To focus only on the Christian’s magic book lends the impression nothing else was going on in the world, and that isn’t true by a long shot. Here are some unpleasant facts Christians brush aside as unimportant. There are no original copies of the gospels. No one knows who wrote them. Every single copy of the Bible for centuries to come were copied by hand and as Bart Ehrman points out, there are multiple discrepancies between them. There is little to no independent corroboration for the stories of the Old Testament. It cannot be objectively determined that the majority of the people mentioned there ever even existed, much less what they might have actually said. The religious right sees their book as the answer to everything in spite of the fact these people can’t even understand the questions.
Just like a movement called Scientology. If there are numerous CONTEMPORARY sources for jeezyboy, then provide non theological sources. Don’t give me that shit about ALL SCHOLARS accept the existence of jeezyboy, if that is true you can provide numerous sources. I DON’T HAVE TO PROVE NON EXISTENCE OF JEEZYBOY!
Even as a record of oral traditions, the Bible fails. Look at other cultures that have strong oral traditions, their stories are more consistent and make more sense, even acknowledging that they’re myths or fairytales.
"There is little to no independent corroboration for the stories of the Old Testament."
Oh it's worse than that; there is good evidence Exodus is a flat out fable, developed later. It uses 6th cent. BC names for places instead of their 12th-14th cent. BC names, and (I love this one) at the time it supposedly happened, Egypt controlled the "Canaan" region. So they literally went from Egypt to Egypt lol.
“A 2nd Grade lesson about “Fighting for the Cause” introduced students to “ordinary people who stood up for what they believed in and who fought for a cause, even when faced with immeasurable odds.” That sounded wonderful! The leaders mentioned in the unit included Jackie Robinson, Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks… and the biblical character Queen Esther.”
Since when is a queen an ordinary person? Even if Esther was ordinary and fought the fight which made her a queen, that is too far afield for 2nd graders to grasp. But looking at the story (per overview on Wikipedia) Esther was already a queen when she fought whatever fight that made her famous. So, she was clearly added just to include a Bible reference and not because she actually fits the purpose of the curriculum.
"We don't care about facts and accuracy, we'll just find someone who we can bend to our will." Texas Board of Education undermining the education of their children in favor of Christian Nazionalist indoctrination. Why am I not surprised?
I see the problem. You thought the purpose of schooling was education. It's not for white fundamentalists. The purpose of schooling for them is indoctrinating the next generation to be anti-science, white supremacist bigots who love white Jesus and white America and hate everyone else.
The Texas BoE want students to answer bible-based questions while I want to ask the Texas BoE (and adult Texans in general) why they keep putting the obscenely corrupt xtian Ken Paxton back in power.
A lot of poor people in Texas paid taxes for this shit. They should all be hopping mad at the way the BoE is shoveling their tax money into a fiery furnace and openly coercing them into using such shoddy material to "educate" their children.
America First? Wait, WHO exactly is “America”? Imagine hurling insults at mayor Mamdani’s shoveling employment, but clapping for throwing your money straight into the garbage?
* Why is there no actual documentation of Herod ever issuing a decree to have all the first-born male children aged 2 years and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding area put to death?
* Why is there no actual documentation of Pontius Pilate having a man named Jesus put to death via crucifixion DESPITE the fact that Romans were meticulous record keepers?
This is the kind of ham-fisted BS I've come to expect from those who are trying to inveigle Christianity into secular classrooms. They'll cram their noise in any way they can, and it should be no surprise that they are so anxious to do so that the number of errors in their efforts stack up like cord wood. This doesn't even mention the amount of re-jiggering classroom curricula will need to deal with this new (and unnecessary) material.
We've all said it at one time or another: leave biblical bullshit for Sunday school. THAT is where it belongs.
No different than what you see in the likes of Dumb Idiot Ken Ham's writings where everything sentence and paragraph is swamped with Bible verse references in parentheses that points to verses in the Bible that has zero to do with what Dumb Idiot Ham is talking about in his stupid writings.
