I didn't leave it to the schools to get around to teaching my kids critical thinking skills, it was something they were exposed to organically in conversations as they grew up. I'm proud to say that I raised a couple of very smart skeptics. We live in the bible belt, there is a creationist museum next to a state park with dinosaur footprints (if you saw the Dinosaur program from PBS you know important research happened here). All of these topics were discussed so the kids had an intellectual form of self-defense when presented with the opinions of those who feel there are no versions of scientific truth but their own biblical interpretations.

The trouble with people taking the bible literally is that it is an accumulation of stories, largely handed down, that were finally written and assembled over time by the few literate scholars of the day. The stories are allegorical, and the closest cognate I can think of are American Indian trickster stories. Told only at certain times of year, told by experienced story tellers, and meant to teach - so over the top that listeners couldn't help but figure out that the trickster who devoured his own tail or who eviscerated himself and ate his own intestines or . . . was not learning from his own mistakes, but the listeners figured out to stop while one is ahead, or to not follow certain flawed paths, to not break social mores or folkways by doing what the trickster did. Teaching by example.

There is a lot of that in the bible, in some form or other, gradually massaged into different forms by many hands over the centuries. One hears of the "King James" bible - a foreign individual not present at the time the stories were originally told, but representative of another level of alteration and interpretation. The bible as literature is one thing, but the modern move by some to take it as the same as science, given from god's hand to their eyes is ludicrous.

SRS