It’s often said that the fastest way to turn Christians into atheists is to have them read the Bible cover to cover. The atrocities committed by God and his chosen people, the bizarre rituals, the vague prophecies, the blatant contradictions, the primitive morals, and the religious hysteria all make it seem like the Bible was written by violent, racist, sexist, intolerant, superstitious fanatics. I, myself, had my faith shaken many times while reading the Bible.
That’s why I was surprised to encounter a former atheist who become a Christian after reading the Bible. On my Google+ page he said, “It was because I picked up a Bible that I became a Christian.” I find this very strange. I understand Christians who start with the assumption that the Bible is divinely inspired then rationalize it (I was one of them), but I do not understand how an atheist could read the Bible objectively and honestly conclude that it was written by God.
If God is all-knowing and all-powerful and infinitely intelligent, his book should be the most amazing piece of literature in history. It should be so brilliant and so glorious that no human author could write anything that compares. Instead, the Bible appears to be nothing more than a bunch of ancient myths, ritual instructions, mediocre poems, strange legends, religious letters, and deluded ramblings that were cobbled together by Jewish and Roman men a long time ago.
So what would we expect to find in a book that was written by God (or “divinely inspired”)? Here are seven suggestions.
1. It would be well-organized.
The Bible is in chronological order and the poetry, prophecies, gospels, and letters are mostly grouped together. Other than that, it isn’t very well organized. The Bible is supposed to be God’s message to humanity, a collection of teachings and stories we can apply to our daily lives. So why is it so difficult to learn from it?
Think about your high school textbooks. You had a different book for each subject with different chapters for each topic and different sections for each subtopic. Textbooks are organized this way because it’s easier to learn that way. So why isn’t the Bible organized in a similar fashion?
There could be a book about God’s creation, a book about love and relationships, a book about parenting, a book about prayer, a book about spirituality, a book about managing churches, a book about morality, and so forth. You know, a well thought out user’s guide to life. Instead, Christians are forced to flip back and forth through thousands of pages, piecing together little bits of information here and there with the help of concordances. And that brings me to my next point.
2. It would be more specific.
Imagine how convenient it would be if one of the books of the Bible was called “Morality” and it had a different chapter for each area of morality. What if there were a chapter on murder that clearly describes all the various scenarios where killing is permitted (war, execution, self-defense, etc.)? Maybe a verse that says “Thou shalt not slay an unborn child” so there would be no doubts about whether abortion is murder. Or better yet, there could be a verse somewhere that says “Thou shalt not own another human as property.” Then we wouldn’t need thousands of apologists to explain how to interpret passages like Exodus 21:20-21.
To be fair, the Bible is very specific about some things: genealogies, descriptions of temples, how to carry out weird rituals, the many types of people who should be executed, and so forth. But when it comes to good, practical advice that we can apply to our daily lives, the Bible falls short.
3. It would be easy to understand.
Why is the Bible so confusing that it requires thousands of preachers backed by an army of theologians to explain it to us? If God wants his message to be understood by everyone, then even simple-minded people should be able to understand his book. As it is, experts in theology have been debating the exact meaning of many passages for centuries.
I can already hear some of you saying, “But if you read the Bible with an open heart, the Holy Spirit will make it clear to you.” Well that sounds great, but I have known many men of God who all claim to do that and who all have different interpretations. When I was a Christian I prayed for spiritual guidance before reading the Bible, yet I was still left frustrated and confused by many passages, especially those written by Old Testament prophets.
Revelation is another good example. I used to think I was too uneducated and spiritually immature to understand Revelation, then I realized no one understands it. Why would God include a book that is so bizarre his own followers can’t even make sense of it? All they can do is cherry pick the verses they like and shrug their shoulders at the rest.
4. It would be perfectly consistent.
What does an all-powerful writer need? An all-powerful editor, apparently. When God spoke through his ghost writers, one of his angels should have spoken up and said, “Hey, you might want to fix some of those contradictions.” I mean, come on, there are hundreds of them. Am I really supposed to believe this book was written by the same being that created all the billions of galaxies throughout the universe?
Take the gospels, for example. (By the way, why are there four of them? What sort of author tells the same story multiple times? Why isn’t there just one detailed story that includes every element from the four gospels?) Let’s focus on the resurrection story. This is considered by many to be one of the most important stories in the Bible, so how come the authors seem to disagree about how it happened?
- Matthew says Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb (28:1), an angel rolled away the stone and sat on it (28:2), and that Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (28:9).
- Mark says Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb (16:1), a young man was sitting inside (16:5), and that Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene (16:9).
- Luke says Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women went to the tomb (24:10), two men in shining garments were standing inside (24:4), and that Jesus first appeared to two of the disciples (24:15).
- John says Mary Magdalene went to the tomb (20:1), no one was there although later there were two angels in white siting inside (20:12), and that Jesus first appeared to Mary (20:14).
