Email From the Edge.
I wonder how much they are asking?
I get email. Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone does so there’s nothing usual in that, but every so often, my email gets well… interesting. Yeah, interesting, that’s the word. Most times, it’s from people who agree whole heartedly with what I have to say. Sometimes, it’s someone who disagrees even more passionately, and then every now and then I’m not really sure what the writer believes but the mere fact that he “believes” comes through strongly, and his creative use of ALLCAPS, incoherent platitudes and white space usually offers something amusing. But every so often it’s completely different. Is this one of those different ones? Well… I’ll let you judge. This letter was in my inbox last weekend. I left the document completely unedited save for leaving out the last name.
Name: Lee *********
hey! im a 16 year old guy trying to figure out the meaning of life….i really just want to make my own life and have no one else control it….i used to be super SUPER relgious and now im still having probelms with it….i cant find any error in the Bible i do know alot about it and every contradiction out of the some 500 in there has an intepration that makes total sense
i want to be an atheist because i want control of my own life…all my desires and my own brain
ive been a conservative CHristian up to this point but now i just dont know
i tried looking into evolution but there is so many wholes as there is in everything else
im starting not to care about religious boundaries anymore i really just want to be a humanist and live the life that makes me happy
problem is that good ole Bible nothing has been proven wrong in it(from my opinion)
i dream of a life like yours
please give some advice if you dont mind
sorry i dont type correctly haha but i would love a free thinkers insight
i just dont want to live for nothing
Hmm. I read it and alarms began to blare through my head. Part of me, a large part, screamed that this must be a set up. People, particularly Christians on the edge losing their faith, simply don’t think like this. And if I’m wrong and some actually do, I’d bet much that they don’t talk like this. What this echoes most strongly is the Fundamentalist viewpoint of why people become atheists. This isn’t some boy on the verge of reason. It’s an Evangelical interpretation of what they think that someone who throws away their faith must go through.
Allow me to paraphrase what the cynic in me is hearing. ”I want to have the life of a freethinker, to decide what’s right or wrong on my own, to be a selfish master of my own fate, Alas, the Bible just keeps proving accurate no matter how many times I have tried to prove it otherwise. In the face of all this evidence proving Christianity true, what’s a budding freethinker to do?”
I feel this is an accurate interpretation of what’s happening here. In fact, I’d bet on it, but if I close my eyes and assume it’s true — a feat I am becoming quite adept at with this study — what should I tell 16 year-old Lee? What insight does one free thinker have to offer another budding but likely fictional freethinker?
First, read what we have written so far. I have tried to do my best to point out the Biblical absurdities and the commenters here have been amazing at pointing out all that I have missed. As a team, we have nailed the Christian God thoroughly and will continue to do so for many years to come. I didn’t realized what entertainment value the Bible had.
Second, Lee, comes the natural counter to this idea “i cant find any error in the Bible i do know alot about it and every contradiction out of the some 500 in there has an intepration that makes total sense.” This glossing over the vast number of idiosyncrasies is done using several techniques. The first is usually placed under the concept of hermeneutics. Thank you to Mr. Hubbo for introducing that word into my vocabulary. I knew the definition long before I knew what it was called. Hermeneutics is a concept I have argued against in these posts and in running battles in the comments, and I will continue to fight as my last breath leaves my body. Hopefully not soon with some Christian pitchfork stuck through my chest as they’re burning down my house. What? You people don’t wake up in the dead of night screaming about horses of cross bearing psychopaths roaming the streets? Um… Yeah, me neither…
Anyway, let’s do with some definitions first. Hermeneutics, in regard to Biblical interpretation, is taking the Bible as a whole and not as a collection of parts. On the surface, this sounds like a fine idea, and overall, I would support viewing any human document hermeneutically, but when it comes to how the Biblical literalist uses it, I must make an exception. Their work in this area is simple apologetics, a defending of a position already taken using whatever sleight of hand one can use. When a literalist finds a contradiction or anything that makes them feel uncomfortable such as God slaughtering thousands of Egyptian children or destroying a civilization for becoming too great and threatening his own power, he or she only needs to pick through that vast repository of phrases to find one that tempers it or counters it or allows them to ignore it completely. Bingo! Contradiction alleviated.
