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[theweaselking]

"50% of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married."

Comments

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

In unholy matrimony!

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

Those dummies. Everyone knows that Gomorrah is the one that cut Sodom's hair.

[scixual.livejournal.com]

...I did pretty well.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

You know, I'll admit, I don't know what/who Sodom and Gomorrah are, but I didn't think they were married. I know I've heard the names... Wait, weren't they cities? The ones with all the sinners? And god was gonna destroy them and someone wanted to save it so some angels told him to find one person who was worth saving.. Or something.. Couldn't find anyone and he told the dude and his family to run away and not look back. But his wife I think looked back and she turned to salt? Or something... Umm.. Wiki time!!

Oh, I did get it PRETTY well. Ah, it's interesting the differences between christian and jewish accounts of this story. I don't remember the homosexuality part being taught in jew school. But maybe it was cause we were young and why would you tell kids about guys having sex with each other? Annnyway:

"Classical Jewish texts do not specifically indicate that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because the inhabitants were homosexual. Rather, they were destroyed because the inhabitants were generally depraved and uncompromisingly greedy. Rabbinic writings affirm that the primary crimes of the Sodomites were terrible and repeated economic crimes, both against each other and outsiders"

I just thought it was interesting that this article implies that christian bibles DO specifically indicate that god destroyed the cities because the people were gay. Hmm..

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

No, the Christian Bible specifically indicates that God destroyed the cities because the people there were arrogant and merciless. However, the episode where the citizens wanted to get their will with the angels has kinda overwhelmed the rest of the text and caught a lot of people's imagination, I would wager. To the locals it would be an extreme example of lack of decency, since the safety of guests is one of the most ingrained values in the whole Middle East (and not only there, of course). If people could ignore that, they basically had no morals at all.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

On one hand: good! Can we please begin the complete removal of this crap from the popular culture?

The idea that americans need to have a working knowledge of world religions is sort of stupid. Shouldn't the goal be to have a world that can coexist regardless of religion? Why should I have to understand the Hindu faith? I should only need to understand decency and international law, i'd think.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

The idea that americans need to have a working knowledge of world religions is sort of stupid. Shouldn't the goal be to have a world that can coexist regardless of religion?

Wouldn't having a working knowledge of religion help towards coexisting? At least so you don't bring a pound of bacon when a Jewish family invites you to dinner?

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

That's part of that world free of idiotic superstition that the rest of us are working toward.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, i'm sure calling it an "idiotic superstition" does wonders toward achieving your goals, much in the way that a Christian calling you a "godless heathen" does for theirs.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I care not a lick for being called a godless heathen. From a christian point of view anyone outside their pantheon s a godless heaten anyway. But I'm in favor of a movement toward making religion less obligatory and more optional.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I think that knowing more about religion can help lead towards a state where it is "more optional". Seriously, who can object to knowing one's fellow man better, not only in matters of religion but in all facets of their culture?

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

This drives me nuts: the core liberal conviction that being nice and playing fair with people who aren't in touch with reality and who don't care about reality will cause them to do the same.

They're not going to abandon their beliefs as long as they are mollycoddled and told that said beliefs are perfectly fine and not harmful and damaging to humanity in any way.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Of course it could help. But I'd prefer an ideal where it isn't required to make coexistance possible.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

Well, it's dangerous to believe in something so strongly, and not even know wtf you are believing in...

And while we are blindly leading our separate faiths that we know nothing about, we often offend others who also have no idea wtf they are believing in, all we and they know is what is supposed to offend us and them. And that's enough to kill and die for... So stupid... If we understood each other, and ourselves, better, we might not have so many problems.

But hey, we are only human. Stupidly, stupidly, human. And we got too much going on in our lives to actually understand what we are believing in. =P

[dorothy-parka.livejournal.com]

god, that whole thing was appalling.

in the quiz, they ask "what is Ramadan" but the answer (" Answer: Ramadan is Muslim holiday characterized by a month of fasting.") does not tell us what Ramadan is, only what one does during it. that's like asking what's Hannukah and only saying it's characterized by lighting some candles. christmas? SHOPPING!

then this, from the article "Goff says schools are not wholly to blame for religious illiteracy." um WHAT? why are tehy to blame at all? isn't that the church's responsibility?

screw the xtians excepting that everyone should know the minutiae of a religion they themselves know so little about. everyone needs to know about xmas and easter, but god forbid they know anything about islam, beyond "omg they don't eat for the whole month?"

