# How Can There Be NON-Fundamentalists? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 24, 2004, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896 "2004-09-24T17:06:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/1 "2004-09-24T17:06:36Z")
Now, I am asking this as a lifelong atheist who doesn’t know all that much about relgigion. But I just read this book (is that the hottest author ever, by the way?), which raised a lot of questions in my pretty little head. The author states that “real” (i.e., fundamentalist) Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that their particular Holy Book is the Word of God. No questions asked. Follow every word. This makes sense, right? He goes on to state that the nice, reasonable, “cafeteria” Christians, Jews and Muslims—the kind we befriend and chat with here on the Boards—are fooling themselves. “Well, I believe in the Old Testament [or New Testament, or Koran], but I don’t believe you should stone adultresses to death or torch entire towns because some inhabitants are infidels.” Harris argues that these people are making deals with themselves psychologically, because if they admitted that _some_ of their religion is outdated rantings from thousands of years ago, they’d have to let in a chink of reason and admit that maybe _none_ of their Holy Book held water. Opinions? ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/2 "2004-09-24T17:08:52Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > I am asking this as a lifelong atheist who doesn’t know all that much about relgigion. . . . Including how to spell it . . . ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/3 "2004-09-24T17:13:46Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > if they admitted that _some_ of their religion is outdated rantings from thousands of years ago, they’d have to let in a chink of reason and admit that maybe _none_ of their Holy Book held water. This is what I’ve always thought. Good OP. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/4 "2004-09-24T17:15:58Z")
It’s a difference in belief about the origin of the holy text. If one believes it is divinely inspried, and therefore literally true down to the last word, then one is a fundamentalist. If one believes that it is the product of men\*, then one can admit that the text is not literally true (word for word). One might conceive of the text as being alegorical, teaching general moral principles, rather a prescriptive code of ethics. But even if one is a literalist, there is still a lot of debate about what specific words mean from a text that was written down so long ago. Words change in meaning over time, and some we may not even know the meaning of. \*even if the faith itself is divinely inspired ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/5 "2004-09-24T17:17:34Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > . . . Including how to spell it . . . Boy, do you need an editor. I had this basic problem the first time I tried to read the New Testament. I read through the Gospels and was partway through one of the next books along and I got to the point where the Holy Spirit came down and killed a couple people for lying, and I thought, “Perhaps that was misreported in the popular press…?” So I went back to the Gospels, re-read the things attributed to Jesus, and stuck with those. Probably still subject to errors in translation, but the errors are closer to the source. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/6 "2004-09-24T17:18:55Z")
My opinion: Nah. Everybody who subscribes to **any** set of beliefs or principles—a political affiliation, a philosophical school, whatever—makes some compromises with their content as “officially” set out in the party platform or founding text or what have you. Compromises with sacred scriptures are no different. I think comparatively few theists really subscribe to the view that “THIS HOLY BOOK IS EXACTLY AND ENTIRELY AS IT WAS REVEALED BY THE DEITY, AND WHAT ITS STATEMENTS SEEM TO MEAN TO ME IS EXACTLY HOW GOD MEANT THEM.” Most believers allow for the possibility that the transcribers or interpreters of the text, as well as they themselves, are looking at it “through a glass darkly” and can’t expect to see exactly what God meant by all of it. So one “no” vote here for the thesis that non-fundamentalist, non-literalist theists are just barely hanging on to religious sanity by a shred of cognitive dissonance. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/7 "2004-09-24T17:21:25Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > I had this basic problem the first time I tried to read the New Testament. I read through the Gospels and was partway through one of the next books along and I got to the point where the Holy Spirit came down and killed a couple people for lying, and I thought, “Perhaps that was misreported in the popular press…?”. That has been debunked as propaganda from The Galilean Fishermen for Truth organization. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/8 "2004-09-24T17:23:44Z")
Well, there used to be a group called the [Essenes](http://www.essenespirit.com/). Lots of people believe Jesus himself was an Essene. The Essenes didn’t believe every word of the Torah was literal truth - they believed some of it was metaphor. If the founder of your religion didn’t believe in the literal truth of the document, why is it self-foolingnessism? Also, I’m not sure I understand why you can’t think the Bible is an imperfect record made by humans which was an attempt to capture that which they thought was miraculous, or at least needed to be written down, that someone else thought should be part of the Bible. It seems your author’s argument has a hidden assumption - that belief in a religion is founded in the belief of the book. Drop that and you’ve got it made. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/9 "2004-09-24T17:26:41Z")
