Re: Texas given up on the switch scam?

On Fri, 30 May 2025 20:59:26 +0000, jillery wrote:

On Thu, 29 May 2025 13:24:51 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
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On 28/05/2025 11:17, jillery wrote:

On Wed, 28 May 2025 09:44:32 +0100, Martin Harran
<martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:
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On Mon, 26 May 2025 08:46:37 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
wrote:
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-bill-ten-commandments-public-schools-rcna206851
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Texas had bent over for the obfuscation and denial creationist switch
scam back in 2010, but had to have the bait and switch run on them again
in 2013 when they tried to use the switch scam to teach ID in their
public schools.
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They are now trying a more direct approach that seems to be as
unconstitutional as Oklahoma's use of the Bible in public schools as a
text book, and last month Arkansas' Trumpy Governor (she claims that
Trump was chosen by Jesus) signed similar 10 commandment legislation
when I was out on the road.

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[...]
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America Magazine, published by the Jesuits, had an article yesterday
analysing how it is wrong for the Christian Right to be campaigning
for posting the Ten Commandments in schools.
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I give a link to the full article below but here is the TLDR version
from their newsletter yesterday:
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<quote>
Father Clifford, a Jesuit priest who taught for 55 years at Boston
College and is a professor emeritus of Old Testament there, notes a
consensus among biblical scholars from the Jewish, Catholic and
Protestant traditions that while the Ten Commandments lay the
foundation for Jews' and Christians' relationship with God, they are
not meant to be a universal covenant that applies to adherents of
other religions-or of no religion. Posting the Ten Commandments in the
classroom, then, is not just a violation of the First Amendment, but
also a contradiction of the Bible itself.
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What might be a more appropriate text? "Let me offer an alternative
for American classrooms: the Golden Rule, treating others as one would
want to be treated by them," Father Clifford writes. "A version of the
Golden Rule is found in several places in the Bible and in almost
every religion in the world."
</quote>
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Full article:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/05/27/clifford-ten-commandments-classrooms-250734

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"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
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A better version is:
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"Do unto others as others would have you do unto them".
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It's a subtle distinction.  But based on your posting behavior, the
subtleties of both versions escape you.
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The second version avoids at least some of the failure modes of the
first, but it has its own failure modes. Consider the case where the
other person is a narcissist or a sociopath.

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What is the point of the Golden Rule?  How does doing what a
narcissist or sociopath wants you to do to them violate that point?

I would say that The Golden Rule has the virtue of usually simplifying
the rulesets for moral behavior from some long enumeration of
specific sins (lying, killing, hurting, cheating, ...) to a simpler
unifying principle. For most, it provides a simple standard of
introspection. It further suggests a motivation, reciprocity which
children can understand and which helps them develop a sense of
empathy. That sense of empathy is arguably at the heart of an
evolutionary sense of the utility of ethics and morality.
The suggested alternative has some potential merits on the empathy
front but it requires more sophistication than many seem to master.
It further brushes up against a good deal of innate morality as it
has been studied by multiple methodologies. It also seems to
break some of the more common game theory models that provide a
quasi-mathematical model for the advantages of reciprocity.