Comments on: What’s the Relevance of the Bible Bee?

By: Jude

Jude — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:02:39 +0000

I used to participate in Bible competitions (ours were called Bible Bowls) and I found them great fun. I also find it rarely useful to still be able to turn to nearly any book in the Bible on the first try. Of course, I was also a spelling champ. It was just another thing for a smart kid to do in a small town.

By: Stacy M.

Stacy M. — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:08:47 +0000

The main message of Leviticus?

NO frigging yeast! He cannot stand that sh*t.
-NonStamCollector

By: Polly

Polly — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:25:29 +0000

@Sue,

The main message of Leviticus?
a) Almost anything can be forgiven if you kill a pigeon afterwards.
b) Priests love roast pigeon.

I literally laughed out loud.

My recollections were mainly offals and stonings.

By: Asad

Asad — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:46:33 +0000

Considering the number of kids that spend hours on video games and copying stunts from pro wrestling, I think a Bible Bee, a Quran Competition or even a Grammar Rodeo are great options. I know all about Bloom’s Taxonomy and how memorization is a low-level skill. I also know that you can’t get past the first semester of med school if you can’t memorize like a pro.

By: steve

steve — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:04:21 +0000

At least Muslim children who memorize the entire Koran can make some serious coin. A professor in Palestine told me prize money can run upwards of $50K USD.

By: BEX

BEX — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:00:13 +0000

Name the five Stages of Acquisition

infatuation
justification
appropriation
obsession
resale

By: Joffan

Joffan — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:52:44 +0000

These strike me as the worst kind of quiz: the one where someone has decided on a right answer and you have to guess it. Your answer may be a perfectly accurate response to the question, but if it doesn’t agree with a magic answer sheet, you fail.

The classic example there is the first question. Someone has somehow force-fit some aspects of these myths into an alliterative list (creation, clan, confinement, commandments, camping, covenant, conquest, cycles, crowns, chasm, captivities, construction, can I have my candy); produce some other perfectly reasonable list of words and you’re toast.

So a good primer into sycophancy but as Hemant says, not much good to encourage actual learning, understanding or analysis skills.

By: David D

David D — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:26:07 +0000

Those C words are pure evil. Camping, confinement, captivity… repressed memories of boy scout experiences come flooding back.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:46:12 +0000

@Matt: me, too. What I was surprised about when I read over that part of the list is that I couldn’t answer ALL of them. We did a lot of Bible drill kind of stuff growing up, mostly in AWANA. That’s more verse memorization, though, not weird obscure facts. Though we did have to know which books fell into which categories in the Old and New Testament (major prophets, minor prophets, poetry, gospels, etc).

And we didn’t play Trivia, we played BIBLE Trivia. The last time I tried to play regular people Trivia, the game ended in tears, I am embarrassed to admit.

By: Stephen P

Stephen P — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:09:46 +0000

Actually there is one question in there that is important, at least if you live in a fundy area:

How many times does the Bible claim to be the actual words of God?

Because the answer is zero.

Or, to be more precise: the fundies I’ve challenged on the subject couldn’t come up with any. God is quoted in various places, but there are no claims that the rest of the text is God’s word.