This is what allows the fundamentalist to condemn homosexuality with vigor but ignore many of the other verses in the same chapter. You just get to pick and choose what you want to hear and ignore the rest. For example, “He who lies with an animal shall surely be put to death,” is followed soon after by “If you lend money to my people, the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you are not to charge him interest.” How come we never hear about that anymore. It was big in the middle ages but not now. With all the raging homophobes screaming from every pulpit about the dangers of homosexuality, someone has to explain to me why aren’t banks being burnt to the ground. We have Christians lending money at interest all the time. But of course, this lack of economic freedom would go against what we want to believe so we just ignore it. Homosexuality outlawed. Banking good. See how easy that was?
This same verse condemning gays is preceded by this little gem. “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken for he is his property.” Beating slaves to death is fine as long as you don’t do it too quickly. Yeah… Now this one was big prior to the civil war but isn’t used much today. Why? Is morality relative? These are just two of thousands of instances of God either being a bastard or out right contradicting his own teachings.
The reason that an advanced use of hermeneutics is so useful in plastering over the vast gaps in sheer Biblical decency is that it allows anyone to pick and choose the parts that they want to follow and ignore that parts they would rather forget. If you start with the firm conviction that God is perfect and the Bible is inerrant combined with your own preconceived notions, it is a simple matter to come up with an interpretation to suit what you already “know” is true. You don’t change yourself as much as you change the Bible to suit you. In the brilliant words of George Bernard Shaw, ”No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.” (Thank you to Daz for that.)
Hermeneutics is often accompanied by the whole “That was the old covenant. Jesus sacrifice brought a new covenant to us.” So God changed the covenant from a harsher on to a nicer one? Why? Did the perfect God make a mistake with all the evil he did with the first one? And if so why do we still pick and choose only the parts of the Old Testament that we want to follow and not the whole thing? Who chooses those parts? Why do we swear by one verse and ignore the whole next page?
These two Biblical polishing techniques are then followed with the only available option to Christians when confronted with the idea of a wicked God: they make excuses for him. He killed all the children of Sodom and Gomorrah and Egypt because the parents were evil (evil here simply means not following God’s arbitrary commands) and therefore the children would be evil. This has been pointed out on more that one occasion that this is why God punishes to the third and fourth generation. God punishes children for the sins of their parents. But ask yourself Lee, if we followed the same technique and butchered the children of our enemies on purpose, would we be doing the right thing or the wrong? If we purposefully tortured and killed children in our wars and conflicts would we be honorable or despicable? WWJD? Isn’t this the ideal Christians strive for? But alter it slightly and make it “What would Jehovah do?” Should we be butchering the Iraqi children as we speak? Should we take the babies of criminals and butcher them on the court house steps all in the name of justice? No? Are we not following his example? Why can God do anything he wants and name it good simply because he’s the one who did it? Might doesn’t make right, yet here he is committing genocide and his apologists smile and tell me about perfect justice and perfect love and how those flawless concepts necessitate genocide. Perfect justice involving the slaughter of innocents? Perfect love? Perfect bullshit!
And ask yourself this, Lee, if the Bible is so consistent, why are there so many different interpretations of it. Why are there so many Protestant sects in the United States and around the world — 30,000 by one estimate — that have a radically different outlook on what that book really says? Why has the interpretation of this book changed dramatically through history? Every sect whether present or historic uses a different approach to hermeneutics to get that book to say what ever they want it to say. Then they claim to be one of the few groups of people on the planet who really knows the truth and then often try to convince all the other people of the validity of their claim… Usually at the point of a sword, This infallible book has been the inspiration for the crusades, the inquisition, the conquest of other lands and vast religious wars that have left entire regions decimated. The Bible was used extensively to justify both sides of the American civil war or for that matter, most any civil wars. How can so many people get so many different meanings out of a single book that is supposedly perfect? And why do those meanings usually reflect what the people really want to do anyway?
Think about it Lee. It’s because of those very contradictions. It’s because of those flaws. Those terrible differences in tone and decency have given people all the tools they need to give divine justification to whatever the hell they desire. Even a brief but honest reading of history of the western world demonstrates the truth of these statements. The cross has been at the forefront of atrocity after atrocity. God strides hand in hand with every tyrant for every despicable and depraved act. Virtually every call to war, genocide and massacre that the western world has been responsible for has held the cross high and asked for their God’s blessing while crushing any resistance underfoot.
So, Lee, I ask you to do one thing. Read the Bible, but not as they, the preachers and bishops ask you to. Don’t be praying for “God’s” guidance while you read. Don’t make excuses for the evil contained there in. Read it with an open mind. Or even better, read it how you would read the Koran, that is looking for the brutality and evil. Read it how you would read the nonsense in the book of Mormon. Then ask yourself if the behavior exhibited by your God is rational and decent. Ask yourself that if any human ruler emulated this behavior and actions that you would think as highly of him as of your God. Or would we be going to war just to stop him?
