Nary a one

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

After recovering sufficiently from a ten-day vacation [on which I took along a copy of Christopher Hitchens's 2006 book, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography (Books That Changed the World)], I checked all of the editions of the Durham Herald-Sun that a neighbor had piled on our dining table, to see whether there were any more letters to respond to on the subject of the Bible's having been written by God.
    Nary a one!
    I think I detect some disappointment in myself that there wasn't one, but I'm mostly elated.

This way, I can imagine that Gordon Hansen & Co. have all gone back and re-read their Bibles with newly opened eyes and been able to discover for themselves what Thomas Paine could have told them:

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. [–The Age of Reason]
    The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God. [ibid]
    What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith. [ibid]

    Paine wrote that "The Bible...has been read more, and examined less, than any [other] book that ever existed" [as quoted by Joseph Lewis in Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine].

Hmm, if there had been another letter to respond to, I'm sure I could have found a way to quote Paine.

Nailed it (and no damn fooling)

The Letters editor of the Durham Herald-Sun telephoned me last night. She was going to run my letter in the morning.
    "You printed it this morning," I said.
    "No, tomorrow's will be your 'abominable things' letter."
    "I submitted that on Friday, right after reading Gordon Hansen's letter."
    "Oh?" she said. "I just received it this morning. Hmm, I'm going to have to check what else might not be being sent on to me....
    "You're right about religious rants," she said. "They do generate some interest. When letters have been kind of boring and one like that comes in, I'm glad to run it. And letters like yours, they're welcome anytime. Thank you for submitting them."

So, the game wasn't cancelled after all, although whatever happened that she didn't receive my letter immediately was a sort of rain delay.
    And it appears that I hadn't needed to soften my "Constitution seems to guarantee the right of The People to believe any damn fool thing they want" in Friday's letter to "Constitution seems to guarantee the right of The People to believe anything they want" in the one she printed yesterday.
    Good on you, Ms. Betsy O'Donovan!

Did you see my letter?" I asked my wife from the kitchen.
    "You nailed it," she said.
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Today's letter on the web

A former Baptist, that is

A fitting objet trouvé to accompany my letter in today's Durham Herald-Sun¹ sort of reached up this morning from p. 376 of Christopher Hitchens's 2010 memoir, Hitch-22, and tapped me on the shoulder. I found the objet in the chapter, "The Jewish Question," in which Hitchens explains how he discovered that he was a Jew and reports on his extensive investigations into his Semitic roots:

As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions [I think these are the writings from which Mr. Gordon Hansen likes to select those that support his prejudices against gays and women], we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam....²

As ever and always, Christopher Hitchens, thank you, thank you for your mind and your heart.
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1. The rest of the paragraph:

   Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for "mind" or "intellect," and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over "exile" or "return." It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the "messianic" Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.

2. Today's letter on the web

A Baptist weighs in

Well, they haven't printed my letter in reply to Gordon Hansen, but they printed Larry Bumgardner's this morning, and that gives me an opportunity to try again:

Judging by Mr. Bumgardner's letter this morning ("Southern Baptists will apologize again"), my having been a Baptist^* confers on me, too, some authority to enter this conversation.
    Mr. Bumgardner writes: "Hanson [sic; “Hansen” according to the Sept. 30 edition] used scripture to justify hatred toward gays and a refusal to allow women to be pastors. If he were so disposed, he could use scripture to justify slavery…polygamy…stoning adulterous women…on and on."
    Quite right; the Bible is used to justify many incompatible things. What is one to conclude from this? God did NOT write the Bible; it is NOT His inspired word. Or, the Bible is no more inspired of God than, say, the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I can pick a word at random from the dictionary (or from any book whose language I can read) and "get an idea" that might (or might not) be helpful to me in solving a problem, being cheered up, making the right decision, or whatever I'm looking for. That's the nature of inspiration, the only inspiration we know.
    The First Amendment of our Constitution seems to guarantee the right of The People to believe anything they want, including that God wrote the Bible. That doesn't make it so—not when it flies in the face of facts and logic.
    If having been a Baptist qualifies me to say that, I suspect that Mr. Hansen would say that my use of logic disqualifies me.
    I’m not sure about Mr. Bumgardner. He too seems to be lapsed.

