the bible literacy project.

www.bibleliteracy.com


this website/publishing house has produced a textbook that teaches bible literacy and supposedly can be used in schools to teach kids more about the bible, regardless of constitutional restrictions.

on their website they have some reviews of the books from different media outlets. one of them goes like this:

"Public schools have no business using Bible instruction to advance a religious agenda. But when they decline to impart knowledge about such an important subject, they are not doing anything to preserve the separation of church and state. They are merely failing their students."
Chicago Tribune (May 12, 2005)

and here is another:

“How are we to expect our young people to live up to America’s ideals if they are cut off from the stories, beliefs and metaphors that for hundreds of years gave those principles life?”
The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 12, 1999)

what i thought was interesting about this wasnt really the war that has erupted between secular and religious interests attempting to exert influence on childrens education, rather it was the fact that this is presented in a way that makes it appear that a lack of knowledge about the bible precludes an effective understanding of the principles of Americanism. I would agree with the assessment that judeo-christian themes permeate our society on most levels, but find it disturbing that a writer from the Wall Street journal is so uneducated as to not grasp the concept that these principles did not originate with the bible or christianity. I also think that most american christians today are woefully ignorant in terms of scripture but that the majority of them still seem to have some understanding of the underlying principles of the country. What does everyone think of this, is an understanding of the bible necessary for american kids to become good citizens? Do we need to teach this stuff in schools or is it a subtle encroachment by the right to christianize the education system while apparently circumventing constitutional prohibitons on the mixture of church and state?

 

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It's not really necessary, but I could see it as part of a higher level class in comparative religion including the other major works, the koran, talmud, bagavad gita, tao te ching, non-canonical gospels, etc...

I think one can study the judeo-christian themes without actually getting into the details of scripture, much of which might not be very relevant.

 

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yeah but its just the bible, and i believe they are advocating teaching it in an elementary or secondary school setting, where higher level world religion classes probably dont even exist.

 

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I think comparative religion classes should only be at higher levels. Elementary and secondary schools are way too early. My high school barely even covered history adequately, much less something like philosophy or comparative religion. This textbook is probably just another attempt, like Intelligent Design, to infiltrate their Christian worldview into public schools.

 

thats kind of what i thought. i heard these people being interviewed on NPR this morning (the publishers/authors i guess) and they were talking up all the virtues of bible literacy and why schools really need this, and more importantly, how schools that already are seeking to put forth that kind of agenda can get it in their schools without violating first amendment rights. i got a little angry about it when i heard it because i really dont think that stuff like that should be included in our education system. i dont think its as bad as intelligent design because they have to focus the class or scope of study really narrowly in order to get around the first amendment, like i think they said that they have to stick to analysis of the writing styles and composition and things like that. but i still think its another attempt to force feed kids christianity. its like the cigarette companies purposely targeting their ads to minors. get em when theyre young and theyll be hooked for life.

 

If the school system were ideal, then a book on the influence of Christianity would be more than welcome. However, with limited resources and time, and the possibility of bias, I think such books can wait until college. I mean, put one in the school library in a religion section. If kids want to read it, that's their choice.

 

well yeah but in an ideal school system as i conceive of it, you would be taught the historical influence of all religions and their effects on modern culture and social norms, but you would also be taught the kind of logic that invalidates the usefullness of religion in the first place. i guess it depends on each persons ideal vision. i just think that this kind of thing definitely constitutes bias in some way and is basically not fair to the kids.

 

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M*W: I suppose this is one of those "faith-based" projects. I would say that for public schools this would never happen. For faith-based schools, I could see it happening. However, any groups (authors or publishers) would not reinterpret the Bible with any accuracy, so its use in elementary education would still be propaganda. The only true way to reinterpret the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) would be to translate them cosmologically and astrologically. They don't teach astrology in school, so they won't teach the Bible either. Anyone who bothers to read the Bible today is reading nothing more than the astrogenesis of the world that has been covered up by the religious ignorant. As surely as the Bible would be retranslated cosmologically, Christians would drop like flies.

