&: have a little perspective

fideism
exclusive reliance in religious matters upon faith, with consequent rejection of appeals to science or philosophy.

re: Don't have a little faith (Alexi White, The Queen's Journal, Sept 12, 2008)

Next year will mark 2009 years since the alleged birth of Christ and 1616 years since the demarcation of the current biblical canon at the Synod of Hippo. Suprisingly, despite being an order of magnitude older than Charles Darwin, people still question the Bible's teachings. Could it be that the age of one's ideas doesn't strengthen them, but gives people time to question and refine them? Evolution certainly doesn't survive today in a purely Darwinian sense; we have learned a lot more about evolution than Darwin could assess without an electron microscope or carbon-dating. Is it that far-fetched to apply the same logic to the Bible? Is possible that though the Bible's context has become outdated, its message has not?

I respond here to Mr. White's oh-so-common but entirely mistaken argument that synthesis, or "picking and choosing" one's religious beliefs, is irrational. In fact, this argument is not only wrong, but is a sublime example of the anti-religious prejudice left over from the Age of Enlightenment that self-styled intellectuals today enjoy calling "Reason". To see this, we need look no further than Mr. White's callous assertion that Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design are essentially the same thing, despite the latter having nothing to do with biblical interpretation.

Mr. White points to the Old Testament's numerous outdated moral laws as something that current religious individuals have rejected. And rightly so. In today's society we should not be keeping slaves, nor should we be stoning homosexuals. But purporting that the "answer, of course, is that through critical examination, [one can] conclude that a literal translation of the Old (or New) Testament is meaningless" does not in any way logically follow from that premise. Singling out parts of the text, criticizing them, and then assigning that same level of credibility to the whole, is a blatant fallacy. By that logic I should assume that since Mr. White's editorial contains poor reasoning, I should not bother reading the Journal at all because it inherits his reasoning skills. Even lumping together the Old and New Testaments is an act of intellectual laziness that I find appalling.

The Bible was written over a vast period in history by many different authors, and further edited by later generations. Regardless, I think we can safely agree that it is not the literal Word of God. This conclusion comes with corollaries: we must realize that the writers of the Bible acted within their social contexts, lacing the text with myths and laws that their society would have found appropriate. However, the purpose of the Bible is no longer to teach about the proper punishment for children who have disobeyed their parents or women who have left their husbands. Reading it today we are far more concerned with the nature of God and what our relationship with him should be. It is our job, as rational beings, to drudge through the writers' prejudices to find timelessness in their writing. This is, essentially, what theology -- and textual analysis in general -- has always been about. I would argue that the individual who takes the time to read the Bible and assess those parts of it which he or she finds to be reasonably believable is far more rational than the individual who dismisses it outright because it was written by homophobes. Here I point to Thomas Jefferson's version of the four gospels, written without Christ's virgin birth or any of his miracles. Was Jefferson irrational for believing only part of the Bible? Or was his criticism and construction of personal belief more rational than the common atheist who believes Christ did not exist because it's such a ridiculous idea that Moses parted the red sea?

I agree with Mr. White on the point that no complete literal interpretation of the Bible is possible. My main problem with his argument is the assumption that the creation of the Earth in six days and the miracles of Christ have essentially the same level of believability. We have direct proof that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. We do not have any historical account of Jesus that directly contradicts his miracles. Yes, we have science that makes such miracles improbable, but not impossible. This is one of the nuances of inductive science: if I throw that rock up 99 times, and it falls 99 times -- then it has fallen 99 times. That it will fall on the 100th attempt is never 100% certain. But assuming that certainty is the exact prejudice of science which I feel needs to be addressed: that if something is not scientific, then it is not possible. There are those among Galileo's children who still feel so wronged by religion that they have rejected spirituality altogether. This, I think, is a mistake.