To want the Gideons to get the #### out of my child's school

[PatriarchyPersonified]

As I have made clear on threads on here in the past, I am an atheist (I'm actually a strong anti-theist) and I believe in the secularisation of society. (i.e religion can be there for people who want it but it should be irrelevant to anybodies day to day life unless they want to make it relevant.)

I believe that children should be taught about religions in school, as part of a comprehensive RE syllabus, and particularly about Christianity, as I believe from a cultural and historical perspective, it is impossible to fully understand the history and culture of the UK without reference to the bible. I would feel the same way about the Qu'ran if I lived in an Arab country btw.

What I am not happy about is that my oldest DC (12) has just had the bloody Gideon Society hosting an assembly in their school and dishing out Bibles! School is not the place for this. There is a reason why religious groups always target schools and prisons, its where the easy targets are.

I remember getting a Gideon bible in y7/8. But given all our assemblies were 'of Christian character' it was certainly one of the less religious ones, albeit very much about we put bibles in hotel rooms so lonely people always have something to read.

Later around 2004 I ended up travelling around the UK for work a lot, and being pre-mobile-internet I did end up reading them, mostly for the bits that never got read in school or church. Like Habbakuk. Why does poor old Habbakuk never get read out? (because he was clearly bonkers). Or Jonah? And of course Revelation, which we all read at school for the lurid details.

Copies were actually very popular and the older kids at school would ask for them - free spliff paper.

“Later around 2004 I ended up travelling around the UK for work a lot, and being pre-mobile-internet I did end up reading them, mostly for the bits that never got read in school or church. Like Habbakuk. Why does poor old Habbakuk never get read out? (because he was clearly bonkers). Or Jonah? And of course Revelation, which we all read at school for the lurid details”

I thought the Gideon was just NT?

YADNBU

Bible is chockfull of revolutionary ideology about how God will lift up the poor and hungry and humble the rich and powerful. Fucking outrageous
What's revolutionary about telling slaves to obey their masters or telling women to shut up?

And as for the woman 'taken in adultery' instead of the first stone bit why didn't Jesus say, well why are we letting the man off free and killing her?

I thought the Gideon was just NT?
I don’t think the ones in hotel rooms are, picturing them as larger and orange - unlike the school ones which are small and red.

Sash would it have been a better ending if they’d gone, right enough let’s kill him too - and stoned them both?

I will Bertrand. Last year when the school decided, without being in possession of all the facts about the Graham’s, decided to run Operations Christmas Child. Pleased to say they withdrew the scheme and gave the shoeboxes to a local soup kitchen.
Also managed to redirect donations for OCC at the local church to a soup kitchen, as they were clueless.

Bible is chockfull of revolutionary ideology about how God will lift up the poor and hungry and humble the rich and powerful. Fucking outrageous“

Yeah, but only once you get to heaven!

Janey there's a technique to it, if you care to google. Prisoners do it for rollups as well.

Sash would it have been a better ending if they’d gone, right enough let’s kill him too - and stoned them both?

Actually yes, have you any idea how many women have been stoned and are still being stoned? Instead of saving a single person it could have been an opportunity to make men responsible for their own actions, not making women responsible for her actions and the actions of men.

You don't have a problem with the slavery then?

Can't get photo to upload, but my Gideon bible is A5, brown wood-effect fake-leather-bound hardback, both Testaments. I recall the school Gideon had some of them but mostly had the small red NTs, and had the fond hope we'd keep them in our blazer pockets to read at odd moments.

Pritt-sticks were plentiful at my school, yes. Suspect most people were smoking either rolling tobacco or things that allegedly got you high like nutmeg or banana skins.

The Gideons round here are red plastic NTs.

For all we know, Jesus and many others might have suggested equal punishment punishment or lack thereof for adulterers, but it didn't go down well with the crowd or disciples and either never got written down or was in the many texts not assembled into the now-established testaments or apocrypha.

Of course that starts getting into all the theology about why an omnipotent god would create evil, allow its message to be corrupted, and whether giving free will and lack of evidence of a god better supports the idea of a loving or an evil deity...

For all we know, Jesus and many others might have suggested equal punishment punishment or lack thereof for adulterers

OK so the words attributed him by the Bible are not true? Could be totally different? How can anyone take any of it seriously if you think that?

“For all we know, Jesus and many others might have suggested equal punishment punishment or lack thereof for adulterers,”

I think I’ve heard everything now!

Read Bart erhman/watch Bart erhman or bishop Shelby spong etc on YouTube.

They're quite good at explaining how the scriptures grew and morphed

No. Not all of the words can be with certainty attributed to Jesus that are in red.

Scribes liked to add in things and change things, not even always on purpose sometimes just human mistake... but... if you believe the bible to be the inspired infallible word of God... this isn't a problem as obviously god has made sure what's needed is in and made it in at the council of nicea.

Bear in mind as well that the so called gospels are completely anonymous, we have no idea who wrote them and we have only copies of copies of copies. Jesus as portrayed in the bible didn't exist, even if there was ultimately a Yeshua Ben Yoseph character. In the same way that King Arthur never existed, even if there was a Celtic warlord fighting the Saxons who inspired the myth.

Christ as a symbol of the self - Carl Jung

Faith has a positive effect on those suffering from mental illness, particularly depression, and those who attend church regularly are less likely to commit suicide. So yeah I'd happily assert that extra people walking the earth instead of succumbing to mental illness and suicide outweigh the fact that in your view it isn't true.

How many gay people have killed themselves because of depression from religion?

Children abused by priests?

Women forced into marriage, forced to put up sexual abuse because god wanted them to procreate etc. Forced to hide their faces. Told if they get raped in the city they were asking for it because they could have shouted louder. Forced to marry their rapist.

More than half the population are grabbing the shitty end of the stick with religion.

I don't think any serious scholar , religious or not, has any real doubt that Jesus the person existed - your not very well read then because any serious scholar would say there is a probability that jesus existed. 1 in 3 up to just over 50% chance that a person or persons named jesus did, amongst the thousands of other messiahs at the time, have a small following of 'believers' and they did tell stories.

but if it is only info sharing as in this instance and not indoctrination does it really matter? That is how indoctrination spreads, the sharing of one persons supernatural opinions as if they a source of 'truth'. So yes it matters.

Genuinely unbiased "serious scholars" with the necessary training in historical research (in other words, not Christian theologians with literature degrees in the NT) are entirely agnostic about the issue of whether Jesus was an existent human being or not.

There is simply not enough evidence to make any solid determination.

There are a couple of vague clues within the Epistles that suggest he might have been, but even more to suggest he was initially conceived as a heavenly god, just like the other 10,000 or so humankind has invented.

My point about Decartes a few pages back was precisely the only thing I know for certain is that I exist, and yes of course that is only evidently true to me in the privacy of my own psyche. To argue on about anything else requires some faith of some kind.

Take for example the notion of free will, given all that we know about the physical world from the sciences there is as much "evidence" for our own free will as there is for God ie there isn't. Any. At. All. I'll just give a moment for that to sink in.

Free will may well just be a chemical trick of our own brains in that we think we experience it but it may well just be a delusion. The single most rational position is nihilism, but very few people take it that far, and most atheists when you peel back the layers believe in many things for their own sense of self depends on it.

Now given that I have a preference against nihilism I'm willing to risk being deluded in order to believe in free will I'm also willing to accept a lot of other things on faith, as faith has benefits. Again I'm not advocating for any one belief system I'm rather advocating for faith itself. Go into philosophy, science and religion (any I'm not fussy) and work it out for yourself it can be a fascinating journey.

This whole religion vs religion or even atheism vs religion is all tribal at the end of the day, and everyone wants 'thier' tribe to win. Atheists included.

CritEqual-this is completely irrelevant and there is no need for you to answer-but can I ask-are you a man or a woman?

I wouldn't worry about it OP. It us annoying as it is like a pressure group turning up and pushing their stuff. However I remember them coming to my school and I think very few of the bibles made it home intact. I handed out pages on the way home saying 'peace be with you''.