Teach the controversy, uh-huh

[mahnmut]

People's willful attempts to keep themselves ignorant has never stopped boggling me.

Automatically filling the blank spots that still remain here and there in our knowledge about many things - with a deity of some sorts - reminds me of the fairy tales we often tell our very young kids whenever they ask "daddy, where did I come from?" Then we start talking about bees and birds and everything is all right. Funny, many people choose to remain in eternal childhood forever. It would've remained just funny-full-stop, unless entire groups of those eventually started pushing their ignorant agenda onto the rest of society and turn this into a political issue, now that's where things turn ugly.

Teach the controversy is a nice way to move the goalposts of free speech into a slippery area. By the same logic, why not teach Astrology in class? Many people trust it, don't they?

Comments

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

It also claims that Tyre will never be rebuilt!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It also claims that Nebuchadnezzar was going immediately thereafter to leave Egypt barren for 40 years. That would have been news to the Achaemaenids, Ptolemies, Romans, and Byzantines, to say nothing of the Muslims. XP.

Yeah, there's a reason I have nothing but contempt for the Fundies.

The other one I was referring to was Jesus's statement that one of the three, Peter, James, and John would live to see his Second Coming. Last I checked all of those Apostles are dead and it's 2000 years later......

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That is to say, 40 years where Egypt was entirely uninhabited by human beings, this in the lifespan of the one truly great later Babylonian Empire-builder.

Perhaps the single biggest stinker, as far as the Bible's historical problems, is that it claims that the Jews were anachronistically monotheistic. There are inscriptions in Palestine that indicate that the Jewish culture of the time was at the very most charitable henotheistic, and was in reality polytheistic, including the Asherah as consort of YHVH.

If the Biblical state had been half of what it was claimed to have been, the Egyptians and the Assyrians would have been able to wipe it out simply due to sheer isolation. But the Bible was very clearly written by partisans of the Judaean court at the expense of the Northern Kingdom, which can be deciphered from several passages and explains the BLAM where Simeon and Levi sack and massacre an entire town in Genesis. Both of which were founders of Northern tribes.

Which in turn raises the *real* problem of to what extent anything in the record can be trusted.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Luke 9:27 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

Mark 9:1 And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

Matthew 16: 28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

That's the one, yes:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that as far as Biblical inerrancy is concerned there's another issue that people seldom bring up that's hard for the inerrantists to fudge: the Bible can't even keep the 12 tribes of Israel straight from list to list. The theology only attempts to fudge that and give a meaning to the reality that the Bible was mixed together haphazardly and edited poorly afterward.