Spanking Scofield

Oh, this just made my meeting-attending, class-preparing, paper-grading afternoon to see Be Scofield scorned on the Black Skeptics.

When the Scofields and Karen Armstrongs of the world talk about how the new atheists just aren’t aware of the liberal, tolerant, sativa smoking, feminist, genderqueer god concept, my response is “I don’t believe in that motherfucker, either.” She’s just as poorly evidenced as the old fashioned patriarchal god. She’s also not the predominant god concept impacting the African American community.

That felt soooo gooooood.

But now, back to the papers…

Hungary joins the United States in pandering to the wingnut brigade

I was feeling lonely. The daily spectacle of the Republican presidential candidates prancing their “family values” about the stage had me wondering…is there any other country in the world that would give such idiots such prominence?

And yes there is. Hungary. They just passed a new law that sounds so…American.

The new law says the family, based upon marriage of a man and a woman whose mission is fulfilled by raising children, is an "autonomous community…established before the emergence of law and the State" and that the State must respect it as a matter of national survival. It says "Embryonic and foetal life shall be entitled to protection and respect from the moment of conception," and the state should encourage "homely circumstances" for child care. It obliges the media to respect marriage and parenting and assigns parents, rather than the State, primary responsibility for protecting the rights of the child. The law enumerates responsibilities for minors, including respect and care for elderly parents.

Hungary also has a new constitution, with some good points mingled among the bad.

The constitution calls for the protection of life from conception and bans torture, human trafficking, eugenics, and human cloning. It recognizes marriage as the “conjugal union of a man and a woman.”

Something about their obsessions suggests the grasping hand of the Catholic Church in all this.

Islamic science has come to this pitiful end

The words of the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu ‘aleihi was-sallam) have been tested scientifically, and found hilarious. In work carried out under the direction of Dr. Jamaal Haamid, students at Qassim University examined a saying by the prophet, and have published it in a freely available pdf, The Hadeeth on the Fly, which you can download if you desire. Or you could just read this post, which summarizes entirely the complete content of the short paper, which is pretty much unpublishable and unbelievable anyway.

Here are the holy words.


(Notice that I include the original Arabic so there can be no confusion!)

If a housefly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for the one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure of the disease.

I do find that rather disturbing: so in Arabia, if a fly touches your water, you’re supposed to catch it, dunk it in deeper and slosh it around, to prevent disease? Arabian flies buzz around with pathogens segregated to just one wing, while the other one is healthy? How do they do that?

OK, setting aside the sanitary habits of Arabians and the mechanism by which this holy aphorism could be true, our intrepid students do carry out the obvious experiment: they drop a fly in a flask of sterile water, and then they pluck out the fly and immerse it completely in a second flask of sterile water. But then it all goes horribly wrong.

Here is the result of experiment #1.


Plate 2- Cultured water sample taken from a flask containing sterilized water and where a fly fell (without submersion). Growth of pathogenic (disease causing) bacterial colonies of the E. coli type were identified after taking samples from the water in the flask for culture.
Plate 1- Cultured water sample from the same flask following the complete dipping of the fly. An entire disappearance of the bacterial growth seen in Petri-dish 2 is clear. The new bacteria growing in plate 1 was identified as Actinomyces, the one from which useful antibiotics can be extracted. This explains the complete inhibition of growth in plate 2

Plate 2 on the right is the one from water merely touched by a fly. There is no explanation for how the plate was produced, or how the bacteria were identified; the strange brown sludge suggests poor technique, though, and I’ve cultured E. coli myself — and that hideous thick fecal-colored glop looks nothing like E. coli.

Plate 1 on the left, made from water in which the fly was fully immersed, looks nasty too. It’s a poor photograph, but that looks like a thick lawn of colonies everywhere. How do they know it’s Actinomyces? I have no idea, they don’t say. It’s also a mistake to simply declare it beneficial — Actinomyces are opportunistic pathogens.

Experiment #2 was a different fly, two flasks of water, same result.

Experiment #3 was a third fly, two flasks of water, same result.

