Interesting timing on your question, Paul. I just started reading Test Your Cultural Literacy this week. One of the chapter (called tests in this book) is All’s Right with the World: Myth and Religion. The test has 50 questions, covering ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to name a few. There is also an explanatory section at the end of the test so you can learn what you don’t know.
As to why learn about these faiths: they’re important in history and culture.
But it’s pretty widely agreed that Deuteronomy was written in the 7th century BCE, long after this Moses character was supposed to have lived.
Wicca has had almost no actual influence on world events or cultures, compared with Christianity, etc.
I do think children should be exposed to, or at least understand some of the very basics of, the major influential world religions/philosophies (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism), simply as part of their overall education - as someone upthread noted, to the same degree/level of granularity as they are taught geography, history or literature.
This sort of debate is too much granularity for children’s education.
My own suggestion for teaching such figures as Moses: they are legendary and mythical, which means that, while they are varstly important culturally, people do not agree on whether they really existed or not. Some mythical, legendary figures may have been inspired by real people and others may have been invented by ancient story-tellers - we simply do not know which are which. However, their importance lies in the fact that for hundreds or thousands of years, people thought they were as real as you or I, and this made the stories about them more powerful.
As a long term atheist, I raised my daughter to know about the Abrahamic religions for many of the reasons given above. It would be uneducated not to know what so many people believe. She had a little exposure to Judaism because of my family and to Catholicism because of her father’s family. A significant proportion of Australian students go to private schools, and most of these have a religious affiliation. I knew my daughter would be exposed to religious education and attend chapel at her Uniting Church school. I also taught there. A church school which happily employs openly atheist teachers isn’t too heavy on the religion.
She needed to know the stories and characters, but also the structure of the religion and way it is implemented in reality. What church and synagogue are really like. How religious people behave and think - so she needed contact with some people who were the sort she could talk to.
I think we found the right balance, she has chosen to be an atheist, having dabbled with religious belief at one stage. But she is profoundly interested in religion from a philosophical and historical perspective, and has some basis on which to explore this. Now she’s investigating non-Abrahamic forms of religion.
As an atheist myself, I’m appalled at the idea that someone wouldn’t teach a child about religion. What, do you want them learning about it in the streets? You’ll have only yourselves to blame if your kids come home one day clutching pamphlets and fantasizing about other kids burning in hell. If you don’t talk to your kids about religion, somebody else will.
Seriously, though. The entire intellectual and literary history of everything is shot through with implicit and explicit assumptions about God. The intellectual and literary future will continue to be a response to that history.
Christians have for centuries tutored their children in the cockamamie stories of classical antiquity largely without fear that the little beasts will take this stuff seriously except as fables and vital cultural references. Once in a while you’ll hear about some Christian who refuses to let their kids get exposed to fairy stories because they’ll catch heathenism or something, and generally these fears are viewed as silly and willfully keeping the child ignorant. Is it any less silly when instead it’s atheists who fear exposing their children to the Christians’ cockamamie stories?
Ignorance of religion will not prevent a child from growing up to be religious. My knowledge of the Christian tradition allows me to benefit from the insight contained therein: that you must know the devil and his tricks if you are to be saved.
Those who do not study religion are doomed to repeat it.
Agreed. Even if Moses never existed, I think it’s misleading to refer to him as fictional. I’d save the label “fictional figure” for a character whose first appearance was in a work of fiction—i.e. a work whose creator and orginal audience are fully aware is made up.
Yep. I taught my kids about Mars, Hera, Jesus, Mohamed, etc. If they ever make it onto Jeopardy I’d hate to see them get slaughtered in the religion category.
Thank you all. I have been offline for a bit, what with Ramadan and all.
I consider all dates in the bible suspect, and I’m positive most, if not all of it, was written after the ‘fact’. But they weren’t necessarily made up when they were first recorded, the stories may have been around for a long time. Again, IANA biblical scholar/historian. I just notice that Numbers and Leviticus seem to concentrate on rules instead of stories. They were probably added by the priests for selfish reasons. The Moses of Exodus seems to be totally mythical, to me, continuing the story of Genesis. The Deuteronomy Moses seems more like a real person. I’m not saying a real person, just more like one. Look at the 34:7, someone wanted to emphasize that this was a real guy. I’m sure that the people at the time were often skeptical of the stories further back in time (Pah! Pyramids?! What do you know about pyramids, you’re a butcher? My son-in-law Hymie, he knows pyramids!), but they could probably relate to the time when the nomads settled down, and the last great leader of the nomads would have been entangled in the culture, maybe. It’s just my humble opinion. Nothing more.
