Christians go Nuts: Bible Says God Did NOT Create Universe!

What happens when you insist that the Bible be taken literally ... and it turns out there is a big mistake in the translation? For example, what if the original doesn't say God created Heaven and Earth?

Oops.

It's a perfect example of what happens when you let irrational faith trump scholarship and rationality: every time a new fact comes along, your defense of your beliefs has to get even more contorted and far-fetched than before.

According to Professor Ellen van Wolde, the story of Genesis was mistranslated, and badly. God didn't create the universe, it was here already. He just sorted it all out and made sense of it. Sorting out the heavens and firmament, and the waters from the land, and so on, would be a mighty task, one worthy of any ordinary god. But it's a far cry from creating the universe itself ex nihlo.

If Professor van Wolde is right, it puts Yahweh in the same league as gods like Thor, Zeus and Baal: mighty gods, but of-this-universe rather than creator of the universe. Instead of being omniscient and omnipotent, Yahweh would just be more like an ultra-magical human. Quite a downfall.

While this academic debate over a single Hebrew word is interesting and amusing, it's the reaction of Christians and Jews that I find far more instructive, and sad. Professor Van Wolde's short thesis has spawned hundreds of replies on the newspaper's web site, and some of them fill pages with their arguments.

To a scholar, this sort of thing is fun and fascinating, and the debate is just part of an ongoing, somewhat esoteric, effort to expand knowledge. If this were any book other than the Bible, it would be left in the dry, dusty attics of just a few linguists and historians.

But because it affects one of the core beliefs of conservative Christians and Jews, it has to be refuted. Never mind that in a scholarly debate, everyone might eventually conclude that the professor is right (or not ... that's what scholarship is about). No matter what the facts are, these conservative Christians and Jews have to concoct dozens of reasons why the experts must be wrong.

The refutations fall into three main camps:

1. Professor van Wolde's translation is wrong (this from people who don't even speak Hebrew).
2. The word "separate" can be taken to mean "create."
3. The original Hebrew is irrelevant, because the Bible is God's inerrant word and the current translation is His divine will.

Yikes.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog that is relevant again:

There is no objective truth for religion, no foundation. When religious people argue, they're arguing about opinion, and they can argue forever. But when scientists argue, it's over facts, and sooner or later, the facts prevail. One theory will win out because it is true, and the others will be forgotten. And the scientists will then move on to the next question, to expand our knowledge even more.

That's the beauty of true scholarship, that ultimately, through hard work and clear thinking, and by ignoring our own wishes about what we'd like to be true, we find a core truth that everyone can verify for him/herself. And we move on to the next question.

Religion's reliance on faith, and belief in things that can't possibly be true, makes it impossible to move forward. People waste days, years, and even whole lifetimes, concocting silly explanations to justify two-thousand-year-old mythology, simply because some priests or rabbis declared it to be from Yahweh's own mouth. It's a terrible waste of human intelligence.

Why the Bible has to be Perfect

I respect many religious beliefs, but what do you do when someone believes something that can't possibly be true? Something that has glaring errors that anyone can see? And what if half of a nation believes it? What's a rational person supposed to do in the face of such beliefs?

We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.

That's not some fringe ultra-conservative quote. No, it's from the official Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, endorsed by a large number of evangelical churches representing millions of Americans.

There are many defenses of the Bible's inerrancy, but the most amazing one – and I'm not making this up – is the "slippery slope" argument. It goes like this:

1. There are appear to be lots of errors in the Bible, God is a jerk sometimes, and lots of good people get killed for dumb reasons.
2. If we admit that there is even a single flaw in the Bible, then we must admit there could be two errors, or three, or...
3. Therefore, we can't admit that there is even one error in the Bible.
4. Which proves that there are no conflicts in the Bible, only things we can't understand.

Notice that this directly conflicts with everything we've learned about science in the last two thousand years. At its core, science demands that we never start from a conclusion and try to work backwards to make the facts fit. No matter what we want to believe, if the evidence contradicts a hypothesis, then that hypothesis can't be true.

This is the single most important "invention" in the history of the world: We must be open to the truth, and let the evidence speak for itself. Without this philosophy, we'd still be in the middle ages. There would be no medicine, no cell phones, computers or televisions, farmers would be growing just a fraction of what they do today, and 50% of our children would still be dying of diseases before they reached adulthood.

The problem with the theory of Biblical inerrancy is that the evidence flatly contradicts it. The Bible has many internal inconsistencies, geographical errors, astronomical errors, and historical errors. To a scientist, it's simple: The evidence contradicts the hypothesis, so the hypothesis must be wrong.

Unfortunately, those who believe in Biblical inerrancy flip this on its head: They claim that if the evidence contradicts the Bible, then the evidence must be wrong. That is the antithesis of progress and enlightenment.

Most of us believe in and practice tolerance and respect for each other's beliefs. But what do you do when faced with beliefs that just plainly and obviously wrong? And what do you do when they're justified by circular, illogical arguments like the "slippery slope" test?

There are limits to my respect and tolerance, and I have no patience for Biblical Inerrancy.