How often do we hear people “explaining” religious beliefs by stating “The Bible says so,” as if the Bible fell out of the sky, pre-translated to English by God Himself? It’s not that simple, according to an impressive and clearly-written book that should be required reading for anyone who claims to know “what the Bible says.”
Bart Ehrman’s Exploration: Who Changed the Bible and Why?
The 2005 bestseller, Misquoting Jesus, was not written by a raving atheist. Rather, it was written by a fellow who had a born-again experience in high school, then went on to attend the ultraconservative Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Bart Ehrman didn’t stop there, however. He wanted to become an evangelical voice with credentials that would enable him to teach in secular settings. It was for this reason that he continued his education at Wheaton and, eventually, Princeton, picking up the ability to read the New Testament in its original Greek in the process.
As a result of his disciplined study, Ehrman increasingly questioned the fundamentalist approach that the “Bible is the inerrant Word of God. It contains no mistakes.” Through his studies, Ehrman determined that the Bible was not free of mistakes:
We have only error ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.
(Page 7). At Princeton, Ehrman learned that mistakes had been made in the copying of the New Testament over the centuries. Upon realizing this, “the floodgates opened.” In Mark 4, for example, Jesus allegedly stated that the mustard seed is “the smallest of all seeds on the earth.” Ehrman knew that this simply was not true. The more he studied the early manuscripts, the more he realized that the Bible was full of contradictions. For instance, Mark writes that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal (Mark 14:12; 15:25) while John says Jesus died the day before the Passover meal (John 19:14).
Ehrman often heard that the words of the Bible were inspired. Obviously, the Bible was not originally written in English. Perhaps, suggests Ehrman, the full meaning and nuance of the New Testament could only be grasped when it was read in its original Greek (and the Old Testament could be fully appreciated only when studied in its original Hebrew) (page 6).
Because of these language barriers and the undeniable mistakes and contradictions, Ehrman realized that the Bible could not be the “fully inspired, inerrant Word of God.” Instead, it appeared to him to be a “very human book.” Human authors had originally written the text at different times and in different places to address different needs. Certainly, the Bible does not provide an an “errant guide as to how we should live. This is the shift in my own thinking that I ended up making, and to which I am now fully committed.”
How pervasive is the belief that the Bible is inerrant, that every word of the Bible is precise and true?
Occasionally I see a bumper sticker that reads: “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” My response is always, what if God didn’t say it? What if the book you take as giving you God’s words instead contains human words. What if the Bible doesn’t give a foolproof answer to the questions of the modern age-abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, religious and supremacy, western style democracy and the like? What if we have to figure out how to live and what to believe on our own, without setting up the Bible as a false idol–or an oracle that gives us a direct line of communication with the Almighty.
(Page 14). Ehrman continues to appreciate the Bible as an important collection of writings, but urges that it needs to be read and understood in the context of textual criticism, “a compelling and intriguing field of study of real importance not just to scholars but to everyone with an interest in the Bible.” Ehrman finds it striking that most readers of the Bible know almost nothing about textual criticism. He comments that this is not surprising, in that very few books have been written about textual criticism for a lay audience (namely, “those who know nothing about it, who don’t have the Greek and other languages necessary for the in-depth study of it who do not realize there is even any “problem” with the text).
Misquoting Jesus provides much background into how the Bible became the Bible. It happened through numerous human decisions over the centuries. For instance, the first time any Christian of record listed the 27 books of the New Testament as the books of the New Testament was 300 years after the books have been written (page 36). And those works have been radically altered over the years at the hands of the scribes “who were not only conserving scripture but also changing it.” Ehrman points out that most of the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among the manuscripts were “completely insignificant, immaterial, of no real importance.” In short, they were innocent mistakes involving misspelling or inadvertence.
On the other hand, the very meaning of the text changed in some instances. Some Bible scholars have even concluded that it makes no sense to talk about the “original” text of the Bible. (Page 210). As a result of studying surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, Ehrman concluded that we simply don’t have the original words constituting the New Testament.
Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later-much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, and many thousands of places . . . Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts and there are words in the New Testament.
In Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman spells out the ways in which several critical passages of the New Testament were changed or concocted. They are startling examples:
A.) Everyone knows the story about Jesus and the woman about to be stoned by the mob. This account is only found in John 7:53-8:12. The mob asked Jesus whether they should stone the woman (the punishment required by the Old Testament) or show her mercy. Jesus doesn’t fall for this trap. Jesus allegedly states “Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.”
The crowd dissipates out of shame. Ehrman states that this brilliant story was not originally in the Gospel of John or in any of the Gospels. “It was added by later scribes.” The story is not found in “our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Nor does its writing style comport with the rest of John. Most serious textual critics state that this story should not be considered part of the Bible (page 65).
B) after Jesus died, Mary Magdalene and two other women came back to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, according to Mark 16:1-2). They were met by a man in a white robe who told them that Jesus had been raised and was no longer there. The women fled and said nothing more to anyone out of fear (16:4-8). Everyone knows the rest of Mark’s Gospel, of course. The problem with the remainder of the story is that none of it was originally in the Gospel of Mark. It was added by a later scribe. Those additions include all of the following:
Jesus himself appeared to Mary Magdalene. She told the eleven apostles (minus Judas) about this vision, but they did not believe her. Jesus then appeared to the apostles, chastising them for failing to believe. He tells them that those who believe will be saved and those who don’t will be condemned. Then follows a critically important passage of the Bible.
And these are the signs that will accompany those who believe: they will cast out demons in my name; they will speak in new tongues; and they will take up snakes in their hands; and if they drink any poison, it will not harm them; they will place their hands upon the sick and heal them.
Jesus is then allegedly taken up into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, while the disciples go forth into the world to proclaim the Gospel in miraculous fashion.
Without the above passages (which, again, were not written by Mark) the Pentecostals lose their justification for speaking in “tongues.” And the Appalachian snake handlers have no basis for their dangerous practices.
C) John 5:7-8 is the only passage in the entire Bible “that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity (that there are three persons and God but that all three constitute a single God):
There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Spirit and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one.
Ehrman cites strong evidence that this Trinity passage was entirely concocted and foisted upon Erasmus by outraged theologians who needed support for their prized theological doctrine (page 81).
—
Ehrman reveals numerous other difficulties with the popular assumption that the Bible was perfectly handed down from its original written expression.
Many believers rely fervently on the King James version of the Bible, for instance. They sometimes even say “If the King James was good enough for St. Paul, it’s good enough for me.” Ehrman points out many problems with the King James version, warning that “we need to face up to the facts.”
The King James was not given by God but was a translation by a group of scholars in the early 17th century who based their rendition on a faulty Greek text.
(Page 209).
So what should we make of the Bible? Ehrman argues that the attacks of the New Testament are not simply collections of obvious, self-interpreting words. It’s the same problem we have with other important documents, such as the United States Constitution:
Texts do not simply reveal their own meanings to honest inquirers. Texts are interpreted and they are interpreted (just as they were written) by living, breathing human beings, who can make sense of texts only by explaining them in light of other other knowledge, explicating their meaning, putting the words of the text “in other words.”
(Page 217) The scribes changed the original words of the New Testament by putting them in other words.
In my experience, many people who cherry pick excerpts from the Bible as the proper way to determine what is moral are in utter denial that we don’t have accurate copies of the original writings. Most of them refuse to acknowledge that current popular versions of the Bible contain numerous discrepancies, even compared to the earliest manuscripts we do have. This is on top of the fact that their are hundreds of patent contradictions in the English version of the Bible. To most believers, none of this matters. Stay the course! In fact, in my experience most believers rarely read what the consider to be God’s own inspired word.
Ehrman’s book points out numerous troublesome issues that demand attention even assuming that the original writers of the Bible accurately reported the events described in their original writings (whatever those writings were). The elephant in the room, however, is that none of the authors of the Gospels ever claimed to witness any of the events they were reporting. Further, the extraodinary nature of Biblical claims demands extraordinary proof that ancient self-contradictory writings are simply incapable of providing, except to those of us who believe that the Bible is completely true “because it says so in the Bible.”
For all of those people who continue to go around clentching and thumping those Bibles they bought at Wal-Mart, and for all the rest of us who want to get the story straight, Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus should be required reading.
