Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signed into law a bill that will allow courses on the Bible to be taught in public schools beginning on Friday. Overwhelmingly passed by Kentucky’s Republican-controlled state legislature, HB 128 gives Kentucky school boards the option to add elective courses on Bible literacy to their social studies curriculum.
“The idea that we would not want this to be an option for people in school, that would be crazy. I don’t know why every state would not embrace this, why we as a nation would not embrace this,” Bevin said during a public bill signing ceremony.
According to the bill, the courses must discuss all aspects of the Bible — such as characters, poetry, and narratives — because they are “prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture.”
The bill’s supporters argued that Bible literacy courses as a way to get a better insight on the structure of the country. Republican Senator Stephen West said the bill serves a “secular purpose,” claiming it would “help to educate our kids on the background of how they came up with our founding documents.”
“It really did set the foundation that our founding fathers used to develop documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights,” Republican Rep. D.J. Johnson said, “all of those came from principles from the Bible.”
“All of those came from principles from the Bible.”
Actually no, no they did not.
In fact Thomas Jefferson even said as much:
In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from Judaism, Christianity, or the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.
"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these make a part of the law of the land."
The only people who believe this country was founded on Biblical principles are Fundamentalists like that phony American history "expert" David Barton who Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee are constantly promoting.
The teaching of the Bible in public school will no more inform students about the history of this country than reading Harry Potter will teach them about science.
It is yet another sneaky attempt to teach religion in classrooms dedicated to the learning of facts and not primitive superstitious nonsense.
Of course what can you expect from a state which has a "museum" dedicated to teaching children a fable about a giant boat that magically fit two of every animal in the world?
If this Governor Bevin is so keen to have the children of Kentucky learn about the foundations for democracy he would be better served having them read about Greek and Roman history rather than from a book of iron age fairy tales.
