Many Christians, particularly fundamentalists, have been taught that the Bible offers absolute and irrefutable answers to life’s most important questions, including questions regarding morality. To be sure, the Scriptures contain some commendable ideals. However, they also contain ethical pronouncements that are based upon various assumptions about the world, human beings, and social relationships that few modern Christians accept. For example, few Christians advocate polygamy, genocide, slavery, or the stoning to death of non-virgin brides or of children who curse their parents. Yet the Bible depicts God as directing such activities, and blessing those who engaged in them. And over the centuries, Christians have used the Bible to justify such horrors as the Crusades, the Inquisitions, anti-Semitism, slavery, misogyny, and the burning alive of people condemned as witches. The Bible also has been used to reject discoveries about the universe, such as heliocentricity and evolution. Most troubling for our time is that many fundamentalists believe that there isn’t much point being concerned about the health of our planet and every living creature who calls it home because the apocalypse will be coming any day now anyway. As we will see in chapter 14, some expectations about the end times are so bizarre that war could have erupted in the Middle East in the mid-1990s over what some Jewish and Christian fundamentalists believed were the apocalyptic implications of an oddly colored cow named Melody. It’s critically important to increase biblical literacy by bringing scholarly knowledge to the general reader. Given the significant impact that the Bible has on social discourse, it seems to me that no person—Christian or non-Christian—can be considered well informed without having at least a basic knowledge of its texts. On hot-button issues ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage, the Bible is often invoked without even a basic understanding of its contents. In a way, I have written this book with my younger self in mind. I lost my faith while attending a Christian college. Had I known growing up what I know now, I would have held different views on a wide variety of subjects. I regret that many of the views that I held before going to college were based upon my failure to read and analyze the Bible cover-to-cover. For example, I rejected evolution because of my mistaken belief that the book of Genesis provides a historically accurate account of creation, instead of two distinct poetic expressions about the dawn of time. I also subscribed to so-called “family values” that I have since come to realize are contradicted throughout the Scriptures. I now refer to myself as an agnostic, meaning that I believe that whether or not any supernatural force exists is unknown and unknowable because human beings don’t possess the cognitive, sensory, or intuitive abilities to decide the issue one way or the other. Just as my beloved pets probably think that the world consists of my humble abode and a few streets beyond, so we humans are limited by where our senses and intellects can take us. As I discuss in chapter 5, modern science is able to observe and explain less than 5 percent of the universe; the remaining 95 percent or so is—and may always be—invisible and incomprehensible to us. The vastness of the universe is incredibly awe-inspiring and humbling and, to my mind, any efforts to define or describe a supernatural force that may exist within or beyond it are inherently futile. Some atheists would accuse me of being a dithering fence-sitter, and insist that I should be able to provide a “yes” or “no” answer to the question “Do you believe in a god?” As a practical matter, I don’t believe in any god. As a technical matter though, the term “atheist” has become associated with certainty on the subject. In other words, while some theists claim to know that there is a God, some atheists claim to know that nothing exists beyond nature. In all sincerity, I wouldn’t be surprised by either the existence or non-existence of the supernatural, which is why I can only answer “I don’t know” to the question . . . . I’m also a skeptic. While many people equate skepticism with cynicism, I don’t share this view. To me, skepticism means to be open-minded, to be amenable to changing one’s opinions, and to rarely reject a claim out of hand, no matter how far-fetched it may seem. Although my views are influenced to one degree or another by my own background and biases, it’s always my goal to acknowledge these influences, and to limit them as best I can. Of course, it’s impossible for any human being to eliminate all personal bias when it comes to a book like the Bible, a book that everyone approaches with preconceived notions. To some people it’s divinely inspired by God, and to others it’s ancient literature crafted by mere mortals. When I went off to college, I wholeheartedly held the first view. Because it had been instilled in me from early childhood, this bias was difficult to overcome. I had been taught the rhetorical question known throughout Christendom: “Who am I to question God?” As far as I was concerned, the Bible is the word of God, and that premise wasn’t up for debate . . . . It eventually became clear to me though, that this is a disturbing form of mind control, and that the more appropriate question to ask is: “Who am I to not thoroughly investigate human claims of divine inspiration for a book that attributes to God many primitive words and actions?” My comprehensive investigation has led me to conclude that the Bible isn’t divinely inspired. That’s not to say that everyone who undertakes such an inquiry will agree with me. Indeed, there are scholars and theologians who have reached the opposite conclusion. While my convictions about the Bible are firm, my point here is to open minds, not to close them.
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