Having done the experiment to death, our brave students retired at the third repetition, wrote it up with no methods, no discussion, no literature cited (except for their holy book, of course), and no reliable, believable data. They also didn’t do the other obvious experiment, of snipping off the wings and examining the bacterial flora living on the left vs. right, but then, maybe they’re leaving that for the advanced students.

Any 10 year olds looking for a quick and easy science fair project, there it is. I’m sure you can replicate this experiment trivially — but please, talk to a real microbiologist first and learn how to streak a plate. You might also learn something about a control plate, which our U of Qassim students didn’t bother to do.

Of course, this work wasn’t carried out by 10 year olds. It was done by university students in a “Med 497” (a medical course?) in a department of medical microbiology. I strongly urge anyone visiting Saudi Arabia to avoid getting sick. They might try to treat you by swishing a fly around in your coffee.

(Also on Sb)

Rep. Larry Pittman of North Carolina: Christian, seminarian, and ordained minister

That mini-biography in the title is to help put this story in perspective; it’s also completely unsurprising. Pittman wears his Christianity prominently and proudly, and it seems to be the only qualification he thought important in his run for office. And now he’s using his blessed Christian morality to define his work in the legislature. He was very irate at the easy life of a death row inmate, so Pittman wrote a letter to the General Assembly with some suggestions. He thinks:

Doesn’t it warm the heart to know that the barbaric medieval mentality is still making the laws in America?

He does have some second thoughts about his list. He now regrets broadcasting it, and wishes he’d only sent it to a sympathetic fellow Republican. It’s the standard Christian sentiment: it’s not the sin of violent, uncharitable thoughts that is wrong, it’s being caught expressing them.

Mitt Romney, ghoul

Mormons have some disgustingly repulsive habits. One of them is their obsession with the dead.

It seems Mitt Romney’s father-in-law was smarter and stronger than he was, and didn’t live his life with the crutch of superstition to hold him up. He’s related by marriage to a goddamned atheist, which is a plus in Romney’s favor: he’s at least brushed up against reason a few times in his life.

Ann Romney’s Welsh-born father (who Mitt mentioned in last night’s debate to shore up his pro-immigrant bona fides) was an engineer, inventor, and resolute atheist who disdained all organized religion and raised his children accordingly. Davies, his son Roderick told the Boston Globe in 2007, regarded the faithful as "weak in the knees."

The brush up with reason didn’t help: the Romneys actively worked to convert the Davies family, and succeeded, except in the case of Edward Davies. But like all good Mormons, they had a sneaky last ditch attack they could make: they just waited until Davies died. Once your brain stops working, it turns out, you’re much more susceptible to Mormonism.

According to this entry in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ genealogical database, Davies was baptized as a Mormon at a “special family meeting” 14 months after his death: “All ordinances except sealing to spouse performed in Salt Lake Temple on 19 Nov 1993 in special family meeting,” the entry says. (When we previously asked the church whether Davies had been baptized, a spokesperson told us that the information was available only to his family and church members. But it’s apparently right there on the internet for those who know what to look for.)

Mormons deserve some kind of special prize for intellectual and moral cowardice. That is one creepy religion.

Special note to my kids: don’t you dare pull this crap on my corpse after I’m dead. I raised you better than that.

The absurd whiteness of Be Scofield

I’m tempted to simply dismiss Be Scofield as a smug, smarmy asshole, but I won’t; I’ll take on his arguments, because they are so stupid that I’m going to have fun tearing them apart.

Scofield has a new article, Reason and Racism in the New Atheist Movement, in which he basically accuses all New Atheists of being flaming racists who ignore their vocal claim to scientific reasoning to bash religion indiscriminately.

Scofield sets up his argument by trying to claim the scientific high ground, demanding the utmost rigor from the New Atheists. He’s going to slap us around with some sciencey-sounding buzzwords and sneer at us for failing to meet them.

Given that the New Atheists ground their arguments in science, reason and logic it behooves us to hold these conclusions to very high standards when analyzing them. It goes without saying that truth or knowledge claims should be supported by data, cross-cultural research and empirical evidence whenever possible. This should be measurable and certain principles of reasoning should be employed. Claims of this nature should also be scrutinized amongst a community of experts to try and reach a consensus before drawing conclusions. Unfortunately, the New Atheists fail tremendously in this regard.

