Friendly outgoing eclectic agnostic seeks one gram of soul
Ever wondered what would happen if Satan took on Noah? Well wonder no longer - Noah wins! (at least, he does when I play as Satan, and I’m more worried about getting a screenshot than winning - but don’t worry, Satan kicked Eve’s arse).
Check out the game, if you’ve got some time to kill (or, need to procrastinate) - it’s called Bible Fight.
If you read my essay Reconciling Darwinian Natural Selection with Christian Theology (and you did, didn’t you?) You’d know that I think it’s entirely possible to believe in both Darwinian evolution, and the Christian God (not that I necessarily do, but the possibility isn’t entirely ruled out). There are different ways of accepting evolution and Christian theology, of course, and I’m sure even Christians who have reconciled their faith with evolution differ on the specifics, as I outlined by the two views expressed by Moore and Gray:
“Moore separated [special creation and evolutionist theories] by allowing them both to act in their own time periods. For Moore, special creation was the mode for primary creation, while evolution was the method by which species continued to diversify. Gray, on the other hand, separated them by purpose. While evolution was the guiding process by which species were created, God was still the driving force behind it.”1
One group that may not be convinced by either of these options, however, are those who believe that the bible is to be taken literally, and is infallible. Putting aside, for the moment, my views on this position as a whole, this raises another important question:
If the words in the bible are the true word of God, then which version of the words do we take as the ultimate truth?
As you are probably aware, the bible as we know it today didn’t come down written on stone tablets like the 10 commandments supposedly did - it was written by many different authors, over many years. Even worse, we don’t actually have many of these original writings. We have copies of copies of copies of copies, with god knows (irony intended) how many errors. Then, of course, we have the issues of translation. It’s one thing to say that the original scriptures were the infallible word of God, but that each and every version of the bible (however different) is also God’s infallible word?
Then, of course, there’s the issue of contradictions within the bible itself. If we assume these translations are trustworthy, how to we know which bits to follow when there are definite contradictions? “The Atheist’s Wager”2 examines one aspect of the problem noting that Jews and Christians seem to have very different ideas on what God actually thinks about homosexuality based on giving authority to certain words in the bible over others - how do we know which ones are really important?3 When is the last time you heard a Christian or Jew saying “I’m sorry, I can’t eat shrimp or oysters, the bible clearly states ‘all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales … you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat’”4 Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps people like this do actually exist - anyone met any? Of course, the seafood issue isn’t the only one - have a look at Skeptics Annotated Bible for just some of the “absurdities” that can be found within the word of God.
A book I’ve been reading recently5 goes much into much more detail about the problems with the issues associated with translation and access to the original biblical writings. So, even if we wanted to take the bible at its literal word, there seems to be no hope of doing this without significant problems in verification of what those words actually are.
“Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain texts as authoritative scripture… , however, we don’t actually have these authoritative texts… we can’t interpret the words of the New Testament if we don’t know what the words were.”6
We need to interpret the bible if it’s to have any real meaning. And in doing so, there will obviously be different interpretations. How can we know which interpretation is correct? Simply, we can’t - that’s why the bible should not be treated as a 100% factual account of history or the nature of god. It is definitely a valuable text, which has historical and spiritual significance, but I fail to see how it can logically be accepted as “gospel”.
Here are some of the sites I’ve been looking at recently, that I wanted to share:
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman
Atheist Manifesto by Michel Onfray
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