Talk politics.

Ok, I have this strange idea, and I want to share it. At some point in a child's education, you start teaching children Comparative Religion. You make it part of the Syllabus. maybe at the age of 5, maybe at 15, but you do it while they are young and keen, but old enough to reflect and consider. maybe you do it in stages relevant to their age, but you do it.

As well as demanding that kids learn to read and write, you also make Comparative Religion something that every kid should know by the time they leave school.

Perhaps the question should be "~How~ should we do this?"
For I can see the howls of outrage that would arise. I imagine that few parents would want their kids to know the truth - for the truth is that many themes that run through the Hebrew Scriptures, and thus make their way into Christianity and Islam today, are in fact Pagan myths that got recycled into moral stories and divine myths in order to underpin the newer and emergent societies that borrowed them. They may not have been true, but they were useful.

Take the story of Helel ben Shachar, aka Lucifer, Old Nick, and Satan the Devil.
See, Helel was once a Canaanite deity. His name can be translated as 'Shining One, Son of the Dawn'. Now, Shachar was one of the twin sons of the Sun god - Dusk and Dawn were Canaanite deities, you see. But Helel took it upon himself to rise in the morning before the Sun did, and to go on shining when all the other stars went out. for this presumptuousness, his grandfather cast him down out of heaven.

But of course, Helel is the planet Venus, and is simply a planet orbiting the sun. It has no aspiration to reach the mid heaven at all, but it made a nice story, so the Canaanites told it and Hebrews borrowed it. And when they needed somebody to blame for the lousy state the world was in, they couldn't go blaming God. Someone had to be the fall guy. So certain passages that obviously pertain to the King of Babylon and the ruler of Tyre became read another way, pointing back to Satan, even though Satan never gets a mention by name in Genesis and appears fully formed in the book of Job.

Ok, I got this from several sources like Funk and Wagnell, The Jewish Encyclopaedia, and several other books out of my local library when I was young - it is all on the internet now. Have a link:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer

And it doesn't just stop there. there is a curious passage in Jeremiah , where the prophet bewails the fact that the people are bowing down to 'The Queen of Heaven' in the temple at Jerusalem. "The Queen of Heaven"? Surely, this is a Roman Catholic concept? Actually, no. the Hebrew God originally had a female consort, just like every other local god.

A small inscription has been unearthed in Palestine that says "I bless you in the name of Yahweh and His Ashterah." Yahweh you may recognise as the name of the God of the Hebrews, but Ashterah? It turns out that She was His Consort.

Of course, once Hebrew Monotheism got started, this has to be altered and pasted over quickly. But, Yes, the Jews borrowed a lot of their religion from the local Canaanite to start with, and we see traces of this in the OT. this book was interesting, I though.

http://books.google.com/books?id=y-gfwlltlRwC

We may recall that David's wife hid a teraph, an idol, under the blankets, so that it looked like David was still sleeping. Ok, so what is a Teraph doing in the house of an ardent Monotheist like David? It is questions like these that deserve to be asked.

The upshot may well be that people are less inclined to go out and kill for the sake of a myth or story. OTOH , they may decide that they want to wage war to protect and commit acts of terrorism to protect these tribal myth that justify their own tribal supremacy.

It is hard to tell, until we try it. But is it worth a go? Galileo, Darwin and many others who proclaimed 'inconvenient truths' were persecuted. But their ideas were correct and the ideas triumphed to produce the world we know today.

there are , of course, other myths and stories that have come along since the story of Adam and Eve - outlandish tales like ' Democracy' and 'Justice'. I mean, can anyone find a single atom of justice, anywhere in existence? And people ordinary people actually running a society themselves ? Just look at what has happened to Russia , America and Europe! So long as they are not foolish enough to stick a gold crown on their heads, people Like Rupert Murdoch can go about as if they were above the law. In fact, they ~are~ the law, in real terms. had his henchmen been a bit more discreet, Murdoch would be running BskyB by now. maybe if he is smart , and plays wis cards well, he may yet still do it, when the dust settles and the heat dies down. But for now, his dreams must be sacrificed on the altar of public opinion to appease the Gods of Justice and Fairness. Not to mention people's belief in Democracy.

But ideas like 'Freedom', 'Justice' and 'Democracy' - we should also teach these to kids in our schools.
these are the things that prevent Murdoch taking over completely. People have fought and died for them as well, and maybe, just maybe, they are worth fighting and dying for.

But what say you? Should kids be taught to fight and kill for anything - if so, what ?