[Administrator’s Note: More than 540 comments were quickly contributed to this post, making this page too long to download and display. Therefore, on March 23, 2007, I closed off new comments. Last night (February 4, 2009), I discovered a WordPress plugin that allows me to paginate comments, thereby protecting the site from the sudden and repeated load of 540 comments.
Here’s the good news, then. Anyone who has not yet had his or her say on Bart Ehrman’s book may now jump in at the original post and post a comment. That’s right! If none of the 540 comments that have come before you didn’t address an important aspect of Bart Ehrman’s book, you may now remedy that omission, right here in the comments to this original post. Godspeed. ]
"Smiley when you say that."
I considered putting "sarcasm" in parens at the bottom but my estimation of the intelligence of the DI bloggers is very high. I thought it would be an insult to the ones that did get it, and for the ones that didn't…well, they wouldn't get it anyway, smiley or not.
I also hope that John "gets" my admiration for his uncommon common sense, intelligence and courage in between the lines of my attempt to be funny.
I have to disagree with the usually astute grumpy. John is not attempting to re-characterize god as anything. At least not in that post.
John wrote:
"I see the stories as individual accounts of men attempting to commune with God."
and…
"…it serves to show us how others in the past have viewed God…"
I hope I speak for John when I say that I don't think he was trying to water down the bible at all. I think he was attempting present his view of it as the historical document that it is and possibly begin a new discussion of who god is, if she exists. I find that commendable.
So Grumpy: MLK – just a tepid follower of a watered-down God? How about Father Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine? Dietrich Bonhoffer and other members of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany? There's a religious left out there that can give 'em hell (non-violently) as good as any atheist you can mention.
I am not disputing the fact that religion has gotten many of us where we are today. What I am saying is that the future is brighter when we are able to discern fact (encylopedias/textbooks) from fiction (bibles/torahs/korans). Indeed Martin Luther King Junior and millions of other people were able to make the Bible work for them, at least in some fashion. They have arrived at the "right" destination, in their own minds, and have acheived wonderful things, so indeed Christianity can be powerful. Times are changing though, the GLOBAL environment is becoming exponentially more important than it was 500 years ago, even 100 years ago, even 30 years ago, even 5 years ago. Education is running rampant the way spirits did in the Dark Ages.
I don't want any part in spreading the "word" of Christianity around the globe, not because it isn't a decent message (sometimes), but because the other HALF of the world does not agree and will fight to the *DEATH* just like us. For example, if Muslims invaded here trying to spread ISLAM, do you think we would fight them, or just agree with the teaching of Muhammed? So, when you say I am unreasonable for wanting to squelch superstitions like Christianity, think about what you are supporting, an impending global clash of religions. You moderates are unreasonable for turning a blind eye to the HORRORS of Christianity.
Further to gatomjp's comment, my remarks about John's comment reflect my observation that people imagine the god-of-the-Bible to be a carbon copy of whatever their own personality happens to be. For example, people who are radical evangelical Christians imagine the god-of-the-Bible to be all fire and brimstone, just like they are. Islamic terrorists imagine the god-of-the-Bible to be an avenger of infidels, just like they are (or imagine themselves to be). People who are suffering — hospital patients, recovering alcoholics, prisoners, etc. — imagine the god-of-the-Bible to be Jesus on the cross, soon to be resurrected, just like they want to be. Middle-of-the-roaders, like John himself says he is, imagine the god-of-the-Bible to be a middle-of-the-roader. In John's case (and gatomjp's and Vicki's, too apparently), he takes the Bible just literally enough to, in his words, "show us how others in the past have viewed God and it shows both the breakthroughs and the mistakes that they made," but he conveniently stops short of saying he actually believes any of it or lives by it.
No wonder so many believers try to get others to worship their god: their god is themselves!
This is what I objected to about John's comment. John, like so many people, create the god-of-the-Bible in *their own* image, without really adhering to what the Bible actually says about their god and about how they should worship him. Whenever it says something they dislike, they just skip over those parts or dismiss it as merely someone else's "mistake." How very convenient. How very middle-of-the-road.
