If you thought that no one would dare try to defend slavery, as presented by the Bible, think again. I found this video on Slate; it is an animated (and speeded-up) version of a real-life “Biblical slavery” apologist. Listen for a minute or two, if you can stand it.
Note the comment following the video: “Brilliant! So, where can I sign up to be a “biblical” slave…?”
We’ve featured Andy, son of Phyllis Schafly and his anti-reason heavily monitored blog site, Conservapedia before. His latest project is to create an edited version of the Bible better suited to American Reactionary philosophy.
Yes, he is removing all those Liberal parts where the inerrant Word of God must be wrong.
Mark C. Chu-Carroll (Good Math blog) wrote The Conservative Rewrite of the Bible where he gives specific examples of what is being edited and why. Like removing any mention of “government”, and merging all the names of God to avoid confusion. Even God, in his 10 Commandments, says to forsake all those other Gods over which he has no control and only worship him.
Schlafly represents this as a new, better translation. But he is using the KJV as his primary source. The English translation with the most known inconsistencies from original source material is his best version from which to start. Well, might as well. After all, he will be “fixing” God’s Word.
Even conservative Christians that I know think that this is a crazy project.
Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter have severed their ties with Southern Baptist Convention. Why would they do this, after a six-decade long affiliation with the SBC? It’s because the SBC cherry-picked the Bible for the purposes of arguing:
that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.
What are the consequences of this disparagement of women?
At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.
The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.
Some in Congress are pressing to make 2009 the “National Year of the Bible.” As Politics Daily points out, such a pronouncement might encourage people to actually read the Bible before extolling its virtues. And lots of people do extol its virtues (93% of U.S. homes have at least one Bible). But do they read it? Polls suggest that it is not read often or well by millions of Americans:
A 2000 survey showed that even 60 percent of those chapter-and-verse-quoting Evangelicals thought Jesus was born in Jerusalem rather than Bethlehem. Similarly, a 2004 survey of high school students found that 17 percent thought “the road to Damascus” was where Jesus was crucified and 22 percent thought Moses was either one of Jesus’ 12 apostles or an Egyptian pharaoh or an angel. Half of high school seniors also thought Sodom and Gomorrah were married . . . But before you pile on the slacker generation, consider that one in 10 of all Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, and 60 percent can’t name five of the Ten Commandments.
But here’s more:
Only three out of five Christians can recall the names of the first four books of the New Testament. Only half of the Christians polled correctly identified the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. And a full 42% of the Christians said that without the government’s laws, there would be no real guidelines for people to follow in daily life.
A Gallup survey shows that fewer than half of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis), only one-third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (many named Billy Graham, not Jesus), and one quarter do not know what is celebrated on Easter. . . A 1997 Barna Research poll showed [that] eighty percent of born-again Christians believe it is the Bible that says “God helps them that help themselves.”
These polls substantiate what I’ve been seeing and hearing. Many of the people who argue with me about religion (they come to my door a couple times each year) know almost nothing about the Bible. Most believers know absolutely nothing about the history of the Bible–how the Bible came to be the Bible. It’s a truly fascinating story and there’s no excuse that a Believer wouldn’t know many of the details. See this post on Bart Ehrman setting for many quotes mistakenly attributed to Jesus. Consider, also, a book I am currently reading, Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, with makes a strong argument that Jesus didn’t really say, “Love your enemies” or extol the Good Samaritan. These stories were inserted many decades after the crucifixion (e.g., see p. 260).
I was raised Catholic and I know many Catholics (many of them good-hearted and thoughtful people). Almost none of them read the Bible with any familiarity. They hear passages on Sundays, but that’s about it. I’ve spoken to dozens of serious Catholics who have no idea that there are any contradictions in the Bible and they freely admit that they don’t read it on their own. So much for the “Word of God” among a large group (dozens) of educated and committed Catholics. If they really believed that the Bible was divinely inspired word of God, how could they possibly have time for anything else?
I attended Catholic Church for many years as a child. I don’t remember even once hearing any priest feature the story of Lot, the angels, and Lot’s wife and daughters at Mass. Now I know why, of course. It’s just so much easier to pretend that this story doesn’t even exist in the Bible. It’s much easier to cherry pick in order to maintain that every word in “the Bible” is the inspired literal teaching of God.
Question: Do any of readers remember ever hearing any sort of priest, preacher or minister presenting the details of the story of Lot during any worship service?
Here’s the animated version of the story:
Now maybe you’re not into kinky sex. But maybe the Bible still has something for you. For instance, are you pro-slavery? So is God:
I’m truly disgusted to learn of newest evidence for the religious underpinnings for Donald Rumsfeld’s (and George Bush’s) thought process. GQ has revealed that Rumsfeld authored an entire series of Bible/war memos, “Top Secret Briefings,” to get Bush fired up that he was on God’s side in a Manichean struggle.
This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine.
