I wrote the following retort to "Is the Bible True?" by David Lose, written 4/1/11, in which he essentially argued that the Bible was never meant to be taken literally:
So the Bible should not be read as a physics textbook... fair enough. But is it fair or logical to read a text metaphorically that demands literal obedience and belief? The Bible's authors wrote with a rigid, often lethal authoritarianism. They were not making metaphorical suggestions you can choose to interpret but Laws and Commandments and even historical and scientific accounts whose truth you are commanded to believe or die. Perhaps the Bible is being metaphorical when it commands its readers to be concrete and literal, but such an interpretation requires ignoring its tone, spirit, and letter.
Nothing in the Bible implies that its authors or, by implication, the single god they claim to represent, cares about or is interested in our opinion (unless of course it deviates from that of the authors, in which case we will be punished eternally).
But if the Bible were intended as only metaphor, why put such painstakingly absurd detail into it? Why not use qualifying language such as "about" or "approximately" or "as far as we know"? If I give exact measurements and precise numbers, the implication is that I know of what I speak with a certain level of detail. If I tell a friend that to find my house, they must drive for 554 feet at a heading of 89 degrees after taking Exit Number 47-B on Highway 149 East, my friend can assume I am not just making this up. If it turns out my house is actually a few thousand MILES beyond the 554 feet I so confidently reported or that there is no Exit 47-B (or Highway 149 for that matter), then I have a serious credibility problem. My friend would have a right not only to be angry at me for dishonestly claiming to know something I didn't, but for wasting her time in an elaborate attempt to deceive.
In the same way, why did the authors of the bible chose to wow us with certain numbers? Why not say Noah lived to be an old man than make the ridiculous claim that he built an ark at age 500 and died over 3 centuries later? Why claim that Cain lived 910 years, Seth lived 912 (Gen 5:8), and that Adam was a father at the ripe old age of 130 years (Gen 5:3)? Are we to be impressed with the claim that Methuselah lived to 969 years (Gen 5:27) (the Biblical longevity record-holder)? You need not be a physician to understand such claims are absurd.
Why painstakingly list each generation from David to Joseph in Matthew and Luke, only to have not a single intervening name overlap? And since Joseph was not the father of Jesus does this not mean the descendant of David part of the prophecy was unfulfilled? Why have Jesus tell his followers with great certainty that some of them will not have tasted death before the Kingdom of God is ushered in yet 2,000 years later we are still waiting?
Why make an attempt to date the creation of the earth to about 4,000 BCE, the proportional equivalent of claiming Los Angeles is only 17 feet from New York?
I think it is far too kind to claim that authors of these fabrications never intended for us to actually take what they wrote literally. But even if all non-fundamentalists who have seriously read the Bible and the history of its creation understand that it is useless as literal history or science, how is this rambling collection of works even metaphorically useful?
What profit a man to know the authors of these books thought their god was angry, homicidally so, and murdered all living things (except those Noah saved in his house boat (which was exactly 450 feet (300 cubits) long (Gen 6:15), a size we are to believe could contain 2 of every species of animal on the Earth at the time?) because he didn't like how men used the free will he in his infinite wisdom gave them? What truth are we to infer from a god who asks fathers at times to murder their children and demands a constant stream of burnt slaughtered animals offered in sacrifice from his trembling subjects? When each of Lot's daughters gets her father drunk in turn, has sex with him (Gen 19:32), and then bears the product of this incest (Gen 19:36), what moral lesson are we to glean from this? Why are we to admire Lot, a man who earlier offered his daughters to be gang-raped in order to appease an angry crowd in Sodom (Gen 19:8)?
And how is a modern person supposed to accept the alleged perfection of a document that clearly condones slavery, empowers parents to sell their children into slavery or kill them of they talk back or work on the sabbath or wear clothes of mixed fibers or eat shellfish? Love this god, appease him, believe this book or this wise, compassionate deity will torture you forever and ever after you die. The devotion demanded here is not the loving choice made by a free soul but a desperate attempt to propitiate a murderous, sadistic bully, the type we tell our children should be reported to authorities, not appeased.
When I read this nonsense clearly written by men writing with great authority about matters they knew nothing, but conveniently intoning that women should shut up and listen to their husbands (1 Cor.14:34-36), slaves should obey even abusive masters (1 Peter 2:18), and all those worshipping the "wrong" god in the wrong way should be ethnically cleansed along with their animals (Deuteronomy 20:10-17), I get the same creepy feeling I get reading a Steven King novel with three notable exceptions.
First, the plot of the Bible is far less coherent or compelling (it could have used a good editor and closer collaboration between the authors to at least keep the fiction internally consistent). It is rambling, over-inclusive, and at times pointless. Whatever poignancy might be nursed from the poetry of god's breathing life upon the waters and his seeing that this creation is "good" is badly undermined by his murderous conclusion a few generations later that this creation is so bad that it must be annihilated (with the exception of a single family and whatever animals he can gather). Reading the two mutually exclusive Genesis accounts is a bit like reading the joyful wedding ceremony of a man who ends up murdering his wife and all but one of his children a few pages later.
Second, no one believes King's novels are nonfiction. No one wants to use them as a road map, a guide to family planning, or a substitute for geology or biology textbooks.
Third, King does not condone the evil he portrays, as do biblical authors. Horror is horror because it violates certain universally accepted norms. Parents murdering children, supernatural spirits terrorizing mortals, carefully-thought-out torture rituals are all things that King's characters attempt to prevent, avoid, or fight. One can glean a moral from his stories, one of compassion for the outcast, the odd, the weird who so often find themselves possessors of a special gift that has the potential to save the innocent from forces intent on terrorizing. The biblical authors not only do not consistently offer such a moral, but often its polar opposite, siding with the supernatural entity that commands Abraham to murder Isaac, or Jeptheh to murder his daughter, for example. Our only hope is to propitiate, appease, and perhaps even emulate this cruelty (one of many unfortunate logical conclusions of those who insist on using this book for moral guidance) in the hopes that we might avoid some of these horrors ourselves.
Why do we twist ourselves into knots to make this dusty collection of books condoning everything from incest to genocide to slavery to infanticide fit into our modern world? There is no wizard and I will pull back the curtain and expose his fraud. There may be a god or gods but this collection of books, so absurdly and immorally transparent, establishes nothing. Telling me I must believe something or be tortured forever may elicit obedience from some but threats and intimidation should never be substitutes for the truth. The fact the authors felt it necessary to make such threats badly undermines their credibility, already in shreds thanks to scientific techniques they never could have imagined would one day expose the fiction they were creating. Only a bully needs to threaten you to believe something; the greatest truths are self-evident and self-reinforcing.
Nobody needs to tell me I will go to hell to prevent me from stepping off a high ledge, plunging into an ice cold pool of water, or murdering my children. A host of instinctive and empirical forces make it almost impossible for me to do any of these things. Why on earth are we to believe that something as important (at least to the biblical authors) as which god we worship and how would not be as hard-wired?
In areas critical to survival and reproduction, we were created with self-protective instincts, drives, fears, and appetites. It makes no sense that something as important as our spiritual preservation would be outsourced to a collection of anonymous authors from one place and time a few thousand years ago. Why on earth should we seek answers about things we cannot prove (such as where we go after death, if anywhere) from people who have been so wrong so often about things we can now prove or disprove?
No comments:
Post a Comment