These are just a few of the problems with the resurrection story. It doesn’t sound like a true story told by God. It sounds like a made-up story told by men who couldn’t get their story straight.
5. It would have specific, verifiable prophecies.
If the Bible were divinely inspired, you would expect the prophecies to be specific and not subject to interpretation. “Wars and rumors of wars” is not a good prophecy.
How about something like, “In the third millennium, on the day after the celebration of our Lord’s birth, a great wave will rise from the ocean of India and swallow 230,000 lives.” Here I’m referring to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. In one simple sentence I mention the exact day, the nature of the disaster, and the number of people who die. A prophecy like this could not be fulfilled by people trying to make the prophecy come true, and it is too specific to be a lucky guess.
Granted, there are many specific prophecies in the Bible, but anything in the New Testament that fulfills a prophecy in the Old Testament doesn’t count. Why? Because the New Testament authors would have been able to read the Old Testament and either make their stories fit or manipulate events to make the prophecy come true, such as when Jesus laughably rode an ass and a colt at the same time (Matthew 21:2-7) because someone misunderstood the meaning of Zechariah 9:9 (it wasn’t literally referring two animals).
When you take those away, all you’re left with is a bunch of failed prophecies and multiple claims that Israel would be reestablished someday. Yes, in 1948, Israel was reestablished. So what? If I said, “the South will rise again,” and hundreds of years from now the Confederate States of America reformed, would that make me a prophet?
You know what would impress me? If one of God’s prophets had predicted the exact year that Israel would be reestablished. Why couldn’t God include the words “in 1948” somewhere? It would have been so easy.
6. It would contain knowledge that humans couldn’t have had.
Imagine if there were a Bible verse that said, “For the pieces that make up our Lord’s creation behave as both particles and waves, existing everywhere and nowhere.” It wouldn’t have made sense to people at the time, but millions of people today would recognize it as a description of quantum mechanics. Imagine how many fence-sitters would convert to Christianity after hearing about this amazing piece of scientific knowledge in an ancient religious book.
Here’s another: “For the sun is but a star among countless others, and the stars form a plate of light, and the plate spins through the vast emptiness with countless more.” This description of our galaxy and the billions of others would have seemed strange to people back then, but it would make perfect sense to us. Instead, the authors of the Bible don’t seem to have realized that the sun is just a star. In fact, they seemed to think the stars are nothing more than little lights in the sky that would fall to the earth in the last days (Revelation 6:13).
Here’s a really good one: “Thou shalt boil thy water lest the invisible creatures therein bring sickness upon your body.” Invisible creatures living in the water and making people sick? This would have sounded very odd to people in ancient times. But you know what? Not only would it impress modern day readers, it would have saved millions of lives. Why oh why didn’t Jesus warn people about germs?
7. It would have beautiful, heart-rending poetry and stories.
Think about it: If God is infinitely creative and intelligent, he should be capable of writing absolutely brilliant poems that remain unmatched to this day. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some great stuff in there. I particularly like Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, but these books pale in comparison to the works of T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and hundreds of other great poets.
The stories in the Bible aren’t very good, either. Granted, they’re supposed to be true stories so God wouldn’t have had much artistic license. But couldn’t he have been more selective about which stories he shared? For example, why do we need to know the story of the concubine who was gang raped and murdered?
In Judges 19:22-30, an old man takes in a travelling Levite. Later, a group of men who want to rape the traveler come to the old man’s house and beat on his door. The old man offers them his daughter and concubine instead, so the men take the concubine and rape her all night. The next morning the old man finds the concubine (who is still alive), chops her into twelve pieces, and sends them to the twelve tribes of Israel. The story ends with the words, “consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.”
What are we supposed to make of this horrible story? What’s the point? This is just one of the many strange and disgusting stories in the Bible. And people think the Bible was written by an omniscient, omnibenevolent god? Not likely.
Conclusion
If you’re a Christian, I don’t expect this post to change your mind. When a belief gets drilled into your head everyday for years, it can take years to get it out again. But can you at least have a little sympathy for us atheists? Can you see how the Bible seems like nothing more than a collection of writings by religious fanatics? You have no trouble dismissing the Koran or the Vedas or the Book of Shadows, and rightly so. But it is for the same reasons that we dismiss the Bible.
1 Corinthians 14:33 says, “God is not the author of confusion,” and yet the Bible is one of the most confusing books in all of literature. It is so confusing that there have been over 40,000 denominations of Christianity. If the Bible was written by God, then God is a terrible writer.
And the Bible wouldn’t need interpretation by pastors, priests and rabbis. It wouldn’t have those same people “teaching” the parts they like while ignoring the parts that don’t fit their interpretation.
They, in effect, tell their congregation to study “this” while ignoring “that”.
Well stated, Matt. To believe that the all-powerful creator of existence would choose to communicate in such an ineffective manner when there’s so much at stake for humanity is the height of absurdity.
