I am a huge proponent of literacy (who isn’t, right?) and am also one of those who thinks the U.S. is fighting a losing battle against illiteracy (and this may well be happening in other so-called civilized countries as well). What do I mean by literacy or illiteracy? I mean not just the ability to read and write but the ability to comprehend what one reads and the ability to retain it. Clearly, we cannot retain everything we read with perfect clarity. Over time, memories fade so this necessitates “brushing up.” Brushing up is also a part of being literate. To learn something and then forget about it is no different than never having studied it. Certain types of information need to be reviewed occasionally. For instance, I recently went back and studied the capitals of all 50 states. Other information that has faded considerably in my mind such as the nuclear physics I learned in the U.S. Navy I do not review partly because this is not necessary information for me today and partly because I do not have my notes because the Navy considers them classified and keeps them. Some information, we manage to hang onto such as why did Washington cross the Delaware or who led the Normans at the Battle of Hastings.

While some might dub the idea that we are becoming increasingly illiterate as alarmism, that may, in itself, be a form of illiteracy. An example, would be the fact that school districts in both the United States and Canada are increasingly turning away from the teaching of cursive writing. Many defend it such as this article from Eonline that had this to say—probably written by an eighth grader:

Here's our two cents: You spend the entire year in third grade learning how to write in cursive and then will never, ever write in cursive again. Instead, schools should add additional spelling lessons to the curriculum. Kids are more tech savvy these days, but because of Microsoft Spell Check, NOBODY knows how to spell without a computer anymore.

Let's spend that time teaching kids that there is a difference between language used to text and tweet and proper, written English. It's no longer a matter of knowing "your" vs. "you're," it's learning that it's definitely never "ur."

Also, the capital, cursive "Q" looks so stupid.

You’ll never use cursive after third grade, folks! I write virtually everything in cursive. Evidently, the writer of the article—John Boone—doesn’t own his own house or car or buy much of anything with an ATM card because in all these cases, you have to SIGN your name on the line that asks for your name. Printing is not acceptable. I actually once saw a 21-year-old guy in a bank buying a car who needed his dad to sign the documents because he couldn’t write in cursive! According to the author of the above quote, we should teach kids to spell because they don’t know the difference between your and you’re? We’re going to worry about that when many kids think that writing “Went 2 John’s house 4 party w bf 2nite & it ws fun! LOL!” is a perfectly structured sentence?

Frankly, to me, cursive is a sign of a person with culture. A person who can only print has none. I feel this way because it has largely been true in my experience. How would a person researching the Gettysburg Address study the original draft without being able to read cursive? The answer is, of course, that a person who can’t read or write in cursive is never going to spend two seconds bothering to research the Gettysburg Address in the first place. If, on the off chance a question about it should ever arise in his mind (which will be exactly never), he will pull out his cell phone and bring it up on Wikipedia.

It’s even worse when someone with a degree in a scientific field defends the dropping of cursive on the grounds that they hated having to practice it in school. Really? Well, a lot of people hated studying science in school so maybe we should drop that too. Or let’s drop math—what a perfect bore that subject is. I know a lot of people who hated studying history so let’s give it the axe. Who cares what a bunch of people did 300 years ago anyway? We can drop the teaching of ANYTHING on the grounds that we hated studying it in school.

Further, the quality of printing is also declining. The reason young people today are not being taught cursive is not so much because they won’t use it as because of computers. Computers are not replacing just cursive, they are replacing writing altogether. So not only is cursive going away, so, really, is printing. Some of the examples of printing I see coming from students these days is not only atrocious but they think it looks great! Part of the problem that I see is that many of these people have no idea how to hold a pen or pencil. They are clearly uncomfortable doing so, clearly not something they are practiced at. As a collector of antiquarian books and papers, I delight in finding letters written by people from the 19th and early 20th centuries and marvel at the neat hand in which they wrote and rich vocabulary that most Americans had before the days of television. What will future antiquarians think 500 years from now when they find hand-written letters from the 21st century scrawled in the chicken scratch young people today think passes for written communication? I would regard that culture to be largely illiterate.

On the importance of writing in cursive:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/me ... ng-cursive

If students are having trouble with reading comprehension and writing, then we are in big trouble. How would they comprehend Shakespeare, the man considered to the bard of the English language? What would they know of blank verse or iambic pentameter? When I was a boy, I had to compose verses in iambic pentameter as well as haiku. Are students taught to do this today? With so little emphasis placed on writing in our schools now, I don’t see how they can be taught anything requiring writing complexity.

