I mentioned before that Mark Mathis is prowling Baylor, looking for new footage for his paean to creationist paranoia, Expelled. I have a suggestion for Mark.
Go north.
Just get on I35 and head north to Iowa, and pop into Southwestern Community College. Have a little conversation with Dr. Linda Wild, Vice President of Instruction. Mention the name Steve Bitterman. Bitterman was teaching a course in western civilization, one in which he uses the Old Testament, and here’s what he taught them:
“I put the Hebrew religion on the same plane as any other religion. Their god wasn’t given any more credibility than any other god,” Bitterman said. “I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there.”
Students afterwards said that was “denigrating their religion,” and some students threatened to see an attorney. (Some students need to grow a thicker skin. They should have a little conversation with me: Steve Bitterman will seem like a saint of the church afterwards.)
So here’s a professor stating a simple and obvious truth; dogmatic, ignorant students start bawling that he hasn’t affirmed their superstitions; the students go crying to lawyers and college administrators; and what do you think happens? Do you think maybe the administration supported their faculty’s secular mission and need to teach the facts?
No. Bitterman was fired.
Now there’s a story for Mark Mathis and Ben Stein. Do you think they’ll follow up? It’s perfect for their movie!
I’m not so keen on it myself. If we have to teach all of our courses as if the bible were literally true, after all, we might as well shut down the universities and send all the students off to a bible college. But then, that’s what the creationists want, isn’t it?
But we all know creationists would never do such a thing! They’re soft-spoken, respectful academics who are just patiently asking for a fair hearing for their own beliefs. It’s by no means true that they reason they fantasize about “Darwinist” persecution is because that’s exactly what they would do if they had half a chance!
That’s EXACTLY right. It’s not about gaining unearned intellectual parity for their ideas. It’s about Dominion.
I think Gary North (a HUGE booster of Libertarianism and free-market capitalism, as well as son-in-law of R.J.Rushdoony) said it best:
“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”
“Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”
Gott mit uns!
Libertarianism is really such an interesting element of cultural evolution.
On a less noncommittal note; I just got done reading your Q&A on The Raving Atheists forum. Funny and intelligent stuff, as always Doc Dude! It got me kind o’ nostalgic for my own early days in the blogosphere, as you and TRA were some of the first atheist commentators I’d read online. Like you, I too was saddened by TRA’s descent into irrationality, but if’n he’s gettin’ what makes him happy from that Dawn E blogger, more (personal) power to him, I suppose. ‘Specially since his postings have dropped near to naught ever since.
Anyhow, nice job w/ that Q&A, eh.
I don’t know the numbers involved, but it seems that there is an increasing trend to silence controversial and disquieting speech throughout academia. Teachers at the college level need to be able to be fearless in what they say in order to provoke critical thinking in their students. That ideal of fearlessness has been chilled over the past six years. Have firings over controversial speech increased? Are there any studies. Would a statistical survey itself be controversial?
Southwestern community college sounds like a public taxpayer supported institution.
While I’m not a fan of running to the courts and suing everytime something screws up, they do exist to redress legitimate grievances.
If I was S. Bitterman, I would be thinking seriously of suing Southwestern for religious discrimination and violations of academic freedom. Most mainstream protestant and Roman Catholic sects take the Bible as less than literal. Public, taxpayer supported colleges have no business whatsoever enforcing a narrow sectarian viewpoint, especially in a class on Western Civilization.
He probably can’t get his job back. Not sure why he would want it back anyway. But the ensueing bad publicity and the fact that the college was dead wrong might well force them to settle out of court quickly and Bitterman could at least be compensated for a few bucks.
This is the second such case in a week. Richard Collings at Olivet college was facing an inquisition last week for teaching evolution in a biology class. Don’t know how it came out but his silence on the subject is ominous. That Iron Maiden can be a bitch. Now this guy.
Hmmmm, Yes, this is it. It is witch hunting season. For biologists.