Then ask yourself this, Lee: what evidence is there for a God aside from the Bible, a book that shows it’s inadequacies with every page?
And Lee? We don’t live for nothing. We live for what we choose: our wives, our children, our friends and our life. Life is too beautiful to be wasted following what someone else says is God’s will. Free thinkers think! First! Foremost! Primarily!
This might seem snobbish, but I’d say anyone over the age of 8 who can display such a huge lack of understanding of grammar, spelling and punctuation probably followed about three lines out of your whole (or is that ‘hole’?) piece.
Mind you, your paraphrase was just about exactly what I was making mental notes to post, as I read the Grammatical Masterpiece. I think either you’re being spoofed or someone’s trying to trap you into ‘coercing a mere child away from God’, so they can shout from the rooftops what an evil bastard you are. Or maybe I need to cut down on the caffeine…
Or… Possibly both Daz. But then what would be life’s point. I hate to admit this but alcohol and caffiene, in moderation, of course, ahem… have such a lubricating effect. Life without them would be… Sigh…. Difficult. And sad!
Yeah, I got the same idea. I made sure I watch my metaphors so as not to be threatened with inappropriate behavior.
All this seems so inconsequential after Japan. What a mess. I can’t wait to see the bs the fundamentalist come up with this time. I can just imagine.
Well I’m sure you have seen but PZ Myers has a wonderful selection to start you off on the fundamentalist bs coming up:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2011/03/i_hope_these_people_arent_your/GodBlessAmerica.php
Wow Muppet, that’s just about the most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen. “Apparently God hasn’t forgotten about Pearl Harbor either”, seriously? What kind of horrific hateful god do these people worship?
Anyone else having problems connecting to Pharyngula? I’ve been getting server time-out messages for nearly a day, now.
Okay, I almost posted this on Pharyngula, then realised that if anyone’s having the same troubles I had, it’ll do them no good…
Pharyngula, or scienceblogs, are suffering a DDoS attack, and their hosts have blocked several ranges of IPs. If you’re unlucky enough to be one of those being blocked as a result, read on:
I believe I’m right in saying that if you have a modem connection, just disconnecting, leaving it a few minutes and reconnecting should get you a new IP.
For others (or for all if the above doesn’t work), try installing the free version of Mask My Ip. It slows the connection down something awful, but it’s easy to turn on and off, so you can just use it while visiting Pharyngula.
Hope that helps.
Muppett– two seconds was enough of that. I had to come back over here to remind myself that there are plenty of truly decent Americans (please let there be more of you guys than those guys… plaintively)….
My red flag came up when I read how he said “i want to be an atheist because i want control of my own life…all my desires and my own brain”. Most of the atheist I know didn’t want to be an atheist but were literally forced into it because of their studies. I know I didn’t set out to be an atheist but over the past few years it just happened even without major study of religions but a study of people within religion.
Yeah Baconsbud, the entire thing reads false. This is the same general idea that I hear from the pulpits about how selfish people just want give up God and control their own life. Ignorant.
PS how did you get that delicious sounding nickname. Do tell
My dogs name is Bacon and I am his bud when he lets me be otherwise I am just suppose to feed water and take him for walks. LOL
I suspect that Lee was simply hoping for a “meaningful dialogue” with you, with the intention of gradually converting you to Christianity.
“Surely not!” you cry.
The bit that tickled my funny bone most was the way he “tried looking into evolution” as if it was a spiritual path. Dead giveaway. lol
If he cannot acknowledge any errors or contradictions in the Bible but finds the ToE full of “wholes”, then I’d say you have a fundie Christian on your hands who thinks he’s laid a clever trap. For what, I don’t know.
Hello! Sounds like a set-up. If not, aside from learning to spell correctly, this boy needs to learn critical thinking and reading skills.
There were several things that finally clicked for me: Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same god but the Jews had him first…therefore Judaism (sp?) is the mother religion and the other 2 stole their god and made him their own. Also, Jesus was supposed to be a good Jewish rabbi yet he changes the laws given to Moses. This is a big no-no in the Jewish religion so Jesus was either a good rabbi whose message was twisted (we don’t know) or he was an enterprising man with an eye on being king. Plus, I believe it is one of Moses’ laws that Jews should never worship the dead like the pagans. Jesus is dead. “But he rose from the grave” you say? I can almost, not quite, guarantee you that somebody behind the scenes knew it would be a bad thing to worship the dead Jesus considering how popular he was and moved his remains. That’s just good business sense. “But he came back” yeah, no..not so much. Remember Jesus told his disciples that some would not taste death before the kingdom was restored? The apostles died. The early Christians had to come up with a plausible story to keep their members. Read books about Christian history, real books from authors who study biblical history from an intellectual (and anthropological?) standpoint. Not the mystical stuff. Stop suspending your disbelief for this one book. This is a human book written by human beings for other human beings. It’s not divinely inspired. Jews will also tell you that their part of the bible was never meant to be taken literally. Thanks.
