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I saw the enticing news blurb that Richard Dawkins wants school children to read the Bible, and I had to check it out. The catch is that Dawkins believes that there are so many horrendous things in the Bible, that if more children actually read the thing, they would no longer be credulous about holding up the Bible as our prime moral law, not once they know what is actually in the book.
But I think Mr. Dawkins is missing a wrinkle. The moral proposition that the Bible holds up as supreme is that we ought to obey God. The Bible then shows us that this may entail committing genocide or even killing your own son, if God so commands it.
The key is this: who speaks for God? Unfortunately, this tends to be the right-wing zealots, the kind of people who may want to execute gays or deny women their reproductive liberty or impose their narrow religious views on everyone. When it comes to who gets to speak for God, the liberals voluntarily take themselves out of the equation.
Nevertheless, I agree that the Bible should be read, at least by anyone who wants to be accounted a substantively literate person. I am just saying that it would not end our problems with right-wing, evolution-denying, gay-hating, narrow minded Christianists.
(Source: Richard Dawkins at The Guardian)
But I think Mr. Dawkins is missing a wrinkle. The moral proposition that the Bible holds up as supreme is that we ought to obey God. The Bible then shows us that this may entail committing genocide or even killing your own son, if God so commands it.
The key is this: who speaks for God? Unfortunately, this tends to be the right-wing zealots, the kind of people who may want to execute gays or deny women their reproductive liberty or impose their narrow religious views on everyone. When it comes to who gets to speak for God, the liberals voluntarily take themselves out of the equation.
Nevertheless, I agree that the Bible should be read, at least by anyone who wants to be accounted a substantively literate person. I am just saying that it would not end our problems with right-wing, evolution-denying, gay-hating, narrow minded Christianists.
(Source: Richard Dawkins at The Guardian)