That’s bizarre. He got fired for teaching the same sort of course my girlfriend took at Carleton. “Life and Teachings of Jesus”, where the teacher showed them “The Life of Brian” to summarize the course.
Lots of Christian students dropped out of that course. Mind you, at Carleton it’d be hard to try and make trouble for a prof for that without being laughed off of campus.
I don’t know the numbers involved, but it seems that there is an increasing trend to silence controversial and disquieting speech throughout academia.
Michael Berube has an article on this at
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/11/berube
The ensuing comments are fairly typical…one odious dude with no knowledge of the academy insists that material taught at public universities should basically be decided by majority (=read mob) rule, and a putative professor seizes on a rather fluffy quote from a women’s studies professor as evidence of “leftist indoctrination” in universities.
Those outraged students are ridiculous. When my religous studies professors in college failed to affirm my superstitions, I had the decency to adopt a NOMA-like attitude until I finally shed the superstitions all together. Isn’t that the point of higher education? To open you to new ways of looking at the world and teach critical thinking? I can’t believe they fired that prof. If something similar had happened at my school, who knows where I’d be right now. I hope Steve Bitterman and others like him stand up against this nonsense!
I’d add Jesus of Montreal to the list of good films to watch on the topic.
With regard to the silencing of faculty: stop the attacks on tenure. University administrators are coming to see schools more as businesses and more and more adjunct faculty are being used (I speak as one of those highly exploitable and exploited academic temps). This allows schools to cut down on costs (lower pay, no benies) and also cuts into the development of departments and rigorous inquiry. I’m highly vulnerable and have zero job protection. I don’t hold back, but I know a lot of people will.
students are not customers. Administrators who try to impose that form of business model onto universities do a disservice to the institutions they’re hired to lead. (Maybe we also need fewer business oriented people on the Boards of Trustees of universities.)
Hmmm. That’s the same thing I tell my Sunday school class. So far none has gone to the preacher. Once in a while I get a thanks, when they see something poetic where before they had thought it was all hairy thunderer.
That may be the real objection of the fundamentalists. Jefferson may have been right — there’s good philosophy there, once you get through the expectation that a miracle cures everything. Like the story of Hosea and Gomer (which we studied just a month or so ago), in which Hosea excuses and forgives all sorts of sexual infidelity by his wife, Gomer. Hosea forgives and takes her back, as an indication for how God will act and how God wants people to act (toward even sex stuff, like homosexuality [see Ezekiel 16.48-50]).
No room for Betty Bowers in such a world that thinks and forgives. And the Betty Bowers all know it.
I’d like to see someone teach such a course and tell the students that since others have got in trouble for saying a religious text wasn’t to be taken literally, they were going to teach that all of them were to be taken literally.
University administrators are coming to see schools more as businesses and more and more adjunct faculty are being used (I speak as one of those highly exploitable and exploited academic temps).
And this leads to students seeing themselves as consumers buying a product rather than earning a degree, which is particularly pernicious.
LOL. I’ll bet those little Xians were outraged. When you read The Bible in the historical context it was written the words prurient, juvenile comes to mind. Its only works because everyone today is so ignorant of how the ancient world worked they don’t realize what they think is mysterious and romantic is in fact nothing but a bunch of slander and empty boasts.
Nobody is going to appreciate being shown the source of all what they consider great and wonderful wouldn’t pass muster even with Joseph Gobbels.
And, Madam Pomrey, if degrees are commodified that way, then their truly value would be lessened. And employers will take no consideration on them in order to offer a job. Universities will crumble.
Religious considerations do not affect simply theoretical biology. They may affect strongly fields such as agriculture (remember Lysenkoism) and medicine (remember stem cell research). They may affect all fields of life in an unpredictable way. If America loses one of the most important conquests of the 1776 Revolution (separation between State and Religion), all the world will suffer the consequences.
And, Madam Pomrey, if degrees are commodified that way, then their truly value would be lessened. And employers will take no consideration on them in order to offer a job. Universities will crumble.