Oh, really? Before addressing these claims, I would like to turn the tables on Mr Scofield. Tell me, which religion bases their knowledge claims on “data, cross-cultural research and empirical evidence”? Where are their “measurable” data? Do any Christian faiths, for example, bring their creeds to a council of scholars from Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Scientology to reach a consensus before drawing conclusions? Do they cross-check their interpretations with the Mormons, even?

Isn’t it peculiar how these apologists for religion so indignantly demand data and evidence from others, but never insist on it for their own claims?

It’s amazing how self-unaware the proponents of faith, including Be Scofield, can be. They are conscious that data and empiricism are valued by scientists, so they think that we should just ignore the absence of the same in their claims, and respond to scientists by asking for even more evidence.

The website Adherents.com currently lists that there are 4,300 different faith groups worldwide.

Yes, exactly my point. Which one has the evidence? Which one is true? And that is the crucial question.

Wouldn’t information need to be gathered from each of them before reaching scientific conclusions about whether or not the entire category of religion is harmful or poisonous?

No, because the test is so much simpler than that. You see, scientists have done the science — a few hundred years worth of intense scrutiny and experimentation — and the fruit of all that work is a fairly good (but of course, incomplete) description of the nature and properties of the universe. We know quite a bit about human history, the makeup of stars, early cosmology, geology, chemistry, etc., and we can look at those 4300 religions and ask how many of them describe the universe in a way that actually matches reality.

And the answer is…none of them.

They’re all wrong! They all sound like the guesses a totally ignorant bozo with a desire to manipulate people would make, and not at all like the insights someone with a genuine connection to a vastly greater source of cosmic information would provide.

So how do we know that the whole category of religion is harmful or poisonous? Because it teaches falsehoods about humanity and the universe around us. That is enough right there. We value truth. Teaching lies therefore does harm.

Apparently, Be Scofield considers truth to be unimportant and not at all a significant criterion for appreciating religion — otherwise, he’d be asking the same question of those faiths that he is so quick to ask of atheists. Therefore, I have to conclude he is being dishonest and disingenuous in demanding it of us.

Furthermore, what kinds of research questions would need to be asked? What sort of variables would be involved? Are there measures that could be agreed upon by a community of researchers to analyze what makes a particular religion harmful? Helpful?

How about, just as one example, this question: where did people come from? It’s an excellent question, and I’ll even give all those religious traditions credit for asking it. We know the answer, and it’s quite clear and sharp: we evolved from earlier species, by natural processes that we understand quite well. How many of those 4300 religions came up with that answer? I’m not familiar with all of them, but at least we can throw out all the ones that get it wrong, which I’m sure will be the majority.

Then we can ask another important question: how did they get the answer? What productive, testable process did they use to determine where people came from? If the answer is revelation, aka “pulling it out of their ass”, we can also conclude that their religion does harm, because it teaches dangerously invalid procedures for making and evaluating truth claims.

The truth and how we come to it are matters of importance, aren’t they, Mr Scofield?

Case and point: How can any of these New Atheists claim that the Dinka religious tradition of Africa is harmful? They’ve probably never heard of it, let alone conducted any sort of anthropological or sociological studies to determine the degree of harmfulness it poses to its members or others. Dawkins claims “I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence.” I’d love to see the data and research he’s gathered to reach such sweeping conclusions about religion.

Oh. I confess, I know nothing about the Dinka. Sorry. Do they have the one true religion? Will Be Scofield go out on a limb and say, “Yep, the Dinka got it all right”? And then, of course, he’ll provide the empirical evidence that the Dinka god exists and is the one true god.

And again, Scofield doesn’t understand the nature of the evidence. Richard Dawkins has written many books summarizing the evidence; you can go to the bookstore and find even more science texts describing the studies done. They are studies of the objective nature of the world, not detailed studies of religion. If a religion claims the earth is flat, contrary to the evidence, we don’t need to do a detailed study of its theology to determine that it is a bad idea to promote that particular faith.

