You can't have it both ways

  

          When I listen to some Christians defend the Bible, I am a little perturbed by the ducking and weaving to save this document as some kind of perfect record by an omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent deity while hand-waving some aspects due to faulty humans. Looking at some of the statements, especially when they are combined as part of an overall defense of its divine status, obvious contradictions emerge.

            For the record, I think the Bible teaches some good lessons and some bad lessons. There are stories that map to reality and ones we have no evidence to support. Some of the poetry is quite nice. Even if the Bible lacked contradictions, it would not mean that all the claims in it were true. It is possible for me to tell you a story in which, out of ten statements, nine are true and one is false. The nine facts do not mean the tenth statement attains some kind of accuracy. In any case, the notion that we need to accept it all or reject it all, as if the Bible were one thing, one coherent idea, is ridiculous. It is a large heterogeneous text that covers a large band of time. If nothing else, the Bible has inspired many works of literature, so some knowledge of the characters and tales is useful to interpreting other texts.

The Bible as Divinely Inspired

            One of the problems that arises is the requirement that we take the Bible in its entirety as a perfect document. I have heard both Jews and Christians say that Yahweh dictated the Bible to Moses. Others say that he divinely inspired the authors. There are obvious problems with this stance. Even if you prefer to think that God simply inspired the text. For example, there are obvious contradictions (see Jesus' resurrection or Judas' story). But in addition, the Bible condones slavery and seems micro-managingly concerned with how many types of crops we grow in a field or that our fabrics are pure.

            There are also Christians that want to re-interpret some of the more allegorical writings to support our more recent scientific understanding of how the world works. Some of these claims fall apart in context. If anyone cites Psalms, a book of poetry, as some evidence for scientific understanding, they should be laughed at. Even the passages in Genesis about creation have to be stretched until they are warped to even approximate anything close to our understanding of the formation of our universe, galaxy, solar system and world.

            If the Bible were truly divinely inspired, these problems simply would not exist. Genesis would at least get the order of creation correct, there would be no contradictions about Judas' death or who went to Jesus' tomb and what they saw. The morality of the Bible would not be so dubious. It seems that an all-knowing all-loving god could at least tell people that slavery was bad.

            Overall, this would be a different book.

Imperfect humans misinterpreted the pure word

            If Christians see that there are problems with this divine text, they often dodge. Some say that if we could read the original text, we would see the perfect message. Others might say that the four Gospel accounts were written from different points of view and it's natural for there to be divergences, the same as if four witnesses to a car accident were asked to retell what they saw.

            The clear problem, though, is you want to point to this book for moral guidance and a proper understanding of the past. If the Bible is the work of imperfect humans who are responsible for the contradictions and botched moral advice, including the dietary and purity laws, then how can you tell which elements come from your deity and which are interpolations?

            In short, you can't really have it both ways, but people want to be able to point to the parts they approve of or simply want to believe as the work of a god and hand-wave others as human error.

In a later post, I will examine other dodges about the divinity of the Bible.