Religious considerations do not affect simply theoretical biology. They may affect strongly fields such as agriculture (remember Lysenkoism) and medicine (remember stem cell research). They may affect all fields of life in an unpredictable way. If America loses one of the most important conquests of the 1776 Revolution (separation between State and Religion), all the world will suffer the consequences.
It’s hunting season for us all. Prof. Bitterman is one of the army of adjuncts (as am I) in history. The fundies don’t like any challenge to their assumptions, from any quarter.
Exactly. The attacks on academics are at their core an attack on free inquiry. That’s why superstion itself is an enemy, as is the commodification of knowledge.
And just a few years ago I was chuckling at the “Jesusland” maps that were circulating after the ’04 elections. Now, I feel an odd mix of anger and nausea.
Those students need to to bone up on their American history, particularly that bit between 1776 and 1787… But I guess they’ve been raised by the same people who think it’s an outrage (and somehow anti-American) to have a non-Christian deliver a convocation in the U.S. Senate.
Meanwhile, speaking of the Sentate, that august body has seen fit to formally reprimand MoveOn.org for having the temerity to question the word of a member of the Armed Forces.
I teach world civ, among other things, and so I cover a fair amount of religious history, though on a pretty basic level. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the deep south, but I find one can be honest about the material without being confrontational. On origins of Christianity, I discuss the rise of new religions in the empire, the turmoil in Judaism as Jews confronted the empire, the appearance of would-be prophets and faith healers, and how all that connected back to Roman government and society. I make it plain, I think, that Christianity had its origins in a complex sea of religious ferment both within and without Judaism and in the more general social and political upheaval of the late Republic/early Empire period. I don’t find it necessary, however, to say, “Here was one more set of comforting metaphors that people clung to in difficult times, and this just happens to be one of the only ones that survived.” This guy should not have been fired, absolutely, but there are other ways to challenge peoples’ narratives. I would never say anything about the “credibility” of any religion, though if I they laugh about something in some unfamiliar religion I do point out that all religions have things that seem odd to people outside of them, and I use the Trinity as my example (“And these people say they are monotheists?”)
Of course, I still get students who write on the exam: “Christianity began to spread when Moses led his people out of Egypt…” [Actually, anyone that far off is likely to tell me that “Christianity spreaded out of Egypt….”]
One other note – World History textbooks usually have a whole chapter on the origins and ealry development of Islam, but Christian origins and early development usually get only a page or so in the Roman chapter, followed by a few scattered pages in later chapters. I realize that Islam was of far more immediate political importance, but this has always struck me as problematical (in terns of syllabus design, mostly).
This is what happens when you try to abolish free speech to ‘protect’ various minority groups. Majorities want in on the action, and start instituting speech codes that protect them.
@#2 Teresa: Suppose that quote had read:
I can think of at least a half-dozen wingnut blogs that would be thundering in self-righteous fury at such effrontery.
Lol! Not likely…
How bizarre. That theologian PZ posted about a week or two ago, the one who also got burned by fundie filmmakers — I forget his name, but he dropped by and commented here, seemed a nice guy — takes pretty much exactly the same approach as Bitterman, and he is a Christian at a church-affiliated college (and, SFAICT, in no danger of losing his job). Was Bitterman’s college some fundamentalist bible outfit? Or is it a secular institute, less concerned with doctrinal purity than with avoiding trouble?
Theron:
So you would hold up Norse mythology as being as credible as Christianity? You would say that existence of Zeus is just as credible as the existence of Yahweh? I’d be willing to bet that saying that would also get you fired.
It was a state institution, a public community college.
Then again, as an alumnus of Iowa State with relatives who live in the state I’m not terribly surprised. After all, for a while, ISU’s men’s basketball coach was the highest paid employee of the State of Iowa, making more than the Governor or anyone else in state government.
Great priorities, Iowa.
