Why Debate The Bible, Or Maybe I Shouldn’t Write In The Kitchen?
Post by Jim Newman
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I was writing about some bible passage the other day. Having a good old time in the briar patch, slashing up brush and looking for keen insight, and maybe that wascally wabbit or more accurately brer rabbit. My wife in her inimitable way glanced at me and asked with baleful innocence: “Why would you care what’s in the bible?”
Nyeowwww, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba baa, I felt like a cartoon plane spiraling to doom on the hard earthen surface. Sputtering dirt and airplane parts from my mouth, I responded lamely, “duhh, I don’t know, people take it seriously.” Silence. My next reaction was that I could have stayed in bed and read the news or dozed amidst the morning calamity like I used to but nooo, I had to go on a diet, be full of energy, wake my ass out of bed, and write, while family circles around me wary of this unusual sight.
My Wife (I have been asked not to use her real name) has on occasion threatened to begin reading the bible. She smiles at me and says “You say reading the bible breeds contempt.” Sput, sput, sput. “Go ahead, read the damn thing. Unless you’re raised into it, you can’t possibly take it seriously and not see the contradictions.”
The problem is I have seen her attend church, say the words, sing the psalms, and been chastised when I roll my eyes, point at the nasty passages, or even try to utter a comment. It would be better if I just fell asleep during a service, funeral, or wedding, like her father used to—one hopes this is a whimsical memory. But then how would I know how many tiles are in the ceiling or how many pipes the organ has? Somehow it seems less rude to comment than to fall asleep, to me.
So, it is odd that I have to be as proficient at biblical exegesis as a believer. Moderates and Catholics have it easy. They don’t even have to pretend that any of it is really true or that one should read certain passages of it—and I don’t just mean the begats.
It does send a chill down my neck when she threatens to read the bible. I am worried she’ll catch the flu, the bible flu. It’s all fiction to her anyway. As a political science person, truth is in the market of people, for her. It’s all narrative, and some of it is more interesting. All narrative. Truth is pretty irrelevant so long as the car starts in the morning. It reminds me of religious folk who say they hate science but can’t wait to get the latest, most technologically advanced, weapon; so they hate science but they want the result of it. In her case that’s not it. She’d be perfectly happy without the iphone, or the phone, or the TV, or cars if she could.
I wish I had that freedom. It would be great sometimes not to feel so driven to know the truth, even though I readily admit there is no such thing as the Absolute Truth—I do believe I’ll have another beer. There is a reality out there though and no matter how many hallucinogens I take, I come down, back to it.
Maybe though I am just trying to compete with smell to a skunk. How can I ever really argue the bible when basically I don’t believe much of it anyway. Not even Jesus. My Medieval Latin teacher pretty much always dismissed my philosophical interpretations of Aquinas, Thomas, or Augustine because I was an atheist. How could I possibly understand the ontological proof or have the emotional sympathy to look deeply. I soon developed a pat answer: because Mary Magdalena was Jesus’s girlfriend, or he was gay (seems obvious to me).
It really pissed him off that I was using the term collective unconscious from Jung—to mean the underlying rationality, reasoning, or intuitions of a people. I simply felt no threat from the term and it was better than saying social weltanshauung or something equally arcane. Sort of like how I didn’t mind being called spiritual until it was coopted from pagen or heathen New Agers to mean religion without buildings. So she is right. Even our words are just politics.
By treading on sacred turf I hope to shake up the believers of the book. I hope that I can destable their insistence that what they read is accurate. Thank goodness for the Internet because I don’t even want to read the damned thing and now can search by phrase.
If I just say the bible is all bullshit I will spend all of my time discussing archaeological and historical evidence for its existence and lo and behold I am back to the book, which is used to prove itself. If I say there are other bullshit sacred texts, I am back to comparing them to deal with how they all refer to god, the one reality out there.
