the bill died.

good riddance.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/24/texas-legislature-ten-commandments-bill/

I think many people with secular worldviews drastically underestimate the load-bearing that generic Christian social morality and ethics have played in our country.

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"The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other...

I have known of societies formed by Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western states, to found schools and churches there, lest religion should be allowed to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising states be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from whom they came."
- Alexis de Tocqueville

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For a large part of the past century we have slowly but surely eliminated Christianity from the public sphere. We should expect a dramatic decline in social trust and decline in the functioning of political institutions and that's exactly what we've seen. There is no other logical outcome.

Serotonin said:

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I think many people with secular worldviews drastically underestimate the load-bearing that generic Christian social morality and ethics have played in our country.

Quote:

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"The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other...

I have known of societies formed by Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western states, to found schools and churches there, lest religion should be allowed to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising states be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from whom they came."
- Alexis de Tocqueville

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For a large part of the past century we have slowly but surely eliminated Christianity from the public sphere. We should expect a dramatic decline in social trust and decline in the functioning of political institutions and that's exactly what we've seen. There is no other logical outcome.

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Why have the other democracies of the world been able to function, frankly, better than us with declining religious affiliation numbers?

Macarthur said:

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Serotonin said:

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I think many people with secular worldviews drastically underestimate the load-bearing that generic Christian social morality and ethics have played in our country.

Quote:

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"The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other...

I have known of societies formed by Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western states, to found schools and churches there, lest religion should be allowed to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising states be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from whom they came."
- Alexis de Tocqueville

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For a large part of the past century we have slowly but surely eliminated Christianity from the public sphere. We should expect a dramatic decline in social trust and decline in the functioning of political institutions and that's exactly what we've seen. There is no other logical outcome.

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Why have the other democracies of the world been able to function, frankly, better than us with declining religious affiliation numbers?

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Who are you referring to here?

Edit: I can't really respond unless you give me specific examples, but I'm guessing that you are referring to countries which have centuries of shared ethnic history or a fraction of the U.S.'s size, or both.

I get it...things like this can be vague.

Let's start with this:

2023 Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index ranked the US 25th

2023 Global Wellness Index & Bloomberg Healthiest Countries Index the US 37th

Recent World Happiness Index US ranked 15th.

The United Nations Education Index (Human Development Index) has the US at 15th.

These are plentiful with a little google work. Now, this is a complex issue that has tons of variables and I don't think the point is to get caught up in methodologies of all this stuff.

My point is simply addressing your assertion that there must be some sort of religious framework for a society to function well.

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My point is simply addressing your assertion that there must be some sort of religious framework for a society to function well.

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You are right that it is fuzzy.

There are other ways to have high social trust and good political institutions. You could be a much smaller political unit (Singapore, NZ, Norway, etc) or you could have an ethnic monoculture or have a shared ethnic history.

We don't have these options in the U.S. but we did have an extremely strong 'civic religion' which went hand in hand with a generic public Christian morality.

IMO the biggest challenge for a country of hundreds of millions of people is just continuing to exist and not exiting from world history. How do you avoid just collapsing into chaos due to social entropy like most large empires through time?

If you look at China and India you see very aggressive unifying ideology in the form of the CCP or Hindu Nationalism. Both approaches are very totalitarian, but that's one way to maintain a massive country.

If you want to argue against the ten commandments or generic Christianity in the public sphere then fine, but what is the positive vision for citizens that replaces it? Currently our public morality rests on legalism and proceduralism and that doesn't make for a strong civic society; a large multicultural society based on that is bound to fail.

Much of our government doesn't even believe in the constitution, let alone the ten commandments.

kurt vonnegut said:

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AggieRain said:

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I'm fine with it. Perhaps it will inspire someone who otherwise would have had no exposure to explore further. Others are free to ignore it. In that regard, it as at a minimum a net positive for some and net neutral for others. I also have no problem with the displays from other religions.

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I think we should be careful about turning our classrooms into the street corner next to a polling location on Election Day. And since apparently all value systems are religions (so Zobel says). I look forward to funding church of satan, atheist, and LGBTQ signs to go all around your Ten Commandments, because screw this proposed bill. It's obvious virtue signaling and these politicians couldn't give two ****s about the kids, only the votes of their evangelical parents.

The classroom is the wrong place for adults to wage petty ideological war.

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Nut politicians pandering to old people voters on a proposal they know would get rejected as unconstitutional. As a country and state, we are so easily manipulated.

I would remind everyone that in 2007 the Ten Commandments Commission released an animated movie on the Ten Commandments, not sure it did much.

However, the law serves three purposes, one is to keep civil order a belief held by all Christians and therefor posting it has value.

It would have more effect if Churches still taught the law instead of creating culturally relevant fluff.