We can go into a deeper examination and analysis of the causes of the decline of literacy, of the phenomenon known as “academically adrift” but that isn’t the purpose of this essay. You may be wondering what it is doing in the Belief and Philosophy folder. Because I am also worried about literacy of the bible. May seem silly for an atheist who encourages people not to believe in the bible to urge that people need to be literate about the bible but we do.

The bible is a book (the very word “bible” means “book” after all) and books were meant to be read. Reading a book, any book, is a form of self-improvement but, of course, some books are more important than others. Anyone who would say that the bible isn’t an important book in Western culture is either crazy or stupid. The bible is pre-eminently important in the West, at least. Therefore, to be cultured one must know the bible. One does not have to believe the bible but one must know it.

Today, we think of Germany as this nation where people share a certain set of cultural values and laws peculiar to them and speak a language called, quite appropriately, German. But in the medieval period and the Renaissance, the nation of Germany was more a concept than a reality. Germany was a group of separate states with such names as Westphalia, Saxony and Thuringia. The people of these states were governed by different princes and electors with different laws and their own dialects which bore only certain similarities to other states. Many Germans from one state would have trouble communicating with or understanding Germans from another state.

But by the mid-16th century, Germans began to feel a sense of national unity due to the efforts of Martin Luther. His translation of the bible, which started with the New Testament in 1522 and ended with the Old Testament in 1534, was written in Saxon German, his native dialect. This wasn’t the first German translation but it was far more accessible to the average German for two reasons: 1) It was simplified German that reflected how the average person actually spoke (vernacular German) and 2) It was a translation not sanctioned by the Church but in opposition to it which pleased many Germans tired of Church dogma and eager for a German-based rather than a Roman-based Christianity. The Lutheran bible spread across the various German states rapidly and, in so doing, standardized the German language to the point where citizens of different states now found themselves speaking the same language. Language is highly important in forging identity. Ask any non-Hispanic English-speaking American if he or she feels closer to English-speaking Canadians or to Spanish-speaking Mexican-Americans.

Luther’s goal was to make the Word available to everyone rather than only to priests and the very wealthy and educated. The Catholic Church in those days actually forbade the common people to own bibles. They were for clergy only. Although the printing press came several centuries late to the West, the dissemination of the bible under Luther had the effect of making printed material of all kinds available to the common person once the idea that the masses having printed literature available wasn’t going to destroy civilization but enhance it.

The Reformation started by Luther had spread into education and law. Everyone was educated in the bible. No one literate in Europe could be ignorant of the bible. When we say that knowledge of the bible was ingrained in people, we mean that it became an integral part of the knowledge of how the world works and so factors into just about everything they do. Mosaic law figured at least as prominently as English Common law in the first laws passed in the colonies in the 17th century—“Articles, Lawes, and Orders, Divine, Politique, and Martiall for the Colony of Virginea” in 1610. The first laws of Massachusetts passed in 1641 were also partially based on the bible. The New England Primer, the very foundation of the American system of schooling although educative contains numerous passages from and references to the various books of the bible.

The 1777 version of the New England Primer:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/nep/1777/

The founding of the American republic was partially derived from the bible. The era from the Exodus to King Saul was dubbed the Hebrew Commonwealth and was believed to be the finest example of a republic. Many of the colonial leaders felt that with this biblical form of a republic to guide society and the words of Christ to guide the individual that one would have as close to a utopia as can be found on the earth. Both John Adams and John Dickinson (1782-1888) referred to the bible as “the most republican book ever written.”

But, gee, doesn’t mean that the conservative nutjobs are right and that America really was founded as a Christian nation?

Only in a very general sense. The problem is that speaking of the Founding Fathers this way assumes that they all wanted the same thing when even a cursory glance at history shows this to be far from the truth. Some Founding Fathers as Jefferson wanted a separation of the church and state while others as Samuel Adams thought that church and state should be at least allies. A nation partially founded on Christianity is not necessarily the same thing as a Christian nation. The Founding Fathers went by what they knew and they all knew the bible very well. But we really can’t be certain what they wanted except to acknowledge that they did not all want the same thing. But what they seemed to agree on was that there should be no state religion as the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights makes clear:

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting ...

