Orange County Public Schools Hold One Standard For Christians, Another Standard For Non-Christians

June 15th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Religion | State and Local - (4 Comments)

We live in a nation with increasing religious diversity. In every single in the USA, the portion of the population that follows Christianity is in decline, while the nonreligious portion of the population is increasing. In most places, non-Christian religion is taking up a bigger share of the population as well.

Still, in some places, Christians in positions of authority still try to act as if it’s their natural right to use the power of government to elevate their beliefs above everybody else’s. Orange County, Florida, the home of the city of Orlando, is one of those places.

The Orange County Public Schools has established a double standard for the distribution of books about religion in its high schools. Christianity is given a first class position in the high schools in Orlando. Christians are allowed to distribute their Bible to public school students there. Non-Christians, however, have been banned by the Orange County Public Schools from distributing their own books about religion.

One group, the Central Florida Freethought Community, tried. The organization attempted to gain permission to distribute its own books: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, The Truth, by Robert Ingersoll, Why I am Not a Muslim, by Ibn Warraq, Jesus is Dead, by Robert Price, and others. The Orange County Public Schools refused to grant permission. The Orange County Public Schools said that these books would cause “disruption”, ignoring the fact that disagreements about the Christian Bible have engulfed nearly the entire continent of Europe in war.

The Orange County Public Schools wrote to the Central Florida Freethought Community that the “claim that Jesus was not crucified or resurrected is age inappropriate”. How the assertion that a person was not executed in a long, gruesome manner is inappropriate for teenagers, the school district didn’t explain. However, the Central Florida Freethought Community has noted that, in approving the Christian Bible, the Orange County Public Schools has agreed that a book that writes extensively about crucifixion is age-appropriate. What’s the psychological theory behind that conclusion?

The legal complaint by CFFC explains that the group doesn’t ultimately want to place books in public schools that promote freethought ideas about religion. “Our public schools exist to educate, not to serve as conduits for advertisers, proselytizers, and special interest groups seeking to propagandize a captive audience of young students. Plaintiffs prefer that no dissemination of outside materials, such as Bibles or their own literature, occur in Orange County Public Schools. But since Defendants are allowing distributions, all viewpoints must now be granted fair and equal access,” it states.

Until the Orange County Public Schools either allows all points of view about religion to have equal access to high school students or institutes a ban for the distribution of materials about religion in high schools by outside groups, students in the Orlando area will be receiving a remarkable lesson in hypocrisy.

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Joe Barton Urges Creationist Response To Climate Change

April 11th, 2013 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment | Religion - (1 Comments)

Two years ago, when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing many of the workers who were aboard and unleashing an unprecedented tide of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from oil-soaked Texas, urged his colleagues in Congress not to make a big deal out of the disaster. The problem was just a little, human-caused event, he said. “This was an accident,” Barton blustered, “not an act of God!”

Yesterday, Congressman Barton repeated his mixture of religion and opposition to environmental responsibility. This time, however, Barton is arguing that people should ignore an environmental disaster because it’s the fault of the god of ancient Israel, and not of human beings.

faith based scienceRepresentative Barton admitted that climate change is happening, but insisted that it could not possibly be caused by human activity. Barton’s primary piece of evidence for this assertion was the Christian holy book, which includes an ancient reference to a big flood. Barton explained, “I would point out that if you are a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the great flood was an example of climate change. That certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”

Do you follow Joe Barton’s logic? 1) There’s an old story about a flood from thousands of years ago. 2) The people who wrote that old story claimed that it was caused by a supernatural being. 3) That flood was an example of climate change. 4) Therefore, supernatural beings, and not people, cause climate change.

The most pathetic thing about Joe Barton’s citation of a Bible story as if it’s reliable climate science is that he doesn’t even get the story right. The old story about Noah and the flood describes the flood as lasting for 40 days. That makes it an extreme weather event, not climate change. Furthermore, the story blames people, not the ancient god, for the flood, saying that the god had to create the flood because the people were not behaving properly.

The moral of this story, Congressman Barton, is that if you’re going to mix religion with politics and confuse it with science, you need to at least get your religious stories straight.

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Will They Teach The Rocky Parts Of The Bible In Public Schools?

April 5th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Religion - (4 Comments)

In Jan Brewer’s Arizona, if you hit your thumb with a hammer, you’d better watch your back. About this time last year, Brewer signed a bill into law allowing public schools to teach the Bible in public school.

stoningTeach that the Bible is the foundation of law in the United States, as right wingers want to do, and you’ll be teaching the legal doctrine of Leviticus chapter 24 verses 13-16: “Then the Lord said to Moses: “Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: ‘Anyone who curses their God will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death.”

Yes, the Bible teaches that anyone who dares to criticize its prime deity must have their bodies smashed with stones until they are dead. Some people believe that this kind of brutal morality is the foundation of law in our society. Other people see things differently.