The ham-fistedness comes from their authoritarian culture; they value loyalty over competency so much that when given the opportunity to write textbooks, they get loyalists to write it instead of competent writers.
I think this is probably a good thing for us. An own goal on their part. Imagine how much harder it would be for a Principal to decide not to use the free books if those '6 pages of bible story' inserts were all well-written, well-edited, on-grade-level content.
Never cared for The Big Bang Theory. I think it trivializes science and engineering, and yeah, that bugs me because I am an engineer. NUMB3RS was at least somewhat better, though their math was frequently sketchy (big surprise, right?). At least the husband in Medium was an engineer, and we got a brief look into his work, but mostly, engineers aren't as sexy as doctors or lawyers or cops.
Which is why there has never been (to my knowledge) any dramatic TV series featuring engineers.
I'm a web designer working at an engineering company. For years I have been trying to figure out if I'm a geek working at a company of nerds or a nerd working at a company of geeks.
What a boondoggle. After yesterday's story, I wonder what % of Texas English and History teachers will be using this particular material - my guess is not many. Looks like they'll be going the "package" route for the next few years.
I can just imagine a group of teachers, going before an administrator and saying, "This stuff is GARBAGE. It does NOT help our students and we refuse to use it!"
If the word has gotten out about this stupidity (and that wouldn't surprise me), it may have already happened.
I'm sure it's happening. My kid's in HS now and not one single elementary or middle school class of his just plonked through a textbook. This is in a decent district with mainstream texts. It's practically guaranteed that Texas teachers were already using supplementary materials and handouts somewhat, this just pushes it towards 'allwhat.'
Well, at least 75% of schools aren't even bothering with it. But I'm guessing a lot of these conservative evangelical lawmakers are perfectly happy with the thought of degrading public education in the poorest 25% of schools. The oil industry needs serfs, how you gonna get them if your kids all get a decent education?
Well, there might be value in this curriculum yet. Districts that do not use the curriculum to actually teach their students can provide the materials for the students to edit. There is some educational benefit to correcting the mistakes of others.
Chock full of errors, shoddy materials, agenda driven lessons, and not rigorous enough for elementary students? Sounds like a Christian version of education. Cue the King of the Hill meme. But of course the Repubelicans in Texas are shoving it through, they’re typical repubelican politicians, get what they want, quality and consent be damned, and the fact that it’s centered around children makes it all the more Repubelican.
Back in college, a friend of mine took an econ course where much of it was trashing a specific econ book. But that's college; 5th graders need the good material taught 'straight' rather than games of find-the-error.
I’m just saying that the poor punctuation could be used as a worksheet to help students learn punctuation. Even the facts that are incorrect could be a lesson on fact checking. But I wouldn’t use it for anything beyond a practical workbook type lesson to get practice in the object of a better lesson on punctuation and fact checking. Not focus on how the curriculum is shite and what not to do.
I would definitely not do that, for several reasons. First, because while you may be using a paragraph or story for a spelling and grammar drill, the students WILL absorb some of the content of what they read. So pick content they should be absorbing rather than sunday school stories. Second, I suspect that the writing might be so terrible that the 'one error' you want them to find might get lost amidst the other bad construction choices lol. Lastly, I don't want schools to subtly communicate "look how badly this religion screws up it's writing" lessons, even if I might personally agree with it. Let's not use political or ideological opponents as punching bags in a public school.
So the 5th grade unit on 20th century US history had some material on MLK followed by 6 pages of bible stories. I am shocked. Really Texas, do better. You'll never beat Louisiana to the bottom until your 5th grade 20th century US history unit is 100% bible stories.
Not surprised this flawed bowing to xtianity has 4000 + errors. After all, that religion's own supposedly inerrant "sacred" text has untold factual errors and contradictions.