 

How can we hope to give a child/student the chance to discover their beliefs about the origins of man if we biased towards evolution? Is that, in effect, brain washing the children if only one side of the argument is taught? Myself, a product of the school system, did not choose to learn about evolution. I was being taught evolution there, and about God at church. Later in my life, I weighed the evidence and perceived my own truth about the matter and would rather not have been taught evolutionary theory. Though my life's instruction was balanced at that time, the percentage of church-goers to non-church goers is much small than it was when I was in school. So, today children are most likely just being taught evolution and not about intelligent design at all. Regardless of if evolutionary theory is complete truth or complete rubbish, the children are not able to have the choice because we have removed biblical teachings they used to get at home or at church from the equation. If we are not balancing a child's education, then we should not teach the subject at all and pull evolution from the curriculum. Otherwise, where is the child's choice? They have no choice but to believe that evolution is fact. Regardless of the validity, they have no choice because there is no alternative.

It's a bit like teaching children that there are only nine planets in the solar system.

 

what you are saying is that reality shouldnt be taught because fantasy exists and that in order to be "egalitarian" you have to teach a child that a proveable theory and a completely unsustainable story are to be given equal intellectual creedence. wrong. thats like saying well kids, we have a pretty serious and supportable theory of what reality is like, but there is an alternative, so just in case we arent right i want you to read all of the Harry Potter books and consider with equal weight that an entirely unseen world of witches and wizards may exist even though we cant find one shred of evidence to support it and we have a metric ton of evidence supporting the other version of events. does that sound insane to you? because it does to me.

 

There is no argument as far as science is concerned.

Until ID provides a testable hypothesis, which it has not, it remains completely outside the realm of science. Until a testable hypothesis is provided and that hypothesis is supported by evidence there is nothing to argue about and ID has no more business being taught in a public science classroom. None, nada, zilch. To date, the entire ID argument consists solely of an argument from ignorance and nothing more.

~Raithere

 

As to the Bible being taught in public classrooms, I say sure. Just as long as we don't forget to leave out the Quran, the Tao Te Ching, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Satanic Bible, the Talmud, the Vedas, the Buddhist Sutras, and the Humanist Manifesto... just to begin with.

Until then, adding the Bible to the classroom (even in a historical context) is biased and unconstitutional. It gives special priority and recognition to a single religion over all others.

~Raithere

 

From http://disassemblance.com/

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Science has uncovered many pieces that point to natural selection, but it is far from reality. Sure, logic says that in the absence of evidence, an argument is false since there are an infinite number of improbabilities. I just want to correct your equating "reality" with evolutionary theory. Natural selection has a lot of evidence, but is still missing crucial pieces. In the absence of any alternative viable evidence, it can be assumed, but assumptions are not reality.

Eighty percent of Americans are reportedly of a type of Christianity. Are we not doing an injustice by not allowing those eighty percent the opinion of intelligent design? Young minds are very impressionable and treat a teacher's word as absolute truth. I was not given a choice, and I bought into it without giving much thought of my position of the origins of man. I was a Catholic who believed in evolution because my teacher told me it was undeniably fact. They have a right to an opinion of the origins of man, and that is something the current curriculum does not allow.

Turn the tables, and you would be arguing against the Bible being taught in schools and that evolutionary theory be introduced as a provable alternative. Of course, I would be fighting against it, as you are fighting me. So, for the children's sake, let them choose and we not choose for them and let us agree to disagree. If evolutionary theory is so evidenced we need not worry, let them learn of it in college and make an educated decision. Then perhaps they will see that they have been lied to about God and be all the more against the Bible's teachings.

I say teach neither the Bible nor natural selection, or teach them both. Otherwise, we are not giving the child a chance to weigh the evidence and make a decision.

 

the children should choose what they want to be taught?

down this road lies ruin.

