An Atheist Perspective

In response to this blog: http://somewhatsinful.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/bible-promotes-atheism/

If you’re of a mind to join the discussion, here’s where things stood this morning.  My response to the criticism of biblical discrepancy. 

Littlemissblogger, it’s a valid point you bring up regarding discrepencies and contrary passages; my question to you is why this might really make a difference. If we hold the bible up to the same standards as we might a textbook on chemistry, then we must of course demand coherency throughout. We have to remember, though, that canon is set in community. Both testaments came to be through use, not revelation; as the community of faith used the texts to describe God and their relationship to God, certain writings emerged as being particularly useful or true. Indeed, the New Testament wasn’t set into canon until three hundred years after Jesus’ death.

What this means for us is that we must evaluate the bible on its own terms. The writers and readers of the bible didn’t require its consistency for thousands of years; as art, as literature, the bible’s job is to point to God via the experiences of both men and women in a world in which war and famine, poverty and vice, sickness and death seem to have the last word. Taken as threads in a greater picture, the books of the Bible are meant to inspire and make meaning, not supply formula or even proof.

If we present the bible to the mind of the modern rationalist with the hope that they will find everything within as orderly as algebra, we will be disappointed. If we present the bible as art, we no longer insult their intelligence. Literature is always taken on its own terms. And it’s no less life-changing for all of that.