As regards Vicki's comment, I do not see the relevance to my comment. Her comment refers to people I said nothing about (indeed, people who are mentioned nowhere else in this entire long thread), and the topic she discusses is not the one I discussed: tepid, middle-of-the-roaders.
Grumpy and Ben: Evidence please for the repeated assertion that " religious moderates" (what I call the religious left) tolerate or enable fundamentalism and religious extremism. There's plenty of evidence that many Christians in this country agree with CS Lewis that theocracy is the worst form of government, and are actively combating the religious right's attempt to establish a theocracy in this country:
-An evangelical pastor recently published a book on "How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church" – see http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Christian-Nation-Polit…
-Also check out http://iamachristiantoo.org/ and the Sojourners – http://www.sojo.net/ and their blogrolls.
-On talk2action.org, there's an expose of how the right-wing Institute for Religion and Democracy is trying to infiltrate the Methodist church.
Over 500 years ago, my ancestors, the Mennonites, came up with the idea that state power should not have any say over religious belief and vice versa, and also that followers of Christ should not take up arms or fight for the state for any reason. It's worked out pretty well for them, though certainly not always "convenient" and often quite far from the middle of the road.
Grumpy: **sigh** Yes religion is subjective. It's more like an art form than a scientific discipline. Yes the Bible is a work of literature and as such it can be read on different levels for different purposes and subjected to interpretation and re-interpretation. Certainly some people who call themselves religious want to find a God that confirms their prejudices and limitations, just like scientists can sometimes be blinded by their own biases.
But for many religious people, religion is a discipline for going beyond the barriers of the self and getting to a new place, becoming a new person. I think every thinking person in the world today knows that we have to get beyond individualism/greed and find some way to break out of the endless cycle of returning violence for violence… I am open to insights from evolutionary biology/psychology that can help with this conondrum, but I also am open to the insights, wisdom, and practical guidelines that have been developed by the historic peace churches of Christianity, engaged Buddhism, dharma punks, etc.
Premise 1: Grumpypilgrim is "usually very astute".
Premise 2: In this case, "I (Gato) disagree with Grumpypilgrim".
Logical Conclusion: Grumpypilgrim is wrong.
Sorry for picking on you Gato, just trying to support Grumpy's side here, which I agree with (therefore he MUST be right). 🙂
Anyway, how can we possibly "discuss who God is" without drawing on our own biased ideas which were imprinted upon us when we were still young children. (Before which our brains were incapable of forming rational, fact-based conclusions) And, all this without consulting the Bible? Nutz.
Grumpy:
My point in mentioning MLK, Daniel Berrigan, Dietrich Bonhoffer et. al. – they all identified as Christians and were inspired by this god-of-the-bible you call a "ranting, raving, genocidal, megalomaniacal, self-absorbed lunatic." In your post that contained the above quote you state pretty clearly that your version of the godofthebible is the only "real" one and that because John (sorry John please don't be scared off by our rantings!) had a different view he was not a "real" christian. ("Come on, John, if you really want to be a Christian, then BE one.") I'm sure John gets enough of that from his former pastor by the way.
The only alternative you portrayed to your version of "real Christianity" was a tepid, watered-down pop Christianity. And I'm just saying that people have been inspired by their religious experience to do some pretty courageous, difficult things like really love their neighbors, return good for evil, and stand up to the mighty power of the State.
Furthermore, in your post, you made a number of assertions about John and his motivations that were completely unsupported by anything he said. I find that interesting so I'm pushing a bit to see where this emotional charge comes from. Sorry, you can tell me I'm full of crap if you want but it seems like you've bought into the dominant meme that violence and harsh punishment are somehow more "real" than gentleness, love, and all that kind of girly stuff.
I am flattered to have your interest and skepticism. I would be glad to let Grumpy (and others) provide examples of religious moderation enabling religious fundamentalism (while I try and dig some up). You are probably right that I am slinging some ideas about haphazardly, without proper documentation. In my defense, I was simply taking actual experiences that I have had, and things which I have learned and adopted into my ideology, that I am projecting into this discussion.
Plus, keep in mind that I am not intending to present myself in the same dignified, consistent, *actually* intelligent, (sane?), manner as Grumpy, although I have been consciously trying to get better in that respect.
