We read Genesis in English class. To discuss it as literature.

I had some of this in a college English class. Very interestingly taught by an excellent professor. But there were a few awkward moments during the first class when he explained we were studying it as literature and not as the Word of God. A student excused herself because she said she took the bible literally word for word and couldn't accept that it was being taught otherwise.

Hell, I have an otherwise well-educated teen cousin who thought Adam and Eve were Jesus' parents. It's an odd sort of educational avoidance, that.

OMG, I was so confused about how dinosaurs and Adam and Eve (and maybe something stupid like the Pilgrims) fit together. Relatedly, it was an embarrassingly long time before I figured out how cells fit in with atoms.

Quite a while ago I was in a bookstore, checking out the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section and there were a group of people there looking at a JRR Tolkein book and commented on what a sick twisted mind could produce all this anti-christian stuff.

How do people this stupid even find the bookstore?

A friend of mine wrote up the study guide included in the Classics Illustrated Moby Dick (which actually isn't a half-bad adaptation, according to her) and got one of her "study questions" at the end of the essay shot down by the editor: "Now do you know why you must read the Bible and Shakespeare in order to be considered literate?"

Max Factor was also a real person -- he was a Hollywood makeup artist.

Gah. I hate the inability to distinguish "not Christian" from "anti-Christian". One of these things is not like the other, people!

When I first read Genesis I was pissed because there were no dinosaurs. It was pointed out that they hadn't said they didn't exist, just that they hadn't been mentioned by name. Didn't matter. Dinosaurs were so big, I thought they had to be in there.

Later on a teacher tried to contradict what I'd since learned of evolution, and I went home pissed hoping that my mother would hit him or something. But she just laughed it off.

Max Factor was also a real person -- he was a Hollywood makeup artist.

I recommend the Max Factor Museum in Hollywood. If it's still open, that is. He invented tons of stuff.

Dinosaurs were so big, I thought they had to be in there.

Dinosaurs went extinct when Noah couldn't fit them in the ark. But he felt guilty about it, so he wrote them out of Genesis.

A student excused herself because she said she took the bible literally word for word and couldn't accept that it was being taught otherwise.

A serious question: how do people like this function in a multicultural society? It's got to be awfully difficult, going to work every day and meeting people who are, e.g., different religions or downright atheists. Do they just end every conversation with a mental "You're going to hell, you sinner"? I think probably they have to do a lot of mental gymnastics when they make friend with a Unitarian or something.

Oh, and for Nutty: wasn't it St. Peter who got crucified in Rome?