The Daily Mail is apparently surprised that “Arch Atheist” Richard Dawkins is in favour of Michael Gove’s plan to supply a free copy of the King James Bible to every state school.
They shouldn’t be of course as he is on record as acknowledging the cultural and literary contribution made by the 1611 translation of the bible to the richness of English prose and it would be as serious an omission not to have a copy of it in schools as to omit Shakespeare or Keats.
However, Richard Dawkins supports this initiative for the same reason I do; knowledge of the Bible is probably the best way to ensure children do not fall for the cherry picked rhetoric of the clergy (and religiously motivated politicians like Gove) that tries to portray its message as “moral”. As I pointed out in my last post, confirmed by my own bible study, it is anything but.
It would be nice to think that Michael Gove and the Tory donors sponsoring this initiative are doing it for the culturally relevant reason of “commemorating four hundred years since publication” but I suspect not. The motivation is at least in part religious but unlike the National Secular Society (whose general aims I fully endorse by the way) I am not concerned that this will result in the promotion of Christianity, either over other faiths or atheism. In the unlikely event that any child actually attempts to read a copy in any depth it is much more likely to repel than attract.
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