Open Letter to Suby

The following is in reaction to a commenter on my last post:

Suby, I first off must say your lack of vitriol is refreshing. Thanks.

You mention the Bible, so I’ll speak specifically of Christianity.

I’ll readily admit that most Christians have conclusions created before they see evidence. I’d add that most atheists, scientists, researchers, etc., also do this. Welcome to the true scientific method, which is: conjecture, refutation, conjecture, refutation…

Note that Christians have specific conjectures that are generally systematic; there’s not a great preponderance who claim that God is evil, or that green men run around rooms when no one’s looking. To say so is to show an ignorance (which is commonplace) of the systematic, logic-based quality of Christianity. Logic doesn’t make something true, but Christianity does have concrete barriers of possibility, so it doesn’t have the mark of utter randomness one sees in, say, Greek mythology.

You spoke of “stringent measures” taken by scientists, but you seem to have more faith in the lack of human fallibility than do other scientists and atheists. For instance, Karl Popper, atheist scientist, said “All scientific statements are hypotheses, or guesses, or conjectures, and the vast majority of these conjectures … have turned out to be false. Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; … our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; … it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths.” Bertrand Russell, the old-school king of atheism himself, said “All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: ‘If this is true, that is true: now that is true, therefore this is true.’ This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say: ‘If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone, and stones are nourishing.’ If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the arguments upon which all scientific laws are based.”

All this is not to attack science; I’m simply pointing out that faith in the accuracy or completeness of science is just that, faith; it wasn’t that long ago that scientists thought friction was caused by “interlocking asperites” instead of chemical bonding (and that’ll probably be proven false also). My recommendation is to avoid Scientism, and to embrace true knowledge wherever it may be found and whatever ramifications it may have.

Regarding the Bible, with all due respect, you mention many “facts” that are false. For instance, you say that it has been “changed so many times” as if it has been a linear translation, but in actuality, most objective scholars are very impressed with the level of accuracy between modern translations and the earliest manuscripts, which are, as you may not know, still the source of modern translations. The common idea of the Bible as a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy is just erroneous.

Regarding Biblical interpretation, again, with as many Christians as there are in the world, there’s a significantly narrow range of interpretation that makes up orthodoxy. There’s little evidence of “convenient” interpretation (not that it doesn’t exist, just like there are scientists who conveniently intepret tobacco study data, for instance).

I just googled “atheist errors” and quickly found a site that listed pages and pages of them, but that doesn’t mean they’re accurate. Many religious people slander atheists without a concern for accuracy, just as many people say the Bible is full of contradictions without concern for accuracy. The Bible is a complex book, and requires contextual reading for an accurate understanding. If you can show me any true contradictions, I’d love to hear about them, I’ve been looking for one for about ten years now.

My main point is that atheists often have preconceived conclusions and hold fast to them through faith despite contradictory evidence, and claim a monopoly on truth, yet this is the behavior of which they accuse Christians. Lets all stop pretending that we’re not fallible, stop smearing those who think differently than us as less dedicated to logic and reason, and have real conversations that could lead to profound conclusions to which we would otherwise never come.

I’m open-minded and ready to truly take in the substantive arguments you may have; I hope you feel the same.

It’s not what I would expect from a holy book!

There’s this popular view going around these days about the Bible which I think has been popularized by Sam Harris (professional atheist extraordinaire). Basically, many people are saying they don’t assign any authority to the Bible because it doesn’t match expectations of what one would find in a truly divine book.

Those who hold this view will claim that the Bible betrays evidence of creation by an ancient culture (partly true) and that it holds many contradictions, immoralities, scientifically disproven claims, etc. (not so true). You see, though it’s detractors would like to claim the intellectual high ground and say their position is obvious and the only reasonable view, the Bible can fairly easily make it through any unbiased analysis. The stories of those who have come to trust in God after reading through the bible critically are numerous. If one comes to scripture with as few preconceptions as possible, it’s very hard to imagine that humans could come up with such a collection.

It seems pretty blatant to me that if the Bible is divine, it’s descriptions of man as fallen and antagonistic towards God, and seeing God’s wisdom as foolishness, can easily explain the work of Bible bashers. Our pagan culture will always try to find some way to dismiss the Bible, because if it is true, we’re accountable to God in ways that are extremely disconcerting. Coating prejudiced diatribes in a veneer of rational criticism and a claim of attempts at clearing away myth and backwards thinking doesn’t make them any easier to swallow.

Having said all this, in an effort to be critical of my own views I’m always on the lookout for evidence of real scriptural contradictions or fallacies. If you feel you know of some, please take the time to search out traditional Christian answers to your proposition (since most “contradictions” have been pretty easily cleared up for centuries), and if you still feel no satisfactory answer exists, comment away, change my mind.

I look forward to the learning.