Not to mention missing texts and books and passages arranged out of order. Case in point: the passage in Genesis 38 about Judith and Tamar thrown in the middle of the story of Joseph and his technicolor dream coat.
To focus only on the Christian’s magic book lends the impression nothing else was going on in the world, and that isn’t true by a long shot. Here are some unpleasant facts Christians brush aside as unimportant. There are no original copies of the gospels. No one knows who wrote them. Every single copy of the Bible for centuries to come were copied by hand and as Bart Ehrman points out, there are multiple discrepancies between them. There is little to no independent corroboration for the stories of the Old Testament. It cannot be objectively determined that the majority of the people mentioned there ever even existed, much less what they might have actually said. The religious right sees their book as the answer to everything in spite of the fact these people can’t even understand the questions.
My biggie as it comes to this is: The Bible Has NO SECOND SOURCE. It stands by itself, no real corroboration or independent verification.
It might as well be a bunch of fairy stories ... and it is.
There is no definitive evidence Jesus even existed, and no one has any idea what he may have actually said.
Yup ... purdy much. 😝
Are you denying that Jesus existed?
Fucking yes, I am denying that fuckwit existed!
Then, how is it that there is a movement named Christianity today?
Guess that means Zeus is real then. Because there are modern Zeus worshippers.
Same for Odin.
Do you really want to play this game?
Just like a movement called Scientology. If there are numerous CONTEMPORARY sources for jeezyboy, then provide non theological sources. Don’t give me that shit about ALL SCHOLARS accept the existence of jeezyboy, if that is true you can provide numerous sources. I DON’T HAVE TO PROVE NON EXISTENCE OF JEEZYBOY!
Even as a record of oral traditions, the Bible fails. Look at other cultures that have strong oral traditions, their stories are more consistent and make more sense, even acknowledging that they’re myths or fairytales.
"There is little to no independent corroboration for the stories of the Old Testament."
Oh it's worse than that; there is good evidence Exodus is a flat out fable, developed later. It uses 6th cent. BC names for places instead of their 12th-14th cent. BC names, and (I love this one) at the time it supposedly happened, Egypt controlled the "Canaan" region. So they literally went from Egypt to Egypt lol.
There's stupid, then there's 𝑻𝒆𝒙𝒂𝒔 𝑺𝒕𝒖𝒑𝒊𝒅.¹
(¹ 𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈'𝒔 𝒃𝒊𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒏 𝑻𝒆𝒙𝒂𝒔.²)
(² Including the 𝑺𝒕𝒖𝒑𝒊𝒅.)
Could we have kippers for breakfast?
Smoke me a kipper, I will be back for breakfast! by Arnold “Ace” Rimmer (Red Dwarf)
“Stupid Texas Song”
https://youtu.be/aPvLD7HSUDY?si=3LQ6nM081ZriT8Sm
“A 2nd Grade lesson about “Fighting for the Cause” introduced students to “ordinary people who stood up for what they believed in and who fought for a cause, even when faced with immeasurable odds.” That sounded wonderful! The leaders mentioned in the unit included Jackie Robinson, Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks… and the biblical character Queen Esther.”
Since when is a queen an ordinary person? Even if Esther was ordinary and fought the fight which made her a queen, that is too far afield for 2nd graders to grasp. But looking at the story (per overview on Wikipedia) Esther was already a queen when she fought whatever fight that made her famous. So, she was clearly added just to include a Bible reference and not because she actually fits the purpose of the curriculum.
My question would be pretty simple: does Esther have any recorded existence other than in the bible?
I'm waiting...
My grandmother’s name was Esther. Gotcha, atheist!
https://tenor.com/kBW9wnFj51P.gif
Queen was an ordinary band. ; )
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑎 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑢𝑚 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒’𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑏𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑇𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑠 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑟𝑠.
"We don't care about facts and accuracy, we'll just find someone who we can bend to our will." Texas Board of Education undermining the education of their children in favor of Christian Nazionalist indoctrination. Why am I not surprised?