I mean, the least he could have done was manifest a pencil and write his own autobiography…
So say you. There are those who will understand and practice gods word and sit throughout eternity with him. Then there are those who will argue about all the discrepancies, contradictions, how poorly it is written, interpret, reinterpret, found false religions (all the Protestants) and have the audacity to tell god how he should have communicate….they will burn in hell. 😉
Yes, says me. Because I understand that Yahweh is just a Canaanite war god adopted by the Hebrews to justify their conquests and atrocities. I understand that the Bible is just another civilization’s mythology that happened to become popular, largely due to the Roman empire establishing it as an official religion, and through conquest and forcing it upon captured civilizations.
Hell is another absurd idea. It doesn’t exist. Jews don’t believe in hell, because there’s no mention of it in the Torah. They believed in “sheol”, a morally neutral afterlife, not heaven and hell. They don’t believe in Satan because “satan” in the Torah is just a word used to refer to human adversaries. It was later personified into the embodiment of evil by Christians, and tied back to the serpent in the garden of Eden retroactively. Besides, there is no crime worthy of eternal torture, especially not simply choosing not to believe in ancient myths that aren’t supported by the facts.
wow… realy? there is just something seriously wrong with you.
Your whole basis for believing in this god is your “good” book, and you don’t have a problem with the fact that there are blatantly obvious inconsistencies with what is written in it… Or that it condones horrendous atrocities of murder, genocide, rape, pillaging, slavery, child abuse, and treatment of women as property.
Actually, you should be the one in fear of eternal damnation for subscribing to these immoral acts and considering them “good.”
Stop cherry picking and read the f**king thing, then get back to us and tell us how “good” it is.
The only good use for a bible is to burn if your stuck out in the cold… and trust me… if you think the bible is “good,” you are not only stuck in the cold, but lost.
It is a bit disingenuous for Matt or the editor to include a bible graphic that attributes the quote about god’s message to Carl Sagan. The quote actually comes from his science-fiction novel, “Contact.” So it can be attributed to a character in the novel, but it is not necessarily a statement that Sagan would utter apart from the novel. Authors often have their character say things that the author does not personally subscribe to. That said, I would nevertheless wager that Carl Sagan would be sympathetic to the quote as a personal statement.
Have you read Carl Sagan’s book, “The Demon-Haunted World”? Or his essay about the invisible dragon who lives in his garage? If you had, you would know that the quotation at the beginning of this essay is EXACTLY the kind of thing Carl Sagan would utter apart from his novel. Sagan was not a believer in a sentient god with a personality and moods who can be appeased, convinced or wheedled into granting wishes. He was simply an agnostic who was unconvinced by anything until he had compelling evidence.
I’ve read Carl Sagan. My point is about the accuracy of the attribution. Carl Sagan did not say it as himself. It’s a quote from his novel. The quote shown should be attributed to the novel. It doesn’t matter if it’s the “kind” of thing he would have said himself (or not).
Or maybe a clue about germs and bacteria or why someone falling into a fire is not possessed by demons.
No, the bible is NOT in chronological order, apart from the Old Testament. The Gospels are out of order. Mark is generally acknowledged to have been written first, with the other three working off of Mark and copying from him. Yet, the order they are published in has nothing to do with when they were written. Additionally, the Gospels are published at the beginning of the New Testament, yet, the Letters of Paul were written decades before the Gospels. In fact, only seven of those letters are considered truly written by the same author – the others are forgeries!
The old testament isn’t entirely in chronological order either. 1 and 2 Chronicles cover the same time periods and repeat (different versions) of many of the events of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. As far as when they are written, Job is likely older than Genesis, probably the oldest book in the Bible. The general direction of flow though is mostly chronological.
I was about to say the same thing. There are actually Christian apologist web pages, “explaining” why it’s *not* in chronological order. Otherwise, the seven points ring true to me. It was regular Bible reading, while I was a fundamentalist Christian, that brought me to doubt its veracity.
Point number seven has always bothered me. As a student and long time lover of literature and poetry, I just can’t agree that the bible is beautifully written and poetic and cannot understand why this lie has been parroted for so long. I have never actually heard anyone argue that it is well written as a text book for living, but obviously it is not. 🙂
I used to know a brilliantly intelligent man who was a devout Catholic at the same time as being a nuclear physicist (I know, right?). He once told me that he viewed the bible as a cleverly-crafted collection of metaphors and parables designed to get us to compare the bible stories with situations in our own lives so that we’d use our own minds to decide the best course of action. The trouble is that somewhere along the way, the stories were tweaked and changed and edited to reflect the narrow agenda of the editors. That’s when it all went sideways.
I’ll bet it lost a lot in translation.
