A Christian Philosophy of Education - The Government Schools

[Gabu]

Today Christianity is attacked all through the public school system.

Oh dear.  What kind of horrible attacks?

Reports from parents say that the evolutionary denial of the creation of the world by God is taught to the children of the second grade. How can a child of seven or eight stand up against an organized attack of the theistic worldview?

Evolution?  God, no!  Evolution goes against the Bible!  Clearly teaching something that goes against the Bible is an intolerable attack on religion, even if it has plenty of scientific evidence behind it!  Evolution is so gosh darned atheistic, even though it makes no claims about the existence of a god whastsoever and indeed is not at all incompatible with the existence of a god!

Mention has already been made of the exclusion of Bible reading from the public schools. The result has been a generation of children who are handicapped in the English language and literature. It is an incontrovertible fact that the English Bible has had a greater influence on our language, our literature, our civilization, our morals, than any other book.

Damn straight, even though no evidence of such a completely unobvious assertion is given!

The children who are deprived of the Bible are culturally deprived, as well as religiously deprived. Someone has well said that knowledge of the Bible without a college education is of more value than a college education without knowledge of the Bible.

Praise Jesus, this author sees the light as long as we ignore the fact that this statement is patently ridiculous and that you can't do anything practical with knowledge of the Bible!  We should drop education and just teach the Bible 24/7!

Since the cultural deprivation of this policy is so obvious, some of the educators want to teach the Bible as literature.

HALLELUJAH!  The public school system is saved!  The Bible will be taught after all!

It may turn out, however, that the Bible as literature will be worse than no Bible at all.

WHAT?  Please continue so we can put the fear of GOD in the children's hearts!

Will the Bible be taught as divine literature or as human literature—mere literature, and not revelation?

GOOD QUESTION, because darn it, we sure should teach the Bible as divine revelation in school, as this would definitely advance the religious liberty that the writer claims to desire if we ignore the fact that this is retarded!

In one school where this was tried, the teacher required the pupils to write a paper. She was very flexible in her requirement: Each student could choose any part of the Bible for his subject. One little girl asked if she might write on Isaiah. The teacher asked, Do you mean first Isaiah or second Isaiah? Thus the teaching of the Bible as literature becomes an attack on its veracity.

I HAVE NO GODDAMN CLUE WHAT THE HELL THIS PERSON IS TALKING ABOUT ANYMORE BUT PRAISE JESUS ANYWAY

I'M NOW GOING TO WRITE FIVE MORE PARAGRAPHS THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO READ

YOU GO GIRL

[Gabu]

While I don't agree with everything this person is saying, I posted this mainly becuase of one point I do agree with: public schools aren't neutral on religion. They actively promote secular humanism and anti-theism.  That thing about the "first isaiah" and "second isaiah" is a good example. While conservative scholars view the book of Isaiah as a single unit composed in the 8th century BC, liberal "scholars", due to their bias against predictive prophecy, divide it in first isaiah, second isaiah and third isaiah. The first siaiah corresponding to chapters 1-39, and being from the 8th century, the second chapters 40-55 from the 6th century, and chapters 56-66 from the post-exile period.  That was a good example of a direct atack on the Bible.

If that's a "direct" attack on the Bible, I'd love to see what an indirect attack is, because that seems ridiculously obscure.

[Gabu]

I honestly don't understand how that constitutes a direct attack

I honestly don't understand how it even constitutes an attack at all.  If it's a historical fact that the book was written in three separate time periods, then I don't see what the big deal is, and if the book is nonetheless intact despite the divisions in it, I fail to see how it matters even if it isn't a historical fact.

[Gabu]

But it is no such thing. There is actually a great deal of continuity between the variously assigned sections of Isaiah, and now the liberals are trying to  explain away this continuity in terms of a final redactor who smoothed things over and made Isaiah look more like a single-authored work, in some places using earlier material from the time of the original Isaiah, thus offering an explanation for signs of early composition such as the antiquity of the Hebrew and the references to idolatry which would be anachronistic if the book were a later composition. Talk about molding the theory to preserve the paradigm.

However, the real "problem" for the liberals lies in these verses:
Isaiah 44:28That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.

Isaiah 45:1Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;

These are a prophecy of the Medo-Persian king Cyrus - he who sent the Jews home from their Babylonian trials and authorized the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple. Pretty strong and specific stuff if authentic. This   is what leads them to date this part of the book later. It all boils down, of course, to a denial of predictive prophecy, and barring recovery of a manuscript dating earlier than Cyrus, all either side can do is stick by their presumptions.

However, the book begins with these words:
Isaiah 1:1The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Saying that parts of the book date from the 6th century BC and later is attacking its veracity, period.

If you feel that your religion as a whole is direly threatened by someone who dares question the history behind a section of it, and if you would immediately presume that anyone who does so is simply trying to "explain away" its contents, you really need to re-evaluate how seriously you take things.  Is your religion really that weak that it could be threatened in such a way?  Perhaps your tinfoil hat is a little too tight?