 

Evolution is both fact and theory. That natural selection drives speciation is a fact, plain and simple. It has been observed both in the wild and many times in experiment. There are no critical pieces missing.

ID proponents address the unknown and debated aspects of the reconstruction of Evolutionary history as if the questions that remain in this area somehow weaken or invalidate the science of Evolution as a whole. They do not.

This is the single area where I have some agreement with anti-evolutionists. Certain aspects of science are taught as factual when they are not, including some historical and hypothetical aspects of Evolution. Depicting the hypothetical aspects of Evolution with the same certitude as the factual aspects undermines the public's perception of scientific validity.

Once again, there is no evidence for ID. It is not a scientific theory and therefore does not belong in science classes. It would be like teaching how to fix a time machine in shop class.

~Raithere

 

when i was like 12, we were asked in school what we "believe" in, how the world was created and stuff. i think almost everyone else said god, but i said "big bang"

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but i don't believe in the big bang anymore..................... ♥

 

jayleeuw. Yawn. Please stop coming onto a science forum with your nonsensical propaganda that there is no "reality" behind evolution. Fortunately in the real world of science people are actually solving problems using the theory of evolution. But the United States are going to provide fewer and fewer of those people as time goes on, and consequently are going to lose their world primacy, particularly in the (fairly important to Americans I believe) field of healthcare and general avoidance of death.

Those cartoons were funny, but I happen to think that going straight to the "nazis" argument is no better than the kind of specious anti-evolution argument deployed by Jack Chick etc. It's better to use one of the cartoons that deal with the theory of gravity in the same way as the theory of Evolution. You're not being polemical then, you just highlight with ridicule.

As to the argument here about "Bible Literacy", I am not in favour of leaving these things to the college years. Children are growing up with the effects of religion all around them, they deserve to know what it is all about. Children of religious families are going to be learning this stuff from their mothers' knee in any case, the rest of them should at least be able to speak from a level of knowledge. Not having any kind of bible class amounts to suppression of knowledge. In Britain, Religious Education used to be the only subject that was mandated by law (in a way it had to be because there was less inclination to teach it), but that is no longer interpreted as inculcating the (now very multicultural) schoolkids with Christian dogma, but an overall examination of all religions. And this is how it should be, imho.

I don't know that there could possibly be a better overall introduction to the Bible in schools than one of my favourite books on the subject, written by my personal favourite author: Asimov's Guide To The Bible. Isaac Asimov was of course a famous atheist and humanist, but there is not one single word of anti-religious polemic in this book. He was Jewish, too, but there is no detectable anti-Christian bias in the book either. Of course, the book doesn't accept dogmatic tradition about Moses having written the Pentateuch, etc., but it does mention those traditions and gives some of the background behind them. The only down side is that it is slightly out of date, having been written in 1968 - but what's 37 years in two and a half thousand?

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It's an excellent reference and very easy to read, having been written in Asimov's famously unfussy language style.

 

As to the Bible being taught in public classrooms, I say sure. Just as long as we don't forget to leave out the Quran, the Tao Te Ching, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Satanic Bible, the Talmud, the Vedas, the Buddhist Sutras, and the Humanist Manifesto... just to begin with.

That is, of course, the only viable solution to appease all. However, it is a powderkeg of intolerance in that parents would not allow their children to be part of classes if "the other" religions were being taught.

Would a Christian parent actually allow their kids to learn about the Quran and vice-versa?

 

I've debated this before, it was either you or Cato that conceded to the odds of natural selection being very low, but that they exist. And in the absence of any other evidence, logic says the theory with the most evidence (or the only evidence) is true. Do we need to debate this again?

The odds for the right changes at the right time defy reason, but yet it happened, so it is possible (if the theory is sound). The sheer odds for the creation of life from amino acids took just the right conditions and influences are high enough before you consider how nature created a sentient being.

There are facts that support the theory of evolution, but conclusion that all life is the result of natural selection is still circumstantial. It would take millions of years to prove the theory of natural selection.