People love to tout the modern English language version of the bible as this great piece of literature, not because they heard someone say it once so it must be true and it’s very validating to believe it’s true. Perhaps it is a much better in Hebrew. I believe there is a great deal of bias involved in assessing it, including from me. I find the writing style to be dull, repetitive and somewhat too choppy for prose but not quite convincing me it is a poem. However I also think the contents are utter crap and the few bits that offer up any actual useful morality (not morality based on God’s vanity, jealousy or misogyny) can be found in other religions, philosophies, cultures and writings. I think that people who believe the bible to contain truth, history, God’s word, or who think that somehow it is the first or best example of humankind attempting to tell such stories, have that confirmation bias of seeing beautiful literature because they were told it is. 😉
He wasn’t a devout Catholic then but only given his lip service to Catholicism, much like 99% of the christians in the world. After all, catholics people accept the bible as the word of god, anything else is blasphemous or possibly a protestant viewpoint (oops that’s redundancy).
You are absolutely wrong. You haven’t the first faint clue what you are talking about. You don’t get to open your festering yap and say one single word about this man. I knew him for 53 years and if I were standing in front of you, I’d punch you in the mouth for having the nerve to speak about him that way. He and I disagreed about the nature of the god he believed in, but I respected the fact that he at least used his brain to consider the possibilities. He was 10 times the human being that you can ever hope to become. He’s been dead for two months and he’s still a better thinker than you!
blah blah blah….if he didn’t believe and follow the tenants of the catholic church you are not a DEVOUT catholic, plain and simple. Devout catholics do not believe they are parables and metaphors, but the word of god….He might have been a great person….and you don’t need religion to be that.
Punch me in the mouth…great solution often used by the ignorant ,
BTW with a degree in philosophy, I can think!
AS a martial arts instructor I find your threat of violence laughable.
And I can open my YAP, that’s the nice thing about a democracy, all people can speak whether you agree or not.
Ah, yes… the imaginary philosophy degree and martial arts expertise. I remember you now. You’ve spun these lies before, usually when someone points out that you’re an idiot badly in need of a good rap in the snotlocker.
If you had the ability to think, you’d have seen that your ridiculous assertion about my friend’s religious belief has nothing to do with whether I am a Catholic, because I’m not.
You can’t agree because it does not fit what you have been taught is beautiful literature. Taught by those that were taught by those that were taught ……and thus a dogma is promulgated. Accept that the bible is beautiful and all you have been taught is merely a repetition of a falsehood. THINK beyond what you have been brainwashed into believing, do not accept education, it stifles learning.
Nonsense. But we can agree to disagree. Christianity stifles learning.
or maybe you’ve been drinking lies your whole life. Maybe you should get a real education instead of one on your church’s Facebook group.
bible is nothing but folk tales. People used to gather around the fire in the night and tell stories to kids and women. those have be collected and written into a book by some people..
Yeah, keep telling yourself that if you find delusions comforting.
When it comes to slavery being okay, or rape being not that bad (just pay the fee and you can marry her), etc., I was told as a Christian that God didn’t actually approve of these practices, that he was simply *allowing* them because it was common at the time. I’m sorry to say it took me years to realize how ridiculous that idea is. There are plenty of things that were common at the time, yet the book says he forbade them. If he didn’t like rape, he could have just said so. Same for slavery, polygamy, and other things on which humanism eventually improved.
Very well said. I think you and I have had very similar experiences in our transitions from believer to questioner. You came from fundamentalist Christianity, whereas I came from Roman Catholicism.
My journey was long and slow, beginning with doubts about what human beings were deciding for me versus what God really wants, proceeding through annoyance with inconsistencies within the scriptures and winding up with a profound change in my perception of the very nature of “the Almighty.”
I’ve come to think of “God” as not so much a sentient personality (subject to moods like anger and the desire for vengeance along with flattery and willingness to be cozened into granting wishes for humans) as merely the sum of the laws of nature. Gravity is God, thermodynamics is God, nuclear physics is God.
When I’m accused of denying the existence or importance of God because I believe in what science has taught me all these years, I say, “Look how complicated a cell is! Look at a Herbig-Haro object and learn what has happened to it and what it is still doing! Look at how many different systems are operating within a human being!”
Yes, my God is indeed an awesome God, but “he” is just not subject to human moods and doesn’t sit down to write books.
“I’ve come to think of “God” as not so much a sentient personality… [but] as merely the sum of the laws of nature”
I came to this point and rested there for a few years without further thought. But eventually I realized I had just redefined “God” to mean “things that are known to exist”. If I define God as “the universe” or “everything I experience”, then I’m just playing semantic games with myself and no longer believing in *God* as theists usually define it. It was then that I realized I was an atheist.
(Don’t get me wrong. This process took 25 years, and not all of it was consciously deliberated in my mind.)
