Start acting like it
(Note 31 October 2002: This came about a bit more harshly than it should have. Sorry about that. I have left it up unedited as it has already been discussed at QuickTopic, where a good discussion is going on.)
From the Christian Charity Department of mcgees.org:
If you don’t like Christianity, [t]hen why don’t all of you leave America, this country was founded by Christians for Christians. And if you don’t like it then go to a Godless heathen nation that agrees with your retard tinged philosophy. Their are way more of us Christians than you losers. Their is NO separation of church and state and you heathens will lose. Thankfully you are old and I hope you get a painful disease like rectal cancer and die a slow painful death, so you can meet your God, SATAN . . . .
There’s more. You can view other hate mail filled with intolerant diatribes, racist, misogynist, and anti-gay messages, and anonymous death threats.
I am told frequently by Christians that while Christians might say hateful things and perform horrific acts, this is not the fault of Christianity. Besides echoes of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, it is simply untrue. Racism, intolerance of homosexuality, misogyny, and death threats are what the Bible excel at. The book has taken these sentiments to dizzying heights. Yes, I know that the Bible also attributes to Jesus the sentiment that we should love our neighbors. But accepting that in light of other Biblical tales requires either a very diseased notion of love or a very limiting definition of neighbor.
Talk some time to a mainstream Christian and try to discern his or her criteria for determing whether something in the Bible is custom, a fallacy of man attributed to God, or truly God’s word. A woman wearing men’s clothes is an abomination to God: that’s just a custom, you will be told, especially by a woman in slacks and a shirt. We’re allowed to keep slaves: whoops, that’s a fallacy of man attributed to God, because we know slaveholding is wrong. You must believe in God or you will go to hell: tada, that one’s God.
If the Christian is a non-fundamentalist with even an gram of education or understanding of physical processes, ask about the six day creation story. Umm, must be a customary story, or a metaphor of some sort. A woman who commits adultery, or a son who disrespects his parents, should be killed: yikes, that’s a fallacy of man, because, after all, God is Love. One should love one’s neighbor as oneself: yep, God.
A pattern emerges quite rapidly. If your conversation partner has already decided something is right, that’s the will of God. If he or she has already decided something is wrong, that’s the will of man. And if he or she has decided something is absurd, that’s custom. In a way you have to respect the logic of Orthodox Jews more, who follow jaw-dropping, staggeringly pointless rules such as a hamburger being OK to eat, and a grilled cheese sandwich being OK to eat, but a cheeseburger being an abomination to God. For the mainstream Christians, it’s all ad hoc justification. It’s just each person’s prejudice given selective support by a deity. (I’m not, by the way, saying Christians should logically follow kosher laws. In their “New Testament” kosher laws are explicitly overturned. “Yes, I know that eating pork was an abomination last Tuesday,” God says, “but it’s not any longer.”)
Rather than send hate-filled, death-threat-laden, and badly spell-checked missives to people in their communities, this group of Christians should grow spines, stop threatening that their invisible friend will beat people up, and begin to come to grips with their own hate, bigotry, and closed-mindedness. We are all neighbors, folks. Put down your Bible, unload your shotgun, and start acting like it.
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May 5th, 2009 at 12h07
The Bible is a book made up of individual books/letters written by over 40 authors over a 1600 year period.
The OT contains three parts: the Law, the Writings and the Prophets.
The NT contains the the Gospels and Acts, as well as the letters.
The readers of scripture must know what type of literature they are reading: narrative, poetry, prophecy, legal codes, teaching, etc.
Each book of the Bible must be understood as a whole and in its parts.
Reading the Bible is part art and part science.
There are rules that govern its interpretation. Words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs must all be carefully studied. The immediate and larger context must be studied as well.
It’s possible to make the Bible say anything. But some interpretations are better than others.
Atheists have a tendency to read the Bible with a literal dullness that is hard to fathom.
Like any complex piece of literature, the Bible isn’t always easy to understand. But the problems that atheists point out in the Bible usually don’t amount to much.