Re: #11 – “… they had thought it was all hairy thunderer.”
Or Cosmic Muffin.
— CV
Prof. Bitterman could have taught at my Catholic high school, using exactly those words, without any such dire consequences. Not only did we have science classes, taught by the Sisters: we also had Comparative Religion, taught by priests. Non-Catholic students (yes, they were “allowed”) were not proselytized. At the time, S.J. Gould had not yet written of “non-overlapping magisteria,” but that’s the way I was taught science by a mix of Sisters and other teachers.
there’s nothing wrong with a literal reading of the bible, at least as a starting place.
let me elaborate with a bit of a background story. i’ve taken a class in in the old testament as well. our prof made one, single, solitary demand of the students — that they check their religion at the door, and just read what the text actually says.
it turns out that people DON’T read the bible literally, especially not the ones who claim they do. every day, there was some debate about something or other, with a prominent “literalist” saying one thing, and the professor saying “but that’s not what the text says.” i have found this over and over in debate with fundamentalists myself — they say things that are contradicted by the plain reading of the text.
literal readins are a good place to start. it’s good to know what the text says — any interpretative reading that contradicts what the text says is by definition wrong. you can then analyze the symbolism and metaphor based on that. but people who insist on symbolic meanings are generally trying to defend the text as somehow accurate or relevent today, still retaining truth. this is most obvious with the early parts of genesis.
a literal reading indicates alot of stuff that is just plain contradictory to science — a young earth, formed in a week. it’s flat, covered by a solid dome that keeps out the water outside of our atmosphere. the sun and moon and all the stars are affixed to this dome. people who try to defend the accuracy of the story are then forced to fudge the details here; say that it doesn’t really mean those things. but the details are important to the symbolic meanings. the 7 literal days are the etiology of shabat. as countless eons, it’s meaningless. and the protection of heaven is used symbolically, along with the tabernacle, to talk about god as a protector of his people. if you read only literally, you will miss those things, yes. but if you read it with the idea that it’s strictly metaphor, these meanings get lost as well. symbolism and metaphor must come out of the literal nature of the text. that’s how it was written, and that’s how it’s always been analyzed in jewish midrashim. (see the PaRDeS system)
the bible is a library of texts, many of which are anthologies themselves. they were written by many different people, in at least two separate countries, over the course of 1,000 years or more, in three different languages. many different ideas are present, some even DEBATE each other. there’s lots of variety in theological message. but a large portion of the text that relates to things covered by history or science today is simply innaccurate, mistaken, or worse, purposefully lying. it’s a simple statement of fact, and a literal analysis of the text will show that. the people who say “it’s not literal” are trying to hide the errors.
yes, absolutely, put it on a level playing field with other religious and ancient mythological texts. we don’t read the epic of gilgamesh as simply metaphor. we read it as a literal story, with metaphorical meanings about man’s quest for immortality. we don’t think about it as actually happening, either. why should the bible be treated any differently than gilgamesh? or any other similar text? and why would an atheist support a symbolic bible reading?
no, it means what it says. even if it’s wrong, hateful, genocidal, or just plain silly.
@Bob L (#14):
indeed. some of the slander is actually sort of amusing, like the story at the end of genesis 19. the author takes the names of eponymous ancestors of two neighboring tribes, moab and ammon, renders them in hebrew to sound like the equivalents of “bastard” and “inbred,” and makes up a story to go with it. there’s a couple of inter-lingual puns, like the “babel” in genesis 11 (which oddly also works in english).
although, i wouldn’t say “prurient.” i would say “prudish.” they write of sex (and women) in a very negative manner, scorning the surrounding canaanites for their open sexuality (see leviticus 18, genesis 9, genesis 19, etc). the kings that are praised most highly in the book of kings are the ones that shut down the practices of outside religions, especially the religious prostitutes (usually rendered improperly as “sodomites”). the only text that deals with sexuality in a non-euphemistic manner is song of songs.
