Sound and Meaning

In the God Delusion, Dawkins rightly bemoans the current generation’s ignorance about the Bible. Herein lies a contradiction, however. Past generations didn’t get their knowledge of the Bible and Bible stories directly from the Bible, but rather from school. Like math, if it’s not taught in school, people will be ignorant of it.

Case in point: I attended St. George the Martyr School in London for two years. Upon admission, I promptly lost my lunch privileges until I learned the Lord’s Prayer. (A teacher caught me mouthing nonsense.) Every Friday, the Bible teacher (a.k.a the music teacher) gathered us all into the gym/auditorium/cafeteria and told us Bible stories with the help of OHP drawings of Jesus and his followers getting Biblical. The stories may have been watered down (the drawings certainly depicted a Nazi’s wet dream of lily white apostles), and may not have made me believe in god, but what I gained from the weekly lessons was a knowledge of the stories of the Bible – the kind of thing Dawkins thinks is missing from my generation’s store of cultural references. I agree. Familiarity with the Bible is essential to appreciate Western art. (Ironically, though, a knowledge of the Bible is pretty useless when studying European history.)

The irony is that like evolution, children will remain ignorant of it if it’s not on the curriculum. So unless Dawkins is willing to advocate Bible classes in public schools, today’s widespread ignorance about the Bible is something Dawkins will have to put up with.

Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, a Russian mathematician, has written a 7-volume work in the spirit of Henry Ford’s “History is bunk.” He’s got a New Chronology that pushes the oldest historical events up to no earlier than the 8th century, and argues that some events are just the same one, with the names and dates changed. For example, the Trojan War and the Crusades. One historical event, different descriptions.

The guy obviously takes himself seriously, but luckily his American publishers didn’t take him too seriously to avoid putting FICTION in the biggest print on the cover of the book.

I have probably derived more pleasure from this single audio clip than I did from the entire performance of the Messiah I sat through on a lumbar-hating pew a couple of weeks ago. (Via The Rest is Noise.)

Lenta.ru is reporting that the relics of Alexander Nevsky are coming to the US for “worship by local Orthodox believers and people of other confessions.” They’ll be here in March 2008. No word on where they’re going.

Is there a church in Brighton Beach?