Texas just passed a law that gives extra funding to public schools that teach the Bible.
Checked my Texas municipal property taxes recently. We’ve dropped ISD funding by 30% over five years. Meanwhile, city police spending has surged by 25%.
So I’m paying slightly less than I did five years ago, but over $1k/year of that has simply been a transfer from teachers to cops.
Are you comparing raw dollars or percentage of property tax? Accounting for inflation and the increase of your property value? What about the whole situation where Texas collects the taxes but only disburses up to some amount to schools. Probably easier to just look at the ISD financials. Just need to remove all expenses for non education activities, like sports and administration. I wonder if the ISD funding also gets used to pay for ISD specific police. Just asking questions, without actually doing the work, betting teachers have lost way more than 30% in 5 years. Texas government is actively trying to prove that public education doesn’t work so they can justify privatization, and bring back legal segregation plus religious schooling funded by taxes.
Are you comparing raw dollars or percentage of property tax?
Raw dollars. I paid $2980 to HISD in 2019 and $2035 to HISD in 2024. Incidentally, my housing price has increased 20% over this same time.
Texas government is actively trying to prove that public education doesn’t work so they can justify privatization, and bring back legal segregation plus religious schooling funded by taxes.
Yup
They urgently need russian orthodox popes on payroll
Does it specify which bible?
the Satanist temple joined the chat
Everyone once in while they pop up with a hella funny way to protect human rights. It’s great
Meanwhile, in my country, laicism is mandatory for public schools.
That’s never gonna happen as long as Republicans are fascist religious extremists, and the only other option literally still thinks God talks to them directly.
Biden, 81, told Stephanopoulos, 63, that he doesn’t intend on exiting the race, and only a higher power intervening would make it happen.
"Look, I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race,’ I’d get outta the race,” he said, adding, “The Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down.”
Republicans dove head first into religion, so that means the only other option Americans get is a “benevolent” deluded religious person.
Because no matter how bad Republicans get. Our only other option will always meet them halfway.
I don’t disagree about the GOP, but that quote doesn’t say what you’re asserting it does, lol. He doesn’t say that God talks to him in your quote, he was giving a hyperbolic example of what would make him drop out. Ironically, he dropped out almost immediately after this.
Yeah, I think it’s meant as a kind of “when pigs fly” statement.
Does that mean Pelosi is god?
Nah. Their religion is a polytheistic one with the wealthy owner donors as the deities. Pelosi is their prophet and shepherd.
He’s a lifelong devoted Catholic…
When Catholics pray, it’s too God. And they believe God shows them signs for guidance.
Biden believes he communes with God.
That is not something modern society should want in a leader
Which is the entire point of this post …
What was the point of your quote? It was completely irrelevant when you could’ve just said you don’t like religious people at all. Regardless, I don’t give a shit if people pray, I only care if they try to force their religion and/or religious beliefs on others.
Maybe I’m even more cynical, but it feels like us evangelical christianity is being used as a tool. A gullible fool.
So all these old gheezers are vaguely pushing for a US Christian nationalism… But coronated someone who doesn’t really care about that beyond how they can elect him, and basically shoved their values out the the party’s window.
And US youth is increasingly less Christian. Including Trump supporting youth.
So… I’m not even worried about this long term, relative to everything else to worry about. There will be short term scares, but post Trump Trumpism is not going to be very religious.
Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation would like a word. Or not. They do better when no one pays attention to them.
Orange man indeed doesn’t care.
It’s the people whispering in his ear that are pushing their brand of Christianity™ to positions of power.Evangelical Christianity has absolutely been used as a political tool for the past generation.
EvangelicalChristianity has absolutely been used as a political tool forthe past generationeverFTFY
You have to be gullible to become an evangelical in the first place.
France passed such a law.
In 1905.
Damn, Russia was late to the party. Only in 1918. Until Pu made state part of
KGBChurch again.
The only way religion should be handled in school is in a philosophy class
Which should talk about religion at most, not teach religion. You can talk about what religions believe and the differences between them, but you shouldn’t teach the religion itself.
Prezactly
Not theology?
Yes, religious study. Theology is part of religion.
Does that kick in at the primary and secondary levels now? Pretty sure that’s the levels that are getting all the cristofascist attention these days. And theology is taught from a religious perspective so guaranteed to be heavily slanted. No, I’d like to see all levels of education beyond preschool treat the subject of religion completely neutral and explore all of them not just the big ones. Would likely be enough material there for at least a 2 year program
I think you misunderstood what I tried to say there. Philosophy isn’t about religion, theology is. Philosophy does approach a lot of subjects religions tend to talk about. But it itself is not specifically about religion.
This was answer to question about theology. Or do you mean one about greek gods from 300 BC?
Yep, you misread something
What about history?
History already has a class and last I looked religion was only touched on for the crusades and jihads. Religion should have its own department to allow in-depth discussion of it in all its many flavors.
In my country, history teaches about the major religions
Watson Heston had no trouble explaining this to people via cartoon in the 19th century.
Bonus cartoon:
That second one is legitimately one of the best political cartoons I’ve see
I love most of Heston’s stuff. Although some of it is pretty antisemitic, at least from this atheist Jew’s perspective.
