It's hard to credit it these days but in one of those fundamentalist-tolerating countries (yup, y'all guessed right), a teacher called Steve Bitterman has lost his job because he urged students not to take the bible old testament literally.
It seems a student threatened legal action on the grounds that his comments "denigrated her religion". He apparently described the story of Adam and Eve as a fairy tale but it seems he has now lost his job - on account of treating the Adam and Eve story as a myth.
Now we can all stretch credibility at times, and allow a little poetic licence but does anyone seriously expect kids to believe in talking snakes?
Des Moines Register carries the story.
This shows what sort of ridiculous silliness we get when someone asserts a right not to be offended regardless of how irrational their beliefs are. There is no right to be free from offence and if someone fails to take your argument seriously, look at the argument and fix it...
What Steve Bitterman did was to report the accepted academic interpretation of a well-known myth. He should have the last word:
From my point of view, what they're doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the eighth century.