The game Scofield is playing here is thinly disguised version of The Courtier’s Reply — he’s demanding that we respect obvious nonsense and study it with all the fervor of a convert. We don’t need to. We have answers determined by reliable, independently verifiable methods, that don’t depend on gullibility and an upbringing in a particular dogma to accept. We can simply ask how well a religion conforms to reality.

And look, he continues with his demands that we appreciate ruffled flounces and puffy pantaloons!

Has he investigated the Japanese religion Tenrikyo? The Korean tradition Wonbulgyo? Have any of these atheists been to Iraq or Iran to interview any Mandeans? Do these atheists ‘know’ in some scientific way that the traditional mythological beliefs of the Inuit of the polar regions were harmful or led to more harm? Are Native American religious traditions really child abuse?

OK, Be, which one of these is the one true religion? Plucking obscure antique mythologies out of a catalog does not impress at all, nor does it compel me to want to dig deeper into them. It also doesn’t help your case; the top two religions, Christianity and Islam, cover over half the world’s population, so all I have to do is throw in Hinduism, Chinese traditional religion, and Buddhism and I’ve got the vast majority of cases already covered. If you’re going to pick some arbitrary tiny sect out of that 4300 as a sterling example of good religion, you’re going to have to a) make an actual case for its virtues, and b) your time would be better spent convincing Christians and Muslims to convert to it.

He also makes a very peculiar argument.

Would the researchers be all white, middle/upper class men like those that have predominantly defined new atheism?

I would agree that many (but not all) of the New Atheists are white, middle/upper class men, and I would also say that it is a problem. In case Be hasn’t noticed, there has been a lot of effort to broaden the appeal of New Atheism and get input and leadership from underrepresented groups. It’s also caused considerable tension within the movement.

But then, why does he then focus his criticisms on Greta Christina? She is white, but she doesn’t meet all those other narrow criteria? It’s very strange.

Also, meet Be Scofield: white, product of a $35,000/year education at a private liberal arts college. Gosh, look at the privileged white people arguing over who is more racist. I’m not even going to try. I admit that I’m a privileged white male, and when matters of racism and sexism come up, I will defer to those who have experienced its oppression. Which does not include the obliviously sanctimonious Be Scofield.

He’s also a liar. This is an outrageously false accusation:

When Greta Christina says that religious people should be actively converted to atheism or Dawkins likens religion to a virus that infects the mind they are effectively saying “we know what’s best for you.” This is the crux of the problem with the New Atheists. They’ve identified belief in God or religion as the single most oppressive factor in people’s lives and feel justified in liberating people from it because they have “reason” on their side.

If I see someone starving, I will say that hunger is the most oppressive factor in their life, and try to feed them. If I see someone sick, I will say that disease is the most oppressive factor in their life, and try to heal them. If I see someone enslaved or trapped in poverty, I will say that hardship is the most oppressive factor in their life, and try to liberate them. I know of no atheists who would claim that freeing people of religion is the most important issue in everyone’s life.

I can think of many religious people who will prioritize saving souls over saving people.

Furthermore, home foreclosures, poverty, homelessness, oppression, inadequate mental health and social services, poor health care and violence plague America. Whether we like it or not, religious organizations are often the first to provide the much needed spiritual, material and social services to this sick society.

It’s also that religious mindset that perpetuates the sickness. We have an overwhelming Christian majority in this country: so why don’t we have a national health care system? Why is there such great economic inequity? What faith tradition is insisting that women not have unrestricted access to reproductive health services? Sure, there are selfish atheists who take the wrong side in these arguments, but we’re a minority — you cannot list the serious problems we have and allow it to be assumed that the godless are responsible. This is a Christian-dominated country: those problems are a consequence of the failure of faith to provide solutions.

Many of these New Atheists claim that holding onto the belief in supernatural entities is absurd or irrational. However, there is nothing more absurd than whiteness, class oppression and patriarchy. Resisting these absurdities means a more nuanced approach to religion – one that recognizes the positive role it can play in undermining such systems of domination. Ultimately, it means relying upon relationships more than reason.

Believing in supernatural beings is irrational. Is Be Scofield claiming that they aren’t?

I’m sitting here all pale and white because of my ancestry: there’s nothing absurd about it, it just is what it is. Oppression of class and sex are also real and awful, and I oppose them — and strangely enough, a majority of atheists are liberal and progressive and also deplore them, while a majority of Christians are conservative and endorse them.

I also think relationships are important…but relationships built on equality. There is nothing healthy about a relationship in which a person claims a pretense of privileged authority on the basis of imaginary, untestable claims obtained from an invisible being. That’s why religion is universally harmful: because it rests on unreasonable claims that it claims cannot be assessed for their truth. It’s also pretty darned good at recruiting useful idiots like Be Scofield to defend its authority.

I haven’t tackled every single stupid claim in Scofield’s article, because I can tell that jaws dropped all over the atheist blogosphere at the appalling ineptitude and dishonesty of his arguments. Ophelia Benson and Greta Christina also ripped into him. I’m sure more of us will join in. Sometimes, smacking a fool is just so much fun.

He probably hadn’t seen the cat in church in a long while

So it is of course entirely understandable that a Baptist minister would torture and kill a mere cat.

Rick Bartlett, pastor of the Bastrop Christian Church, is facing animal cruelty charges. Bastrop Police Chief Michael Black said Bartlett admitted that he caught the cat, named Moody, in a trap on Sunday, Jan. 15. Bartlett told them that he was having a problem with feral cats in his garden.

Moody [I hope this is an error, and that it was Bartlett–pzm] also told police that he had the cat in a cage in the back of his pick-up truck for three days and forgot about him until Tuesday, Jan. 17., when Bartlett brought the cat to police. An animal control officer noticed a name tag including the phone number of Moody’s owners, Sarah and Eddy Bell, on the cat’s collar. The officer offered to take Moody back to his owners but police said Bartlett told them he’d take the cat back himself since they were his neighbors.

Later on the same day, a park visitor discovered Moody’s near lifeless body on the bank of the Colorado River, some 40-50 feet below a bridge.

Moody the cat died of severe internal injuries. He’d apparently been thrown from a bridge after being starved and neglected for several days by good Pastor Bartlett.

There is a little coda to the story.

Moody was Sarah and Eddy Bell’s cat for 11 years. They are having a difficult time understanding what happened to the beloved member of their family. Trying to explain his death to their five-year old daughter has proved challenging.

“She also asked me where Moody is now and I said, ‘Baby he’s in Heaven,'” said Sarah. “She knows the man who did this is a pastor at the Bastrop Christian Church and she said, ‘I don’t believe in Heaven anymore, Moody’s just dead.’”

Parents, don’t lie to your children and tell them this fairy-tale nonsense about the dead magically living in a happy afterlife. They’re smarter than you give them credit for — and they can tell that the people most enthusiastic about telling these lies are no better than other people, and are often worse.

I have been indignantly informed that Bartlett is not a Baptist, but a member of a different sect, the Disciples of Christ. My apologies. All the loons look alike to me.

Pope calls for silence against Internet noise

The Pope would like all of us bloggers to shut the fuck up.

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday hailed the benefits of silent reflection to stop being "bombarded" by information from the Internet but said social networks could be useful modes of communication.

"People today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware," the pope said in his now-traditional yearly message on the Vatican and social comunications.

Yeah, people get on the internet and discover that there are child-raping priests in their midsts, and that the Vatican struggles to cover up their crimes…and they never thought to ask, “Is Father Flaherty a buggerin’ child molester?”

But apparently, the Pope likes Twitter.

“In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated,” the 84-year-old pope said in an apparent reference to the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Concise phrases, like “there is no god” and “you can be good without god” and “fuck the pope” — I agree. There is more profundity on Twitter than in the Bible. Which doesn’t say much about the Bible.

I also discovered something interesting: on the internet, Pharyngula is far more influential than the Bible.