Okay, I found something, it proves that Sam Harris is under attack, for no good reason, by one so-called "moderate". This actually goes one step further and shows how moderate thought can quickly turn gangrene if left to fester.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,496,Sam-Harriss…
AND for the first chapter of MY Bible, if you are interested…
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/chapter-o…
Sorry Ben, but your logic is flawed. Grumpy IS wrong in this case. A careful reading of his post reveals this…"Middle-of-the-roaders, like John himself says he is, imagine the god-of-the-Bible to be a middle-of-the-roader."
Grumpy is assuming what John imagines god to be. That’s not fair. John never said that GOD was anything. John said that the bible reveals how other PEOPLE have viewed god in the past and I think that's a fair statement to make.
Moving on…
Grumpy and Ben may have a point about the moderates, but moderation is the key to bringing us all together, IMO. If that's a wimpy position, then so be it, but it seems to me that holding steadfastly to one or the other extreme does no one any good and solves nothing. The hundreds of posts above this one on this topic bear that out. Have we come any closer together in the months that this blog has been around? I see very little evidence of even a willingness to see the other point of view, and no instances of anyone actually saying, “Hmmm…I see your point. I've changed my mind.” In fact, my friend versperiant, a very intelligent person with much to say about this topic, quickly bowed out of this discussion long ago when it became apparent to him that most of the people posting here regularly were more interested in arguing than in coming to any sort of understanding.
John suggested an intelligent, reasoned, non-fundamentalist view of the bible, a view that I feel puts that book in its proper place as an historical document and not the Infallible Word Of God, and he was shot down for it. We (the agnosics and atheists here) finally had a former thumper admitting to the man-made nature of the bible and Grumpy alienated him. That’s not very Christian of you! 😉
"but moderation is the key to bringing us all together"
It depends what you mean by "all". If you mean America (a fraction of the world's population), then maybe you are on to something, in fact this seems to be the trend in the past 20 years. If when you say "all" you are referring to humanity, then you are just treading water, and your friend Vesperiant was right to bow out, and you may want to take his queue. How the heck are you planning on teaching moderation to Al-Quaida? Especially now with our (USA's) ever-darkening image in the global environment. Are you saying that you are a "moderate" believer in all other religions? That Allah's teachings are to be respected, Buddha's, Moses, Zeus, Yaweh, Hiter, Aristotle, Darwin, Hubbard, Einstein, Heinlein, Stalin, Blair, Clinton, Myers? Sure there are a some wise folks mixed in the bunch, but also some maniacs. It is NOT OKAY to let people have freedom of IDIOCY and HATE, "IMO".
How do we reconcile these diametrically opposed viewpoints, certainly not by encouraging these maniacs. Moderation enables fundamentalism! We need to start here at home, and we all need to strive to crush harmful irrational religions (all of them including the sacred, deepest held lies of Christianity).
EXAMPLE: You are hanging out on the street corner with your friends, smoking cigarettes and whistling at ladies. Some of your friends are a bit drunk and aggressive that evening, and one ends up tripping a smaller kid who was walking by. You stand by and watch as your friends eventually join in, surround the smaller boy, and proceed to tease and berate him and smack him around. Of course, you don't support what your friends and certainly do not want to partake. But, by standing by idly, and not telling your friends they are acting foolish because of their inebriation, YOU ARE THE ENABLER!
Of course there was that *instant* of time (NOW is your chance!) when your friends glanced over at you, to see what you were gonna do, they saw a "wimp", and they took that as meaning it was okay to continue the BARBARISH acts.
Ben- I was actually pointing my finger at Grumpy for making unsupported assertions, but if the shoe fits…
I read the article on richarddawkins.net and also the original Alternet- the author certainly did a hatchet job on Sam Harris but there's no indication that his critique was from a moderate religious perspective – in fact he seemed to be saying that Harris was too soft on New Age mysticism.
Like gatomjp, I'm skeptical about the practicality of a campaign to eradicate belief. A campaign to politically neutralize James Dobson of Focus on the Family – I can see how that would work, and it would take coalition-building with evangelicals. Getting creationism out of science class- largely a matter of getting the right butts on the right chairs on school boards, in state leg, Congress etc. The problem of Islamic fundamentalism is more complex but it will have to involve some effort to understand their perspective and address real and perceived injustice, rather than saying "drop Allah and then we'll talk."
