Lessons in Bias
I have come across my first biased course doing philosophy at Uni. Somewhat disturbingly, the course is introduction to ethics. The lecturer has made comments like
"...the God the Jews invented" (How does he know that?) and talks about how the bible says we should execute people who eat shellfish.

Even the text we are using is hopelessly biased. If you remember a few years back there was a pro-homosexual lobby email that went around as if it was addressed to Dr Laura. Well this email is actually IN the text book. The copy of the letter in the textbook also has errors...attributing statements in the bible to the wrong verses.

This email also seems to be the source of our lecturers misguided notions about shellfish, as it says

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

(My textbook has this as Leviticus 10:10). Ignoring the complete lack of knowledge of the whole bible, a major problem is the word used in Leviticus 11:10 that is sometimes translated as abomination is different to the one used in Leviticus 20:13 when dealing with homosexuality. Lev 18:22 & 20:13 uses To-ebah to-ebah (Pronounced to-ay-baw), which means (from strongs) - properly something disgusting (morally), that is, (as noun) an abhorrence; especially idolatry or (concretely) an idol: - abominable (custom, thing), abomination whilst leviticus 11:10 uses sheqets (pronounced sheh-kets) which means (from strongs) - filth, that is, (figuratively and specifically) an idolatrous object: - abominable (-tion).

So, completely different words are used...the email equivocation is pitiful, as is it's failure to mention that according to the bible eating shellfish only makes you unclean, whilst a man lying with a man is punishable by death.


The lessons being
1) Fake email letters are not good sources of knowledge about the bible
2) Lecturers and Text book authors who rely on such letters are, well, lame.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, August 08, 2006