Like others in here, I have a lot of concerns about indoctrination and separation between religion and government. However, I can see a serious argument for Jonah and the Whale and especially David and Goliath as cultural touchstones that are regularly referenced in modern media. Other stories may be a harder pitch, maybe Cain & Abel?

Kids, there's plenty of verses to read from if you're called upon. Try this one first:

NIV Ezekiel 23:20 "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."

I don't mind them reading the Bible, if they are able to read the whole thing, one end to the other. For many people, a thorough reading of the bible beginning to end is what causes them to question Christianity and realize that it is a population control tool for those with power (and riches), not the word of a God. It is such an incoherent mess that cannot literally be followed - if you follow one edict, you break another. Reading it destroys the idea that an all powerful, all knowing God was it's roundabout creator. If there was a God surely it could have done a better job, even using inadequate humans to produce the product. So, after reading, you know it was a man made project. The Koran and Torah yield similar results. I think that is the main reason why religions try, or have tried in the past, to restrict reading to a select few leaders and try to keep the propaganda to what they want it to mean at any given time in history.

I hope they study James 5....

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

One of the biggest mistakes resulting from the Protestant Reformation's push for the proliferation of Bibles was the belief that one can just pick the thing up and read it like it's any other book, divorced from the tradition that wrote and shaped it. The whole idea that God assembled 66 books and bound them up in leather and dropped it from heaven is both foreign to the vast majority of Christian thinking throughout history AND grounds for a very dangerous heresy (turning the Bible into the "ultimate" revelation of God, rather than Jesus being that or at the very least redefining the Trinity as "Father, Son, and Holy Scriptures").

The funny thing is, is that the same people who hold to an idea that if everyone read the Bible the world would be better are the same who offer selective readings and ignore/downplay the parts they don't like (as we see in this proposal).

There are some passages they could read to open their eyes about religion. Those that their pastor never uses in church...

Oh helllll no.

Force them to read the whole bible. Nobody who actually reads the bible remains a theist.

Shouldn’t the bible be subject to that age verification thing that’s going around? You know, to actually protect the children.

Talk about how to get kids to reject religion. Do they think this is going to convert these kids?

Texas recently passed a law preventing books that involve sex from being in libraries. The story of Lot and his daughters, and the famous quote in Ezekiel mean the bible should be banned under that law.

Is this only old testament bullshit?

Another section of Gilead being raised.

If you are in a comparative religions class or an ancient literature/mythology class and also reading passages from the Torah, Quran, Toa Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, the teachings of Buddha, etc. for comparison, by all means, read the Bible. If you are just reading the Bible under a pretense to push Christianity onto students, push the law to its bounds and normalize indoctrination (and we know you are), then fuck all the way off.

It is funny when you see one theocracy (Israel) in alliance with another (the US is a de facto theocracy, not a de jure one) bombing a third theocracy (Iran) killing indiscriminately. And they all believe in the same God, practicing similar methods, only their rituals of worship are different. Is there a more obvious fact that religion is the source of all evil in human history?

Freedom of religion (of our choice, not yours).

How to cause school shootings 101

I am just going to leave this here again

(https://ffrf.org/outreach/ffrf-chapters/)

Isn't a bad idea to get involved

we need in person community organization, like yesterday.

get involved.

Well maybe this will do something to increase their reading levels. And as they say, one of the best ways to lose your Christian faith is to read the Bible.

I could honestly see this backfiring in a really funny way. Not only will they actually try harder to get them to learn to read, but in my experience kids tend to hate books they are forced to read. In the setting that is church there's more of a peer pressure from all the other kids and adults to learn the bible. In high-school/middle-school there's peer pressure to not read the books you are supposed to read save for those that love reading. The only books I remember reading from those years are the ones I chose to read while the ones I was told to read had left my brain almost entirely by my mid 20s

Beautiful, the bible is full of stories about murder, incest and adultery is a bestseller through the centuries.

Adjusted dozens of times so that the lies are more in line with the times.