Carl and I have been having lots of discussions. After we hashed ClearPlay to death, we broke off on a tangent about the Amish. This led to some discussion of the Bible, and I pointed out some of the internal contradictions therein. Carl, being a True Believer™, showed me how with a little research and understanding of the writer’s point-of-view, the Bible is perfect and inerrant. He then asked me to qualify why I thought his explanations were in error.
Since it is a new topic, I’ve decided to post my response here:
Oh, Carl, I can’t give you a “qualified response.” I don’t believe in the existence of God, so how can I respond to quibblings about the stories He allegedly told humans to write? I just don’t buy the premise. We might as well discuss whether the timelines throughout the Star Trek series franchise are internally consistent. We could type a whole lot of letters about it, and it might be fun, but what difference would it make — Star Trek is a fictional creation; so too is the Bible to me (aside from some of its strictly historical accounts — I do believe Jesus was a person and that a city called Jericho once stood, for example.)
What might be more interesting is discussions about why you think God exists in the first place. The answer I usually get is “cuz the Bible sez so!” Well, why do you believe the Bible? “Cuz God wrote it!” Well, why do you think there’s a God? “Cuz the Bible sez so!”
Some have pointed to the elaborate creation and intricate mechanics of the Universe and said, “see, there must be a God!” I say, why? Where did the Universe come from? “Well, God created it!” OK, where did god come from? “God has always existed; he is infinite; he is the Alpha and the Omega!” Hmm, so you believe in infinity, eh? So why couldn’t the Universe just be infinite? Leave God out of it; cut out the middleman. The Universe big-bangs, it expands, stars coalesce, heavy elements form, billions of years pass, life evolves, intelligent beings write creation myths, stars explode, the universe collapses, then it big-bangs all over again. I can accept a Universe expanding and contracting in a continual infinite cycle much easier than I can accept an infinite sentient being making the Universe in six days and continually meddling in the affairs of hairless apes on a third-rate planet of a fourth-rate solar system in a fifth-rate galaxy.
The nice thing is that more independently verifiable and scientifically valid data supports my infinite Universe theorem than the infinite Santa Claus theorem.
Now, some people will offer up the idea that there is a God who created the Universe, but he does so through physics, evolution, chemistry, etc. This is a Deist view, which the Founding Fathers held to (they were not Christians). It’s an interesting compromise, but to me it suggests a God who is shackled by physical law. If so, what kind of God is that, and what purpose does He serve? Deists held the idea that God is so infinite and vast that we puny humans could never hope to comprehend him or detect His existence, but the closest way we could understand the Creator is to undestand the mechanism of his creations (that is by learning science and studying nature.)
Agnostics are close to that idea, but they have some wiggle room by stating that there may or may not be a God, but if he exists he’s so infinite and vast we could never comprehend Him. Well, if it is a difference that makes no difference, then it is no difference. If you can’t detect God, then why bother to postulate His existence? If there is such an infinite God, why do you suppose He cares whether a hairless ape touches himself inappropriately while watching Britney Spears videos? Sin may be something to be avoided because it causes harm to humans and society, but does a God Who’s busy tending to colliding galaxies and eleven-dimension superstrings really give a shit?
So when I get into these Bible discussions, I do it only to see if Christians are really giving any thought to this or if they are just another brainwashed cultist parroting the official dogma. Carl, you at least can come to the discussion with some logic and research on your side. But any logic founded on a faulty premise (i.e., the Bible is the inerrant Word of an infinite Creator) is still faulty. GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
This whole discussion stems from a throwaway line I used when Carl said that the Amish lived their Luddite life of isolation based on “misinterpretation” of Scripture. I still wonder, why are the Amish misinterpreting? If it is the inerrant Word of God, why are there Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Quakers, etc.? A truly perfect God would have been a better writer than that, don’t you think? It seems awfully risky (or cruel) to write a tome explaining how Your children should live and believe in order to join You in the afterlife, only to have the vast majority of them go to hell because they didn’t properly understand what You meant, or worse, never had the chance to read what You wrote in the first place.
Furthermore, what about Jews, Hindi, Moslems, Buddhists, Mormons, etc. Why are they wrong? This is the part about FEBACs (Fundamentalist Evangelical Born-Again Christians) that infuriates me — the idea that other religions are not different, they are wrong. If you have a belief that you take on faith without a shred of proof, by definition it is an opinion, and opinions cannot be “right” or “wrong”, they can only be “different”.
I think if the God of the Christian Bible does exist, then He has the manners and maturity of a petulant spoiled child. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the story of Abraham and Isaac and the Book of Job.
The Abraham and Isaac story is God’s version of “Punk’d”…
ABRAHAM: God, I love you and worship you above all else.
GOD: No you don’t.
ABRAHAM: Yes, I do! I’ve always been faithful, I pray regularly, I make my tithings and sacrifices, I obey Your Word.
GOD: So you say you really love me, Abe?
ABRAHAM: Yes, above all else.
GOD: And you’d do anything I say?
ABRAHAM: Yes, oh Lord!
GOD: Alright, then prove it. Put your oldest kid on this rock here and stick a knife in his heart.
ABRAHAM: Huh?
GOD: Hey, you said you’d do anything I said.
ABRAHAM: Well, OK… (begins raising knife over Isaac’s body)
GOD: Ha ha! You’ve been Punk’d! I was just testing you, Abe, you don’t have to kill your kid.
What a cruel bastard! Why does an infinite God with unlimited power need to be so sure that His creations think he’s awesome? “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you…” What’s worse is the Book of Job, where God can’t take a little ribbing from Satan:
GOD: Job is so good. He really really digs me.
SATAN: Yeah, he’s quite the suck-up, huh Yahweh?
GOD: Yup. Job’s probably the most reverent human there is.
SATAN: Well, who can blame him? You’ve blessed him with a beautiful wife and family, plenty of crops, all the best life has to offer.
GOD: Yeah, so?
SATAN: Well, I’m just sayin’ that if Job wasn’t getting all Your attention and affection, he’d curse Your name.
GOD: No way!
SATAN: Way!
GOD: No way!
SATAN: Oh yeah? Prove it. I dare you to kill his wife and kids, destroy his crops, and inflict painful diseases and pestilence upon himself and his land. Then I bet you he’ll curse Your name.
GOD: You’re on!
…and then God goes about kicking Job’s ass. Poor Job suffers, but he never curses God. Hooray for you, God. Your puny creations will accept whatever dastardly punishments You rain down upon them, deserved or not, and will still worship Your infinitely merciful and loving ass.
Now, I’m not completely anti-Biblical. I think there’s plenty of great Truths in there — love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, do unto others, all that stuff. I just don’t think these Truths require the existence of the Universal Santa Claus, nor do I think they are the exclusive province of religion in general or Christianity in particular.
So, before we can begin any serious discussion of the Bible, someone needs to convince me of its holy nature. Otherwise we’re quibbling about millennia-old mistranslated history, fables, parables, and dogma, held for centuries in secret by a literate priest caste, used for political control over the illiterate masses. Convince me that God exists and then I can buy the Bible. And if I am wrong, may God stri