* Yes, I was a "First Baptist" for two or three years in high school, roughly fifty to fifty-five years ago. As well as I can remember, the church in the photo above—from somewhere on the Internet—could be the very one I attended (in Tulare, California).
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In case the Herald's letters page should not be available for long), I include Mr. Bumgardner's letter here:

Southern Baptists will apologize again
I’m happy that Gordon Hanson wrote his letter (Sept. 30) objecting to my comments about Southern Baptist behavior. His letter speaks perfectly to the mindset that his children or grandchildren will one day be ashamed of.
    I am particularly qualified to speak of Southern Baptists since I was raised in that tradition and, up until about 15 years ago, was affiliated with them. Their decision to break from a longtime theological position referred to as the “priesthood of the believer” and switch to a top-down authoritarian rule demanding a belief in biblical inerrancy has decimated Southern Baptist ranks. Membership and baptisms continue to fall. I suspect their apology for slavery was motivated by their desire to pick up membership from similarly disposed black churches.
    Hanson used scripture to justify hatred toward gays and a refusal to allow women to be pastors. If he were so disposed, he could use scripture to justify slavery as his church years ago certainly did. He could justify polygamy, if he were so disposed. He could justify stoning adulterous women. The list goes on and on.
    The Bible Belt states have the highest incidence of divorce of any states in the union. The most liberal state in the union, Massachusetts, has the lowest divorce rate. What is it those folks are trying to tell us about living a moral life? It sure isn’t by setting an example. Sooner or later, an apology or serious regret will be forthcoming. It’s just a matter of time.
                                    –Larry Bumgardner, Durham

Abominable subjects

Leviticus, of the Hebrew Bible

I've had enough of tsk-tsking at our local newspapers' printing religious diatribes in their Letters column. I've decided to just enjoy them for their humor. Upon reading the letter printed by Durham, North Carolina's Herald-Sun this morning under the title, "Regarding several abominable subjects," I wrote to thank the editor:

Dear Editor, thanks for continuing to print religious rants like that this morning of Gordon Hansen ("Regarding several abominable subjects"), for they are hugely entertaining, what with their statements like "God was very specific when he wrote Leviticus 18:22" and "If we read further, verses 24-26, we read that God will hold America responsible for the abominations committed here"—as though the ancient Israelite who wrote the verses (or the scribes who came along later and either intentionally or by mistake altered the original wording) had foreknowledge of nations formed millennia later! As I said, very amusing and for that reason much appreciated by adult readers on the lookout for irony.
    I can understand your desire to entertain your readers, but it seems to me that from an ethical point of view you maybe ought to let Mr. Hansen & Co. know that you're using them. While the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution seems to guarantee the right of The People to believe any damn fool thing they want, it seems only fair to Mr. Hansen & Co. to let them know that that's not the main reason you publish their diverting opinions.

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In case the Herald's letters page should not be available for long (for as long as I hope Moristotle will be available, anyway), I include Mr. Hansen's epistle here for posterity:

Regarding several abominable subjects
In the Sept. 28 Letters to the Editor, I read the letter by Larry Bumgardner of Durham. His statement was, “sooner or later Southern Baptists will apologize for their view on homosexuals, and their refusal to accept female ministers, just as they apologized for slavery over 100 years too late.”
    The question I would like answered according to God’s Word, the Bible, and not by liberal judges that for the most part deny the very existence of God, is this: Since God was very specific when he wrote Leviticus 18:22—“Thou shalt not lie with a male, as one lies with a female; it is an abomination” (NASB), which seems pretty clear to me—do we disregard what God has written or do we take the politically correct position to keep the liberals and that ilk happy?
    If we read further, verses 24-26, we read that God will hold America responsible for the abominations committed here.
    Also, one should read about Sodom and Gomorrah, when those cities became so immoral. God did not apologize and did not excuse their lifestyle, and neither should Southern Baptists who are born again.
    The second part of Bumgardner’s article concerns Southern Baptists who refuse to accept female ministers. I assume he would like someone to rewrite 1 Corthinians14:34-35. That to me is clear and concise. It reads: “Let your women keep silent in the church: for it is not permitted unto them to speak: but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.”
    If a woman wants to learn she should ask her husband or a Godly man. “Women speaking” refers to preaching and not conversations.
                                    –Gordon Hansen, Durham