I’m with you. If I tell a theist that I believe in God, their interpretation of my statement is that I believe in the existence of an old white man with a long flowing white beard who hangs around heaven barely dressed and looking angry. I no longer believe in that image, so theists will condemn me as “trying to take God away” from THEM. This has cost me some relationships with some people who can’t understand how I could possibly have strayed from the teachings of my childhood. They don’t understand that my ability to think and examine things developed along with my mind and body. I am no longer a child who needs fairy tales in order to understand the world around me.
It’s very hard to communicate to them that my Almighty is what happens when we shoot a rocket towards Pluto and ask it to take pictures and send them back to us, or how newborn babies can be depended on to tightly grasp anything put into their hands.
It may not be a guy I can pray to and ask for some particular outcome, but I’m more comforted by the predictability of science than the unpredictability of a volatile personality like Yahweh’s. If the old white guy with the beard is everything I have been told he is, then he can’t possibly exist in those terms. And… he’s kind of a jerk.
That may be your almighty, but then that has nothing to do with God. There is no predictability of science, science is merely the recording of nature in a humanly understandable manner. It records order in what some see as chaos, the order was always there….God made it so. When science begins to explain the universe and all that is, was and will be, it is only confirming gods wondrous plan and validating everything the biblethumping religious wingnuts already knew.
“There is no predictability of science”
What? Science makes countless predictions that can be verified over and over again.
People have always used god(s) to explain what science can’t, but then when science explains it, they just say, “it is only confirming gods wondrous plan.”
That is really childish. No matter what science discovers, you’ll just keep saying “god did it, god did it” without any evidence to back up your statement.
To paraphrase the perfectly odious Bill O’Reilly while he bloviated on the subject of the existence of a sentient god, “Facts go in, gibberish comes out—you can’t explain that.
You have utterly failed to understand my point. You are completely wrong.
No, those things are only manifestations of gods omniscience. The religion of science.
“merely” the sum of the laws of nature….you dare trivialize god and nature….blasphemy, you will burn in hell…..oh wait, already in online debates….what could be more hellish than that?
If you think science is a religion, then you don’t know what science is.
The Religion of Science is how some fundamentalist dismiss those the use real science to substantiate their arguments. ie a false religion.
Prediction vs Projection. Prediction ie psychics….make predictions
Scientist using scientific principles can examine and then theorize the undiscovered (Particle Physicists: there is something that must existence but has not been detected – c1960 and then in c2012 ….. Higgs Boson) not a prediction but a projection of knowledge
I guess my sarcasm is undetected sometimes. Read any defense of religious wingnuts (or religious nut if you prefer) tongue in cheek.
Who in the name of Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ do you think you are to threaten me with burning in your imaginary hell? How do you plan to enforce your threat?
Do you think your cranky little tantrum-throwing toddler of a god CAN BE trivialized? By me or anyone else? If so, then he’s not the all-powerful and benevolent deity you claim. How do you respond to that?
I’m pretty sure that you meant “omnipotence” and not the ridiculously misused “omniscience.” They really do mean different things.
How embarrassingly imbecile. Maybe get the first whiff of an education in a subject before holding forth on it? There is quite a literature on the bible you may have guessed. Your knowledge of it is shockingly non-evident.
Specifically, what to you object to in the article? Specifically.
Hard to be specific really – the whole approach assumes a view of God and inspiration that is extraordinarily fundamentalist and literal
Yes, this article is aimed about fundamentalists who believe every word of the Bible was inspired by God.
It completely ignores the actual grown up discourse.
“[G]rown up discourse” about what? As Southern Skeptic has said again and again, it’s not a debate. It’s a question, asked of the supporters of the view that a deity wrote or “inspired” the authors of the bible—If a God who is omniscient and omnipotent was behind the writing of the bible, why wouldn’t s/he have done a better job?
You keep complaining that those who are disagreeing with you about this aren’t being “grown up” enough for you. I think you are having the wrong argument… or discourse.
There are so many diverse ways to think of inspiration. Black and white thinking is not a very helpful way to view the world. A “better job” sounds insane to me – like kindergarten level of reading literature. Yes, they are not grown up, because they can’t be bothered to engage with the scholarly literature.
Jesus F. Christ, it’s like herding cats! You clearly don’t understand the article so I’m done trying to help you learn what these words mean. Go ahead and plod along, satisfied with something as simplistically stupid as,”God said, I believe it, that settles it.”
Personally, I’m inclined to agree with Galileo. “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” The god whom I was told created me must surely expect more of such a mind as those given to humans than to be satisfied when we stoutly refuse to put them to effective use!
Ridiculous pettifoggery like pretending to be concerned with the loftiness of the debate instead of the topic itself is exhausting and nobody is impressed with you when you do it. It’s only annoying. You don’t know shit about the “scholarly literature” other than to mention that there is some somewhere and whine that nobody is wailing about it as loudly as you are! You clearly can’t name any of it or quote from any of it or you would have before now. But man, oh man, you sure remember the phrase, “scholarly literature! scholarly literature!” and like to swing it around.
