linwood

My friend and fellow atheist came to work today a bit livid about his 13 year old sons history report.
The teacher sent home an outline of choices that the students can base their report on.
Here are the choices.

*Ancient Egyptian civilization
*The Tower of Babel
*Ancient Mayan Civilization
*King Solomons Temple

Keep in mind this is a publicly funded private school that his son just began attending this year and up until this point there has been no reason to believe the school has any religious agenda.

My friend was going to help his kid with this report using Ancient Egyptian Civilization as the subject in order to keep the peace.
I managed to convince him he was passing up a perfectly good opportunity to state his belief that religious myth shouldn`t be taught as if it were truth.
He is now going ot use The Tower of Babel as the subject matter for this report.

My question to those in this forum is..
"What if anything is the historical evidence for or against the existence of the Tower of Babel?"
The report outline mentioned that the tower has been found in Mesopotamia and that is all the info that I have.
I`m not being lazy here as my friend and his son fully intend to do thier own research, I just thought there may be someone here who could point out a few particulars that might not be immediately apparent.

Can anyone here point me in the right direction in order to help my freind make a statement?

Thanks.

Sarpedon

Its better to let the kid do a project on something real, so he can learn something, and won't risk getting a bad grade or ridiculed by his fellow classmates. Why are you using a 13 year old as your mouthpiece? By all means, your friend should express his belief that religious myth shouldnt be taught as the truth...in a letter to the teacher,the principal and the board.

freigeister

Why not use the opportunity to help the kid decide for himself what is true? Why not start with the Wikipedia?

Chris Weimer

I agree, if the kid is to do it on the Tower of Babel, he should provide a factual look on what possibly may have been the tower. If he wants to do the myths that accompany it, he should present them from a neutral POV and not from an atheist bashing Christian myths nor about the current political situation of America. If I were his teacher, I would fail his paper if he talked about why myths shouldn't be taught in school since that was not his assignment.

Toto

King Solomon's Temple has about the same level of historicity as the Tower of Babel, or less.

Roger Pennock's Tower of Babel: The evidence against the new creationism is not really about the Tower of Babel as history, but is very good on the topic of linguistics and the evolution of language, and should be part of your friend's reading if he pursues that topic. But I think that is original idea might be the best.

linwood

I disagree, avoiding the subject only strengthens the myth.
Having the boy research the topic will indeed teach him something.
It will teach him that even those our society tells us to trust cannot be trusted, it will teach him to question what he`s being told regardless of who is doing the telling.
This will lead him to critical thinking.
I think this is a far more important lesson than anything ancient Egyptian civilization has to offer for the boy.
Little situations like this crop up around me constantly and it is best to expose them for what they are.
If there is no evidence for the existence of the tower of babel and the boy states as much in his report then gets a poor grade it is easy enough to rectify the situation and perhaps even put a stop to mythology based history lessons in the future.
As a parent who has written letters of complaint to teachers, principles, and school boards I feel qualified to state with confidence that it gets you nowhere.

The boy asked his father for help, in my opinion this route will teach a far more relevant lesson .

linwood

I think I need to clarify.
The boys father isn`t interested in using this as an oportunity to directly state anything about the subject matter other than what balanced research will conclude.
He is approaching it as a valid subject and intends to treat it as such.
It is my limited understanding of the subject matter that there is no basis of historical "truth" to the matter.
A report stating the evidence is more than enough to get the point across without having to delve into the religious faith argument.
From Wikipedia I gather that there is no archeological evidenceof the towers existence.
The only evidence is scriptural and therefore not empirical.

I am interested in any other evidence those here might have though.

thanks.

linwood

I ran across the book in my searches and didn`t take note of it as it seemed to be off topic but I`ll give it a closer look due to your recommendation.
It seems it might be relevant from a different perspective.

Thank you.

funinspace

The only problem I would have with the idea of a history report on the Tower of Babel, is that the only source for data is the Bible. There is absolutely nothing in the archeological record to write about. One could write a report on the OT writings on it, or a report on ancient tales, but neither could build up into a "history report" of any value. There could be no 3+ sources et.al. You could get sources on apologists runinations about it, but not much else.

What a nutty school teacher private or public.

freigeister

Er, did you not see the section entitled extra-biblical accounts?