Whilst I think a Comparative Religions class would be quite valuable, I don't see most schools offering it. I think most school administrators would be frightened of (and in my opinion, rightly so) the inevitable barrage of lawsuits.

The Christian Right will be screaming that we're exposing their chil'uns to heathen practices, leading them down the road to wickedness. Radical atheists will be on the doorstep with an ACLU lawyer and the Ninth Circuit Court demanding that all mention of God be stricken from the curriculum. And any religion that doesn't make it into the syllabus will be there with another ACLU lawyer hollering discrimination.

Like I said, the course would be a great idea. I really enjoyed the one I took at University. But perhaps it would be better to first bone the kids up on history, geography, mathematics, and all the sciences. Which, as we all know, American kids are equally deficient in. Perhaps then, in a generation or two, the nation will have flushed the idiots out of its system, and we'll be mature enough as a people to handle this class. Just a thought.

I got a 92. Didn't have an idea about the buddism tenets. Ah well. Basically there are two kinds of religious education, right? The "comparative religion" types which seek to increase understanding by looking at the characteristics of several religions and, by its very nature, highlights the similarities between different belief systems. Then there is the religious education as provided by the believers; sunday school, madrasa, confirmation classes, and bible studies. Since I was raised in a protestant christian household, I'm much more familiar with the latter, though my own interests led me to explore other philosophies/systems of belief.

I think the believer based education usually suffers from the assumption that its students are already fellow believers. Contrasts with other systems of belief are provided more in a context of; "this is why they are so very, very wrong," than in an effort to find commonality. Again, this is based on my own experiences where the pentacostal sunday school discussed why our particular way of communicating with God was more better than other protestant denominations, and my Lutheran confirmation cirrculum (sp?) was a continual referencing to the differences between the catholic church and the protestant christian...

In other words, you don't really want your membership to critically examine their beliefs or study any alternatives.

Actually, the cities were wholly unrighteous, and one of the expressions of that unrighteousness is that they wanted to homosexually rape strangers. If they had relented and raped Lot's virgin daughters in lieu, God might have spared them.

Eeek, I got a twelve%. Can you tell I've never read the bible and tried to expunge from my brain any knowledge about it that accidentally got into my brain?

My husband has BEEN a middle school social studies teacher who thought that everyone must know something about religion. I agree with him, but I also think people should know how to fix their own cars (or at least diagnose problems), but I can't do that either.

Understanding is very important part of living with other people. If this planet is going to have a successful global economy (I'm not even talking about peace; I'm talking about the lack of continuous, overwhelming war), we need to understand each other. Knowing a little bit about each other's religions is absolutely required.

Sure, sure... go into the long version. Though I'll note that the actual *reason* that raping Lot's daughters would have made them spare-worthy differs between religions - in Judaism it's because the rape of the daughters would have shown hospitality to the strangers.

Oh, and I saw the :p, but thought it only applied to the clause in which it appeared. Parser error.

Yes, because the Bronze Age was a profoundly foreign culture.

When a Bronze Age patriarch talked about "my wife" or "my children," he wasn't kidding. He didn't mean "the wife who is married to me" or "the children I am the father of," he meant literally mine, as he would mean "my sheep" or "my house." The family he headed was effectively an extension of his personal property.

In that cultural background and mindset, Lot was offering up an extremely valuable form of property (the virginity of his daughters), as a way of keeping the duty of hospitality (which was more or less sacred in a lot of ancient cultures). That is what the story is supposed to mean, not that Lot is a terrible father or any of the other things that we would (with reason) conclude from the same story.

Which would be fine and dandy were it not for the fact that people produce the story today in the context of how we should live today (though admittedly they tend to downplay the offering of daughters in favour of brimstone and hellfire). The value of the story is as an illustration of how Bronze Age (or Iron Age) people thought, and it would be good to teach it in that context.

Course, teaching it in that way would no doubt annoy those who prefer the hellfire elements... I don't envy the schools that try and teach this stuff impartially.

I blame the influence of people who call religion unneccessary, or even dangerous. *CoughFranceCough*
Technically speaking, without religion (god, afterlife, judgement) there's no real compulsion to be good beyond the law. Morals were constructed and still exist because of religion. Now I'm not saying you have to know about something to believe in it, but a good knowledge of religion would probably help.

Not according to Freud... *flee!*

That's my exact result, except I also missed the road to damascus because I didn't see Paul on the list. I'm not sure if that counts.

Shouldn't Jesus also be featured on the road to Damascus?

I absolutely agree.

Yes, because it illustrates two concepts that we don't have in modern societies. We don't have the concept of real patriarchy (in which "my daughter" is precisely parallel to "my house" or "my sheep"), and we don't really have something fully equivalent to the once-sacred bond of hospitality (in which you protect your guest with your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor).

Neither do I.

I shouldn't have an extended discussion about this, but I would like to point you to the theories of Kantian categorical imperative and utilitarianism, both of which call for ethical behavior without making reference to religion.

Don't make me take out the wet noodle...

We no longer have the sacred hospitality morality because we no longer need it. Are you willing to enter a strangers home, divest yourself of weapons, and eat his food and drink nowadays without the knowledge that he'll consider himself forever damned if he doesn't take care of you? Without knowing that his neighbors will forever shun him if he kills you rather than care for you?

The reason we no longer have the hospitality morality (I like that phrase) is that we now assume we're safe in another's home, when the exact opposite used to be the case. Once it was assumed that, in another's home, you had to be hyper-vigilant because odds were good he would kill you.

I think it's a good thing we don't have that once-sacred moral code; it shows how far we've come.

Cultural context. I've been in the situation where I depend on arab/bedouin hospitality morality; able to feel safe despite being in a relatively hostile nation/region.

I'm pleased that it is a morality which exists in other places in these throughly modern times.