Back of the Envelope

This week, Back of the Envelope is hosting the God or Not Carnival on the topic of Scriptural Literalism. As host, I'm not allowed to talk about my own opinions on this topic, or judge the submissions others have made, within the carnival. I'll do my best simply to summarize the arguments presented. I couldn't decide on a good organization, so I ultimately divided it between the "God" posts and the "Not" posts. Since Back of the Envelope is a "God" blog, I'll put the "Not" posts first.

Not

In "Scriptural Literalism," Breakerslion of Confusion of Ideas argues that since the internal contradictions make it impossible for a reasonable person to believe that the Bible is literally true, that the assertion that it is is really a litmus test to determine whether the religious follower will believe anything.

Chris Hallquist at The Uncredible Hallq offers a post called "Scriptural literalism is not the issue," where he says that it doesn't matter whether the Bible is literally true or not, that the character of the God described in the Bible is unworthy of worship should he exist at all.

I Am at The Evangelical Atheist offers us "Cherry-Picking (Not Literally)," saying that while it's consistent to argue that the Bible is figurative or that it is literal, it is intellectually dishonest to argue that some portions are literal while others are not except in the case of portions that are "literally figurative," which are clearly presented as figurative in the text.

Seth at the Kingdom of Heathen argues in "Fetch the Book of Armaments!" that those who don't take the Bible literally, yet look to it as a source of morals, are deluding themselves, as the Bible's "not a stable source of morals. It is inconsistent, vague, and downright outrageous."

In "Scriptural Literalism: the Patriarchal Divide," Reluctant Atheist of Bibliblography presents us with the argument that scriptural literalism is more a male phenomenon, due to the way that men think.

LBBP of Skeptic Rant presents "Scriptural Literalism," wherein he takes the view that if anyone truly took the Bible literally, it would require behavior which is far from acceptable to our society.

Francois Tremblay of Goosing the Antithesis submits his post "Applying induction to the 'holey' writ," using inductive reasoning to argue that it's absurd to select a single book as infallible.

God

Dwight Welch at the Religious Liberal Blog has a post called "embracing history," where he argues that no one is takes the Bible completely literally, and that those studying it need to first understand the historical context, and then interpret it through the lens of what Jesus said were the two greatest commandments: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Trey at Daddy, Papa and Me presents the "Greatest Commandments," which takes a position identical to Dwight, that the Bible needs to be interpreted according to the Two Greatest Commandments. He does emphasize the last part of what Jesus said, that "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

At Rev. Bill, the Reverend argues in "About Pat" that people such as Pat Robertson, using a literal interpretation of the Bible in order to try to explain current events miss the larger message of the Bible.

In "Bible: Literal or Figurative?", Brendan McPhillips at BrendanMcPhillips.com, takes a purely figurative view of the Bible and the stories of Creation, the Flood, and the Resurrection.

Chad at Eternal Revolution gives us "Pitfalls of Literal Interpretation," where he claims that it is possible to accept a metaphorical interpretation of many passages in the Bible without diluting or refuting their meaning.

In "On Scriptural Literalism," Jim Jordan at the Moral Science Club takes the view that the scriptures are infallible, in that they do not fail us, but they are not literal. This is a very long post.

Anne Johnson at The Gods are Bored gives us "Evidence for the Defense #4", a humorous story where Satan gives his version of what happened during Jesus's temptation in the wilderness.

Kristopher at Mathetes has a post titled "Interpretation," which says that sola scriptura, the view that scripture is the only source of authority, is illogical, as it does not acknowledge an authority for interpreting the scripture, and as it lacks a source to confirm the authority of the scriptures themselves.

Macht at Prosthesis, gives us "The Chimera of Biblical Literalism," where he argues that literalism and inerrancy are not the same thing, and that no one who believes in the Bible is a strict Biblical literalist.

Athana at Radical Goddess Thealogy sends "ERZEBET Dug HER OWN GRAVE — LITERALLY," where she uses the example of Fred Phelps to show the dangers of taking the Bible literally, but then goes on to argue that it doesn't matter if you take it literally or figuratively, the scriptures of the warrior god, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, are so dangerous that they ought to be banned entirely as Weapons of Mass Destruction.