@Mrs Tilton (#23):
professor chris heard. teaches at pepperdine, which is a christian college.
i should point out that there is a difference between “literal reading” and “reading it as literally true.”
the “true” part is the important part, but it’s the word that gets left out. one can read the text as literal but false, quite easily. but that’s the difference i’m trying to point out. everybody argues the literal part, but they’ve just distracted you with a red-herring: it’s the TRUE part you should be arguing about — and ironically, a literal reading is best weapon in that debate.
even prof. bitterman conflates the two, creating a false dichotomy between “talking snakes” and “metaphoric.” snakes, in the ancient levantine area, were thought of as evil spirits by many other religions. the story in genesis 2 and 3 appropriates that idea, but takes away the polytheistic attitude. if they believe in gods — why not evil spirits that look like snakes? and if they believe in evil spirits that look like snakes — why not talking animals?
further, that story takes particular care to explain why snakes no longer talk: god cursed them to lick the ground, keeping their tongues occupied (so they don’t mislead man again). it’s a just-so story. why not read it as such?
Thinking a bit further on this, this appears to be a simple breach of contract case. Assuming this guy was not tenured faculty, the school contracted with him to teach this material — this is the usual way it’s taught in the business. Such terms need not be qualified or defined if they are generally understood in the business.
If the community college wanted the course taught a different way, they would have needed to have specified that.
Nothing much to do with rights, but a warning: If a college wishes to have something other than the standard course material taught, they’ll need to specify it in the future.
Such a clause may come with disclaimers: “Teacher does not endorse such non-orthodox positions, nor does teacher advocate reducing standards in any other part of the course.”
Then let the students sue for contract breach if they’re offended. They signed on to learn the material that the world uses, not to be entertained and coddled in their misinformed and disinformed ways.
Contract suit. Instructor wins damages. College must advertise it’s lowered standards to both instructors and students in the future. Everybody’s happy!
I’ve noticed that the fundies don’t know their bible any better than they know their science. Quite often they quote mine the bible for some passage to “prove” some point.
More often than not, if you look up the reference, it doesn’t say what they said it did. Sometimes, it is irrelevant, sometimes the opposite. If you put their quotes into the context it came out of, it looks even sillier.
The bible also contradicts itself in hundreds of places and various people have summarized the contradictions. Two creation stories at the very start that differ at noticeable points. They have had 4,000 years to edit the book for consistency and continuity. That the authors included two differenct creation stories and never bothered to combine the two tells me loud and clear: they didn’t take these stories literally true even back when they wrote them down.
@raven (#31):
exactly.
uh, sort of. it says that something was more important to them that the literal truth of the passages, yes. and that’s because the stories were written for two very different purposes. the first is the etiology of shabat, and the second is the etiology of marriage.
it’s sort of like why the people who compiled the new testament included both the three synoptic gospels and the gospel of john. they differ quite widely, but both traditions were important, so both got kept. it doesn’t mean that the stories aren’t literal, just that the tradition was more important than any potential differences.
you can actually find better examples if you look a little harder. job, for instance, fundamentally argues AGAINST many other books in the bible, saying that people don’t always get what they deserve. put that in context of the prophets who talk about the exile (jeremiah in particular argued that israel and judah had done something to upset god, obviously, because god was punishing them). that’s a whole book whose main point argues against the philosophy fundamental to most of the rest of the bible. THAT’S a quality contradiction.
The Iowa Association of Community College Biology Teachers held our Annual Meeting this weekend. (This year it was at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, IA). This story was in the Des Moines Register this morning and the biology faculty from Southwestern Community College were as surprised as anyone. They weren’t familiar with the name- he appears to be adjunct faculty and the course was apparently a distance-learning class that originated at one of the satellite campuses. Incidently, next year’s Annual Meeting is scheduled for Southwestern Community College!
Halleluiah! Shout it from the rooftops!