If I bring up Vine Deloria, the Native American Creationist, who when asked what Native Americans thought about their country said “ours,” I am still going to have to consider the Lakota woman who came to my Fourth grade class and told us her people thought the world was on the back of a turtle.
Once I engage in the dialog of meaning, the words truly no longer matter. I can even talk about embodied metaphors—almost all societies consider good things to be up or higher—but no one will care. It’s all just words.
But words do count. When I call a man a bastard or a woman a bitch, to preserve you from more harsh and vulgar pejoratives, suddenly those terms seem very dear and personal. That’s why I have to get into people’s personal space. If the bible is your space and it’s creating a problem for others I have to get into it. I really have no choice.
I could insist that bible thumpers use an atheist language, thinking of language as culture, but that would be unfair and probably impossible. We have to learn each other’s language and culture as we go along in dialog. The only thing that matters is the politics of communication. Role modeling doesn’t work when time is short. I have to learn their language because I see the train coming down the track just as they learn the language of science to tell me it’s not.
Truly, I do not see science as the only way of functional knowledge in the world. Implied science, oral traditions, functional traditions, genetic traditions, embodied heuristics, have all served humans and animals well over the ages. Well, I guess if you consider the constant amount of aggression and strife we have created for ourselves as good service.
Truly, I do not see hunter-gatherer societies as inferior. It’s just impossible to go back. Bronze age gets a little more iffy; we were gaining hubris, less isolated. Maybe we have the right to destroy the planet? Perhaps the bible was useful. Perhaps it did help with impulse control. Perhaps it did codify some moral foundations. It is just no longer effective.
The best way for me to get that across is not to dismiss it outright but to dissect it on the turf of those who hold it dear. I am sorry but the sacred cow is my tasty snack.
The bible cannot be held separate from any other book nor can it be dismissed as too foolish to argue. While tempting to sidestep the argument and talk about the politics of a good life regardless of what one reads, being outright dismissive is not fair to those who want to use it as support of their world view.
If Protestants want to cherry pick the bible for tasty tidbits, I have to find contrasting tidbits. I just see no other way as I am unwilling to philosophically burn the book; ban it from discussion.
It would be nice to say we will all just go read our own books but we do not have the luxury of isolation—anytime such discussion would come up that isolation will have been lost. I am not ready to give it up here and say my life has no meaning beyond family or say the world is lost, let’s go to Mars.
It’s a dirty fight but someone has to do it.
Jim Newman, bright and well
www.brightpride.com and www.frontiersofreason.com
I still can not believe people believe in bigfoot etc.
I sometimes wonder where all of us get our blinders from. (I am a protestant Christian believer, by the way, although not mainstream, or fundamentalist, or Bible literalist, or evangelical, or just about anything else that usually seems to automatically cheese people off.)
Look, everyone has their own personal way of viewing things. And if that viewpoint is strongly held by a person (and if it has been deeply, humbly, thoughtfully, and graciously considered, I don’t see why they should not hold to it rather strongly), their view of things is very likely going to be in conflict with other individual’s strongly held personal viewpoints.
However, personal viewpoints aren’t reality. They are our moment-by-moment evolving attempts at understanding reality. You, for instance, have a particular viewpoint that makes you find the Bible to be a problem. But the Bible is just a book with ideas in it, just like any other book with ideas in it. Books, in and of themselves, aren’t dangerous. They can’t act on their own. So your real problem is with people whose actions disturb you or frighten you. (Basically, you are bothered when their actions directly impinge on your personal space or, through their actions in a political/group context, indirectly impinge on your personal space by altering the shared public space in a way that negatively affects you.)
I, for instance, am a rather devout protestant Christian. I actually love the Bible and find it to be rather encouraging to me in my journey towards (what I believe to be) God. I am also personally convinced of God’s existence, as well as being convinced that Jesus is the promised Messiah. (BTW, I was never taught to view Jesus as God, simply as the Son of God.) I would very much like to understand God better, and I would also like to follow Jesus’ teaching and example more thoroughly in my life. And (get ready for it, because this is going to raise your hackles), I also reject the ToE for theological reasons.