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

well, really, what is christmas about? do christians even know? presents? togetherness? it sure as hell isn't about jesus's birthday.. i mean, he wasn't even born that time of the year... right?? or am i severly confused? of course i'm confused, what am I saying...

but yeah, channukah, they told us the "kids" version about the holiday in jew school, then there is some other version. I'm so confused about that I still don't know.. ok, so the light burned for 8 days... then there was something about macabees... oye, i just don't know anymore...

and of course, i have NO idea what ramadan is about other than the fasting thing. in jewishness we fast when we want to be forgiven for our sins, to make ourselves weak before god (yom kippur).. is ramadan similar? anyone here actually muslim that could shed some personal light on this rather than me looking it up and reading some crappy thing that has nothing to do with what ramadan really means to a normal person who participates in it?

also, isn't it your parents responsibility to teach you stuff? i mean, parents can't be expected to teach you about all other religions.. and wtf, school? what 'bout the whole separation of church and state thing? hrm. my jew school had a whole year where we learned about other religions. Of course, i don't remember most of it.. but at least they tried, and they took us on field trips to a church and a mosque (spelling?) and they had a pastor and an emom (again, spelling?) tell us a bit about their religions. oh, and at the church, they gave us (unblessed) jesus crackers! which are nasty... ew.

[dorothy-parka.livejournal.com]

i agree, that it should be the responsibility of our parents and spiritual leaders to teach us about other religions. i can see a small amount being taught in schools are part of a larger cirriculum about culture, but school should be teaching us how to balance our checkbooks and write in english (here, at least).

Ramadan is the holiday that celebrates the month that The Quoran was given to Mohammad from God.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I disagree; a school has the responsibility of providing you with information. A church has the responsibility of teaching you about the truth and how it applies to your life. Insisting that an organization which has great moral authority and which takes as a given that other religious truths are false should teach you about other religions is just a set-up to insist that you don't get religious instruction from a neutral source or from a source that you are liable to question if something seems at all unclear.

And this leaves aside those who aren't part of a church. What are they supposed to do? "Sorry, this is something that's affected all of human history and art and social development, but we the school that teaches you about these things aren't going to tell you about it, so why don't you just go sign up with a group that you don't believe in because we the school aren't going to do the basic job of giving you an education"?

(Besides, if you haven't learned how to write in English and balance a checkbook by sixth grade at the *latest*, your school has failed you most greviously. If they aren't failing you most greviously, they can probably take the time to teach you something about the world around you that is not "And now, we are going to tell you how to write down a recurring debit, and that you subtract it from your total. For the third time. This week. Again.")

[dorothy-parka.livejournal.com]

"i can see a small amount being taught in schools are part of a larger curriculum about culture..."

is what I said. There is no place in public school for religious instruction, period. Small is a relative term. We spent a small amount of time in school on cuniform writing. I still remember it.

I wasn't part of a church, yet I had no problem passing the very silly USA test, and in fact noted some errors. We didn't have a "bible" class in school either.

Once we start requiring religion be taught in school, we will require what and how religion will be taught in school. It won't satisfy me, and it won't satisfy you, either.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> what 'bout the whole separation of church and state thing?

I thought that was about the state not telling you that the church was *right*, not about the state avoiding saying anything about the church at all.

(If it is the latter, I suspect that at the *very* least, any Western history lesson and any studying of Enlglish lit before 1800 is going to have *huge fucking gaping holes* in it, and that just seems stupid.)

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

I would prefer it if 80% of high school seniors had never heard of Sodom or Gomorrah, actually.

I would also prefer that people treat each other decently without having to believe in an imaginary deity looking over their shoulder, also.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yer one of them totally wacky non-religious COMMUNIST ATHEIST SATANIST types, aren't y'all.

BURN THE WITCH!

This message paid for and approved by the Concerned Women Of America (http://www.cwfa.org/).

[paoconnell.livejournal.com]

CWA seem to be a bunch of scary people with "True Believer" stamped on their foreheads (along with a tiny "666").

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Uh, yes, which is why their leader is a man named Robert.

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

In Social Studies 8, our school taught a unit on world religions. We were separated into groups and each group did a presentation on one of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Shintoism. One kid was excused from that class that week, because his parents objected. It was no big deal. The rest of us found it informative and interesting, and didn't feel at all that our personal beliefs (or lack thereof) were under attack. I would be cool with that kind of thing being part of the curriculum everywhere. I reiterate, this was only one unit (of about six) of one class in junior high. It's not like you're taking much time or resources away from teaching the "important" things. Like Phys Ed.