If thy right eye should offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee
You should sacrifice the bad to save the good
But to rip up Bible sections, is to flaunt the lord’s protections
So you shouldn’t do it, even if you could!
Every word, nay, every letter, couldn’t ever be made better
It’s the only perfect book that’s ever been!
So the Backyard Skeptics Rip-Off is the thinking person’s tip-off
That they’re really only there to make a scene.
Who could disagree, that urgin’, if your wife is not a virgin,
That by biblical pronouncement she be stoned?
If we start to choose and edit—challenge whether Jesus said it,
We’re committing sins that cannot be atoned!
End the sin of eating shellfish? Why, that’s nothing less than selfish!
What the bible says is good enough for me!
Why, these godless pick-and-choosers are the saddest sort of losers
With their addle-pated game of “thinking free”!
Explanation, after the jump:
Over at Alethian Worldview, Deacon Duncan reports on a protest designed to inflame and provoke while doing its best not to inflame nor provoke. The Backyard Skeptics of Orange County, CA, are ripping up offending bible passages. Well, photocopies of them, anyway, so they won’t actually be destroying books. And they are only ripping up particular passages, chosen carefully to demonstrate the incompatibility of biblical rules with modern moral positions. Seems to me there’s a bible passage that tells you what to do if some rotten portion is apt to cause damage to the whole…
If they’re going through all the awkward passages in the Bible, it will take a while.
I’m surprised Comfort didn’t say “They wouldn’t dare to do that to the Koran”.
By the way, I think you meant ‘flout’, not ‘flaunt’.
Check out dictionary.com, and flaunt’s definition #4. Essentially synonymous with flout. Usages change.
But yes, I do not envy them their photocopy bill!
flout/ flaunt – I’m obviously behind the times, or it’s an American English thing.
But being an old pedant, I’d correct it if one of my students did it!
In a previous verse (long ago, and I don’t remember which), I deliberately used “flaunt” because I wanted it to be ambiguous, and it worked in both senses. I suspect that this is the reason I tend to choose it over “flout”, without thinking through which is actually the better word in cases like the present verse, where the pedant is right and “flout” is the sense meant.
Dang, lost my rather long answer because I wasn’t logged in.
Anyhow, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Bible_Project#Conservative_Bible_Project for an attempt by Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafley to “pluck out” liberal bias.
And does that shellfish prohibition apply to Giant African Land Snails? If so, Miami is in even more trouble! And what about those heathen cuttlefish-eating seals?
(See what I did there? I replied to three posts in one!)
Forgivatation 1
1.Should it be known that one of those among our US has laid upon another whom is not of his house, all shall be as it was before the laying upon was done .
2.For our sins are not of the spirit but of the flesh.
3.And it shall go out unto the land Your mistaketh was to think in the first place.
4.For among the chosen US no wrong can be done.
5.The greater sin is the upon the one which is committed by the speaker against the US .
6.For their minds are filled with notions other than their labors.
I really, really hope these guys are careful with this… Yes, I understand that dramatic demonstrations are often necessary to get ideas across, but this is really toeing the line between “extreme education” and “direct insult”. Yes, we want to be active, but if we’re insulting, that’ll just give them more reason to spread hatred towards us.
Maybe if they added another angle.. something like, gathering a few hardcore Christians and asking them, point blank, if the passages they’re tearing up are, in fact, moral in today’s society. Maybe then it would be less of “Atheists insulting Christians” than “Atheists demonstrating illegitimate morality in the Bible”.