Now before you decide to go tearing me a new one for that last statement, here’s the interesting twist (and basically the reason I brought up people’s actions as the real source of your problem.) If you lived in a neighborhood and were surrounded by households filled with people just like me, you probably wouldn’t even know we were there. Why? Because unless you were following us around 24×7 to see what we were up to, we really wouldn’t be impacting your life.
I brought up my theological opposition to the ToE for a reason. It seems to be a hot button for a lot of people on both sides of the street. My objection to it is on theological grounds. But I do not oppose it where it belongs, which is within the realm of good, scientific thought. And it is because the ToE is good science that I have no objections to it being taught in public schools. I also think it should be part of any decent private school curriculum, as well as it deserving a valued place in home schooling curriculums. Furthermore, I would vigorously oppose bad science being taught in public schools. So if someone were to try to introduce YEC, intelligent design, “teaching the controversy”, or any other hypothesis that had not been thoroughly vetted and tested (to the degree that something can be scientifically tested), I would not hesitate to try to have it thrown out of the school system.
Confused? You shouldn’t be. Remember, my objections to the ToE are for theological reasons, not science reasons. I object to the idea that the ToE has or can state anything about my (conceptual) relationship to God. And, quite frankly, the ToE says nothing about any such relationship. Which makes it completely non-threatening to my theological beliefs. The ToE relates strictly to matter and matter-based life. It does not say anything at all about God (who is not material in any way), nor does it state anything about God’s kingdom (which is also not material in any way.) And obviously, it does not say anything at all about my relationship to God, because that relationship is also not one based on matter in any way. (And if that confuses you, think about it. My relationship with God is conceptually an eternal one, not a finite, temporal one. Thus it existed before I ever seemed to physically came into being, and will exist long after my physical form is dispersed. So obviously, even if I seemed (emphasis on the seemed) to exist in a physical state, there would still be no reason for my relationship with God to be based on matter, since the relationship would obviously not be based on matter in those other two situations.)
So here I am, a Bible loving Christian who theologically opposes the ToE, yet my actions really shouldn’t put me on your “danger” radar screen. Why? Because my actions aren’t ones that will intrude on you and yours, nor will they likely intrude on the public sphere. So do you really desire to have a problem with me just because I think differently than you do? Or are one’s actions that thing that truly makes a difference in how people relate to one another?
And as for you personally having issues with the Bible because it seems to contain contradictions and facts that seem to raise serious questions, please get over it! Human life is full of such problematic situations. You would achieve just as much by railing against human frailty as you would railing against the texts found in the Bible, because human frailty is just as much in evidence there as it is in real life.
Furthermore, the fact that any of us have personal world views that cause us to call into question any “knowledge” that is presented to us in our daily lives is a given. (Remember, our personal viewpoints are not reality, they are our attempts at grappling with, and discerning reality.)
The Bible is a record of people’s efforts to grapple with and understand reality with its primary focus being on God. It contains narratives, poems, songs, teaching stories, parables, history, etc., but all of it is focused and centered on trying to understand this concept called God, and humans have had a very tough time grappling with that concept. And being that there are many different personal viewpoints included in the Bible narratives, and that the level of understanding of the different characters in the narratives varies not only by individual, but also within an individual’s lifetime, is it any wonder that you are seeing so many things that are hard to accept or reconcile? What you read is all over the map because the different characters’ understandings of life and God were all over the map. In addition, the characters in the narratives apparently also had problems with the ideas and concepts and incidents that they were presented with. (Think Jacob, think Moses, think Gideon, think Jonah, think Elijah, think Elisha, think Peter, think Paul, etc.) That’s why so much of what I read in the Bible is encouraging to me. Those characters were really no different than I am, and they (or at least a number of them) still made progress in understanding God. That gives me great hope for my own progress. Furthermore, one advantage I have over them is that I am able to learn from their mistakes as well as their successes.