The Vatican’s news website is getting between 8,000 and 10,000 hits a day with peaks of up to 16,000 hits over Christmas, the head of the Holy See’s social media department said on Tuesday.

Uh, really? This is news to be proud of? Pharyngula’s traffic is an order of magnitude greater than that. And I’m just a guy on the internet, with no infallibility or other magic powers.

What will they make of BoingBoing, and aren’t they worried that the anti-christ will spring out of Cute Overload?

Irshad Manji discovers Muslim love

I would probably not like this book; in fact, from reading the summaries and reviews, I would probably actively detest Irshad Manji’s Allah, Liberty, and Love: The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom — there might be much to admire in her work, as she’s another theist who has taken a step away from the dogma and tribalism of fundamentalism, but she hasn’t yet had the courage or intellectual integrity to take another step and free herself of the folly of faith. I could imagine writing a review of the book that was negative or mixed.

But you know what I could not do? I could not imagine instigating a riot over it, or demanding that she be executed for writing it. I would not demand that the book be banned. But that’s exactly what she got at her book launch in Amsterdam.

Next time you see an atheist accused of militancy or stridency, show the accuser this video. That’s what militant, strident fundamentalists look like.

The Bible is the Bad Book

Jonathan Kay is some conservative Canadian columnist who doesn’t think much, but has nonetheless managed to write something that amused me. It’s an article in which he proposes his solution to just about everything: Everyone should read the Bible (especially atheists). I know already that a lot of you are already giggling: we have read the bible, that’s why many of us are atheists. But as you’ll see, it’s not just the title, but the whole article has this smugly unaware air — he hasn’t thought at all deeply about this subject, but he can wag his finger and lecture us sternly on the conventional wisdom with blissful pomposity.

You might be wondering why he’s taking special pains to hector the atheists. It’s because we’re especially annoying — he was driven to write his article because some damned atheist, Michael Arsenault, is campaigning against the Gideons invading public schools to hand out bibles.

Religious extremists often frighten me, offend me, disgust me. But in terms of provoking irritation, none compare to the militantly godless.

Wait…the Gideons are the ones pushing their faith on schoolkids; Arsenault is only asking them to stop doing that. How is it he’s the irritating one? Kay’s logic is awesome: it’s because religious fanatics believe that the omnipotent lord of the universe has told them to do that, but atheists do it all on their lonesome, without that excuse. Atheists using their brain = massively irritating. Christians slavishly obeying ranting preacher = well that’s all right then.

But there’s even more cluelessness! We are apparently supposed to worship the bible, no matter what our religious beliefs, and Mr Kay obligingly gives us an abbreviated summary of the basic Biblical concepts we must master.

I am not a Christian. But I still keep on my National Post desk a well-thumbed copy of the King James Bible I received from my Moral & Religious Education teacher in 1979. I can’t claim to have read the whole thing, but I have read enough of it to understand basic concepts, such as the genealogy of Abraham’s immediate descendants; the flight of the Israelites from Egypt; the description of Jesus’ life and death contained in the Gospels; and the eschatology of Revelation. Even atheists must understand these concepts if they are to have an educated understanding of our world, for they have a direct bearing on everything from the modern Middle East, to the popularity of Rick Santorum, to the plot of Justin Cronin zombie novels.

So one of the important things we atheists should learn is Abraham’s genealogy? Why? I also suspect some blithe ignorance on Kay’s part: the notorious begats of Genesis 5 are the descendants of Adam; the further begats of Genesis 10 are the descendants of Noah. There are some complicated summaries of Abraham’s descendants, for instance in Genesis 25:

Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Ketu’rah.

And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Mid’i-an, and Ishbak, and Shu’ah.

And Jokshan begat Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were As’shurim, and Let’ushim, and Le’ummim.

And the sons of Mid’i-an; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abi’dah, and Elda’ah. All these were the children of Ketu’rah.

And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac.

But unto the sons of the concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country.

So what, exactly, is the basic concept here? Are we supposed to memorize these names? What is the relevance of Ishbak, Let’ushim, and Elda’ah? Would Canada be a better place with a greater appreciation of the unimportance of Abraham’s many nameless concubines?