The funny thing is, being anti religion in public schools was a Protestant thing in the 19th century US. The KKK were also very much in favor of public education without religion, and advocated for laws against private schools. Private schools were associated with Catholicism, until integration - you can see the allusion with the shadow of the mitre in the second image.
Evangelical Christians have really just been throwing a decades long fit over the fact that Black children get to go to the same school as their kids.
In general, but in Heston’s case, he really hated all religion. Sometimes to a degree that turned into racism. But most of his comics are still pretty funny. I can somewhat forgive a Victorian-era racist considering the time they were living in. He definitely reserved most of his time to hating on Christianity and the Bible. In very pithy and entertaining ways.
Alt: the freethought road versus the Orthodox route, a drawing from 1890 about the separate paths faith and reason will lead you to.
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose the path that’s clear; I will choose Freewill!-Freewill by Rush
Bro people just gonna walk around that wall.
And we should let them. People can choose in what to believe in and we shouldnt disallow it. The point is secularism. Church and state should be separate. When organized religion is kept out of public schools, with time, religion slowly fades away as there is less need for it.
When organized religion is kept out of public schools, with time, religion slowly fades away as there is less need for it.
Is there data to support this? As much as I would love that to be true, I’ve got my doubts. Most religions are not taught in western schools. Despite that, parallel societies are established where a specific religion is fostered. Children are sent to private religious schools and the religion is uphold by these communities.
(This is not an argument against secularism. I’m indeed in favour of keeping proselytizing subjects out of school. Just questions the effect on the evolution of religious demographics.)
You are correct to question it. I honestly have not looked into whether it is causality or just correlation. Based on my own observation, being from a historically catholic region: churchgoing has faded vastly in 30 years, state and public school is secular.
Obvously, you are going to have communities where religion is fostered and the culture preserved. I dont really see a problem in it though. We cant really expect it to go away, nor should we work towards forcing it to go away. An example may be pagan religions which were forcefuly brought down more than a thousand years ago, yet have not been rooted out even today as neo pagan variants are poping back up.
Not disagreeing, image is just kinda dumb
It is dumb, its propaganda. Theres very little artistic merit here… its just too on the nose. I mean, do we really need arrows pointing at everything stating the obvious?
Yes, mainly because religion in the government is degrading rational thought.
Yeah, I’m kinda tired of seeing content like that even if I agree with main sentiment. Low quality political content is low quality even if it’s about polices I support, being separation of church and state.
Not without science they won’t! /s
The science of… Geography…
That’s outside of scope
I recognize this artist instantly - it’s Matt Wuerker, a fellow student from Lewis & Clark College. He and I worked on the school paper at the same time - he had already developed his distinctive cartooning style at that age. I don’t recall ever talking with him, so I srsly doubt he would remember me, but I’ve always been a fan of his work. He’s one of the more distinguished L&C grads IMO - along with Monica Lewinsky and actress Markie Post (RIP, best known as the beautiful lawyer on Night Court).
USA: What about second Church? We can cut school.
This should not be controversial
It’s crazy that the conservative Christians have forgotten their own narrative. They claim that “freedom of religion” is about selecting and practicing a preferred denomination of Christianity. Separation from the Church of England (state defined Christianity) is a huge part of their narrative of the creation of the US.
They will discover why that is important in their narrative of history if they continue on this path.
Fascists
Do
Not
Care
About
Hypocrisy
You are correct, but they will care about the infighting. And their base has strong opinions about their religion.
Theology has no place at the table of knowledge
Except in social studies class. People should be aware of other people’s religions. But each religion should be taught equally, or in proportion to how many members they have. Kids should also be able to learn why people join religions and why religions are persuasive.
Except in social studies class.
Social studies class has religious studies for this. There is no place for theology.
Disagree. People without any religious knowledge are more susceptible to being lured into one.
Instead, school should teach about the history (how they came to be) of the mayor religions.
Out of curiosity do you have any evidence to back that claim for those raised in an environment where you have a high degree of science education? Like I know without science to explain the natural world, religion makes “sense”. But as long as you have a strong knowledge base in science I’m not convinced people would be easily swayed by religion.
For example, I was raised without religion, and I’ve never seen much of a reason to learn about it. That being said whenever I hear someone talk about religion it sounds particularly absurd to my ears. “Sky Daddy will fix all your ills, you just need to trust in sky Daddy. Sky Daddy doesn’t like it when you X.” I’m sorry, what? Uh no.
But did you learn about them and their history though? Even in one of the most laïc country in the world we heard a lot about various religions in relation to history etc.
Where I live now a lot of school are either super-liberal or the ones with a bit more structure are usually under this strange system where the schools are technically Christian but there’s nothing about it in the lessons and kids from all religious backgrounds attend but they’ll maybe have a bible somewhere or whatever because a lot of the funding for the schools come from the churches. That’s even the case in some of these super liberal schools. Can’t say I’m a fan of that and it’s a part of why we’re considering leaving.
Same reason as why sexual education is important. You can’t make an informed choice if you’re not informed.
No. We already know how to prevent that without teaching religion. Building a solid foundation on science, critical thinking and evidence based knowledge.
science hasn’t been anywhere near there for as long as I can remember
