The Bible and Public Schools

[moggie]

Mark A. Chancey of the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund has written a report on the curriculum of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, available here as a PDF:

http://www.tfn.org/files/fck/BibleCurriculum.pdf

Not surprisingly, he finds it highly sectarian (and therefore unsuitable for use in public schools) and that it promotes literalism. He also finds instances of plagiarism, and numerous factual errors.

Favourite quote:

“Respected scholar, Dr. J. O. Kinnaman, declared: ‘Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by the archeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the Bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the Biblical record” (p. 170).

(This quotation clearly illustrates the book’s apparent goal to convince students that archaeology consistently confirms the Bible’s accuracy. It also illustrates how the curriculum represents the authorities it cites. Here Kinnaman is said to be a “respected scholar.” Actually, Kinnaman’s name is largely unknown in contemporary academic circles, and most scholars would reject his theories if they heard of them. Kinnaman argued in his book Diggers for Facts: The Bible in Light of Archaeology that Jesus and Paul visited Great Britain, that Joseph of Arimathea was Jesus’ uncle and dominated the tin industry of Wales, and suggested that he himself had personally seen Jesus’ school records in India. According to an article by Stephen Mehler, director of research at the Kinnaman Foundation, Kinnaman reported finding a secret entrance into the Great Pyramid of Giza, in which he discovered records from the lost continent of Atlantis. He also claimed that the pyramid was 35,000 years old and was used in antiquity to transmit radio messages to the Grand Canyon.)

Riiiight.:crazy: