You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.
Interpretation
Understanding European history and English literature requires knowledge of religious influences and biblical references.
Richard Dawkins emphasizes the critical role that religion, particularly Christianity, plays in shaping European history and literature. He argues that without recognizing biblical allusions, one cannot fully grasp the complexities and nuances of these subjects, suggesting that religion is a foundational element that interweaves through historical and literary narratives in Europe.
In practice
In a classroom discussion on European literature, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of biblical references.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
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Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.
Reviewing good puzzle books is frustrating, because you get to page one of the introduction, find a curious puzzle, become engrossed for 20 minutes, miss your stop and then fail to get home in time to say goodnight to the kids.
There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.
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