We sort of have to make Mr. Hansen out to be a Vaudeville comedian, don't we? If we took him seriously, we'd be forced to weep rather than laugh.

A fundamentalist assumption examined

As I've already mentioned, one of my special pleasures in reading Christopher Hitchens's latest book is his mentions of authors and issues that I'm already familiar with. Reading God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything tends to confirm some of my own understandings about religion:

Many years after C. S. Lewis had gone to his reward, a very serious young man named Barton Ehrman began to examine his own fundamentalist assumptions. He had attended the two most eminent Christian fundamentalist academies in the United States¹, and was considered by the faithful to be among their champions. Fluent in Greek and Hebrew (he is now holder of a chair in religious studies [in Chapel Hill]), he eventually could not quite reconcile his faith with his scholarship. He was astonished to find that some of the best-known Jesus stories were scribbled into the canon long after the fact, and that this was true of perhaps the best-known of them all.
      This story is the celebrated one about the woman taken in adultery (John 8:3-11). Who has not heard or read of how the Jewish Pharisees, skilled in casuistry, dragged this poor woman before Jesus and demanded to know if he agreed with the Mosaic punishment of stoning her to death? If he did not, he violated the law. If he did, he made nonsense of his own preachings. One easily pictures the squalid zeal with which they pounced upon the woman. And the calm reply...—"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"—has entered our literature and our consciousness.
      ...Long before I read Ehrman², I had some questions of my own. If the New Testament is supposed to vindicate Moses, why are the gruesome laws of the Pentateuch to be undermined? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the killing of witches may seem brutish and stupid, but if only non-sinners have the right to punish, then how could an imperfect society ever determine how to prosecute offenders? We should all be hypocrites. And what authority did Jesus have to "forgive"? Presumably, at least one wife or husband somewhere in the city felt cheated and outraged. Is Christianity, then, sheer sexual permissiveness? If so, it has been gravely misunderstood ever since...Furthermore, the story says that after the Pharisees and the crowd had melted away (presumably from embarrassment), nobody was left except Jesus and the woman. In that case, who is the narrator of what he said to her? For all that, I thought it a fine enough story.
      Professor Ehrman goes further. He asks some more obvious questions. If the woman was "taken in adultery," which means in flagrante delicto, then where is her male partner? Mosaic law, adumbrated in Leviticus, makes it clear that both must undergo the stoning. I suddenly realized that the core of the story's charm is that of the shivering lonely girl, hissed at and dragged away by a crowd of sex-starved fanatics, and finally encountering a friendly face....
      Overarching all this is the shocking fact that, as Ehrman concedes:

The story is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John; its writing style is very different from what we find in the rest of John (including the stories immediately before and after); and it includes a large number of words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. The conclusion is unavoidable; this passage was not originally part of the Gospel.

      I have again [after selecting C. S. Lewis] selected my source on the basis of "evidence against interest"; in other words from someone whose original scholarly and intellectual journey was not at all intended to challenge holy writ. The case for biblical consistency or authenticity or "inspiration" has been in tatters for some time, and the rents and tears only become more obvious with better research, and thus no "revelation" can be derived from that quarter. So, then, let the advocates and partisans of religion rely on faith alone, and let them be brave enough to admit that this is what they are doing.

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1. The Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College.
2. Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, from which I quoted in my post of April 30.