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Picture of Jesus in Kansas School Stimulates Issues of Censorship, Religious Teachings

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Display of religious picture in a middle school prompts a greater discussion about religious teachings in schools.

The separation of church and state is something that has been universally understood in the United States, so much so that no one has bothered to check if this is even true. It is in recent times that many issues are cropping up of religious icons and propaganda being displayed in schools, and church-state separation groups are bringing these issues to light. One such case occurred in a Kansas public school.

For decades, a picture of the head of Christ hung in the halls of the Royster Middle School, but a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation prompted the school to take it down. The national organization is focused on keeping the separation between church and state intact. The spokesman for the Foundation, Ryan Jayne, comments that it is “wonderful” that the school responded in the like, while the opposing side is being represented by the comment of Erika Semey: “Not enough people have Christ in their lives.”

This issue raises a question about how engrained religious teachings are in the school systems, especially in the south. Texas has accumulated a history of censorship of evolution, as it goes against the predominant Christian faith in its populace. They have even created new textbooks that have removed evolution from the history of humankind. This raises the question of what type of generation we are raising. Think on it. These students, not believing in evolution, that humans came into being on a 10,000 year old Earth, are flawed in their thinking. Let’s say one of them wants to be an archeologist. Entering a University with the knowledge he/she grew up with would contradict their future studies, not to mention send them for a mental breakdown when coming across objects or writings that are more than 10,000 years old.

This concept of censoring evolution is a heated issue currently. Those of their faith are pro-censoring while you have scientists arguing on the other side for anti-censoring. And it seems easy to say that the separation of church and state can solve this issue the most easily. After all, if you keep religion out of it, isn’t the answer simple? But is it really that simple? It is a matter of perception, what you believe to be your evidence. If you take the Bible to be your source of evidence, evidently, you will believe what your evidence deems true. If you take science to be the truth, you will take the evidence presented here to be the truth.

All in all, it is not an easy issue to solve, not by a long shot. It seems tome that the answer should be via evidence. If there is evidence pointing to the Earth being billions of years old, and evidence pointing to the evolution of humans from so and so, then that is what should be taught. If the other side comes out with evidence to the contrary, then that should be our truth. But as it stands, what is legal is the separation of church and state, and thus the actions of Royster Middle School are justified. And this is with putting all arguments of evidence aside. What is legal is what is legal. You can’t argue against the law.

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