The wording of the amendment is hard to square with saying that they wanted to found a Christian nation. No laws will be used to either found or destroy a religion nor anybody’s right to worship as they please and to openly discuss it and to possibly form a new church as a result. The term “Christian nation” carries very much the same connotation as “Islamic State” and with very likely much the same results and the Founding Fathers had worked too hard to allow that to happen.

The bible gave Americans their concept of their place in the world and it still certainly affects our policy-making (some might say it “infects” it). America’s steadfast support of Israel is bible-based at its root. Indeed, America sees itself as a New Israel. Like the Jews, Americans see their persecuted ancestors fleeing the tyranny of Europe’s leaders—whether religious or secular—and crossing a vast sea to arrive in a Promised Land. The Indian inhabitants were likened to Canaanites, Moabites and Philistines who needed to be cleansed to make the land right for those so obviously chosen by God. This, in fact, God wanted them to do just as God had told Joshua to do and if God did not want them to do it then he wouldn’t have allowed them to have that capability. This was called Manifest Destiny. While we say it fell out of favor by the 20th century, we still dug it up and used it in modified form to, for example, use the atom bomb on the Japanese, get involved in Vietnam and invade Iraq.

The America as New Israel idea wasn’t something that came later but was something the Founding Fathers were themselves well aware of and willing to put to use to found the new nation. When a seal for the United States was first proposed, this was Franklin’s idea:

“Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Washington DC was modeled to match the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” But the city clearly has many affectations of Ancient Rome (including the assertion of some that it was actually built on seven hills) via its architecture and statuary and Egypt (the Washington Monument is essentially a huge obelisk) but doesn’t mean that the Founding Fathers were trying to create a Roman nation or an Egyptian nation. They borrowed things from these cultures because they were educated about them and found things to admire in them and the same goes for the bible.

Bible literacy is essential for all Americans because it has defined them as a people, it has forged their identity. Both Christians and atheists make the same mistakes concerning this. Literacy of the bible does not mean to become a bible-thumping lunatic or a warrior of the Christian State. Literacy of the bible means to understand what is in the bible—nothing more.

The ignorance some Americans display concerning what is in the bible is often astonishing. Once in a college class, we were asked to name various myths and the instructor wrote them on the blackboard. Someone mentioned Genesis and he wrote it down. A young woman (not someone stupid by any means) asked, “What’s Genesis?” We cannot be this ignorant of the bible or we don’t even know our own past, our own culture. Any atheists who hides behind their atheism as an excuse not to study the bible are simply ignorant and only hurting themselves. Fortunately, I’ve met atheists who are far better versed in the bible than most Christians.

Politicians are the worst of all. Most of these bible-thumping grandstanders can’t answer even what should be easy questions for anyone who has studied the bible. If given a list of all the books in the bible scattered up, few of them can successfully separate the Old Testament books from the New Testament. Many think that phrases such as “The Lord helps those that help themselves” and “Virtue is its own reward” are found in the bible. They are not. But the truth is, these congresspeople don’t give a damn about the bible or anything in it. They are after votes and will say anything to whatever constituency they can to get them. If they say something wrong about the bible, who cares? Certainly not their constituency who is every bit as ignorant as they are about what’s really in that book they profess to believe in so much. They just have to hit the key hot button topics: evolution is a lie, there was no big-bang, gays are going to hell, the earth is a few thousand years old, abortion is murder, global warming is a atheist/commie/liberal lie then watch those votes come rolling in. It’s a sick, cynical game but it works.

Christianity Today ran an article on bible illiteracy where they state that 45% of regular church-goers do not read the bible more than once a week or once a month. One in five claim to read it everyday and yet that same ratio admit to never reading it all—church-going Christians. In fact, at least half American Christians admit consciously or otherwise that they do not believe in God as relayed in the bible or even in their own church’s doctrines. While I was not in agreement with the basic thrust of the article, it said something I am, in all my atheism, completely in agreement with:

There is little excuse for anyone living in Western Civilization, particularly Christians, to not know or read the Bible. Nine out of ten American homes have at least one Bible. The average American—Christian or not—owns at least three Bibles. And technology has put Bibles at our fingertips wherever we are—you can download the Bible for free on your smartphone.