Talk:Freedom From Religion Foundation

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1 FFRF Criticisms
2 Deism
3 IL/Legal Bible Instruction in Public Schools
4 Founding date

[edit] FFRF Criticisms

My main criticism of this article is that I think there should be some examination of the various criticisms of the FFRF group. There is a list of what may constitute "successes" from the organisation's point of view, but little else. The general tone of the article, to me, seems biased in favour of the FFRF.

One problem I personally have with the FFRF website is that they at one point suggest on this page:

http://www.ffrf.org/quiz/scripts/bquiz_results.php

that "You may be better off not knowing much about the bible." Well, maybe, maybe not, but the general context in which this is written to me seems to be promoting ignorance rather than "freethought". I'd be interested, also, in knowing if the FFRF acknowledge, at any point the many *good* things that religion has brought to the world, and not just the bad things. I think that would make a much more interesting site than one that just criticised religion one-sidedly.

Absence of criticism is not the same as endorsement of a particular viewpoint, so I disagree that this article is POV. As for their website, that is beyond the purview of this encyclopedia, regardless of how extreme its positions may be. -Wiccan Quagga 09:40, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

FFRF isn't really a "freethought" website, except insofar as "freethought" is a euphemism for atheism. Their point of view is specifically anti-religious. Freedom From Religion. They basically want religion to leave them alone--generally their point of view is "if I wanted to hear about religion, I'd go to a church--now leave me alone." Rob 14:08, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I wrote a full rebuttal to that FFRF quiz. The quiz is very leading and misleading. You can see it here: www.jcsm.org/Education/FFRFQuiz.htm --Jason Gastrich 17:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

You mean you found another Wikipedia article into which you can jam in a link to your ad laden, commercial site where you hawk your wares. Mark K. Bilbo 18:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

It's removed...I can't see how this can be justified at Wikipedia, and it's typical of Gastrich to keep trying to put in free advertising for his site(s), which, itself, is laden with spam advertising and with mechanisms for planting data miners. WarriorScribe 18:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Still trolling me, eh? You're going to wear the Wiki admins out. You really oughta do something about this and this. If either of these were mine, I'd consider my Wiki life a depressing, pathetic failure. --Jason Gastrich 18:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Gastrich would like to represent it as "trolling." I have another thought, and that is to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia as a resource, unimpeded by Gastrich's attempts at self-promotion. WarriorScribe 18:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I actually read that "rebuttal". When it talks about God commanding his followers to kill people, it's little more than "he was only trying to scare them" or (worse) "That was then this is now." That's not a rebuttal. Harvestdancer 17:09, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deism

Do they promote deism? God and religion are distinct. 15:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe the only thing they promote is separation of religion from government in America. They mostly find themselves fighting the intrusion of Christianity in government, but if deism or any other religion started intruding into government, they'd probably fight that too. johnpseudo 15:52, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IL/Legal Bible Instruction in Public Schools

There was an edit by 68.6.58.171, which removed the use of "illegal" to describe Bible teaching in public schools, claiming the "Constitution does not make public Bible instruction illegal". This claim is not entirely true. There are legal and illegal forms of allowable Bible instruction in public schools, and the use of "illegal" is needed to distinguish between them.

For instance, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution deems certain methods as illegal, such as in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963) where children were forced to recite Bible prayers read over the intercom. The case won by the FFRF was brought against explicitly illegal instruction, not all forms of Bible education.

The specific case the article blurb refers to is Doe v Porter. In the ruling, the court found that the instructors were not teaching "history" but claiming as fact that "The Lord Jesus Christ is the only Savior." That kind of indoctrination was explicitly deemed illegal by the Supreme Court in 1948, and so is fair-game to describe as "illegal" in this article. See [1] for FFRF's summary of the case. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ceran (talk • contribs) 22:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC).