On serena's excellent thread

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,406680

it was suggested by some posters that the Bible stories aren't important and shouldn't be taught to children. Even if those stories are taught as mythology, say in the same way one would teach children the Greek myths.

I need to go on the record with this: bona dea is absolutely correct when she states that knowing these stories is fundamental to understanding western civilization.

Sorry folks, regardless of how anyone feels about the Bible, it is part of the canon and it is a cornerstone of Western Civilization.

Bona Dea also made it clear that she doesn't think the stories should be taught as fact or as truth, but rather as literature.

Do you have any idea how many works of art become unapproachable if you don't have any knowledge of Christianity at all? Well, a a shitload, folks. A whole shitload.

So, ask yourselves this: are you as freaked out by your children being taught the various violent and horrible stories from Greek mythology? Or is this something you reserve only for the OT and the NT?

Just a thought.

And again I want to emphasize, I am not talking about religious education where these stories are touted as true, but rather that they be treated in exactly the same manner one would treat any other piece of canonical literature.

Actually, Greek philosophy is the cornerstone of western civilization. Christianity is simply the result of a small Jewish sect being influenced by common Mediterranean pagan ideals.

http://pocm.info/index.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2012 04:00PM by forbiddencokedrinker.

I'm sorry, but you just are.

Just think about Renaissance paintings. Thousands of them. Many of them show themes from Greek Mythology. And many of them show themes from Biblical Mythology.

Then there is literature.

And further, Christianity was, itself, influenced significantly by the Greeks.

It's a long unbroken syncretistic chain of narratives in Western Civ. Each new thing influenced by that which came before it and in turn influencing that which comes after it.

You are wrong.

Uh, Christianity may have started out as a small sect but it became the religion of the West and is the largest religion in the world. You don't have to believe it to see its importance on culture. BTW, Greek and Roman civilization is equally important.

Thank you,Elee. and FCD both the Bible and Greek and Roman civilization are cornerstones. We n eed to know both.

But only from the perspective of understanding the *history* of western civilisation. You can't avoid the bible if that is your aim, but you can quite merrily go through life without understanding either.

... I think it might originally belong to Pascoe:

"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise."

Just sayin'

Timothy



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2012 04:11PM by Timothy.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2012 04:15PM by Timothy.

I am speaking more generally.

Understanding the components and critical periods of development in Western Civilizations is necessary if your aim is to have a well-rounded education.

I will never, ever promote ignorance as a solution.

When it comes to how one perceives these works of art, well then, that is aesthetics and completely subjective. But, of course, an informed opinion on such topics will always carry more weight than an ignorant one.

:)

If knowing the basis of christianity is important because of it's cultural impact, and if knowing Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations is equally important...

Then why is knowledge of christianity so much more stressed by our culture?

And why are so many - in America at least - so ignorant of Ancient Greece and Rome?

I agree with you about ignorance of Greece and Rome, but people , even religious ones, are ignorant about the Bible too.

so for me it is a non-issue.

For Americans generally, well, that's their problem. Is this an indictment of our education system? Our values? Dunno.

I would guess the elevation of Christianity is far more prominent in the U.S. than it is anywhere in Europe. The European education model is radically different from our own and these things are weighted more fairly there, in my opinion, than they are here.

Hell, there are even elementary and middle schools where *gasp* Greek and Latin are taught!

so many Americans are such cultural illiterates, that stating one particular item of our cultural base - like Bible stories - is important, when SOOOOO much more isn't known is....

Well, it seems a bit nitpicky to me.

It's kinda like putting a band-aid on the guy with the sucking chest wound.

I totally agree that many Americans are culturally illiterate. I taught high school and junior high for years. I had a student who didn't know which side Washington fought on in the Revolution ( I am not kidding and that is only one story). However, that was not the point of the thread. I do not encourage ignorance in any subject and there is plenty of it to go around.As a teacher, I tend to see red when people advocate ignorance or are pround of it and there is way too much of it in our society.

It is more like when the read Shakespeare of other literature they will get the Biblical references and when they take an art history course they will actually understand what the paintings are about.They will look as if they had an education and other students won't laugh at their ignorance.The teacher will appreciate not having to explain the whole OT when showing slides of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or of Michelangelo's Moses.When showing slides of Da Vinci the kid will have some clue as to who the Virgin, St, Anne, the Christ Child and John the Baptist are.

Those concepts should be taught on a case by case system, when and if students choose to study those artworks.

For the rest of us, we likely don't need it.

And yes, I also have studied Shakespeare and art history. Complete waste of time, imo.

Western Civ. is a vast cloaca. "Western Civ." will disappear. It is in self-destruct mode today. Soon the myths of western civ. will be gone entirely, replaced by the fullest expression of the true and most enduring western civ. of all, the most popular form of western culture--fascism.

SPQR--Hail Caesar!

To each his own, but I couldn't disagree more.

Greek culture is the cornerstone of Western Civilization, the Bible is the cornerstone of Western culture.

Is what I'd say.

... teaching your kids the fairy tales contained in the bible just so they're not caught off-guard by delusional religionists at PTA meetings.

I think the kid and parent did just fine.

Timothy



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2012 04:18PM by Timothy.

I even posted a tribute song to serena for the way she handled that situation.

Again: I am speaking far more broadly here. And I will never, ever advocate censorship (even if you're censoring for yourself) as a solution.

And again: teaching the bible as literature is radically different than teaching it as the word of god.

I am having difficulty understanding why this hair is so difficult for many of you to split.

so what if a parent doesn't go out of their way to tell their kids stories about Moses or Noah?

it's damn near impossible to grow-up in american today and not be exposed to biblical/xtian ideas

this was made painfully obvious to me as a missionary in a country of buddhist/atheists - the missionary discussions assume the investigator has some understanding of xtianity

concepts that would be obvious to any north american (even if only from watching tv and movies) like prayer, angels, scriptures, etc. couldn't be glossed-over like they are in the discussions - where my friends that went to chile were teaching the first discussion on doorsteps in 10 minutes we were going thru the same info in several 1 hour lessons...

my point is that in western culture biblical/xtian ideas are everywhere - you can't escape it

it's not the end of the world if a kid gets to age 9 and doesn't know the difference between Moses and Noah - i'm sure by the time he's an adult he'll have had enough exposure to appreciate western art...

again, I am speaking far more generally.

At what age a child is introduced to this level of literature is going to vary from child to child.

The influential German philosopher and atheist Jürgen Habermas, from a 1999 interview:

"For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk."

More myopic, imperialistic western ethnocentrism.

No alternative, indeed. Putz...

"And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.""

"Post-national constellation" = code for Eurocentric world fascist government.

They dream big in the City of London and in Brussels...

Ahhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh CHEWbullshit! Snort.


Sorry,

Ron

Highly educated people in the modern era well understand that much of our heritage descends to us from the cultures that originated with the Greeks and Romans. We especially owe thanks to specific pieces of literature for great chunks of modern Western culture: “On the Nature of Things,” by Lucretius, for example. We also owe a great deal to the dominance of Christianity in the West as well. These two channels of our culture have not always laid well side-by-side throughout European history, however, and in North America today we are living through a period where this is again the case.

Everything Biblical (and anti-Biblical) is a red-hot button in America these days, thanks in no small part to the fact that there is an absolute dead-zone of Biblical scholarship blanketing the entire continent. True intellectual inquiry concerning the nature of the books comprising the modern Bible is extremely rare (I happen to live in one of the very few parts of America where it is possible to study the book without being buried under piles of dogmatic idiocy), because literalists across the country shout down any who attempt to dampen their fundamentalist fires.

I take your statements into full consideration, elee, but I have to temper them with the fact that a majority of the American population now regards the Bible as pure history and as the literal word of their god, both of which are considered dire errors by the most advanced scholars in the world - people who have devoted their careers to studying these volumes in great depth and across a broad contextual base. Need I add that the chances of a Mormon being included in that congregation of scholars is less than 1 in 14,000,000? (and yes, I do know what I'm talking about.)