For those who say that religion is good, that is sometimes true. Many people have been inspired by religion to channel their natural empathy into acts of kindness.
To those who say religion is dangerous, that is also sometimes true, as witnessed by America’s religious war waged in Iraq. Thanks to the Bush Administration’s application of religion, 100,000 people are dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and millions of Iraqis who have lost their homes.
I would say, as a general rule that we should always discourage violence in the name of religion. Religion is too often a potent mind-altering trip. Too often, it causes people to unplug their pre-frontal cortices, so that their base instincts, especially their xenophobia, rise’s to the top. Religion is too often used to concoct needless imaginary lines between and among groups of people, resulting in growing distrust, which too often ripens into seething hate.
Bottom line: Thanks to Rumsfeld’s (and Bush’s) embrace of what we now know (better than ever) to be religious violence, our “secular” government was able to conclude that their religious ends justified their military means, and that any lie, any torture, and any amount of collateral damage was justified.
All of this in the name of God.
Affiliated Press - May 13, 2009
Recently discovered secret documents indicate that, in 2006, the Bush Administration ordered the destruction of a major cancer research center and banned the doctors and researchers from ever again communicating with each other.
Dr. Rod Nym, former Director of the center, recently agreed to discuss this disturbing incident with the Affiliated Press. Nym indicated that the towering brick and mortar research center had its genesis several years ago thanks to a large grant by the Marduk Foundation. The Center was built in the middle-east corridor of the tri-state region to bring together hundreds of cancer researchers from all corners of the globe.
Even though the researchers and doctors came from many different countries and spoke many different languages, they were able to communicate efficiently thanks to special software installed throughout the center. The software was similar to Babelfish, and it instantly translated any language into any other language, enabling the researchers to collaborate to an extent never before seen in an international research team.
ASSIMULATED PRESS 2009
As the police were hauling Principal Soeht away in handcuffs, a reporter shouted one last question:
“Why did you drown hundreds of students in the basement of Tarara Elementary School?”
Soeht stared angrily at the reporter and replied, “Because almost all of those children were badly behaved and because I am the principal. I am in charge and no one answers to me!
A bystander then advised the reporter that a handful of students had survived. After ordering the entire school into the basement on the pretense of an emergency, Principal Soeht had opened some large water spigots. As the water started to fill the basement, Soeht quickly appointed a fifth grader named Timmy Ahwon to hand-select a small group of six of his friends and allowed only Ahwon and his six friends to leave the rising waters of the basement of Tarara Elementary School.
As these seven survivors left the basement, Principal Soeht reportedly locked the remaining hundreds of children behind large gates, then opened the valves on several large pipes in the basement (seen here), leading to loud screaming, vigorous splashing, sobbing and, eventually, silence.
Although they escaped death, the seven survivors were not allowed to leave the school. Soeht forced Ahwon and his friends to live in a second floor classroom for one-hundred and fifty days while the waters filled the school basement all the way to the basement ceiling. On their way up to the second floor, Soeht required the seven surviving students to hand-select and feed pairs of various animals that the students had been keeping in the classrooms as pets. While bodies of hundreds of children’s rotted in the flooded school basement for months, then, the hand-selected students carefully fed and cared for pairs of turtles, goldfish, birds, hamsters and other animals. After the seven survivors had lived in the second-floor classroom for five months, Principal Soeht instructed Ahwon to allow several of the pet birds to go free by letting them fly out the second floor window. The police charged Soeht with mass murder. They characterized him as a hideous madman. The surviving children were apparently not upset with the actions of Soeht, however. Instead, they praised him for saving them. Ahwon himself reportedly referred to Soeht as “a completely honorable man.” In fact, Ahwon seemed intent on carrying out a command repeatedly given to him by Soeht during the basement flood: to fill the school with new students who were well-behaved, to replace the badly-behaved dead students. A woman who lived near the school was inconsolable. This is the second horrible incident I’ve learned of today. God help us!
“Christian” marriage is outlawed by the Bible. I’m not exaggerating. You’ll find all of the stunning details, along with citations to the Bible, at Dwindling in Unbelief. How does the Bible outlaw traditional “Christian” marriages? Here are some of the Bible rules listed:
This list list only includes the first seven rules. Go to Dwindling in Unbelief for the details and the pinpoint citations. Don’t just trust me on these rules. Go read the Bible. These rules are all there, clearly stated.
Conclusion: We need to march to America’s heartland and start picketing traditional Christian marriage because it is clear that traditional Christian marriage contravenes the clear teachings of the Bible.
I had an urge to think through some implications of a world-wide flood, such as the one Biblical Literalists claim happened a few thousand years ago.
Let’s suppose that it happened, that the entire world was inundated all at once to cover the highest mountain, and that all surviving land animals and short-range birds were preserved in a single boat. What would the ecological landscape look like?
First, all land animals would only be found on a single connected land mass. There is no way that any crawling creature could have reached Australia or the Americas from the Middle East. Most especially tropical animals.