I’ve always thought this was one of the single stupidest and most dangerous ideas foisted on higher ed by MBAs being hired as university presidents. They are most definitely and decidedly not customers. They are students. There is a difference (as even Miss Manners knew to point out last week).
Pardon my exuberance. It’s a topic it’s rather difficult to be “out” about when you’re in higher ed. It’s reassuring to know I’m not completely alone in that belief.
er, much to the ire of professors everywhere, the administrations of many colleges treat students as customers, the backbone of an economic institution. instead of treating a university as a research institution.
Or even a teaching institution. My love is teaching. Research is secondary to me. Administrators who treat students (and their parents!) like customers give them a sense that they’re entitled to a grade and/or a degree and do everyone a disservice.
Students work hard in my classes. I assign more reading and writing than lots of other faculty. I didn’t realize how hard I worked them until they told me what was expected in some of their other classes. So be it. I make no apologies. And if they get a bad grade and come up to me with “I’ve never gotten lower than an A before,” I’m more than willing to say “Well, you earned that C” (even as an adjunct).
The problems facing higher education are multi-faceted. They flow from right-wing anti-intellectual and anti-inquiry folks as well as idiot administrators who think universities and colleges are businesses. Unfortunately, faculty can’t stand up alone. Faculty governance is rare, and academics are under attack. We can make the cases for what we do, but we also need political support from those outside the academy. Maybe we need folks in the academy who can talk to the broader public about why customer-based models are inappropriate, but we’re too few to stand alone (and too many business school faculty are willing to argue for such models).
Raven at #6 – Got any more information or links about the Olivet College case you mention? I grew up in Lansing, Michigan, about 30 miles from Olivet. This is the first I’ve heard of it, and so far, I can’t find anything about the situation by googling, which in this day and age is almost as weird as your cat opening its mouth and talking to you.
Sure. The threads, at least two, were on Pandasthumb a week or so ago. Richard Colling himself made a few posts. Just read the posts and the comments and you will know as much as me. RC sounded like an OK guy, sorry to see him being put on the rack like that.
Olivet seems to be affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene or some such.
I think that you are jumping to conclusions. Other than Bitterman’s claim, where is the corroboration that he was fired for what he taught? More than one commenter of the DesMoines Register article identified themselves as his students and observed that he was churlish.
More on the Richard Colling persecution story. There is another thread above it from “Henry’s Web”.
Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays. Unfortunately, the recent upsurge of witch hunts for biologists, MDs, geologists, astronomers, and anyone with a brain and a university connection is a bit unnerving. Back in the recent past when being accused of being a witch could get you killed, Halloween probably wasn’t all that fun.
Could it be that these students are also those complaining about their religion not being properly “respected”?
Churilshness is not a reason for firing someone in the middle of a term. Incompetence? Sure. Churlishness? No way.
If he was hired to teach, and did so competently, there’s no reason to get rid of him in the middle of a term.
Again, students are not customers.
Having read the Des Moines Register article, I’m not sure why Bitterman was fired, or even that he was fired. We have his story, but the school is mum, apparently asserting a policy of not commenting on personnel matters. I’m withholding judgment for now. As a skeptic. ☺
Sounds kind of like how the Old Testament was presented in the introductory religion course I took in (a Lutheran-affiliated)college. And the teacher was also college chaplain. Yet neither he nor the students had any problem accepting the Bible readings as the literature of an ancient culture.
Tulse:
Well, I happen to believe there is as much, or more to the point, as little evidence for Thor as Yahweh. Being tenured, I doubt it would get me fired to say this in class, and even if I weren’t, I still doubt it. Despite being in the deep south, my school and my students aren’t really like that. I personally am very much a live-and-let live nonbeliever. I crusade against those who would impose their religion on me or others, but I do not pass judegement on the beliefs of others. When I said I wouldn’t comment in class on the credibilty of any religion, I meant it. I tend to be very clinical about discussing religion in class: “Islam holds that such-and-such is true” and leave it at that.
