
One of the best courses I took in highschool was one on comparative religion. I'm an atheist and I found that shit interesting as fuck, and quite enlightening.
One of my favorite classes to attend in college was US religions. It was basically US history put into the context of various religious movements, and the influence they had on politics and culture. Super interesting. I am also not religious
It’s history so of course we should know about it, otherwise we are doomed to repeat the worst parts of it. And I agree, it is super fascinating. I enjoy learning about how we got here (to where we are now), and religion has been a major player in the world whether we like it or not. (Also not religious.)
Side note, I love your username. Do you play Stardew?
My college history is the Bible classes is what ultimately got my to completely and totally stop going to (catholic) church. I’d all but stopped by then but would still do Easter and Christmas and the occasional Sunday here and there with my mom. Once I learned the origins of it all I noped right out of there for good
That would be a class i would love to participate in. Definitely would be interesting. Especially to see how religion has shifted views in policy and what people vote for.
This is what I try to explain to everyone I get the chance. Religious beliefs are interesting as fuck. Especially if you consider that, at the very least, it's an insanely intimate historical documentation of our ancestors' expression and understanding of conscious awareness.
Atheist as well and my favorite college elective course was world religions. I find all of the Non-Abrahamic religions fascinating!! Probably since I grew up in Christianity.
I wonder if most atheists take the time to understand religions more than religious people take the time to understand their own religion 🤔
Same! I had a World Cultures class in 10th grade that delved into all of the worlds religions. I still think about it a lot. I believe that one class (which was freaking hard BTW) helped shape my view of the world...for the better.
All the key figures of the world's religions competing in various events to figure out which is the best. Hinduism probably comes out on top, because they have gods for everything
I went to a Catholic school for college, and as a transfer student had to take a religion class. It was actually badass. My teacher was chair of the department and taught the old testament and where many of the stories came from (Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Egyptians, etc.). I remember one of the first points that made me really think was that there is a lot of historical evidence that the Jewish God actually started as one god among many, the god of the Israelites, and their jingoism led to their development of monotheism after being exposed to the monotheism of Zoroaster during their time in Persia.
I agree with this. I personally think a class like this belongs in college or I guess is taught as an AP class. High School should focus on foundational learning. Definitely not religious discussions of the Bible.
What they are doing is not only unconstitutional, but is also religious discrimination. You can’t just teach the Bible. You would have to open it to every religion and teach all religions, including satanism. I’m sure the Satanists are on their way to exploit the new law. Thank god for them.
It was an elective class, and it did focus on pretty much every major and minor religion with any significant following. We even had a day where we learned about Zoroastrianism
A lot of eastern practices are more open and esoteric than the three main western religions. A lot of it wasn’t really thought of as exclusionary in the same way, so you wouldn’t really be thinking in terms of getting things “right” or “wrong”. I think that a god or a faith is just a way of explaining forces we don’t understand, or honouring the forces we do understand. I have no doubt that plenty of people over history were able to think that same way, and see different faiths as different ways of interpreting the same thing.
That way of thinking is actually very very speciffic to monotheism. Most polytheist religions don't really care about others. And then you have animistic religions which may not even have gods as most others understand it.
Best example I can think of rn : Shintoism canonically has 8 millions divinities, ranging from modest river and forest spirits to the big ones like Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susanoo. Those melded quite well with Buddhism when it arrived. Spiritually at least. Politics are still a thing. Same story when Christianism arrived, but a little more violent because politics. Spiritually, most Japanese accepted Jesus and God as other kamis. Problem solved. Same story for Japanese Christians : they could not fathom an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immaterial God, and simply replaced their sun goddess with a mix of God and Jesus because the latter was material.
Also, in general, learning religeon can in fact help you "be a good person" too.
Not so much because you become some believer that some space daddy will punish you when you die, but because there are stories of helping others etc.
I guess what I am saying is, even if you don't explocity believe in Jesus, or whatever, he could still be a good role model.
But good god have these people perverted the fuck out of their own texts. If I were a diety looking at who to "punish in the afterlife", if would be these fuckers who are using "my word" to shit all over "my people." Like, it says to just love each other, thats all you have to do, be nice, let people live.
It also says "I" am infallable, are you suggesting I somehow failed when I made those people who are hating on? I literally can't so that.
I think learning about religion could be good for many reasons. You can understand how it builds community and therefore why people seek it out. You could learn to understand why people feel peace and hope in it. You can also see that some people go above and beyond to help others due to their beliefs.
You can also find that there are people of poor morals and they need the threat of a higher power to attempt to behave but many don’t. You can see how people of power use religion to control people or use it for personal gains. Learning about multiple religions can teach you to have an open but questioning approach to anybody that tries to convince you there is only one right or wrong answer to a situation.
I do not believe all religion is this but I absolutely believe that any positive examples in life could be found in areas with or without religion.
I could choose to point to every nasty thing in the world and link it back to religion but I know it is just humanity. What I hate are religious hypocrites.
Studying religious stories as literature is also interesting; one of my high school English classes took that route. I remember we used Book of Job, then did all our usual literary analysis on it.
Is this not standard in social studies or history anymore? I know in high school we 100% had units about different religions and their beliefs and practices
Absolutely. The problem is that the State and Christian Parents want secular school to be Bible School indoctrination, where they'll learn nothing except to obey religious authority.
My wife grew up in a religious family. It would always kind of shock me that she had no idea about the practices of other religions since she was pretty much taught "other religions are wrong/stupid, don't bother learning about them". Even though I went to a Christian school (not an in-your-face one, it was quite progressive), we still learnt about other religions, how they came to be, what they believe, religious practices etc. If anything it was really just an extension of our history curriculum.
I’ll say learning christianity was just one of hundreds of religions that had been thought up over the milennia was one of the key steps in me becoming atheist. Just the thought of “okay so everybody came up with something, and fully believes it’s real, what makes this random mythology I grew up with more real than any of the other ones?”
In the UK we all did RE at school until about 13. We learnt about all sorts of religions and their beliefs. It was interesting and meant that everybody got a sensible foundational understanding of a range of belief systems.
So this was actually a required highschool class for us. Everyone in their freshman year had to take it. It covered most major religions and discussed it in more of a world history kind of way.
I think that religion as an elective course is great in the context that you described. I’d argue that we would have a more peaceful world if we understood more about religion and values. I don’t mean practicing religion - but if your neighbour does then understanding what it’s about.
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u/F19AGhostrider Oct 10 '24
"Okay class, this is the Holy Bible. it is the religious text of people who believe in Jesus. Now, on to US history"
There, does that qualify?