Richard Dawkins Supports Bibles in Schools

[Sweetdeath]

I don't have a problem with children or schools having access to any religious text. I wouldn't want teachers to teach that everything in the bible is literally true, but it's useful for understanding inter-textual references in a lot of works. The bible is something that gets referenced a lot.

They could be like "this was written around  the same time as... " whatever.
I think most kids are naturally skeptics too. So teaching the bible in school the same way greek.mythology is taught is fine
They will see it for ridiculous donkey shit .

[Asmodean]

I think most kids are naturally skeptics too.

I heard young kids were more or less hard-wired to trust their elders... Not sure though, because my own wiring has always been... Special.

[Tank]

I don't have a problem with children or schools having access to any religious text. I wouldn't want teachers to teach that everything in the bible is literally true, but it's useful for understanding inter-textual references in a lot of works. The bible is something that gets referenced a lot.

They could be like "this was written around  the same time as... " whatever.
I think most kids are naturally skeptics too. So teaching the bible in school the same way greek.mythology is taught is fine
They will see it for ridiculous donkey shit .

Unfortunately this is most definitely not the case.  Kids do accept their parents authority without question the vast majority of the time. You'll hear parents bleating about unruly kids, but that's generally after puberty hits. Between 3 and 11 kids are pretty much in the intellectual thrall of their parents. 

[Sweetdeath]

That reminds me of when i overheard a parent telling their 9 yr old son about how a policeman's job is to take down bad guys. I felt sick. Such "this is right. This is wrong" thinking is dangerous.
Also this happen during a case in nyc where two policemen were on trial for taking a drunk women home from a bar and raping her....
Has building surveilance if them entering her residence, then leaving two hours later. One of them stood "look out."

[Sandra Craft]

Unfortunately this is most definitely not the case.  Kids do accept their parents authority without question the vast majority of the time.  

That was certainly the case with me -- adults told me something and I automatically assumed they knew what they were talking about and went along with it.  It took some time for those scales to fall.

[Amicale]

Unfortunately this is most definitely not the case.  Kids do accept their parents authority without question the vast majority of the time.  

That was certainly the case with me -- adults told me something and I automatically assumed they knew what they were talking about and went along with it.  It took some time for those scales to fall.

Same here. From the time I was a toddler (ie, vaguely aware that I was even in a church, although my grasp was fuzzy at best as to what it meant to be there) to the time I was 13 or 14, I was very much under the influence of my family and their beliefs. True, it was a mixed bag of beliefs. True, nobody was really what I'd call a hardcore fundie. All the same, it was the accepted norm that the Bible was true, that Christianity was true, that good people believed in God while bad people didn't, etc. It was very black and white, for me. I was never forced to go to church several times a week, never forced to do anything, really. It was just assumed I was Catholic and that was that.

One other thing I wasn't forced to do was read the Bible. My family just assumed that because the bible was read during Mass on Sundays (nevermind it being carefully selected bits with warm fuzzy largely humanistic explanations - ie, the 'feel good' stuff), that really ought to be enough for anyone. The standard default position was "we're Catholics, we're more balanced and reasonable, we're not obsessed with the Bible like those fundie protestants are!" and they prided themselves on that - go to work, raise your kids, enjoy life, and pay lip service to a religion and Bible you really don't KNOW a lot about.

So... imagine my surprise when I was given my own bible as a 15 year old. I excitedly went down to the local Christian store, got those 'bible tabs' (the ones that have the bible book names on them), set my bible up, and started reading. And reading. By the end of a couple weeks, I'd read through huge chunks of the Old Testament (I was already familiar with the New Testament), and I had more questions than answers. Mind you, I was trying VERY hard to believe. I cherrypicked the nice stuff, for a long time. I read the NT often, taking comfort in the nicer bits... but I kept returning to the verses that left me feeling cold and disgusted. The God I found there didn't in any way jive with the loving, forgiving, father-God I'd been raised to believe in. This one seemed more like a vengeful, cold, jealous psycho. So I started asking my questions, and got all the usual responses. Everything from God's justice and righteousness, to 'that was then, this is now', to 'if God created it, he can destroy it too', etc. It still didn't make sense.

As the years went on, I continued to read. I continued to be surprised (not in a good way) by how I saw God being portrayed. I started to wonder how many people around me even KNEW most of this stuff was in the Bible (turns out, not too many). Once I read the Bible through the lens of looking at the character of God, I started reading it to look for the science, the history, the general ideas and philosophies. Again, surprised and not in a good way. What the bible said about huge groups of people dismayed me and sickened me. What it said about who deserved hell or not sickened me. What it said about who people had to be, otherwise God would reject them sickened me. What it said about human nature in general upset me. And that's when the doubts really started kicking in. The more I read, the more I questioned.