arachnophobia: I found your post #32 very helpful. You said in very few words what I feel about much of the Bible. Good on ‘ya.
thank you. i happen to find the text very interesting, from a historical/literary standpoint. the people who view it as strictly literal sell it far too short. and the people who pretend it’s consistent and of godly origin water it down. it’s quite a complex and peculiar set of texts, and there is quite a lot of it that can be picked apart an analyzed academically, if we could only help that our religious biases get in the way.
i am also quite intrigued by the fact that atheist positions on the bible are just as hampered by often the very same religious biases held by fundamentalists. it’s like western society simply cannot get away from certain ideas about what the text says, or meant to say, or what it means, or even what it is.
arachnophilia #46: You could probably say the same for the Robin Hood tales, if they were collected into a putatively canonical text.
i think a more appropriate analogy in the english language (and, uh, sometimes french) might the various legends of king arthur. very mythological, very anachronistic, written by the hands of many authors, woven in the fabric of society, and possibly containing a hint or two at real life backstory that has been horrendously misrepresented, and influences from other tales in folklore.
and yes, i’m aware that asserting that there is some historical basis for the bible is a bad idea around here, so let me give an example of what i mean before the strawmen come out.
there have been a lot of efforts to claim the hyksos expulsion from egypt was the biblical exodus — but none of the details (or even gross facts, really) line up. however, it’s quite possible that hyksos kings (semitic people) upon being chased back to the middle east, told their harrowing story of a flight from egypt to their neighbours, only to have it become part of the background cultural narrative. when a different group of semitic people, the levitical priests in the countries of judah and israel, sought to tell a story about the formation of their religion, they could have easily taken this story, or some variant of it, and changed it to suit their needs. the kind of “kernal of truth” i mean is sort of literary re-appropriation of background cultural folklore that went on here, and went on with the stories of king arthur. the stories clearly do not depict the real event in any recognizable way, yet the event helped shape the origins of the stories. and there’s ALOT of distortion in between. (this is not to say that the prehistory portions of the creation and patriarchy are based on anything at all. they’re quite clearly on the level of mythology)
but yes, you could probably say the same thing for any similar text. what a person finds interesting is highly subjective. i happen to be interested in this, but not so much english folklore and literature.
Examples?
GH:
I think you might be waiting for that for a long time.
how can someone provide an factual example of something that doesn’t exist?
or are we back to “fundamentalist atheists” nonsense again?
*sigh*
I’m beginning to think that PZ should boot any poster who tries to make the argument that atheists have a “fundamentalist religion” into the dungeon for a week to consider their idiocy.
…of course arachno could correct his/her phrasing and say something like:
“atheists sometimes have biases when they interpret biblical texts”
which would be at least a bit more accurate, and examples could be provided of that, most likely, though I can’t think of any recent examples off the top of my head on this forum, at least.
Arachnophilia, I stand corrected.
King Arthur is a far better example.
Still, it’s obvious you (more than) get my point.
@GH (#49):
and
@Ichthyic (#50):
er, no, that’s not what i mean at all. while i suppose it is possible to be a “fundamentalist atheist” (idiocy comes in all forms, and people can think things for the wrong reasons) that is most certainly not what i meant here.
the thing is that, whether you like the bible or not, it’s a very important and influential work in western society. parts of it are in our background cultural narrative, far moreso than people often realize. and that narrative doesn’t strictly follow the text, at all. further, the KJV translation was (is?) one of the most read works in the english language, so certain hebraicisms have worked their way into our daily language.
for instance, your average person could probably tell me all about adam, eve, and the talking snake, without ever having read genesis 2 and 3, or paying much attention to it. poll the average person, and they’ll probably even tell you the fruit they ate was an apple, thus “adam’s apple.” which is clearly not what the text says, or implies.