If those imperfect beings who wrote the bible believed one thing which turned out to be intrue, then surely it is possible that all the other things they believed lose their validity and can turn out not to be true. That is the argument I think. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/10 "2004-09-24T17:30:17Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > It’s a difference in belief about the origin of the holy text. If one believes it is divinely inspried, and therefore literally true down to the last word, then one is a fundamentalist. If one believes that it is the product of men\*, then one can admit that the text is not literally true (word for word). One might conceive of the text as being alegorical, teaching general moral principles, rather a prescriptive code of ethics. > > But even if one is a literalist, there is still a lot of debate about what specific words mean from a text that was written down so long ago. Words change in meaning over time, and some we may not even know the meaning of. > > \*even if the faith itself is divinely inspired Well it’s difficult to be a literalist as far as the Bible is concerned if or no other reason than that it contradicts itself. I agree that words change meaning over time, and ancient definitions may be unrecoverable. What I do not understand is why there is not an _unbroken line of understanding_ from the first revelation of God’s word until today. Why should we have to translate words from thousands of years ago? If the truth of his wisdom is so apparent, why was it not passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, clearly and concisely, with no interpretation required? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/11 "2004-09-24T17:33:21Z")
So I read a post here by, say, **iampunha** , who’s actually done a couple of them, that seems to live and breathe the spirit of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I say that “King’s legacy inspired ol’ **pun** to write that.” And I do have a definite meaning in mind when I say something like that. Or I see a witty, sardonic comment by yourself, dear OP, and I say that “the spirit of Dorothy Parker lives on in **Eve**.” You catching a drift of the point I’m making here? Now, I pick up ye olde leatherbounde Bible and start leafing through it. I see records of a lot of guys going “Thus saith the Lord…” and a books telling what Jesus said and did. But nowhere do I find any book written by God Himself – leastwise not the Father or the Son. The Holy Spirit – well, He is something of a ghostwriter (pun intended) for the folks purporting to give a message from God. But every book in that collection was written by a human being, overtly and clearly so, and with the exception of one short passage supposedly written directly by God on stone, it’s totally clear that it was human beings delivering what they understood to be what God wanted them to convey to people. So whatever He wanted said is filtered through the minds and vocabularies of people. And, people being people, it’s quite possible that many of them were mistaken as to what exactly it was that He wanted said and done. So it’s quite possible to believe in a God who “inspires” Scripture, without believing it to be His verbatim words. Because people **do** fuck up. Look at any religious thread here, or I can link you to a forum with 928,845 threads and 9,443,182 posts allegedly discussing what God has to say – and the differences of opinion are rather extreme, to say the least. This is not to condemn those who happen to believe in the literal veracity of the Bible – it’s to respond to the OP by demonstrating how an intelligent person can accept it as “inspired” but non-inerrant and not identical to “the word of God.” ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/12 "2004-09-24T17:35:12Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > The author states that “real” (i.e., fundamentalist) Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that their particular Holy Book is the Word of God. No questions asked. Follow every word. This makes sense, right? Well, no. The problem is that all of these faiths also have traditions outside of the Bible informing their doctrines. Remember that Christians didn’t have the Bible as it is for the first couple hundred years of the faith’s existence. Same with Judaism, except expand it to a couple thousand. I’m not as versed in Islam. Second, there are also traditions of lessons being taught through the use of parables and metaphors, which are not supposed to be taken literally. They are just illustrations. > [@](#): > > He goes on to state that the nice, reasonable, “cafeteria” Christians, Jews and Muslims—the kind we befriend and chat with here on the Boards—are fooling themselves. “Well, I believe in the Old Testament [or New Testament, or Koran], but I don’t believe you should stone adultresses to death or torch entire towns because some inhabitants are infidels.” Again, the problem is that the books are long and often filled with vague lessons and instructions that are sometimes conflicting or sometimes exclusive to the time and place. It’s quite easy to pick and choose because of this vastness. > [@](#): > > Harris argues that these people are making deals with themselves psychologically, because if they admitted that _some_ of their religion is outdated rantings from thousands of years ago, they’d have to let in a chink of reason and admit that maybe _none_ of their Holy Book held water. There are a lot of people who do admit the possibility that none of the Holy Book held water, but still believe that it does. It’s not a logically exclusive position. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/13 "2004-09-24T17:42:34Z")
Eve, I think it’s a good point. I’m not a theist, but I think I’ve hung around here long enough to understand what might be their reasoning on this. I think most middle of the road Christians would say that the Bible was written by _men_ and thus subject to human fallability. Inspired by God, but written by men. And I would guess that many Christians would say they don’t need the Bible to _prove_ God, because they have personal knowledge or faith or whatever you prefer to call it. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, DO believe the Bible to be the infallible word of God. I once had a conversation with a fundmentalist friend where I mentioned the stoning of adulterers proscribed in the Bible. Her response was, “Well, it’s sure gonna keep people from committing adultery, isn’t it?” I don’t hear as much from Jews and Muslims, so I can’t speak for them. > [@Ethilrist](#): > > Boy, do you need an editor. > > I had this basic problem the first time I tried to read the New Testament. I read through the Gospels and was partway through one of the next books along and I got to the point where the Holy Spirit came down and killed a couple people for lying, and I thought, “Perhaps that was misreported in the popular press…?” > > So I went back to the Gospels, re-read the things attributed to Jesus, and stuck with those. Probably still subject to errors in translation, but the errors are closer to the source. Actually, we’ve had some really good threads on the gospels, and there’s a great Straight Dope article on them as well. I was quite surprised to learn that the gospels are not close to the source at all. They are quite far removed from first-hand sources, and a lot of the material is even re-used in almost the exact same wording from one gospel to the other. And of the parts that _are_ original material, they frequently contradict each other in rather important ways. There’s considerable doubt as to whether one can know if Jesus said or did _any_ of the things attributed to him in the Bible. Oh, and on preview I see that Polycarp has already confirmed what I was saying about the Bible being men _inspired_ by God. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/14 "2004-09-24T17:52:48Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > That has been debunked as propaganda from The Galilean Fishermen for Truth organization. 🙂 Aren’t they the ones who say Jesus only had minor injuries, but put in for a full resurrection anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/15 "2004-09-24T17:58:10Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > That has been debunked as propaganda from The Galilean Fishermen for Truth organization. 🙂 Right. And those weren’t nail holes, just self-inflicted wounds. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/16 "2004-09-24T18:08:04Z")
> [@Neurotik](#): > > The problem is that all of these faiths also have traditions outside of the Bible informing their doctrines. Remember that Christians didn’t have the Bible as it is for the first couple hundred years of the faith’s existence. Same with Judaism, except expand it to a couple thousand. I’m not as versed in Islam. With Islam, they wrote down Mohammed’s seurah’s shortly after he was gone; nevertheless, there are even a few different versions of the Qu’ran, with small differences traceable all the way back to way-back-when. Tangentially, it’s hard to understand how God Ips-self could have written the Bible, when the book of Luke starts out, “A few other people have written this down, but now I’m going to put together my best attempt for you, Theo.”[sup]1[/sup] [sup]1[/sup]Paraphrase. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/17 "2004-09-24T18:19:26Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > I was quite surprised to learn that the gospels are not close to the source at all. They are quite far removed from first-hand sources, and a lot of the material is even re-used in almost the exact same wording from one gospel to the other. And of the parts that _are_ original material, they frequently contradict each other in rather important ways. There’s considerable doubt as to whether one can know if Jesus said or did _any_ of the things attributed to him in the Bible. Oh. Great. Well, that killed 30 years. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/18 "2004-09-24T18:27:05Z")
Damn, **blowero** beat me to it! I understand the divinely inspired, human written position, but I think it has significant problems. How does one tell the parts that are purely human, written, the parts that are divinely inspired where the human made a transcription error, and the parts where the divine shines through. How can any deity expect us to act upon such unreliable instructions, except through the same non-divine logic and moral reasoning that we would use without any divine inspiration at all? If there were large chunks (think containers in a buffet) that were one or the other, it would be easy. We could see Job as a fable, Chronicles and Kings as non-inspired historical commentary, and Leviticus, say, as divinely inpsired. We could fill our plates from the good containers and avoid the dubious ones. But things seem a bit more mixed than that. The important stuff, like the Shma, is mixed in with the stuff we’d rather ignore (like the “every harlot must get stoned” part. Could an advocate of the divinely inspired - human mangled position give me an algorithm for a filter that does not involve our human perceptions? I understand where this position comes from, by the way. Our moral code is far beyond that of 2700 years ago. But I don’t know how you reliably pick out the good bits of meat from the nasty ones. In my buffet, I’d toss the whole pot. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/19 "2004-09-24T18:35:20Z")
> [@bup](#): > > It seems your author’s argument has a hidden assumption - that belief in a religion is founded in the belief of the book. Drop that and you’ve got it made. But I don’t think you _can_ drop that—if there had never been an Old Testament, there’d be no Judaism today. Had there been no New Testament ever written, no Christianity. No Koran, no Muslims. ---
**Author:** ![Homebrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Homebrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Homebrew)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2004, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896/20 "2004-09-24T18:44:49Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > Harris argues that these people are making deals with themselves psychologically, because if they admitted that _some_ of their religion is outdated rantings from thousands of years ago, they’d have to let in a chink of reason and admit that maybe _none_ of their Holy Book held water. > > Opinions? This is precisely what happened to me. I grew up _very_ fundamentalist Pentecostal. Rationality eventually caused me to begin rethinking everything. In due course, I rejected it all. Even later I finally overcame my religious-based homophobia and Came Out. So based on my experience, I think they’re all afraid they’ll become Gay. And that’s why they won’t rethink things. Okay that last part is for humor only. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-there-be-non-fundamentalists/265896.md?page=2)