(SRN NEWS) More than 300 Texas school districts and charter schools have signaled plans to use a state-developed reading and language arts curriculum that references the Bible and Christianity. The Texas Tribune reports that the number represents about a quarter of Texas’ 1,200 districts and charters, and could still grow before the state publishes official […]
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(SRN NEWS) More than 300 Texas school districts and charter schools have signaled plans to use a state-developed reading and language arts curriculum that references the Bible and Christianity. The Texas Tribune reports that the number represents about a quarter of Texas’ 1,200 districts and charters, and could still grow before the state publishes official data in coming months. The schools will be using the Bluebonnet curriculum, which includes religion-infused reading lessons as well as phonics and math materials. Bluebonnet was approved by a narrow eight-to-seven majority of the State Board of Education last year.
( ) The language used in the debate over Artificial Intelligence is increasingly taking on religious overtones. Geoffrey Hinton, the legendary 77-year-old programmer who helped develop AI, refers to its potential as “godlike”. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has referred to his company’s technology as a “magic intelligence in the sky”, while Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has even argued that AI could help bring about the Antichrist. Professor Robert Geraci (ger-AY-see), who studies religion and technology at Knox College, points out that “We human beings are deeply, profoundly, inherently religious.”
( ) According to new research based on data from the Centers for Disease Control, Americans ages 18-to-34 are significantly more likely to identify as transgender than those 65 and older, and those 18-to-24 are more likely to identify as transgender than those 35-to-64. About 1.3 million U.S. adults identify as transgender along with another 725,000 teenagers. That means transgender people account for less than one percent of the U.S. population. President Trump has ordered that going forward, the census and other federal surveys will no longer collect data about so-called “gender identity.”
( ) Iraq continues to rebuild, a decade after ISIS took control of large portions of the country. In the northern city of Mosul, war-damaged churches have been rebuilt in an effort to preserve the heritage of the city’s shrinking Christian population. Most of Mosul’s small population of believers fled when ISIS launched its offensive in 2014. Before the invasion the city’s Christian population stood at around 50,000. Today, fewer than 20 Christian families remain as permanent residents, although some who resettled in the semi-autonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq still return to Mosul for church services.