ok, so that one’s a little obvious, but less obvious — who was the snake? you’ll get a wonderful story about how god created the angel lucifer, who led a rebellion in heaven, and god cast him down to become the devil. have you heard that story before? i’ll bet you have. poll your average person, and they’ll tell you it’s in the bible. poll some random atheists, i’ll bet a few of them even think that, or at least that this idea is somehow represented in the bible. it’s not, though, it’s from milton. the bible presents a much different idea of who satan is, and the snake doesn’t even come into it.
these are one of the types of biases i’m talking about — everyone, regardless of belief, has heard these stories about the bible, and most think that’s where they come from. i don’t think there is a single person immune to cultural misconceptions about the text.
the other kind is a more general set of misconceptions. i frequently see atheists arguing against the bible with the very same logic the fundamentalists use: either it’s the word of god and perfect in every way, or it’s meaningless. the truth, really, is somewhere in the middle. it’s neither, and to insist it’s one or the other is a false dichotomy, black-and-white thinking. i also typically see a failure to recognize the multiple sources, styles, emphases, and functions, but this one is becoming less common. people tend to read a bit of genesis, stop, and think the rest of the bible sounds the same, and is composed of the same sort of content. so they lump the text all together as one entity — the same as the fundies.
the fact is, and what i meant to get at, is that there’s a lot of cultural noise that’s just incredibly hard to get out, and leads to a lot of cognitive dissonance. atheists are not immune to this, because no one in western society is. it would practically take someone from mars to not think they knew something or other about the bible before they read it. i must say though, your average atheist generally has better knowledge of the bible than your average fundamentalist — they’re further from the brainwashing rays or something. :P
@John Morales (#52):
:D
i think the best way to look at it is as literature, and just leave religion out of it. passion about the subject, one way or the other, just muddies things up. the plain, unbiased reading of it will lead you away from this “literal word of god” stuff pretty quickly. and it’ll do it rationally.
A quick note on the idea of teaching the history of the Abrahamic faiths; all that is necessary is to treat their texts with the same skepticism that you use for every other source in history. It goes to the heart of the problem and the students generally will follow right along into critical analysis of the OT as text if you’ve done the same since day one of class and their reading of The Epic of Gilgamesh. The text I use for this section is Gerald A. Larue’s Old Testament Life and Literature, written by one of the foremost scholars on the OT as a text. Dr. Larue also just happens to be an atheist, but it’s his presentation of the complex history of the received text that carries the weight.
@Stwrile #54
How do you feel about Misquoting Jesus? I thought that it was a very good explanation of why it’s impossible to take the biblical texts literally. A search on Amazon was amusing, because there are at least two books dedicated to refuting Ehrman.
@Stwriley (#54):
it’s an interesting point of fact that education regarding other texts dissuades the belief in the literal truth of the bible. i knew a kid freshman year of college, who came in as a clean-cut fundamentalist, and a year and a half later was a dirty pot-smoking hippy. i asked him what happened…
…and he pointed out that he had assigned a lot of truth to the bible just because of how it sounds. but having had to read all these other ancient texts for class, he came to realize that they’re all about the same, really, and it made him question all the things he’d been told in church.
I sent this email to Rampant:
Hello,
Can you please explain to me how PZ Myers ended up in “Expelled” when he was interviewed by Mark Mathis for Crossroads, a docu posted on your website? I’m sure the fact that Mathis is credited as an associate producer on Expelled is just a coincidence…
As an award winning filmmaker I am appalled by the apparent dishonesty used by those who profess to be on the side of “God and truth”. But then again the truth that has never stopped fundamentalists and cranks from pursuing their predetermined myth based conclusions.
I am curious to see if someone responds with a reasoned and honest reply. If not I’ll just take it as an acknowledgment that truth is not the mission while pursuing “a compulsion to enlighten and entertain” as posted on your website.
MPW- I think it’s Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois, not Olivet College in Olivet, MI.
Hemant Mehta has some more on this on his blog. The professor may have been fired for being an asshole instead of a non-literalist.
http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/09/24/fired-for-telling-the-truth/