Yeah, but you have to know the circumstances of how Deuteronomy was “discovered.” This is from Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World:
I don’t understand. Why does it matter that some random pastoralist dude 3,000 years ago, who might or might not have settled in his native Canaan and whose life story, whatever it was embelished to be, archeology tells us was never anything like the biblical tale we now know, might, possibly, perhaps maybe have existed?
How does that correlate with the biblical story?
It’s like me trying to say that you shouldn’t discount the possibility that J.R.R Tolkien was actually writing real history, because you know… well look at a map of middle earth! It’s clearly a map of Europe/Asia. China is mordor. And you can’t possibly tell me that in all of history some little person did not in fact travel from somewhere in France to China carrying a ring, and then procedded to maybe, perhaps drop it in some hot soup! HA! There you go. So I’d kindly ask you to stop dismissing Frodo as a fiction when clearly he is simply the legendary picture of a real life, clumsy, French little person touring China.
I guess what I’m asking is: how much does the story have to get wrong, before you say it’s fictional?
Forgot about the political atmosphere of when this stuff was written as CurtC mentions. Take that ALSO into account along side the archeology and the heck else have you got left?
It matters if you want to understand the history and current problems of the Middle East.
Just like you would need to know something about Christianity to understand European history.
Some atheists might want to read this post with an open mind on who it might apply to.
Regards,
Shodan
Eh, back on topic:
I would follow suit with most of the responses from fellow atheists. I think it’s important they have an understanding of the main bullet points of the three major religions including basic history (both as written in the bible and what modern archeology and historical study actually tells us). I’d also want them to know at an early age about more ancient religions, as well as some basic information on more modern ones too.
Essentially, I think the topic is important and should be studied. Regardless of my own (lack of) beliefs religion is, was, and is likely to continue to be a major force shaping the social fabric of our world.
I never implied that it didn’t matter in the context of understanding those particular religions. I was asking: why does it matter as a point of actual history? Can the statement: “Moses existed” make any sense if in fact the guy the legends derived from lived hundreds of years after moses was said to have lived, never liked the desert, settled with his mom and cousin Matilda in some Canan hill, and was actually named Sesom?
Given what we know about the context in which the story was penned, and what we know about the time period in which the story was supposed to have happened what is the more likely scenario? That he existed, or that he did not? And if he existed but was just like Sesom, what would be the answer to the question “Did Moses exist”? I would say the answer would still be no.
In the preface to Bulfinch’s Mythology he says: “Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciate.” This applies to the bible as well as any other mythology. In that sense anyway, I think it’s important to have a basic understanding of the bible. Many of its myths and metaphors are in common usage.
So true. But it would be a difficult job teaching about all the religions of the world, especially when when the teacher (me) doesn’t think any of them deserves more than 10 minutes. Honestly, I feel back on teaching my kids that it was OK to not be religious, to not be disrespectful and, hopefully, to filter the information they receive about religion. Just existing in America one gets a heavier dose of Christianity than anyone really needs.
I’m not trying to factualize the Bible. It is all fiction as far I am concerned. There is a difference between fiction that is totally fabricated, and fiction that is based on actual people and/or events, or legends that may have some basis in reality. There is historical evidence to show that some of the Bible has elements of reality in it. Recently a stone was found inscribed with something like ‘House of David’. Lending credibility to an actual David having lived as King. Doesn’t prove much. But the subtopic was about calling biblical figures mythical or legendary. You aren’t providing much of an education if you call it all myth and fiction. And as time goes on, more factual detail arise.
CurtC, you have a good point about the coincidental discovery of Deuteronomy, but it offers no additional facts. The book may have been a way of mixing legends with politically advantageous philosophy. Known now as conflation. Not making the call, just pointing out the possibilities.
My kids world history book had a very nice section on world religions, all treated equally and all in the style of “Christians believe that …” or “Hindus believe that …”. I think this is an essential piece of learning history.
When I was in high school we had a small section in English on “the Bible as Literature” but I think they only trusted the AP class with it, and we were 98% Jewish anyway. But nothing objectionable in the way it was handled.
Everyone should read Shakespeare, and everyone should read the Bible. Believing is a totally different matter.
Theoretically, I think religious studies should be required in several grades throughout public education. It is culturally important, and promotes understanding between peoples of the world.
Practically, there are problems. Oh, how there are problems. I took a class in [public, mind you] high school called Bible History. The teacher happened also to be a minister, and a better name for the class would have been “Church.”
Prove it: how does a secular understanding of Martin Luther King, Jr. suffer by only focusing on the secular aspects of his motivation?
Anything worth doing can be justified using purely secular arguments. Something like Shahadah is irrelevant to real life, unless you’re trying to catalogue every pointless thing religious people do because they’re religious.
Having been subjected to religious studies for a number of years, I found them to be a massive waste of time.