Yeah, nuance is “pettifoggery” – this is why you are unable to grasp arguments that go beyond the kindergarten level of this simplistic nonsense, and see the world in convenient blacks and whites. But reality is in colour. The ridiculousness is in trying to foist crazy false dichotomies on the rest of us. Can you please at least try to see my point? That to reduce everything to the fundamentalist level (religious/atheist) is to completely miss reality. That’s what happens when you can’t be bothered to engage with scholarly literature.
And your crazy assertion that I know nothing about the scholarly lit is just embarrassing for yourself. Ask yourself how the heck you can claim such silliness. I “swing it around” because it matters – but if you’d prefer to live in la-la land pretending there are only two possible views of inspiration, enjoy your delusion.
If you agree with Galileo, perhaps actually start using your reason instead of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “lalalalalala”
Quote me some scholarly literature, why don’t you? Use some scholarly literature to refute ANYTHING from the article or my discussion with you. NAME some scholarly literature. Bring some of the scholarly literature to bear in support of your assertions that any of us here are wrong about the authorship of what is now called the bible.
I dare you to convince me of anything using your godalmighty scholarly literature. Let’s make that a double-dog dare since you accuse me of being “banal,” “babyish,” and “kindergarten level.” In that dare, I also challenge you to answer ANY of the questions Southern Skeptic or I have asked you. You cannot be specific about what you object to in the article, nor can you explain what you imagine to be a “false dichotomy.” You refuse to understand that the article is addressed to fundamentalists who believe god wrote the bible. You only whine about who the article is NOT addressed to. I think we can all agree, citing our own schoolyard experiences, that a double-dog dare requires you to admit that you are a big, silly doodoo-head if you can’t clarify any of this. It also requires you to answer the question, “Why are you hitting yourself?”
You complain about Southern Skeptic’s “anthropomorphic view” of god. Isn’t that what the bible is full of? God is portrayed as a personality with a bunch of names, Yahweh, Jehovah, Yeshua, Jesus, and very human set of personality flaws. S/He has been vindictive, petulant, cranky, destructive, easily angered by crap the rest of us blow off daily with a casual, “That’s life,” or ” Whaddya gonna do?” S/He is weak-willed, moody, untrustworthy, jealous, high-maintenance, wrathful and a host of other sins we mere humans are supposed to rise above if we hope to avoid being drowned by a 40-day-40-night flood or cast into the fiery pits of perdition. This god must be constantly appeased by the humans. We must throw animals, dead and alive, onto altars and burn them so god’s little nostrils will be happy. We are told to sing and dance and sell everything we own so god will think us worthy. Some of us are asked to kill our children (see Abraham and Isaac) as a sacrifice or in Abraham’s case, a sick practical joke. More perversely, we are asked to just be okay with it when something else kills our children, like a disease or injury, because after all it’s god’s will. We are also allegedly made in his/her image. So your anthropomorphism complaint really doesn’t hold much water.
What else ya got?
Wow, it’s hard to know where to start, when we’re faced with thousands of years of a whole plethora of conceptions of inspiration. It’s like when a climate denier asks for proof texts when the whole field of climatology points towards climate change. Or when a creationist wants chapter and verse to prove evolution, when it emerges from the entirety of biology.
So, all I can do is pluck out a few recent treatments of concepts of divine inspiration in biblical writing: Bruce Vawter, Biblical Inspiration (London: Westminster, 1972). David Law, Inspiration (London: Continuum, 2001), Richard Briggs, Reading the bible wisely (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade, 2011) (this latter a good introductory text).
These sources refute the basic stance of the article, in which there is a false dichotomy (not “imagined”) – either God wrote the book (and is a bad author etc etc), or it’s not inspired at all and there is nothing divine in the world. These books discuss many other ways of thinking about divine inspiration. They get beyond the fundamentalist literalism of “new atheism” and its Christian counterpart.
All those aspects you mentioned that are offensive are only what one would expect to find in ancient literature, reflecting its cultural setting. Surprise surprise. Guess what – there are many other ways to conceptualise ultimate reality. It’s not a black and white world.
You have miserably failed the double-dog dare. Giving me names of two writers and cribbing from their publisher’s website does not qualify as using their arguments to support your position.
You lose.
Nonsense – these are serious scholarly works – what’s your issue with them? My position is that fundamentalism, whether atheist or religious, is a very limited view of the world.
Well, my challenge to you was to USE the scholarly literature you insist nobody else knows about but you to argue in support of your views and against mine. You failed to do that. You only cut and pasted a couple of search results.So you lose.
But you are just nanometers away from the entire point of the article! Congratulations!
The article (if I may bore you by pounding the point yet again) is addressed to the fundamentalists’ view of the authorship of the bible. (Honestly, why can’t you absorb that?) And their view is wrong. Dontcha wanna know why? OK, I’ll tell you. BECAUSE FUNDAMENTALISM IS A VERY LIMITED VIEW OF THE WORLD!!!
