Reader responds to religious scripture bill

Regarding the Feb. 4 column by Hector Avalos, Kenneth Atkinson and Robert Cargill 'Why we don't support religious scripture bill”:

Everything mentioned in the article makes sense if you don't support a religious scripture bill. What's interesting to me, in my over 50 years as a Bible student, is that I have studied every Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran Church of Christ, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Evangelical Free, Seventh-day Adventist, Mormon and Unitarian, reform Jewish, Sunni, Muslim Theravada Buddhist, secular humanist and atheist teaching.

The one thing they all have in common is that they don't let the Bible interpret the questions that confuse people. It's also interesting that Jehovah's Witnesses aren't mentioned in all the religions addressed in the article even though Jehovah's Witnesses in 2016 spent 1,983,763,754 hours talking to other people about the Bible and held personal bible studies with over 10,115,264 different people in 240 lands worldwide.

As much as people would want to debate this point; in all these hours spent with people teaching the Bible it is never done with the intent of swaying them toward one belief or the other. It's done to give them knowledge they need to make the decision for themselves. It's the only way it can be done. And that's why it doesn't matter whether you support or don't support religious scripture bill. Once colleges or anyone else provides education with the thought of the student being able to make their own decisions will true education take place.

Steve Maddison

Cedar Rapids