A little while ago, I was arguing with a fundamentalist Christian about how he knew that he was so right and everyone else was so wrong.
He told me that there were no errors in the Bible that every bit of it from Genesis through Revelations was 100% true. He claimed that every bit of it was “the inspired word of God” and therefore perfect and infallible.
What did that mean I asked him? He said: “God has the power to actually put His message into our words.” He also assured me that he couldn’t possibly have personally misinterpretted one syllable.
I asked how he knew this to be true. “Hasn’t it been translated thousands of times & written & re-written by many authors?” I queried. “Aren’t humans inherently prone to error? How is it that virtually no post on the this board can be made without a typo yet the Bible be 100% correct?”
Now, ordinarily I don’t like to diss anyone else’s religion and that is not my specific intention here. But, this guy was being an arrogant jerk. I was merely trying to challenge his beliefs a little to have a discussion about moral choices and perhaps get him to see someone else’s side for a change, but he was being all sanctimonius.
So, after enduring frequent insults about my ignorance for trusting in science, I finally let him have it. I told him that I now knew that he was lying, because there were many well-known errors in the Bible. So, either he was deliberately overlooking these portions or he knew a lot less about he Bible than he claimed to. Either way he was lying.
The fact is that many portions of the Bible are patently absurd if read literally. I don’t mean that I just disagree with them. I mean that I don’t see how ANY rational person living in today could possibly believe all of them wholeheartedly (as he claimed he did), because many Biblical claims are not only improbable, but sometimes even self-contradictory in light of our modern knowledge. I would bet that he had never even read the Bible cover to cover - just selected passages (like most people). Picking and choosing the best parts - all the while claiming that “every bit of it” was fact dictated directly from God to author - never added to by later authors or revised one bit. Most likely, he was just parrotting what he had been taught about the book.
Many other frequently overlooked portions of the Bible, that I won’t get into here, have little relevance to our modern world too. For example, the sections that advocate death by stoning for blasphemy or adulterous women seem really awful to everyone today (outside of a few in parts of Nigeria or Iran).
Anyway, I finally posted the following passage & commentary & that finally shut the guy up:
** THE BIBLE {New International Version (NIV)} **
*Genesis 1
The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was [1] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day. 6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day. 9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning-the third day. 14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning-the fourth day. 20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning-the fifth day. 24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." 29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day.*
MY VERY IRREVERENT COMMENTARY ON GENESIS (Chap. 1)
Notes: *Day 1 - God creates heaven & earth, but the earth has no land or oceans. (???) Though God is
said to be “hovering over the waters”. (I thought God was everywhere? How does he hover in one place
rather than another. A very primitive notion - more akin to conceptions of anthropomorphic pagan gods
than - e.g. Zeus or a Genie - rather than a monotheistic omnipotent being.) And, why does he need to
“hover”? Is there gravity? Is he made of matter?
Then he calls the light “day” & the dark “night” - but it is always both day & night on a spherical earth.
This only makes sense if you believe in a flat earth - where the sun moves across the sky, like Apollo’s
chariot.
Also, note: there is light & dark but no sun or other stars yet.
Then he creates “sky”. Before this there was only light & dark & earth (but the earth had no ground nor
sky). Perhaps this should be interpretted as meaning clouds “water from waters” - though that’s not
what it says in any texts, it says “sky”. (And I don’t want to read into the text based on modern
understandings of these things. Gen 2 says there was no rain yet - not until after vegetatuion & animals.)
Then, there was “evening”? (Whatever that means without a sun. (???))
**Day 2: Then he creates land & oceans.
Though how this is can be “day 2” or “morning” when there is no sun yet is unknown. Makes no sense.
(Anyone? Maybe these are godly days? But then why call them days at all? How about Epoch 1, epoch 2,
etc. Again, don’t want to read anything into the text that isn’t there. Will assume that “day” is meant &
these are regularly 24 hour days. Even if the earth is not moving & no sun yet.)
Then he creates vegetation. Evening. (???)