Among those who see things differently are a group of atheists at the University of Arkansas. This week, they held a public stoning on campus – but it was a satirical stoning. Members of the group stood still and allowed themselves to be “stoned” by onlookers, with water balloons standing in for real stones. It was a simulation, but the stonings of the Bible were not merely theatrical.

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Member of Congress Quietly Eschews Bible to Pledge Oath on Constitution

January 20th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Politics | Religion - (1 Comments)

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, broke the news earlier this month that Democratic Representative Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona stood out as the only member of Congress known to take her oath of office on a non-religious document. Rep. Sinema took her oath of office with one hand on the United States Constitution.

Is the dominance of the Bible (and its Jewish counterpart, the Torah) in the congressional oath of office eroding? Back in 2006, when Rep. Keith Ellison started taking his congressional oath of office on the Koran, right-wingers said that option should be banned. But as Ellison has continued the practice, indignant peeps from conservatives have piped down. Joining Rep. Sinema as a new member of Congress this year is Tulsi Gabbard, who took her oath of office on a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to no apparent outrage.

Coming back to the Constitution, has Rep. Kyrsten Sinema received any condemnation in the right-wing press for her Bible-eschewing act? I can’t find one such word. The only conservative note on the practice comes from the Washington Times, which suggests at the end of its article on the subject that there may be other members of Congress who quietly use the Constitution in their oaths as well.

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A Year in the Life of Adam

December 4th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Religion | Science - (4 Comments)

Genesis 2:19-20 tells the story of Adam’s task:

"Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals."

If you’re a believer in the literal truth of the Bible, you should be interested to know about the recent work of Camilo Mora and colleagues. The 2011 journal “How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?” (Mora C, Tittensor DP, Adl S, Simpson AGB, Worm B. PLoS Biol 9(8): e1001127. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127) uses taxonomic estimation to determine that there are 7.77 million species of animals on planet Earth:

Table 2 From Camilo Mora et al 2011, estimating the number of species on Earth

If the Lord God brought all the wild animals to Adam to be named, all 7.7 million of them, then Adam must have been at it for quite a while. If Adam got up each and every day at 6 AM, and named a new animal every 2 seconds (try saying “Thompson’s Gazelle” in less than two seconds), not stopping until 6 PM every night, then Adam would have been at it for an entire year.

The need for speed would explain “Bonobo.”

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Mrs. Jesus

October 3rd, 2012 | Posted by F. G. Fitzer in Media | Religion | Uncategorized - (3 Comments)

There’s a little controversy in the Christian world about a fragment. The bit of papyrus has written on it a reference to someone named Mary as the wife of Jesus, the legendary founder of Christianity. Some people are asserting that the fragment is fake, because the grammar doesn’t seem quite right.

Wouldn’t that criterion of authenticity make the writings of most students fake?

wife of christMany Christians presume that the legendary Jesus was different than almost all other men in that he never had sex and was not sexually attracted to women. In what appears to be an attempt to mollify these Christians, the Associated Press, writing about the little text, cites a professor as suggesting that, “the fragment, which she called the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, doesn’t prove Jesus was married, only that some early Christians thought he was.” But then, the entire New Testament doesn’t prove that Jesus ever existed, only that some early Christians thought he did.

As for authenticity, it has been accepted by most academic analysts of the Bible that the people who were initially claimed to have written many of the books of the New Testament were, in fact, not the authors at all. In fact, like a cheap paperback, the books of the New Testament seem to have been written by teams of writers and editors.

So, what does it matter if the “fragment” actually comes from where it was initially said to have come from? Would that make it any more fake than the New Testament?

There have been many modern Christian writings that assert that Jesus was married. What makes them less authentic than the New Testament?

Is it where a piece of writing comes from that makes it matter?

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Irregular Times Schooled on Biblical Morality: It’s OK to kill entire races if they’re Evil Races

September 22nd, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Mail | Moral Values | Religion - (3 Comments)

Samaroo Joel writes in to Irregular Times, hoping to set us straight on genocide in the Bible.

Dear friend,

I was reading your article titled “secretes of the Bible”. You quoted two verses from the Bible to proof that God of the Bible promotes Genocide. But you ignored thousands of other verses which promotes to love, showing mercy, helping poor etc. You have no idea what are the real secretes in the Bible. Taking life of others are not always genocide or evil. But an effort to protect serious damage of more people. Just like military operation against terrorist group is not genocide but saving many life of others.

Please understand this. If no wheat grain would fall on ground to die, you will never be able to get bread for for living life. Same way there were always a need of killing evil race or group to establish Justice, Truth, Righteousness and Love among men. During time of Old testament, Children of Israel were already in Slavery, oppressed, suffering, hunger, pain and death. The main oppressor were the same race and tribe which you mentioned in your article. Name of such evil race are mentioned in book of Exodus 34 or Leviticus 26 or any of such Old testament Books.

