Skeptical Sunday: Fundamentalism: Fatally Flawed
Skepticism definition #2: Doubt or unbelief with regard to a religion, esp. Christianity.
Each Sunday I am going to blog about something religion-related from my skeptical and atheistic viewpoint. It’s time to hear (read, actually) the nonbelievers viewpoint instead of letting Christians have the entire day for themselves.
Let’s start off with something from the Bible that is quite sick.
Imagine you are driving down the road, and when you go past the local church, the sign out front says this:
That would certainly grab your attention wouldn’t it? Hey! Focus on your driving before you cause an accident! And quit talking on your cell phone while you’re at it. Multitasking while driving is not a good thing.
Now, here’s what the Bible says:
18) “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them,
19) then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives,
20) and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’
21) Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
I can understand disciplining one’s kids, but wow, talk about overdoing it! Violent much?
The parents lied also. They said he was a glutton and a drunk when it said nothing about him doing those things. All it says was that he was rebellious. Like the guy needed matters to be even worse??
So does this sick edict, among so many repulsive others given by Moses in Deuteronomy, come from a loving, just, and good God? Not a chance. Any loving, decent god would find such things disgusting and beneath him.
I think it’s safe to say that if your religion tells you to stone your own kids to death, it’s not sane, rational, and loving. At least parts of it certainly aren’t. It’s true, there’s some good stuff in the Bible, but too much of it is not good.
It is verses like these (and this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg) that present a problem for fundamentalists. If a Christian’s, or even a pastor’s son is rebellious, do you really think he is going to get all the elders of his community together to stone his son to death? Of course not. But since they believe the Bible is literal (it is meant to be taken as it is read — it isn’t allegory, parable or metaphor), then how do they that reconcile that belief with what they are told to do by the Bible which is obviously wrong? If you aren’t obeying God’s laws, then you are a sinner and you’re going to Hell unless you repent. Isn’t that how it works?
To get out of this predicament, they may take the usual apologist route and say that what the Bible says is not actually what it means. Or they may use old cop outs like “God’s ways are mysterious.” But when it comes down to it, you can’t have it both ways — if you’re a fundamentalist, either all of the Bible is inerrant and literal, or it isn’t.
Obviously I am not saying you should go about stoning people, much less your own family, because it’s wrong… duh. You don’t need the Bible as a moral guide to tell you that, because it tells you to do the opposite. My point is that Biblical/Christian fundamentalism is absurd, bankrupt, and like the title says, fatally flawed. To take all 66 books of the Bible literally is just nonsense in my opinion. And if you did take them literally and obeyed all the laws like a fundamentalist Christian is supposed to — utter obedience to God and all — you’d find yourself in jail or an asylum sooner rather than later for trying to stone someone.
Lastly, the whole concept of Biblical inerrancy (which is a part of fundamentalist Christianity) is sort of childish in its “logic.” The argument goes like so: God is perfect, therefore his revelation to man as contained in the Bible must be inerrant and perfect also.
Clearly, and in many ways, the Bible falls far short of being error-free and perfect.
Now for some external links, Wikipedia style.
External Links
Wikipedia: Fundamentalist Christianity
Wikipedia: Biblical literalism
The Errancy of Fundamentalism Disproves the God of the Bible