Yet you are also right: one can not simply sweep away twenty centuries of Christian art, literature, music, and architecture. It is neither possible nor desirable. The West is experiencing a bad enough identity crisis as it stands already. But I believe it does nobody any good to continue capitulating to the literalists, allowing them to pretend that the fairy tales of the Bible were - or are - any more than just that: fairy tales. Those good Christian parents who would give junior and missy a children's version of the story of David and Goliath or Joshua and the Battle of Jericho (I had both as a child) are not the same people who would give junior and missy a children's version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Why? Because to them, Gilgamesh is a pagan myth (that they refuse to even explore) which threatens to dilute the potency of their Bible stories, and this they will not allow, under any circumstances.

This line of thinking also returns us to the question asked by literalists about the nature of morality: "if it were not for the Bible, where would we find a moral guide?" For thoughtful people, the answer is that examples of high moral and ethical standards are found in many places, including selected parts of the Bible. There is an entire body of literature that forms the ethical base of Western philosophy, most of whose titles are completely unknown to the literalists, and, thanks to the machinations of lowbrow divines like Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart, never will be. Even Mormons, as desperate to be liked as the ugliest kid at the school dance, have seized onto this "morality monoculture" and flogged it to the heavens, just so they can "fit in." In my opinion, this attitude is foolishness and it deserves to be exposed as such. If we fail to do so, we stand to lose a part of our cultural heritage equal in magnitude to that which you enumerated, as significant and as rich, but different. Why do I think that? Because the fundamentalists and literalists, in their fervor, will seek to destroy it. They always have.

I agree with most of what you said, but I for one would give my children childrens' copies of both the Bible and the pagan myths and I would treat both as myth. In fact, I don't have kids but have made a point of giving such gifts to my nieces and nephews. So do many people.I doubt I am alone.

“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think-though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one-that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

My view is that Hitchens is wrong. Educated people should know both. Our past is important.

Christopher Hitchens on the necessity of teaching the bible:
http://awilum.com/?p=234

Excerpt below:

"You are not educated if you don’t know the Bible. You can’t read Shakespeare or Milton without it, even if there was nothing else of it. And with the schools now, that’s what I hate about secular relativism. They’re afraid of insurance liability. They don’t even teach it as a document. They stay out of the whole thing to avoid controversy. So kids can’t quote the King James Bible. That’s terrible. And I quite understand Christian parents who want to protect their children from a nihilistic solution where there’s no way of knowing what’s been discussed."

I am glad he sees that.

+++++ good post.

Imagine...no religion, too. Nothing to kill or die for. No fascism, no futile, myth-based, god-driven "governments" or "states" or "kings".

Yes I'm a dreamer, and I'm not the only one.

But ya'll just keep wallowing in your little "godly cloaca", bowing to your little clay god of "western civ..

Hello, if that was addressed to me I am not religious. Neither is anyone else in the thread so far as I know and you have missed the entire point elee and others are trying to make. Maybe you should go back and read the thread. Of course, you consider Shakepeare and art to be a complete waste of time which means we are not even on the same wavelength.No wonder we don't understand each other.

Xstianity was derived from other cults, and myths, and once formed borrowed from the traditions of pagans who came before. I think there needs to be more honesty about the origins of our culture. Xstians think they are the beginning, and the end of all. At every chance artists had during different periods like the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, they looked outside of xstianity for inspiration.

I think it should be considered a national epic. It is essential to understanding much of our culture, but it should be given its proper place, which would be nearly impossible to do here. No one wants to know about the violent rise of xtianity, and how it "inspired" so much, because it extinguished all others be become the only game in town. I think we should study the continuum, and leave the religious part out.

Maybe the Bible could be helpful from a sociological perspective in understanding why people believe the way they believe. But good god, if you want to study literature, then go to the library and get some.