The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible gets linked to a lot in Bible discussion threads. I’m mostly happy about the site, it’s good to take a look at the Bible in a critical light whether one is a believer or an atheist.
However, the maintainer of the site has shown himself less than interested in accuracy. Many of the pointers which the site shows about a particular chapter or verse are just silly. For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus addresses his mother as “Woman”. The SAB says this is an example of “rudeness”. Well, in Greek this was a totally normal form of address, with nothing implied besides calling someone’s attention. Greek texts are full of such forms of address.
I e-mailed the site’s maintainer with a list of weak points like these. No response came, and no action was taken.
So what do you think, Dopers? Is the creator of the site really out for truth, or does he just want to be an ass and complain about the Bible as much as he can?
I am no Bible scholar but… Perusing the SAB has reinforced my conviction that turning to skeptics for religious info is like asking fundies for scientific clarifications.
Seriously, this site is shallow, badly researched, childish at times, and thoroughly biased.
It’s a bit of an overgeneralization to tar all skeptics just because of the SAB. There’s plenty of good skeptic material out there, IMO, although that doesn’t relieve the responsibility to hear the Bible believers’ side from their own mouths.
Of course, but it depends how you define skepticism. There can be a sort of religious skepticism, like the Buddha’s “don’t take my word for it, try it out for yourselves.” However, for many people, skepticism entails materialism. I will most gladly hear a materialist’s challenges to religion and spirituality, but I will keep in mind his bias - just like I would if we reverse the tables.
Take for example a much better resource, the Skeptic Dictionary. It’s a great and useful site when it comes down to delivering the straight dope on science, pseudo-science and sheer quackery but it downright sucks when it comes to religious concepts - or even just non-materialist philosophical entries.
In my opinion, their entries on karma, chi, or feng shui (for instance) are either one-sided or completely miss the point. Compare this with this Staff Report on feng shui, which does a much better job at presenting it’s subject neutrally.
I agree with UnuMondo. The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible could be a really good resource, but it’s sloppily done. So are the various lists of Biblical contradictions I’ve seen. Most of them try too hard; they should stick to the contradictions/errors/whatever are actually there, instead of trying to invent new ones. Jesus calling his mother “woman” doesn’t really matter one way or the other, even if it were rude.
Yeah, they really go overboard sometimes. It’s too bad, because if they’d just quit trying to criticize everything and only focus on the real problems, it would be a very interesting resource.
Although I am impressed by how much effort must have gone into it, misdirected though it might be.
The SAB certainly s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s to make some of its points. I might use it to lead me the right direction if I’m in the mood for a good bible-bashing, but if you’re going to point out a contradiction in a thread it’s better to bring the Bible quotes into the thread yourself from a bible site, and explain the contradiction yourself if you think it’s valid.
What I think makes this particular resource completely useless is that it fails to give any sort of context. A real good skeptic dictionary would point out potential influences by outside religions, secular hypotheses about miraculous events, etc. It needs to go well beyond the “ha! ha! religion sucks ass!” that the ASB is. But then, of course, It’d be about 14 times longer of course.
Yes, it’s a good idea and could be an interesting source of factual biblical analysis. But it does seem to have an unhealthy amount of snide side comments and irrelevant opinion.
What the writer fails to appreciate that naturally some things in the bible are going to be scientifically incredible or impossible to prove factually. That’s because religions are not science and are based on faith. Criticism of faith on these points is a futile exercise, proves nothing and only gets people’s back up. Attempting to do so only suggest they are more interested in point scoring than analysing and presenting the facts.
And picking up on expresions, use of words and literary merits is just ridiculous. You need to refer back to the original ancient Hebrew for a start for this to have any value, and even then it is just modern day opinion of the historical values of the times.
The site as a whole would be far better if they stuck to the facts of what the bible says, steering clear of opinion, belief and literary criticism. There’s plenty within that alone to make the point that the bible is a hodge-podge of contradictory tales of dubious factual content.
The author of SAB goes way too far finding contradictions: obviously poetical references in psalms are taken as fact and presented as contradicting other bits. In the section “God of Peace”, there a three references to “God of Peace”, against two that say something like “the lord is a man of war.”
By reaching like that, he undermines the whole project, and shows himself to be a niggling hairsplitter with no sense of degree.
I have it. It’s not a comprehensive commentary, more like a breezy. lighthearted overview. It does point out all the really weird parts, the gory parts, the dirty parts, etc. It’s entertaining but it’s not a serious attempt at scholarship, it’s more like going through and pointing and saying “look at this, it talks about donkey schlong! Bwaahahahahahaha!”
My only complaint about the Skeptic’s Bible is that I find at least one or more links to chapters and verses doesn’t work (maybe the server gets overloaded, I don’t know).
Oddly enough, since I have it as a favorite, I use it to check Bible verses (since it is an online bible afterall)…
Ok, I got a reply from the maintainer of the SAB yesterday. He basically accused me of being a fundie, and questioned how I would know anything about Greek (“Did you read that on an apologist’s site?”), never mind that my formal university training is in classical languages.
Anyway, he asked for some more clarification about the Greek language issue in John 2, so I gave it to him. He then responded “Well, I can’t put that up there because it is too specific and the site can’t be everything for everybody” (i.e. “I can’t be honest because that’s too much hard work”) and refused to take any action. So next time you read about cruel and rude treatment of women in John 2 at the SAB, I hope you know it’s utter bullshit from a total dumbass.
The SAB guy needs to look in the mirror for a god lonmg tiem, for he is guilty of the same wilful blindness and determination to distort and obfuscate as those he condemns.
Ax grinding is unattractive in anyone, but it is all the more appalling in someone who claims to be a debunker of lies and falsehood.