Which brings up a point about about the reliabiltyof what is written in the Bible. Non-believers are fond of suggesting that if there are a number of factual errors in the Bible, doesn’t that call into question the veracity of the other parts of it? To which I would reply with the often stated Wall Street truism, “The market has already taken that into consideration.” Do you really think that any reasonably serious student of the Bible isn’t already aware of those facts? Surprises are not only a given in Bible study, they are also a given in the experience of any serious student trying to get closer to God. Why? Because God is hard to understand from a human standpoint. We should all expect to be surprised and corrected from time to time as we proceed on our journey.
Oh, and your comment about cherry picking? Pulleeeze! Unless one is a Bible literalist (are you a former literalist by any chance?), it’s not so much about cherry picking as it is about interpreting the Bible in a discerning way rather than in a woodenly literal way. Jesus knew the Bible as much as the Bible scholars around him did, yet he seemed to understand both it and God rather differently (and much better) than they did. And if I were going to choose a standpoint from which to view the Bible, I think I would much rather understand Jesus’ viewpoint of God and the Bible rather than accepting the viewpoint of someone who seemed to understand it less.
Which brings up a point that I touched on earlier when I mentioned my opposition to the ToE. My relationship is with God, not with a book. I use the Bible as one of many ways to help me understand God better. But the book is not God any more than my view of reality is reality itself. My evolving view of reality and my evolving view of what I read in the Bible, as well as my evolving view of (what I believe to be) God improves as I turn to God.
So criticize the Bible if you like. Just be aware that you are actually just criticizing a number of snapshots showing the variable nature of human life. But the point of the Bible, at least as I understand it, is that even with all of the ridiculous things that one may encounter in life, God is still very much there to discover for those who are willing to put the effort in to understanding Him better. That’s why I continue on the journey I am on.
My 2 cents.
Hey dude, are you trolling for debate? Tired of arguing with your Christian friends? I’ve got no blinders on. You’re the one trying to convince me you’re a friendly neighbor even though clearly you have an agenda and would be happy to oppress me with either your ideology or your actions. You’re exactly why Hitchens said he’d fear a gang of Christians more than a gang of thugs in a dark alley. Go find your own ilk to discuss your perverse ideology. No one here gives a damn about the bible, allegorical, psychological, or literal.
Ctcss, you really ought to try and make your cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization not so blatantly obvious. You say:
CTC: “I brought up my theological opposition to the [theory of Evolution] for a reason.”>>
There is not a dichotomy between scientific reasons and “theological” reasons. There are either good reasons to believe claims or bad reasons to believe claims. As you’ve already admitted, evolution has good reasons for it’s claims when you said:
“…it is because the [evolution] is good science that I have no objections to it being taught in public schools.”
Being good science means it has good evidence/reasons for us to believe what it shows us is true. Saying you have “theological” objections doesn’t address the truth of evolution other than to say you have emotional spiritual based feelings about why you don’t like it. It’s completely non-responsive.
CTC: “My objection to it is on theological grounds.”>>
Evolution doesn’t address theology, which from my perspective seems to be nothing other than the study of nothing. Nor does theology address evolution. This should be obvious because evolution address something that actually exists, nature/biology.
CTC: “my objections to the ToE are for theological reasons, not science reasons.”>>
You would be more honest to say you object to evolution on emotional, non rational, faith based reasons, which is to say, no reason at all. If evolution is “good science” as you say, the good reasons for accepting it’s finding are not trumped by your religious wishes. You can’t say:
“I think the data showing how the wing of a plane provides lift and allows an airplane to fly is “good science” but I object to the notion that planes fly based upon “theological grounds.”
Yet, that’s what you are trying to do and it’s cognitive dissonance.