Thank you for finally agreeing with me. Now, good-bye. I’m done with you.
Well, if you’re after prooftexts, you probably are new to the humanities (and especially if you need to say “you lose” – um, do you understand the point at all?).
Yes, your fundamentalism is a very limited view of the world. It’s a shame really.
Now are you going to bother to engage with the lit, or just make snide nonsensical mis-hits? Why do you keep making things up?
Another nice view of divine inspiration is offered by the composer John Tavener:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6omOISKnWt0
I have to disagree somewhat. black and white doesn’t always work, but neither does grey (or color) all the time.
Scholarly lit: verbal masturbation ?????
Verbal masturbation? Yeah right – off to the creationists and climate deniers with you then.
If its a question then you get an answer, if you disagree with the answer and give an alternative, it is now a debate.
Question: is the bible the word of God
Answer: Yes
Question asked and answered. Of course the answer is 100% wrong.
The real problem is all these ‘new age’ thinkers that believe they have the explanations. Confusion from the mouths of babes, rehashing centuries old arguments with a new twist….such ignorant fools Watch Ancient Aliens, it explains everything, hahahahahahahahahahahahaha time for my meds.
But that’s the whole point. Those who call themselves evangelical or fundamentalist Christians argue that the bible was literally, actually, physically written by God. As if God sat down to a big desk in the sky, opened up his celestial inkwell, dipped in his heavenly pen and began writing, in the quaint Jacobean English of the early 17th century, “In the beginning…”
Then when called on the absurdity of such a scenario, they sputter that, well, it was INSPIRED by God! Translation: Some schizophrenic who had “visions” was high-functioning enough to sound convincing when he told people about them, so they dutifully wrote down what the crazy person said and called him a prophet instead of a nut. (You ever read Revelations? It sounds like every schizophrenic I ever met and I used to work in an inner-city independently-owned pharmacy that supplied board-and-care homes and halfway houses!) Did God press the button on his heavenly intercom and say, “Isaiah, come here please, and bring your steno pad”?
Yes, there is plenty of scholarly literature regarding the bible. People have been writing about it, translating it, interpreting it and calling themselves the only real authority on it for 5000 years. There have been enough words written ABOUT the bible to fill millions of bibles.
The author’s point is that such an important and influential tome should be clearer on historical events, what is expected of believers and how to proceed in the future if it was actually written (or dictated) by such an all-powerful being as the God we are asked to believe in. It shouldn’t require millions of scholars writing and translating and interpreting it. It should stand alone as the ONLY book about God and how to approach him/her. Since it does not, then we can conclude that it was NOT written by God. It was written by people with their own agendas and ideas.
Well, don’t you think it’s a good idea to get to a more sophisticated level of engagement than that? To expect what an ancient book “should” be like (and such simplistic notions of how it “should” be the only book etc), and such binary thinking as “God didn’t write it/God did write it” seems rather banal, babyish and silly to me, and shows great unfamiliarity with the scholarly lit.
Do you believe the creator of the universe is behind this book or not? If so, then explain why it’s a complete and total mess. Why wouldn’t god do a better job guiding the men who wrote it? All this talk about a scholar perspective is just a lame excuse. If god wanted to communicate with us (not just scholars, but ordinary men), then he would have made sure his book turned out better.
You have a very anthromorphic view of the divine it seems. Could you try, just try, to think above the level of the most literal, simple constructions? Please.
I’m afraid I can’t respond until I know where you’re coming from. Tell me, what exactly do you think the Bible is?
A disparate collection of writings from many different experiences and perspectives, collected together by diverse communities of faith for diverse purposes.
Okay, well as I said before, this article is aimed at fundamentalist Christians who believe the Bible is the literal word of God, so I’m not sure what the problem is.
The problem is the false dichotomy. There are so many other ways to think about inspiration, for example.
I think its more for one purpose, not diverse. To control the sheeples.
The reason it’s a “mess” as you say is because it is the result of centuries of diverse people writing about many different things – it’s a big collection of texts. If Mozart’s music is inspired, why doesn’t it get played on heavenly harps? That question makes as much sense to me as your question.
Interesting about Mozart’s music. Composers write music with all the notations required, and then some “artist” comes along, does their version and it sounds like shit. Should Mozart have written it better so people didn’t mess it up. aaaahhhh humans, screw up everything they touch. Thank this alleged god, I am an alien and just visiting this planet.
Why it is a mess is because mere humans changed and adapted it to suit their needs instead of gods. As an ordinary man, god speaks to me regularly, unfortunately my psychiatrist doesn’t believe me.
Or you can say, millions of people want their 15 minutes of fame so write a bunch of drivel proving/disproving the bible and have arguments ad nauseum via the internet. It’s not gods fault nor the bibles that humans can’t understand and accept the word of god and have to hash it to death.