But eradicating religious belief – it's hard for me to see what that would look like, other than a bunch of people talking at each other instead of to each other, at best, or a kind of crusade or inquisition, at worst.
Oh Lord what about the children? Where would we be without Sunday school? Inquisition, hardly. This is an internet education thing I am talking about here. Stuff like:
Conservapedia, Sunday School, attacking abortion clinics, GWBush, Haggard, Intelligent Design!, "science is bad", abstinence only, pro-life, piltdown-loving, climate "fluctuation", ignoramuses. They must go.
As regards the issue of religious moderates tolerating and enabling religious extremists, I would have thought this was self-evident. You need examples? Where do you suppose the Jerry Falwells, Phyllis Schlafflys and Pat Robertsons of the world come from? Or the George Bushs, Jessy Jacksons, and (late) Yasser Arafats? These folks simply could not have risen to global prominence with only the support of their narrow, extremist base; they needed the tolerance of religious moderates to gain any sort of political power. Even religious terrorists, who do not necessarily need a large following of supporters to achieve some level of political power, do not have significant political power unless they have the support of religious moderates.
Why do moderates not reject and condemn extremists? Because they don't want to say anything unflattering about a fellow believer. And that is where the enablement happens. Folks of other religious beliefs will readily reject the extremist, but religious *moderates* of the same cloth will avoid doing so. When was the last time you heard a moderate Christian minister criticize the Pope?
It is the same with political extremists: when moderate Republicans in the U.S. Congress criticize and condemn Bush's crackpot ideas, he pays attention; when they don't, it gives him the room to suggest even more bizarre things. The Democrats he ignores anyway; it the moderates in his own party who determine what gets done.
Ben, your anaolgy is misleading and exaggerated. I do not advocate passivity in the face of brutality. Where did you get that notion? Those who have been part of this particular blog for the past few months know that I prefer to initiate discussions that find middle ground and bring people together. I distrust extremism of any kind. My way mediates…your way polarizes, and I think we have enough of that in the world already.
Yes, I am a moderate "believer" in other religions, though not a follower of the philosphies of all of the names that you list in your post! Hitler and Clinton in the same group as Buddah ad Einstein? Come on now, Ben! You're trying to inflame the discussion. All religions have good things to teach at their core, it is the way that they have been twisted by men to suit their own petty needs, that I have always objected to.
Let's get back on topic. That is, the ORIGINAL topic of this post, which is the supposed infallibility of the bible.
Wouldn't you agree that to have people begin to recognize the bible as a work of men would go a long way to robbing it of its power in our society? Wouldn't you agree that a "demystification" of the bible would be a step in the right direction?
While the stoning of children for heresy has fallen out of fashion in our country, you will not hear a moderate Christian or Jew arguing for a “symbolic” reading of passages of this sort. (In fact, one seems to be explicitly blocked by God himself in Deuteronomy 13:1— “Whatever I am now commanding you, you must keep and observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away.”) The above passage is as canonical as any in the Bible, and it is only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world. This is a problem for “moderation” in religion: it has nothing underwriting it other than the unacknowledged neglect of the letter of the divine law.
The only reason anyone is “moderate” in matters of faith these days is that he has assimilated some of the fruits of the last two thousand years of human thought (democratic politics, scientific advancement on every front, concern for human rights, an end to cultural and geographic isolation, etc.). The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside. The moderation we see among nonfundamentalists is not some sign that faith itself has evolved; it is, rather, the product of the many hammer blows of modernity that have exposed certain tenets of faith to doubt. Not the least among these developments has been the emergence of our tendency to value evidence and to be convinced by a proposition to the degree that there is evidence for it. Even most fundamentalists live by the lights of reason in this regard; it is just that their minds seem to have been partitioned to accommodate the profligate truth claims of their faith. Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.
Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago—and much of this knowledge is incompatible with scripture. Having heard something about the medical discoveries of the last hundred years, most of us no longer equate disease processes with sin or demonic possession. Having learned about the known distances between objects in our universe, most of us (about half of us, actually) find the idea that the whole works was created six thousand years ago (with light from distant stars already in transit toward the earth) impossible to take seriously. Such concessions to modernity do not in the least suggest that faith is compatible with reason, or that our religious traditions are in principle open to new learning: it is just that the utility of ignoring (or “reinterpreting”) certain articles of faith is now overwhelming. Anyone being flown to a distant city for heart-bypass surgery has conceded, tacitly at least, that we have learned a few things about physics, geography, engineering, and medicine since the time of Moses.
(Excerpt from Harris's the End of Faith)
Gato's Four Characteristics Of An Extremeist:
1. Long answer to a simple question
2. Avoiding answering in plain speech the actual question that was posed
3. Refusal to agree on even the most basic point
4. Long quotations from another source in lieu of soulsearching
I have noticed these same tendecies from people at both ends of the belief spectrum. Both religious fundamentalists and adamant atheists seem to react in the same frenzied way as one approaches the actual point of the conversation.
Maybe a more fair analogy would be that of pollution. Suppose I am anti-pollution rather than anti-religion. I assert that any pollution, even the little bit seeping into the Chesapeake Bay from poultry plants, is bad. Even the little tiny combustible engines of California, are bad. Indeed, moderation such as recycling is better than dumping your motor oil right into the local pond (fundamentalist polluters), but it is not good enough for ME in THIS case. Sure it is a bit unrealistic to want to eliminate all pollution (religion). However, it is my goal, and it is a good goal, a mission from "God" where God is my idealogy of peace love and harmony with nature, earth, and whoever else will listen.
Whoooaaa, this is getting surreal. I ask the empiricists for evidence and I get… a parable. (Ben's story about street corner thugs)
Sorry, I still have seen no evidence that religious moderation enables fundamentalism.
Nor any evidence that a heavy barrage of verbal abuse has ever solved any conflict, for that matter.
Vicki, Ben & gatomjp make a bunch of good points. So many, in fact, that time does not permit me to even summarize them, much less address them individually. Accordingly, I must focus on a few things I disagree with, taking the risk that you all will not think me uncharitable for failing to give praise where it clearly is due.
I'll begin with something Vicki wrote. In defending religion, she said, "I think every thinking person in the world today knows that we have to get beyond individualism/greed and find some way to break out of the endless cycle of returning violence for violence."
I agree with that sentiment, but, in fact, many of the people who "return violence for violence" have declared the Bible to be their moral compass. This includes more than a few popes, various kings and queens of European countries, political terrorists (Islamic, Christian & Jewish), abortion clinic bombers, and George W. Bush, to name just a few. Accordingly, if and when the human species finds a way to stop returning violence for violence, I doubt very much that the Bible will be the inspiration (Vicki's list of Christian heroes notwithstanding).
As regards my objection to John's middle-of-the-road view, my point was simply that it isn't Biblical. Yes, we can point to the NT to find a god with a radically different personality than the one in the OT, but this does not alter the fact that the one in the OT is a ranting, intolerant, infantile tyrant. OK, so some good people have claimed to have been inspired to do good things by reading the Bible, but I bet the OT wasn't where they found inspiration. Indeed, perhaps they, or others like them, would have done good things without reading the Bible, as many people have.
gatomjp writes: "Grumpy is assuming what John imagines god to be. That’s not fair. John never said that GOD was anything. John said that the bible reveals how other PEOPLE have viewed god in the past and I think that’s a fair statement to make."
True, John did say that the Bible reveals how other people have viewed the god-of-the-Bible in the past, and he did not directly say that the god-of-the-Bible was anything, but I still believe my criticism is both fair and valid. John's interprets the Bible using a middle-of-the-road approach: accepting the parts he likes and dismissing the parts he doesn't as "mistakes." I reject that approach, not because I am trying (as Vicki suggests) to characterize all Christians as extremists, but because it is simply not a legitimate way to interpret the holy book of a *revealed* religion. I am not saying we should not view the Bible as a work of literature which shows how our ancestors struggled with their spiritual beliefs; I'm saying that if we do so, then we should not call the result "Christianity." We can call our watered-down, pick-and-choose religion "Johnianity" or "Vickianity" or "gatomjpianity;" we can call it "intelligent, reasoned, non-fundamentalist," etc.; but we cannot call it "Christianity."