And Jim, no need to be grumpy. If a Christian comes looking “for a debate” I always find it the best course to give it to them. The ones that will stand up are actually quite rare and when they do, it’s a treat and an opportunity to teach. If you are not into that sort of thing, don’t chase them off, please leave them for me.
Darrel, you’re my hero. I had spent a couple hours on a post in response and then archived it as being too much. You did well more briefly.
Darrel, you shamed me into it!
Why should I bother learning the bible in order to argue it with you rather than just dismiss it as fable and get on with life? Why engage Christians on their turf; and then wouldn’t that mean I have to do the same with every other sacred text? Suddenly the atheist has to know all of the sacred texts while the religious person doesn’t. Atheists would get pounded to dust from intellectual overwork. I don’t mean in the comparative religion way but in the deep dark debating way.
We are more likely to agree with others than to have a separate opinion. As social beings and as scientists we spend considerable energy seeking confirmation, verification, and social symmetry. Indeed, in a group of people, individuals say and do less because they assume someone else will. The entire issue of status and acceptance revolves around where we are in position to others.
Holding opinions strongly is not really the way to truth. Psychologists have tested people and found when an individual says they really know something is true, when they assert certainty, they are wrong about 50% of the time. So when you are arguing and say “I am absolutely sure that’s true” you have a good chance of being wrong. Our biases require us to work together; not just hunting and big work. Optimism bias in 80% of the population means there is some use for contrarians and curmudgeons but society would grind to a halt if there weren’t vast pools of agreement.
Personal viewpoints are not absolute but they have to be effective or real enough to function. If I don’t believe in evolution and decide to ignore or not study the adaptation of germs, species, and ourselves I will die from the consequences. People who refuse to eat because they believe they don’t need to simply die. Religious people who believe the end of the world is coming and refuse to do anything to prevent it will drag me to death with them and that’s exactly why being social and being right counts.
Even indirectly you can harm me. If because you believe from the bible the world was made for man, you may have no need for Wilderness areas or may make animals go extinct. I may never visit a Wilderness Area or view animals going extinct but I nevertheless do not think the bible should be used as support that man is steward and everything else subservient.
It wouldn’t raise my shackles as you kindly set me up for your position in the first paragraph. I would wonder why you would bother to troll an atheist site though? But your second paragraph contradicts what you just said in that you are a strong Christian though your lack of belief in the trinity would damn you in nearly all Christian sects but Mormonism.
Unfortunately living in your neighborhood would be incredibly painful and would absolutely have a tremendously negative effect on my life. You are not just like other people in any way whatsoever. Even if I cocooned myself in my house you could prevent my wife from getting contraception in your institution. You could control what I saw on TV and what my kids learned in school. Your entire theological world view is very much in my face, and functionally affects me, or I wouldn’t care if you tied up earthworms in the basement. We aren’t islands and it is a ruse to play innocent neighbor. You guys aren’t just friendly, cute, stick-to-yourselves neighbors. If you truly didn’t care about changing me, or thought it was all just view, you wouldn’t be on this site responding in the comments section. You would have to fall back on the strong-opinion and love-to-argue personality issue.
Conceptually you could be a python eating the world. So what? Evolution absolutely does have something to say about your personal relation with god. First evolution requires the laws of physics be true. This means everything, absolutely everything is a material. Causality is absolute. Without question, evolution demands the impossible potential of an immaterial god or any kind of miracle whatsoever. Evolution makes both free will and causality biologically evitable. We can’t even begin the discussion about your relationship with god. Most everyone agrees that evolution is a main proof of the impossibility of a god and the utter denial of any approach to the immaterial. If you wish to mystify religion beyond incomprehensibility you have no way of accessing anything about your religion. Your voice would have to remain mute because you would know absolutely nothing about your god and could not act or think.