***Day 3 - Morning. (???) He creates the sun (finally!) & the moon, then all the other stars (as well, I
assume, all the planets, asteroids, meteors, comets, moons around other planets, galaxies, pulsars,
quasars, blackholes, dark matter, etc. - though it makes no mention of any of these other things.) Of
course, ancient astrologers couldn’t have known that the planets weren’t also stars - just special stars
that moved differently from all the others. God says that all of these heavenly bodies are just for us to
help us mark the passage of time on calendars.
(Busy day! Whew! - he created about 99.99999999999% of the observable universe on this day,
apparently).
****Day 4 - Then god creates sea creatures & birds. (No land animals yet.) (Guess he took it easy after
that long day 3 - probably slept late. I assume he must sleep at night, since he apparently only work until evening & then resumes with more work the next morning.)
*****Day 5 - First, he creates livestock, then all the wild animals. (So, cattle & pigs & sheep, etc. we’re
created already domesticated, then their wild cousins. Not sure about chickens, geese, or wild flightless
birds - Day 4 or 5?). (Perhaps penguins & ostriches were the first land animals? Other birds created on
day 4.) (Not sure when he created bacteria or other microbes. No mention of them in the Bible. Maybe
theyt didn’t exist at all until they were discovered in the 1500s?). (And, where has SARS been hiding all
the time or does he still make new microbes all the time - just no other new organisms, since day 5.)
Then god created man.
******Day 6 Then according to Gen 2 he has Adam name all the animals. It seems the only thing he
made on this day was Eve - from Adam’s rib. Though I’m sure anming all the animals took a long time.
There are over 800,000 species of insect alone!! And text says Adam named all creatures that day, not
God, and there’s a limit to how fast Adam could do it. God also set down the rules for them about the
Tree of Knowledge & the Tree of Life on this day.
*******Day 7. He rested. (Told you he must sleep. Maybe he had to pulled an all-nighter naming the
animals with Adam & making Eve. Though what happens to the rest of the universe while he slept
all-day on the 7th is anybody’s guess. (Maybe the angels minded the store - assuming there were any -
no mention when they were created. Did they all exist before the universe or light & dark, etc.)
And all of THAT is just the errors I could find skimming through the first Chapter of the first book. Divinely
inspired? Nonsense!
It was obviously written by very primitive people with little underestanding of any sort of science. No
amount of double-talk makes the text any more accurate than the creation myths of the Greeks, Chinese, Nordic, African, Aboriginal, Native American, or ANY other cultures. It’s a fun story, but it provides no real insight or knowledge of anything.
At first when the fundamentalist guy read the text above, he said that I must have misinterpretted it, of course, but couldn’t say exactly how.
Then, finally, he admitted that parts of the Bible WERE known to be somewhat allegorical, after all. Though, they were still 100% true, he still maintained. (???) He tried to claim, that the essense that the text tells the way it actually happened.
At this point, I knew I had him on the ropes, so I pressed him further, pointing out that I had found all those errors after just a few minutes of skimming through the first chapter of the first book. Furthermore, I said that if you admit that the Bible is not to be taken exactly literally in some portions, then how could anyone ever know which were the literal portions and which not? The text of Genesis doesn’t say its a metaphor anywhere Also then, why couldn’t one then legimately interpret all the supernatural portions as mere metaphor".
He didn’t like this idea at all. He tried to “pull rank on me” then. He claimed that IF ONLY I had studied the Bible as much as him, then I would be able to easily tell which portions were intended only as metaphor.
"So how YOU decide which portions of it are mere allegory, I asked. "What’s difference with THIS text that makes parts of it perhaps not literally true. but other fantastic events like the animals walking two-by-two into Noah’s ark or even the Virgin Birth literal events. He said again that it was easy to tell. So, I begged him to show me how this passage and perhaps others are known to be intended metaphorically rather than literally, Didn’t some theologians claim this?
He couldn’t answer. He just posted more sciptures. And, then went off to check HIS Bible to look for disagreement with the version I posted, promising to return. But, I knew I had him. I had gotten him to reverse himself and admit that the Bible might NOT be wholly true in some portions. And, from there I knew it was a slippery slope to questioning the veracity any and all of its stories.
I never heard back from him again.
(No offense intended to anyone.)