I see the problem. You thought the purpose of schooling was education. It's not for white fundamentalists. The purpose of schooling for them is indoctrinating the next generation to be anti-science, white supremacist bigots who love white Jesus and white America and hate everyone else.
The Texas BoE want students to answer bible-based questions while I want to ask the Texas BoE (and adult Texans in general) why they keep putting the obscenely corrupt xtian Ken Paxton back in power.
Paxton is clearly their kind of corrupt, just how they like it.
I mean, it's pretty clear that so long as nobody 'impotant' is losing money, they like having the guy around.
A lot of poor people in Texas paid taxes for this shit. They should all be hopping mad at the way the BoE is shoveling their tax money into a fiery furnace and openly coercing them into using such shoddy material to "educate" their children.
America First? Wait, WHO exactly is “America”? Imagine hurling insults at mayor Mamdani’s shoveling employment, but clapping for throwing your money straight into the garbage?
Hey, Texas BoE: Riddle me this...
* Why is there no actual documentation of Herod ever issuing a decree to have all the first-born male children aged 2 years and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding area put to death?
* Why is there no actual documentation of Pontius Pilate having a man named Jesus put to death via crucifixion DESPITE the fact that Romans were meticulous record keepers?
Aaaah, the scribe was off that day, probably boinking his secretary! 😖
Texas lawmakers are definitely a laughable crowd of rapscallions.
This is the kind of ham-fisted BS I've come to expect from those who are trying to inveigle Christianity into secular classrooms. They'll cram their noise in any way they can, and it should be no surprise that they are so anxious to do so that the number of errors in their efforts stack up like cord wood. This doesn't even mention the amount of re-jiggering classroom curricula will need to deal with this new (and unnecessary) material.
We've all said it at one time or another: leave biblical bullshit for Sunday school. THAT is where it belongs.
Even if they manage to fix all the errors due to the rush job, it will still be riddled with errors due to the excessive bible references.
It's the old square-peg-round-hole routine, not that the believers care that it is.
No different than what you see in the likes of Dumb Idiot Ken Ham's writings where everything sentence and paragraph is swamped with Bible verse references in parentheses that points to verses in the Bible that has zero to do with what Dumb Idiot Ham is talking about in his stupid writings.
Correct, the errors are irrelevant. The point is for Christian-veiled propaganda to seep quietly into young developing brains.
The ham-fistedness comes from their authoritarian culture; they value loyalty over competency so much that when given the opportunity to write textbooks, they get loyalists to write it instead of competent writers.
I think this is probably a good thing for us. An own goal on their part. Imagine how much harder it would be for a Principal to decide not to use the free books if those '6 pages of bible story' inserts were all well-written, well-edited, on-grade-level content.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
There are four or five errors right there.
In the Beginning, there was the 𝗕𝗔𝗡𝗚. Then, 9.26 billion years later...
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state
Then nearly 14 billion years ago, expansion started (wait)
The Earth began to cool
The autotrophs began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools
We built a wall (we built the pyramids)
Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery
That all started with the big bang
(Bang!)
Never cared for The Big Bang Theory. I think it trivializes science and engineering, and yeah, that bugs me because I am an engineer. NUMB3RS was at least somewhat better, though their math was frequently sketchy (big surprise, right?). At least the husband in Medium was an engineer, and we got a brief look into his work, but mostly, engineers aren't as sexy as doctors or lawyers or cops.
Which is why there has never been (to my knowledge) any dramatic TV series featuring engineers.
I'm a web designer working at an engineering company. For years I have been trying to figure out if I'm a geek working at a company of nerds or a nerd working at a company of geeks.
Yes. : )
MacGyver (1985 - 1992). Silicon Valley (2014 - 2019). Westworld (2016 - 2022).
American Genius (2015). Greyzone (2018). Chernobyl (2019). Devs (2020).
