Bible Dilemma

I suppose the very first question should be, “Do you believe that the Bible is the holy word of the Lord, written and/or inspired by God and should be taken literally, verbatim, just as we have it today?”  Or, “Do you believe the Bible is a guide, subject to interpretation and that you (or other humans) have the authority to decide which verses are real and you will believe those verses, and which verses are not real today and we are not obligated to believe them?”  The first group that views the Bible as the literal, infallible word of God, I shall refer to as Type A Christians.  The second group who revere the Bible but do not take it literally I shall refer to as Type B Christians.  From where I sit, both groups have an intellectual dilemma that cannot be resolved.

Type A’s must believe everything in the Bible.  They must believe the earth is flat.  They must believe the sun orbits the earth.  They must believe the earth is about 6,000 years old.  They must believe it is better to offer your virgin daughters to a group of men than allow those men to have sex with other men.  They must believe that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night she should be stoned to death.  They must believe prostitutes should be stoned to death.  They must believe homosexuals should be stoned to death.  They must believe that God created everything and evolution is a theory that cannot be proven.  And they must believe that Jesus believes all these things as well because Jesus said he did.

The intellectual dilemma for the Type A’s is that we know so much more about the universe than the authors of the Bible knew.  We know for a fact that the earth is not flat.  We know for a fact that the sun does not orbit the earth.  We consider it a crime to promote your children to have sex with men, stone women for not being virgins, stone homosexuals, and stone prostitutes.  We know for a fact that evolution is not a theory in the common use of the word, it is a scientific fact that has been confirmed over and over again.  In fact, there is no evidence that contradicts evolution and every new piece of data we get confirms it even more.  If there was evidence contrary to evolutions then scientists would be the first to say that this theory does not work because we found an exception.  Whether the Type A’s believe God dictated the Bible, or God whispered in the ear of those men who could write in that age, their dilemma is, much of the Bible is false.  (If God inspired the Bible, I wonder why He did not throw in some anti-slavery, pro-human rights verses.  Did He know it was coming?)  The Bible in many cases is confirmed by scientific fact to be false.  Type A’s now have a problem with clinging to the word of God if we prove God wrong.  Can we believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful God when we know he was wrong? 

Type B’s are much more laid back and much less bull-headed about the Bible.  They see the Bible as a holy work, but believe it must be adapted to the times.  Verses that advocate stoning, advocate treating women as second class citizens, support slavery, condemn homosexuality, etc., etc. must just be ignored.  Those were the rules in the Bronze Age and they no longer apply.  We choose not to follow those passages that conflict with our current social beliefs.  OK.  Type B’s are much more open and comforting and tolerant.

But the intellectual dilemma for Type B’s is that someone gets to just say, “I do not believe this verse to be true today,” and act as though it is irrelevant.  They have made the Bible as false as the Type A’s.  God must be wrong, so we have updated Him.  Even harder to resolve is the question if any passage can be declared inappropriate and inaccurate, who is to say that the virgin birth and the resurrection cannot be declared the same?  Are they not in the same book from which we have chosen only the verses that comply with our thinking?  If we can do that, then this becomes our book and not God’s book, and we declare, once again, that God must be wrong and this book cannot be holy, or at least not worth reading until we have corrected some things.

Perhaps there is a Type C, but I cannot fathom what that belief system might be.  If you believe it all you are wrong and so is God.  If you get to cherry pick which verses you want then it is not a holy book, you could simply ignore anything you wanted to because we have given permission to do so, and the book becomes superficial.

So, where does all that leave us?

If the Bible and our common history of Jesus disappeared, would we re-discover God as we have discovered evolution, gravity, human rights, the order of our solar system, the history of our solar system, our planet and our universe, etc.?  If we forgot all we knew, would we re-discover what we currently know based on science and math?  Yes.  But I suspect we could not and would not discover God.  We would not be as wowed today with burning bushes, parting of seas, water into wine, etc.  We would look for the causes and explanations of such phenomenon and would not make the de facto assumption that they were magical events.  In fact, we would probably look to the authors who described such things as the culprits thereby rendering one more piece of evidence that the Bible cannot be true when we know authors made stuff up.  The question should be, “What factual evidence do we have to support the stories and claims made in the Bible?”  If any are shown to be false, are they all false?  If any are shown to be false should we base an international belief system on this book?  And sadly, it will be up to the Christians to prove it happened not the non-believers to prove it did not happen.  Believing it is true is not the same as knowing and showing it to be true.

Therein is the Bible dilemma.