Egyptian, Babylonians, Palestinian, Amorite, Hittite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite and the Jebusite were the races who use to war against Israel, raped their daughters, killed their youth, bullied them, made them slave, oppressed them unjustly for long long period of time. Then God heard their prayer and stood with them to established justice and a Race to be born of Jesus among them. For this He had to remove such oppressors, adulterer, idol worshiper, murderer, pagan influenced atmosphere etc.

Other wise it would be impossible to get a single virgin woman in this world. Because such people were so evil that before reach a girl at her teen age (12-16), they use to have sex with minor, child sacrifices etc. But God wanted raise a Race which would be free from Idols, immorality, free from sexual sin etc. Because it was impossible for God to give this world “Sin free Son” from sinful and evil influenced womb of woman. Killing of some evil race was the purpose to Save whole world from their Sin through the blameless blood of Jesus Christ. Please understand this.

The lessons S. Joel takes from the Bible:

Killing an “evil race” is a good way to establish Justice, Truth, Righteousness and Love among men.

Killing all members of a group is acceptable: the evil group of people must be “removed.”

If your religious group has suffered slavery, oppression, suffering, hunger, pain and death, the right practice is to bring your oppressor into slavery, oppression, suffering, hunger, pain and death.

This is all necessary so that there’s one woman somewhere who hasn’t had sex.

Sounds kind of kooky, doesn’t it? The thing is, S. Joel is right about one thing. It’s all in the Bible. Read Leviticus. Read Exodus. Read Deuteronomy. Read Joshua. Read Samuel. Read 1 Corinthians. Read Matthew. In all these books of the Christian Bible, the wholesale slaughter of entire peoples is spoken of with favor.

If you meet someone who says they live their life “Biblically,” ask very carefully what that means. Be sure to have a clear route to the nearest exit.

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Why Can’t You Pick Out Just What You Like From The Bible?

July 23rd, 2012 | Posted by Rowan in Religion - (1 Comments)

I came across this graphic (without the red letters “Why Not?” – I put those on) this morning on Pinterest. It shows a picture of the Christian Holy Bible, English Standard Edition, with the caption: “This is not a bag of trail mix. You can’t just pick out the pieces you like and ignore the rest.”

trail mixIt was placed on a board where the very same person had also pinned a graphic that read, “Freedom of religion means all religions, not just yours!” The logical inconsistency of these two messages struck me. With one message, the pinner is insisting on religious freedom, and with another message, the same person is demanding that insisting that only one approach to the interpretation of Christianity’s main text can be permitted.

It’s fascinating to see how people develop blind spots in their religious devotion. In this case, let’s suppose that a person did go ahead and accept the entire Holy Bible, without just picking the parts they like. If Christians really did that, they’d have to accept the parts of the Bible that celebrate warfare against people who have what the Bible depicts as the wrong kind of religion. They would also have to accept the line in the Bible where Moses brings the command, supposedly from Jehovah, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

If you truly accept the entire Christian Bible without question, as this graphic instructs, then you can’t accept religious freedom.

The insistence on Biblical holism leads to all sorts of nonsense because the Christian Bible isn’t really just one book. It’s a collection of books written by different people, and sometimes committees of people, over a long period of time. Some parts of the Christian Bible disagree with other parts about certain matters. A person who read the Christian Bible without discriminating between these different parts, trying to construct a religious meaning in which every word in the text is equally true and valid, could only end up with a doctrine that required the abandonment of coherent thought.

Why is it, really, that a person shouldn’t be able to take parts of the Christian Holy Bible that they like, and reject the other parts? That’s what people do with books all the time. It’s an intelligent kind of reading that refuses to comply with words on a page simply because they are words on a page. A flexible mind can read a book and find value in some parts, while rejecting other parts of the book as mistaken.

Our civilization has advanced because people have been willing to take pieces of wisdom from the sources available, combining them in new ways to achieve a spark of insight. Often, such sparks of insight revealed the flaws in the old sources of information. What would we have had our the world’s innovators do – reject their own insights for the sake of the old texts? Should the idea of that the Earth revolves around the Sun be rejected, because the Christian Bible says that the movement goes the other way?

Balderdash.

I say that, if you’re going to be a Christian, the only way to do it that makes sense is to be a Cafeteria Christian. Cherry pick. Grab that holy book and shake it like a bag of trail mix, eat it up, and spit out the stale old nuts. If the raisins are offensive to you, toss them aside.

What kind of religion, after all, would require people to eat food that’s gone rancid? The Book of Leviticus, I think, demands that such unclean eating be rejected… and you can’t just pick out the demands of Leviticus because you don’t like them, can you?

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