I've had a couple readers ask me about the second panel of this week's cartoon, in which I mention that 300+ school districts are teaching that NASA research proves the sun stood still in the sky, as mentioned in the Bible. Unfortunately, that panel was getting so wordy that I didn't have enough space to go into more detail, so here's the background.

The NY Times had an article a couple weeks ago about a new Bible course being taught in public schools under the guise of "historical" and "literary" study. But in reality, it's a highly sectarian class being pushed by the fundamentalist right.

HOUSTON, July 31 - When the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training in the public schools.

Hundreds of miles away, leaders of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools notched another victory. A religious advocacy group based in Greensboro, N.C., the council has been pressing a 12-year campaign to get school boards across the country to accept its Bible curriculum...

In one teaching unit, students are told, "Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, the majority of men living in the Western world have accepted the statements of the Scriptures as genuine." The words are taken from the Web site of Grant R. Jeffrey Ministries' Prophecy on Line.

The national council's efforts are endorsed by the Center for Reclaiming America, Phyllis Schlafly's group the Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council, among others.

Here's the bit about the sun:

Some of the claims made in the national council's curriculum are laughable, said Mark A. Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who spent seven weeks studying the syllabus for the freedom network. Mr. Chancey said he found it "riddled with errors" of facts, dates, definitions and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings.

"When the type of urban legend that normally circulates by e-mail ends up in a textbook, that's a problem," Mr. Chancey said.

I believe some readers may have thought I was talking about the earth-revolving-around-the-sun controversy, which is understandable, especially since I mentioned Galileo in my last blog post.

I shouldn't need to say this, but to be clear, it's not religion that I'm criticizing here, but the insistence of some on proselytizing in the classroom.