Does Mr Kay know that the flight of the Israelites from Egypt was a myth of an event that didn’t happen? There is no archaeological evidence to support the story in Exodus. And again, spell out the relevance, please. It’s a scrap of pseudohistory.

Similarly, vague umbly-mumbly about Jesus’ life is nonsense about a god-man who did not exist, a collection of legends with no primary sources, and no reason to trust the veracity of the authors, who were all religious fanatics with motivation to inflate the grains of truth in the story. We’d be better off throwing that garbage on the trash heap.

And seriously, we’re supposed to know the eschatology of the book of Revelation? I’ve read it for laughs — that stuff is insane. All we need to know is that there is a body of deranged literature which deluded fanatics use to justify violence and a hope for the imminent destruction of the universe; there are no truths in the prophecies at all, and the only people who really need to know them in detail are the experts in psychopathology who are trying to untangle the delusions that drive dangerous human beings.

Here’s the one great truth you need to know. The bible is a bad book. It’s a nearly unreadable mess of contradictory stories, ancient political propaganda, arcane tribalisms, bizarre rituals, and the bragging of petty provincial bullies. There are occasional scraps of genuine literary quality imbedded in it, but it is 95% shit…and unfortunately, the book has been granted such extravagantly unwarranted reverence that people refuse to recognize the shit and worship it all uncritically. Which leads to columnists telling us to read the bible for the genealogies and Revelation, rather than Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, and whole American industries striving to replace all of science with a few paragraphs from Genesis.

Kay also makes the tiresome argument that the King James Bible is full of idioms that have common currency in the English, therefore…what? I would not deny that the bible has been influential in Western history, but then, so has cholera — I think recognition of the importance of both is essential for an educated person, but I do not endorse being inoculated with either.

In his 2010 book, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, David Crystal concluded that the King James Bible alone created twice as many modern English idioms (think “fly in the ointment”) as all of Shakespeare’s work combined. And even these are only a small fraction of the thousands of idioms given to us by predecessor Bibles, such as the Tyndale, Bishops’ and Geneva variants. The English we speak today and the English of the Bible are inseparable. A common phrase such as “brother’s keeper,” for instance, loses its meaning to someone ignorant of the story of Cain and Abel.

This is a false argument. You certainly can understand that simple phrase without reading the Bible, and you can read the Bible without understanding the phrase. How often have you heard “Am I my brother’s keeper?” used by Christians as an excuse to avoid responsibility, vs. recognizing that it was a transparent rationalization by a murderer? I’d argue instead that many of these well-worn idioms have acquired meanings independent of their sources, and that trying to tie them to Christianity or Judaism ignores their modern usage.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there is a great deal of our modern language that arose from the Bible — evolutionary biologists do not deny the significance of antecedents! But that is not sufficient cause to demand that everyone must learn from the archaic and often irrelevant original source.

That more idioms arose from the Bible than Shakespeare is no virtue. Imagine a table with two books: a copy of the Bible, and the very least of Shakespeare’s plays — say, Troilus and Cressida. Which do you think will be better written, more interesting, more humane, and more coherent? Shakespeare, hands down. Shakespeare was an author who was certainly informed by the Bible, but he was also a literary genius who used the clever 5% and left out the 95% shit, plucking the gems out of the dungheap and giving us a better story and a better morality.

Kay ought to recognize this fact; he even gives an example that ought to have alerted him that his thoughtless assumption that the Bible was a good book was wrong.

My children are too young for the Bible (as I learned from an unsuccessful and unintentionally terrifying experiment at bed-time reading with Robert Crumb’s illustrated Book of Genesis) — so I had to explain concepts like “wickedness” to them as they arose in Montgomery’s text. [He was also reading them Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables–pzm]

I love Crumb’s Genesis — most people have not actually read the Bible at all, and translating it into a different medium — especially a particularly faithful translation — can jar them into looking at it more closely. And what you learn from Genesis is that it is a truly awful, evil, wretched little book. Kay’s children could see that. Now why can’t Kay himself?