I am absolutely worried about your actions and your thoughts. Wrong thoughts can be infectious and people act on thoughts. Your actions definitely impinge on me and my friends. Unless you promise never to act on your thoughts I am never safe from you or anyone. None of us live alone. It’s what social animal means. Our planet is a closed world and the circle of influence is getting smaller all of the time. Nonlinear dynamics shows that even small changes can have dramatic effect on the entire system. There is nothing innocent about your beliefs and actions.
Our viewpoints are glimpses into a real reality or when I reached for my shoe I wouldn’t be able to touch it. When religions cloud reality and critical thinking so badly that one thinks for example, that an immaterial thing can touch a material one then that is areal problem. Your view that evolution isn’t touched by religion means you wouldn’t give it the attention it needs, and the rest of us need, to allow us to survive. If you were a simple deist that would be excusable but then you could have no further comment. Rationalist proofs of god end nowhere and have for centuries. That’s why Dawkins and the New Atheists don’t even bother with them. It’s like talking about alchemy or ether.
While I appreciate that you aren’t a literalist you nevertheless use the bible to create solid definitions and beliefs about what god is, says, and demands of you and others. If you merely saw the bible as inspiration and didn’t believe it impacted the real world more than say a Harry Potter book I would have no problem with your faith. Clearly you do believe reading the bible gives you access to reality, The reality that god exists and for example that evolution must be wrong by definition even thought the bible doesn’t even have a word for evolution or adaptation. Especially because you would have to believe “made in god’s image”. The very god you said is so hard to reach and understand seems crystal clear in your understanding—at least that he exists and at least that you find the bible comprehensible and finally that he made man and in his image and on and on and on. I don’t even find it comprehensible. It’s just collated nonsense.
Yes, agreed, understanding god is difficult. It’s fucking impossible because he, she, or it is incomprehensible. But you still think you know enough about him to claim he exists, evolution is wrong, Jesus was a person, the son of god, and a bunch of other bullshit obvious as bullshit to the most casual observer unless you were raised in the religion. For the bible being a mystical journey with a lot of frail interpretation you insist on a lot of its certainty.
How would you know what Jesus knew? We can’t, nor can scholars, agree that Jesus even existed or that he had any real connection to a god. If you didn’t believe in some literalist points you wouldn’t claim you could know evolution is wrong, theologically or otherwise. Nor would you even know or believe that Jesus gave the sermon on the mount or whether he really said what he said. It’s just because you outline your desire to believe that Jesus promoted compassion that you select the “do unto others” cliché as being true versus say “I come to you bearing a sword.” In the one case you may claim to know it is an allegory for truth but in the other it is a literal admonition. All of your interpretations rest on the words in the book.
You can claim that the book isn’t god but you nevertheless rely on the book to define god(s), god’s will, and a bunch of other reality.
You wouldn’t have a clue about god without the book. It’s all about the book. There are no signs of god anywhere. Without someone making up the story and writing it down you would never know or think there was a god or Jesus or Peter. If you had been born 10,000 years ago you would know nothing about your god. The book defined your god for you. Have a great journey. But if you really were the innocent neighbor, you would keep me out of it, and keep your belief as your own hallucination rather than insisting I share it.
I resent having to learn the bible to defend atheism. My time would be better spent reading near any other book. I am not sure I even care about its cultural importance. But to be a well-rounded philosopher I have had to study it. To respond to people who said I can’t criticize it unless I have read it I have had to read it—and some of it in Latin and Greek, but I refuse to learn Hebrew! As far as I am concerned biblical scholars would better spend their time learning how to cook.
That was long Jim. Is Phil paying you by the word? Just kidding!
LOL. Yeah, just matching ctcss’s length. At some point in there I felt like my son, when young, pounding those wood pegs into the board. Whack, whack, whack. Sorry to be like a loud American in Europe. No, my writing is all volunteer. Donate at my web site! At some point my DW will say to hell with fun, get back to work. Right now this is depression therapy. Until then, enjoy! They say I need a platform to publish a book. Unless I’m cute like ZOMGitsCriss or have a great accent like Pat Condell I’m screwed.