Secondly, we expect to see floral panspermia. That is, the waters would have carried every species of seed to every land mass all at once. Vanilla and cocoa and peppercorns should all be found growing in the same places throughout human history. Same for and chile peppers and coffee and potatoes. Wheat and maize should also be seen as combined staples of every ancient diet.
Or the opposite: The flood waters killed off all the seeds except what was carried on the ark. Therefore, only the plants found in the middle east could exist anywhere in the world.
Also, all modern animal species should be represented in every geological flood stratum. After all, a single massive drowning event doesn’t distinguish between creatures of comparable size like an allosaur and an elephant or a trilobite and a mouse. Surely there must be abundant examples of these combined fossils.
So it is easy to prove that such a flood actually happened. In fact, it must have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when Europeans first sailed to the Americas and found everything there to be just the same as back home.
Writer A. J. Jacobs embarked upon a one-year attempt to follow all of the rules in the Bible. To do so, he first wrote down every rule he spotted in the Bible (he came up with 700). Following those rules was difficult, however, especially when he didn’t quite understand them. For instance, where are the “corners” of one’s beard?
Though his talk is often humorous, Jacobs reveals some serious epiphanies he had along the way. For instance, he found that his behavior sometimes changed his thoughts (he found that visiting sick people made him more compassionate rather than the other way around). He learned to give thanks for the hundreds of things that went right every day, rather than focusing on the few things that went wrong. He learned to have reverence for many aspects of his life, even though he remained an agnostic through the whole experience. He also learned that he shouldn’t completely dismiss that which is irrational, and we all have irrational aspects of our lives (is blowing out birthday candles on a cake rational?).
You’ll enjoy Jacobs’ understated delivery and his respect for those who are different. His talk is well worth a viewing, no matter where you fall on the belief continuum.
Over the past three years of writing for DI, I have discussed evolution with many creationists who have posted comments at this site. These exchanges have been good for me. They have forced me to think harder about exactly what it is that I understand about evolution and what evidence supports my understanding. These exchanges have also helped me to understand the concerns and mental gymnastics of creationists.
I now find myself getting increasingly impatient with the creationists, however. It was initially interesting to banter with creationists because I enjoyed the challenge of trying to understand why they claimed the things they claimed. I’m now getting annoyed with these creationists arguments, and it mostly has to do with the refusal of creationists to acknowledge relevant scientific observations from the real world.
My frustration also stems from the anti-scientific mindset of creationists. As a group, creationists refuse to argue even-handedly. They become skeptical only when it suits their immediate needs—they don’t apply skepticism equally both to their own claims and to the claims of those with whom they disagree. As a group, they scurry to find disingenuous arguments to support points that they actually learned in churches, not in science books. Many of them are consciously dishonest, and when you call attention to their obvious untruths, they try to change the subject. There are exceptions to this rule. There are some creationists who aren’t consciously being dishonest, but those creationists tend to be so incredibly ignorant of the principles of the scientific theory of evolution that they lack the ability to meaningfully criticize evolution. Their arguments are aimed at things that no competent scientist has ever claimed. For numerous excellent examples of this problem, see these videos by AronRa here and here.
It is well-established that humans are susceptible to committing errors caused by the confirmation bias. We seek out evidence that supports our current beliefs. Scientists are imminently aware of this danger and they work hard to design experiments to counteract this bias. Creationists (who don’t even try to run experiments) excel at feeding their confirmation biases. They proudly exclude evidence that threatens their opinions. Creationists come to mind when I consider David Hume’s quote: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” [A Treatise of Human Nature, (2nd Ed.), Book II, Part I, Section III (“Of the influencing motives of the will”) (1739)].
About two years ago, I read a terrific book by Bart Ehrman: “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.” Ehrman is a bible scholar who concluded that in the past 2,000 years, the New Testament has been changed in thousands of minor ways and dozens of major ways. He therefore put up a caution sign to all of those believers who claim that the Bible is inerrant. “Which version of the Bible?” is always an important clarifying question.
Here’s the link to my post, which I titled: “Who changed the Bible and why? Bart Ehrman’s startling answers.” More than 540 comments were quickly contributed to this post, making this page too long to download and display. The phenomenon of the passionate flood of comments confounded me. Many of the comments were irrational, in that the writers had clearly not even read my post (or the book). They argued about things that Ehrman (and I) did not claim and they failed to address Ehrman’s meticulous scholarship.
For technical reasons I closed off new comments back in March 2007. Last night, I discovered a WordPress plugin that allows me to paginate comments, thereby protecting this website from the sudden and repeated load of 540 comments displayed on one page.
Here’s the good news, then. Anyone who has not yet had his or her chance to comment on Bart Ehrman’s book may now jump in at the original post and post a comment. That’s right! If the 540 comments that came before you didn’t address an important aspect of Bart Ehrman’s book, you may now remedy that omission in the comments to the original post.
Godspeed.
