by Daney Jelley

Created on: July 03, 2007

If I have to give myself a label (for the purpose of writing this article as an atheist) I would call myself an agnostic atheist. I am not actively out to prove or insist there is no god. However, when religious fundamentalists use the writings in their holy scriptures to justify their claims to the certainty of their monotheistic (I am referring to all the major monotheism's - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) infallibility, then I am bound by my sense of humanity to debate those claims.

It never ceases to amaze me when believers quote the bible (or the Torah, or the Koran)to illustrate how true every word is. As if the very act of them saying it out loud makes it irrefutably so. I am not sure what I find more appalling...the awful ignorance of some of the biblical verses, or the certainty with which the devout believe in them. The King James "Authorized" Version was translated from Hebrew or Greek or Latin. With the final canonized books of the bible not even being decided on until some six hundred years after the days of Jesus, are we to have no question as to what the gospels may have looked like in their original form? We are to accept that the persons who translated all the subtle nuances of the different languages used to compile the books in the bible were linguistics superstars. They had no problems whatsoever getting every word written perfectly as it was intended? After all, it is from the mouth of God and will be literally interpreted and applied for thousands of years to come. The premise is absurd. If you were to bring a case into a court of law with such a preposition - you would be ridiculed by the judge, the jury and your peers. The "literal-word" crowd of fundamentalists never would subject themselves or their loved ones to a standard of proof so weak as this when it came to any other human endeavor besides their holy book. What of the Gospels left out of the bible? Church councils decided which ones were synoptic, and which were apocryphal. Which ones were disowned? What was the criteria for canonization?
I cannot take seriously any claim that the words of the bible are literal truth. I think reason bears out the theory that many of the stories, and teachings are hearsay. Oral histories diluted, inverted, diverted, and perverted over the years so as to resemble nothing like what may have actually been said and intended.

The interpretation of the bible is not a closed subject. The ramifications of how people interpret this book will have impact on our society. It has now ever since it was first brought to the people by the Church. In light of what is going on between the religious factions over the whole globe, I am not optimistic that there will be a peaceful way to integrate believers and non-believers. Infallible words from scripture give the fundamentalists, and the fanatic the instruction from God to convert or defeat those who will not believe as instructed. Of course that instruction comes from their one, their only and most frighteningly.....their last word from God.

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