It’s not my fault that you are too simple-minded to be capable of embracing complex thought about something as important as the nature of the entire universe. How in the world can you expect to stand before your god and explain to her why you refused to use your mind?
Does calling people simple minded or ignorant make you feel better or superior? Do you have self-esteem issues?
I will never stand before god and explain anything to him, god is the imaginary being, the crutch of the simple.
I don’t have to make myself feel better than or superior to you. I already am. I’m on this article because I’m interested in the discussion. You are just here to throw stupid bombs and pretend to be involved in discussing the topic at hand.
In Internet circles, you are called a troll. To my mind, you are simply a childish twit, no more intellectually interesting than a fallen stick to be kicked off the sidewalk by people going their way.
But we did get all of life boiled down to ten simple commandments directly written in stone by God for us simpletons. I think that the progression of Christianity from the old testament to the new testament to modern times (We don’t have an official New Testament Vol. 2, but with 40k disagreements it is about time for another one – essentially individual denominations have written their own.) is very representative of changes in social culture. Early Christianity embraced pagan rituals and holidays probably in order to advance the religion. Bringing people together and uniting them is generally a positive thing and I think early on that may have had a positive effect. The problem is that Christianity also marginalizes and ostricizes some.
As a humanist I think empathy is the greatest common denominator and I think it is empathy that should be championed and pressed in order to advance other positive goals. Religion is outdated, ancient, and decrepit and it only serves to divide us at this time.
And thus a new new-age religion is born The divine church of the empathists.
Okay, got to stop you here… first, there are 613 commandments (according to the Toraht), 19 in Exodus, and many others listed in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In either case, not 10…
Second, they make no sense, at least not from the perspective of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, divine being bestowing words of wisdom and direction to his faithful followers. I mean “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk” realy? that’s important enough to give your people as a commandment? Someone with an IQ of 40 could do better than that.
As Humanists, we already know how to properly treat others, but if we were going to have 10 things to live by as a social set of moral guidelines, they would look something like what is posted at http://americanhumanist.org:
1) Thou shalt strive to promote the greater good of humanity before all selfish desires.
2) Thou shalt be curious, for asking questions is the only way to find answers.
3) Harm to your fellow human is harm to humanity. Therefore, thou shalt not kill, rape, rob, or otherwise victimize anyone.
4) Thou shall treat all humans as equals, regardless of race, gender, age, creed, identity, orientation, physical ability, or status.
5) Thou shalt use reason as your guide. Science, knowledge, observation, and rational analysis are the best ways to determine any course of action.
6) Thou shalt not force your beliefs onto others, nor insist that yours be the only and correct way to live happily.
7) If thou dost govern, thou shalt govern with reason, not with superstition. Religion should have no place in any government which represents all people and beliefs.
8) Thou shalt act for the betterment of your fellow humans, and be, whenever possible, altruistic in your deeds.
9) Thou shalt be good to the Earth and its bounties, for without it, humankind is lost.
10) Thou shalt impart thy knowledge and wisdom gained in your lifetime to the next generation, so that with each passing century, humanity will grow wiser and more humane.
OR from http://time.com/3582354/heres-a-secular-alternative-to-the-ten-commandments
1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence. (Jeremy Jimenez)
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true. (Matthew Main)
3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world. (Isaiah Jackson)
4. Every person has the right to control of their body. (Chris Lager)
5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life. (John Roso)
6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them. (Jamie Andrews)
7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective. (Carol Fly)
8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations. (Michael Marr)
9. There is no one right way to live. (Eli Chisholm)
10. Leave the world a better place than you found it. (Maury McCoy)
The obvious inference is that the Bible is the literature of an Iron Age people. Interesting, sometimes even very beautiful and moving, but not the one true Word of the Creator of the Universe. And, increasingly, it seems that the anthropomorphic God described in it is not, in fact, that, and does not, in fact exist. For me, this is not a hard nut to swallow, as, quite the opposite, even as a young child, the story of a Sky God that creates us in order to punish us never made any sense and did not have even a whiff of “ring of truth.” I just never could buy it. But to those who do and did, I say, with Rodney King, “Can’t we just get along?”
And you know this god does not exist because……you believe so? Since you say “in fact” repeatedly, perhaps you are privy to some secret knowledge. Because something does not make sense or have a whiff of truth, as a child, is irrelevant. The bible is written in the manner it is to confuse the non-believers, who will burn in hell for eternity…..blah blah blah.
Nice post. This website does an excellent job of categorizing the good and mostly bad things in this crazy book. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
God should of used more pictures:
Hi Matt, I saw this article as it was adapted for Patheos.com and I made a video response to it. I’m giving you the link here and would love to hear or read your thoughts on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdZdEReV3kQ
Nice echo chamber in the comments here. LOL Shakespeare is crap too–because I can’t understand it. Brilliant deductions all around–keep up the good work.