Apparently, engineers are quite sexy beasts after all. ;)
Stipulated, though HBO's Westworld was a hot mess to me. Chernobyl was brilliant and powerful if tragic, and I never got into MacGyver.
As it comes to real-world, I LOVED MYTHBUSTERS. Some genuine engineering going on there, ESPECIALLY with DUCT TAPE!
If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40.
Yes. Yes we are.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4788946/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8566938
Oh, SWELL ... 🤦♂️
https://youtu.be/y055c7qwpT4
Just wait until Genesis I and Genesis II start contradicting one another.
And neither line up with the Sega Genesis.
Or the band Genesis.
What a boondoggle. After yesterday's story, I wonder what % of Texas English and History teachers will be using this particular material - my guess is not many. Looks like they'll be going the "package" route for the next few years.
I can just imagine a group of teachers, going before an administrator and saying, "This stuff is GARBAGE. It does NOT help our students and we refuse to use it!"
If the word has gotten out about this stupidity (and that wouldn't surprise me), it may have already happened.
I'm sure it's happening. My kid's in HS now and not one single elementary or middle school class of his just plonked through a textbook. This is in a decent district with mainstream texts. It's practically guaranteed that Texas teachers were already using supplementary materials and handouts somewhat, this just pushes it towards 'allwhat.'
Well, at least 75% of schools aren't even bothering with it. But I'm guessing a lot of these conservative evangelical lawmakers are perfectly happy with the thought of degrading public education in the poorest 25% of schools. The oil industry needs serfs, how you gonna get them if your kids all get a decent education?
"The oil industry needs serfs, how you gonna get them"
By letting them in at the Mexican border?
No because then white people will become a minority in the US. And you know it sucks to be a minority in the US.
Well, there might be value in this curriculum yet. Districts that do not use the curriculum to actually teach their students can provide the materials for the students to edit. There is some educational benefit to correcting the mistakes of others.
Chock full of errors, shoddy materials, agenda driven lessons, and not rigorous enough for elementary students? Sounds like a Christian version of education. Cue the King of the Hill meme. But of course the Repubelicans in Texas are shoving it through, they’re typical repubelican politicians, get what they want, quality and consent be damned, and the fact that it’s centered around children makes it all the more Repubelican.
Back in college, a friend of mine took an econ course where much of it was trashing a specific econ book. But that's college; 5th graders need the good material taught 'straight' rather than games of find-the-error.
I’m just saying that the poor punctuation could be used as a worksheet to help students learn punctuation. Even the facts that are incorrect could be a lesson on fact checking. But I wouldn’t use it for anything beyond a practical workbook type lesson to get practice in the object of a better lesson on punctuation and fact checking. Not focus on how the curriculum is shite and what not to do.
I would definitely not do that, for several reasons. First, because while you may be using a paragraph or story for a spelling and grammar drill, the students WILL absorb some of the content of what they read. So pick content they should be absorbing rather than sunday school stories. Second, I suspect that the writing might be so terrible that the 'one error' you want them to find might get lost amidst the other bad construction choices lol. Lastly, I don't want schools to subtly communicate "look how badly this religion screws up it's writing" lessons, even if I might personally agree with it. Let's not use political or ideological opponents as punching bags in a public school.
So the 5th grade unit on 20th century US history had some material on MLK followed by 6 pages of bible stories. I am shocked. Really Texas, do better. You'll never beat Louisiana to the bottom until your 5th grade 20th century US history unit is 100% bible stories.
𝘋𝘪𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘶𝘮 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬?
Sure, but they only have one reference book.
Not surprised this flawed bowing to xtianity has 4000 + errors. After all, that religion's own supposedly inerrant "sacred" text has untold factual errors and contradictions.
Not to mention missing texts and books and passages arranged out of order. Case in point: the passage in Genesis 38 about Judith and Tamar thrown in the middle of the story of Joseph and his technicolor dream coat.
Go go go Joseph...