Eventually, I came to see the bible for what it was: a long-lasting conglomeration of books, selected by committee, all of them a product of their time, worldview, and culture. No more, no less. As literature, many of the books have value. I recommend that all people have access to these and other religious texts in their entirety, not brief, carefully selected segments and parables. Some of the books have good stories in them, or interesting ideas. Others have horror stories and very bad ideas.

But I do think the surest way to get a child to WANT to read the Bible is to ban it, and refuse the child access to it, or control what he or she reads out of it. I say give them the whole thing and talk it over as objectively as possible. In this way, I do agree that people should be able to read the Bible and other religious texts -- not from the premise that it must be true or that they ought to believe it, but from the premise that they should know what the ideas are inside it, so that they can evaluate them for themselves.

Sorry for the long post, if anyone read it. This is just stuff I've been thinking about for a long while.

[Sandra Craft]

Sorry for the long post, if anyone read it. This is just stuff I've been thinking about for a long while.

I read it, and appauld it -- wonderful post, Ami. 

[Jimmy]

I do think that allowing bibles to be required reading in high school, along side other religious texts, would encourage debate between students about what the meaning of the texts could be. I mean think about it. If I went to Bible school(hypothetical scenario) and was taught that passage x meant y, but was taught in public school that passage x could mean y or z, then I would most likely develop a better ability to interpret the bible on my own. This may not cause me to reject it entirely, but when comparing it to other religious texts, or to other ancient mythologies, may lead me to at least have a more tolerant view of religions other than my own, and if I decide not to reject the religion of my parents, I would at least  less likely to become a fundamentalist. The fewer the number of religious fundamentalists in the world, the more cooperative and peaceful civil society should become. At least, that would be my hope.

As to actually reading the bible? I started reading the Old Testament numerous times, but once I got past Genesis, it all became incredibly boring; maybe I ought to give it another whirl? My uncle did buy me my first Bible when I was twelve, or thirteen, for Christmas. In fact, all of his nieces and nephews received a copy of the King James Bible that year and he offered each of us ten dollars if we read the New Testament. Being a glutton for money, I read it and collected. Now, this particular copy had all of Christ's words in red and I couldn't help but be skeptical as to how the style of the narration closely matched the style in which Jesus spoke; it just didn't seem believable that those were Jesus's exact words.

[En_Route]

Sorry for the long post, if anyone read it. This is just stuff I've been thinking about for a long while.

I read it, and appauld it -- wonderful post, Ami. 

I agree.

[Stevil]

...and got all the usual responses. Everything from God's justice and righteousness, to 'that was then, this is now', to 'if God created it, he can destroy it too', etc.

Hey, that reminds me of someone I know. Scratches head.
Hmmmm, are these pre-canned answers?

[Stevil]

I wish more people would actually read the bible and see what a piece of crap fiction it is. It isnt even well written fiction.

Honestly, the first five pages are enough to see how scientifically inaccurate, sexist, vindictive and unjust this book and its god are. Not to mention the extremely poor wording and repetition.

Atrocious book.

[Tank]

Thing is if anybody sent the Bible to a publisher today as fiction it would be rejected because it doesn't have a consistent narrative. If anybody sent it to a publisher today as a non-fiction publication it would be laughed out of the office for inaccuracy and inconsistency (there are two different creation myths, both wrong). The ONLY reason the Bible is considered valid is because of historical assertion. 

[xSilverPhinx]

I've listened to enough of Dawkins' debates and interviews to know that he thinks the KJV (specifically) is important literature, and it is an important heritage for the English language. I don't think he meant that schools should have a copy for religious purposes.

[Sweetdeath]

Thing is if anybody sent the Bible to a publisher today as fiction it would be rejected because it doesn't have a consistent narrative. If anybody sent it to a publisher today as a non-fiction publication it would be laughed out of the office for inaccuracy and inconsistency (there are two different creation myths, both wrong). The ONLY reason the Bible is considered valid is because of historical assertion. 

[Sandra Craft]

I've listened to enough of Dawkins' debates and interviews to know that he thinks the KJV (specifically) is important literature, and it is an important heritage for the English language. I don't think he meant that schools should have a copy for religious purposes.

Not at all, he was clear about the bible being taught only as literature, not as a religious text.