Great piece, as always; I absolutely love how you started with “[...] what should I tell 16 year-old Lee? What insight does one free thinker have to offer another budding [...]freethinker?” (see what I did here?
) and finished with “Then ask yourself if the behavior exhibited by your God is rational and decent.” – fantastic change in underlying assumptions in the discourse!
I wish I had the same verve when those damn sect members are knocking on my door every week-end!
Well done, as always, KK. Succinct, clever, and straightforward.
I admire that you really thought about it and turned it into something for all to think about, where I would have just rolled my eyes and hit delete.
With GBUK, I was grinning by the end of this piece–how very gently you walked around that, KK! Very impressed– can you come over next time my JW friend rings my doorbell?
@Skraeling– “tried looking into evolution”, exact same bit made me swallow wrong, too
Just as though he’d been handed literature and a flower from an evolutionary biologist standing in an airport…
“Just as though he’d been handed literature and a flower from an evolutionary biologist standing in an airport…”
*Tries to picture Richard Dawkins in an orange robe…*
Maybe its just me, but I think the man could totally rock an orange robe.
Just what I thought
)
There are many many days after visiting these sites that I wake up and thank god (irony intended) I live in a heathen land like New Zealand where the religious hold little to no sway on anything.
That’s *exactly* what I love about living in Japan– I know my kids are getting proper science instruction, they’re not being proselytized at school or anywhere else, and I never have to answer the question “Where do you go to church?”. That was not, of course, my design in settling here–just a welcome consequence of it. So I was really happy,actually, to see that KK had started a freethinkers group–the more the better!
For anybody who was following or replying in the debate (I use that term loosely) with Mr. Hubbo, Daz has posted two lengthy–and really excellent– replies to Mr. Hubbo’s post at his own blog on the Teleological Argument. If you click on Mr. Hubbos’ name over there in the comments list, you can see his original post as well as replies to it. Or if you prefer to go directly to Daz’, he’s pasted Mr. Hubbo’s original post (and response in his second reply) paragraph by paragraph with his responses to Mr. Hubbo’s points below. It’s easy to read that way, and you can decided for yourself without flipping back and forth whether Daz has adequately answered Mr. Hubbo’s points. Go check it out!
*Gets ready to duck or blush, depending how this goes*
Good job, Daz. I wish I could write like that.
Thanks! Why don’t you give it a try? Plenty of free blogger sites out there. And we’ll all promise to come along and
Seriously, I didn’t know I could ’til summat got me riled up enough; then it just came out.
laughpay homage<endless book conversation>I’m half way through the latest in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series — One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing. Good stuff! I believe it’s also out in the States now.</endless book conversation>
KK wrote:
“Why do we swear by one verse and ignore the whole next page?”
Um… because fundies are too gluttonous to give up bacon and shrimp?
except for the Seventh Day Adventists–they don’t eat either of those (and they observe the Friday sundown to Saturday sundown sabbath–my best friend in school was SDA. I used to have to do a lot of explaining to others:-))
They pick and choose what they can use to get ahead, nothing more. If it will allow them to push themselves as superior to others it is trumpeted. If it can’t be manipulated, it is ignored.
AS for the SDA’s, isn’t it funny how all religions try to pick something that sets them apart from others and then trumpets that one piece as the thing that really matters. That is what God really wanted.
FYI, hermeneutics doesn’t mean what you think it means. It is a blanket term to cover techniques or methods of interpretation – the examples you mention are examples of a particular hermeneutic, but there are many others. For example, it was the rise of humanist hermeneutics that began to undermine the authority of the bible.
Generally I find that the religious use it to mean, “You’re taking that horrible inexcusable passage out of context. You need to read it another way because … hermeneutics!” It’s just a buzz-word they trot out when backed into a corner, like Ponder Stibbons and ‘quantum’.
Can’t help myself…every time I hear a religious person throw out “hermeneutics!”, all I can think is…
Alternative translation: “You lack an objective hermeneutics”= “Ur doin it rong”…