Finally, Vicki writes: "The only alternative you portrayed to your version of “real Christianity” was a tepid, watered-down pop Christianity."
True, the only alternative I mentioned to "real" Christianity was John's tepid, watered-down pop version, but that's because I was responding to John's comment, which contained only John's tepid, watered-down pop version. I didn't address any other versions, because John didn't, either. That's why Vicki's examples were unrelated to my comment: neither John nor I addressed the topic she did. Be that as it may, it just so happens that "real" Christianity is not practiced by any "Christian" I have ever known or heard of, so it appears to be a fact that all alternatives to "real" Christianity ARE tepid and watered-down, including those of the people Vicki mentions. While those people clearly were passionate about their beliefs, they did not, for example, become pilgrims for Jesus.
gatomjp writes: "All religions have good things to teach at their core, it is the way that they have been twisted by men to suit their own petty needs, that I have always objected to."
The reverse is also true. Many religions, including all of the ones based on the Bible, teach vile, cruel, outrageous things at their core, and it is the way they have been *rejected and humanized* by irreligious people, to suit important community values, that has caused them to become acceptable.
Ben is right: the doors leading out of scriptural literalism did not open from the inside. They were yanked open by their neighbors who had a conscience, and more love in their hearts than did the believers behind the doors.
Grumpy writes "Why do moderates not reject and condemn extremists?"
I listed a number of links where religious people were rejecting and condemning extremists from their own group -evangelicals criticizing and opposing evangelicals even. Here's another link to a Muslim woman who is risking her life by criticizing and working for re form of Islam from the inside: http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/index.html
You offer only repeated assertions ("it should be self-evident!") and a rationale with some pretty wide inductive leaps, but no empirical evidence that religious moderation enables religious fundamentalism.
Grumpy writes "When was the last time you heard a moderate Christian minister criticize the Pope?"
Google "bishops defy pope" and you'll get some results that may surprise you.
Grumpy and Ben, your rhetoric is the rhetoric of annihilation. There is ample historical evidence that your type of opposition just fans the flames of religious extremism. Attacks from the outside usually make the attacked group close ranks and defend each other. Look at the US in Iraq. We are generating terrorists faster than we can kill them.
Thanks Grumpy I would like to take credit for that inspired door-swinging metaphor, but my *entire* post was an excerpt which I pasted from the Sam Harris website (granted, I do agree with most of it). My reasoning being that since I hadn't been reading all of the spiritual links provided here, it was possible that other folks didn't have time (interest) to go the extra click either.
In terms of the rhetoric, I plead guilty with explanation. It seems like rhetoric to you, just like how the spiritual-everything-will-be-fine-if-we-all-hold-hands seems like *rhetoric* to me. The only real facts that I see (as a RARE scientist who is willing to engage in philosophical discussion) are those of science. Death is death. Life is life. The universe is infinite or at least gosh dern big (still counting the stars though, just in case).
Christians, Jews, Muslims and Spiritual Healers who come on the internet need to see this message loud and clear, and eventually the beautiful, natural, peaceful message of atheism won't have to be kept a secret. Scientists will be able to practice science freely, therapists (what was once referred to as spiritual healing) will be able to teach well-being and have people listen with an eager ear. Try this link to "A Blog from Hell", he is right on the money…
http://normdoering.blogspot.com
Even when I disagree with the author, I end up getting that eerie feeling that he is probably right, similar to what has been coined the "Grumpypilgrim" phenomena.
Ben, the funny thing is…I agree with most of what you desire. It's just that I feel that your divisive methods are more harmful to our cause than helpful.
I'd like to quote Vicki here because she said it better than I can and I think it bears repeating…
"…your rhetoric is the rhetoric of annihilation. There is ample historical evidence that your type of opposition just fans the flames of religious extremism. Attacks from the outside usually make the attacked group close ranks and defend each other. Look at the US in Iraq. We are generating terrorists faster than we can kill them.