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Donor Pulls Scholarships After University of Arkansas Fayetteville Posts Ten Commandments (www.friendlyatheist.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/atheism@lemmy.world
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[–] 14 points 9 months ago (4 children)

You literally answer your own questions with your denigrating comments.

But to answer you, here are a few bullet points:

  • My favorite take is Frederick Douglass's characterization about "American Christianity". It is all about hypocrisy and it mostly stems from the white south and their justification for slavery.

  • There are plenty of solid, "good" christian based practices, but there are also way too many bad faith ones.

  • USA has a Constitutional amendment about this, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." by posting the TC in schools, this is ridiculously close to just that.

  • You want this argument to be about whether or not people believe in God or the TC, but it's really about separation of church and state.

  • What did Christ say when asked which was the greatest commandment? Yeah, he didn't even respond with any of the original ten.

  • You know what should be posted in the classroom? The "All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten." poster. That is a better summation of Christ's response than the TC.

  • The TC in schools is a dog whistle issue meant to make dumbass christians, like yourself, argue "Whats so wrong about the TC?", instead of focusing on real issues.

  • I grew up in a very christian, faith based household. The church we belonged to was very kind, supportive of its members, and urged commitment and sacrifice to better the community. I would consider it a strong contender for what Christ intended. But even with that framework growing up, I realized this, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it: the complete and utter bullshit the bible is. It is nothing more than a bunch of stories curated to control the moronic sheep that fear death. It was supported by the ruling classes because it helped support their claims and created this fantasy for the proletariat to feel better about and accept their plight.

Religious choice should be a personal, private relationship each person has with God. Not a tool used to force all of society to bow to your own beliefs.

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  • [–] -4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I agree with pretty much all of your points, especially the ones regarding American politics. But the Bible is a collection of books, none of them claiming to be the actual word of God but with authors (who declare themselves from the get go, usually, like in Ecclesiastes)... I think the only thing given divine origin is actually the TC? There's a lot of wisdom therein, and also a lot of nonsense made my men in power to keep their power and excuse their excesses, that's obvious. And in both the OG books and the NT, Paulian letters being the main example of NT nonsense (faith without works? That's just hypocrisy, lol). Only someone who's not read the Bible would say it's the word of God, anyone who has would say it's the word of nameless authors, and then David, Solomon, there's the apostles in there too and also Paul.

    And a society should still have a baseline ideology with a moral framework in it which should be inculcated in everyone since they're young, else you have amoral beasts, hedonists, roaming around and no social cohesion besides meaningless things that can be used against you like race, for example. Religion in America, and Christianity in many places, is completely disconnected from morality, when the religion of Moses is, evidently, a religion of moral duty since the one thing God truly communicated was that! You can just confess, or trust the "grace" that comes from believing a man is a deity, or give money to your local megachurch pastor and you're good! Nevermind God and his judgement, we can trick him! Lol. If you're left with a nasty aftertaste from being and seeing what "religious" means in America, I understand, but know that, just like your for-profit prisons, police/school shootings and ICE, they are (at least to the degree they've been taken to) pretty much just American issues..

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    There's no reason we can't have a moral baseline based on philosophy, community and intrinsic fairness. What we need is secular education without an arbitrary morality being preached based on some sort of sky fairy.

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  • [–] -3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    That's been tried in the West pretty much since the days of Nietzsche without any moral development. I mean, Western imperialism is as naked as it could ever be today. 🤷 But maybe, sure, maybe.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    No worse that the faux morality that comes from religion. And generally a lot better as it can be questioned, discussed and improved. There are plenty of Western countries where religious dogma is no longer connected to governance. It's really mostly just the U.S. that has regressed.

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