That's it, all the entries this time. As you can see, I didn't get a single post supporting the literal interpretation of the Bible, excepting those saying that the literal interpretation was reason to reject it.

Let me know if you see any problems with this post.

The next GOD or NOT Carnival, number seven, is on January 30th at The Uncredible Hallq, and the topic is "Definition of God."

Update: I added one last post, where I was late getting the necessary information. It was mostly my fault as I think I hit the wrong button and saved the e-mail with the info request rather than sending it.

While hosting the God or Not Carnival, I of course had my own thoughts about the quality and nature of the arguments, but I was not allowed to comment on the posts themselves in the Carnival, and the manager of the Carnival asked me not to post any analysis in another blog entry until a few days after the carnival. To be honest, reading the entries was somewhat depressing, as very few of them, even among the "God" entries, agreed with my beliefs, and many of the posts were downright hostile, not merely argumentative. I will not attempt to go through the posts one by one, but there are a few arguments which I feel compelled to address. I am not interested in answering insult with insult, but I do need to explain and defend my own beliefs. Thus there are three arguments that I intend to address in the upcoming week:

1. The first argument, made at the Evangelical Atheist, is that believers are inconsistent, in fact, intellectually dishonest, in believing some parts of the Bible to be literally true while believing that others are figurative. The Evangelical Atheist allows for the fact that some things are "literally figurative"--i.e., the text makes it clear they're figurative--but argues that this doesn't allow the Christian to regard the gospel stories as literal and the creation story in Genesis as figurative, as it's either all or nothing. He's correct that believers often choose literal vs. figurative as a matter of convenience, but he's taking an overly simplistic view of the Bible. There's more leeway than he allows.
2. Theist Mathetes argues that sola scriptura religions are illogical, as they neither allow for any authority to interpret the scriptures nor do they allow for an authority which establishes the authority of the scriptures. I believe that he's misinterpreting what sola scriptura means, which I'll attempt to demonstrate.
3. The final argument has little to do with scriptural literalism. It is instead the observation that the Bible contains a lot of bad stuff, and taking it seriously at all, whether literally or figuratively, requires belief in a God who is overtly evil. This was the view taken by The Uncredible Hallq, Kingdom of Heathen, and Skeptic Rant among the atheists, and Radical Goddess Thealogy among the theists. This is a serious objection to the God of the Bible and deserves a serious response, even if the hostility evinced in some of these posts seemed more designed to offend than to convince. I don't think God is evil, of course. I think our Western concepts of human worth and dignity would not exist without the influence of Christianity, so we would not even have the concepts by which we judge the God of the Bible without Him. I also think these bloggers are really making just a small part of a broader argument, the context of which I'll try to provide as I address their argument.

So that's what I intend to talk about in the upcoming week. Ambitious, isn't it? And dang, I need to get to work on revising Eyes of the Shadow some time soon. Well, I'll do my best.

Despite my best efforts, I've been having difficulty explaining, in my comments on my previous God or Not Carnival Thoughts post, why outliers make it difficult to see trends in data. Thus, I'll demonstrate by example. The following graph shows the number of murders per 100,000 for each state in the year 2000, and the percentage of the vote that Gore got in each state that year. As you can clearly see, voting for Gore causes more murders per capita.


"Wait a second!" you say. "There doesn't seem to be any pattern."

"But look at that one point, the one where 90% of the voters voted for Gore, and the murder rate is 42 per 100,000. Isn't that striking? See how clear it is!"

"But it's only one point!"

"But look how big it is!"

That's essentially what my argument with Athana has been like. She refers to a study in the Journal of Religion and Society that shows that religion is bad for nations. As proof, it shows the US, with its high rates of abortion, murder, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, et cetera, versus a whole bunch of other first-world nations, in a graph where religious belief is the x-axis. The problem is, if you remove the US, which is way more religious than the other nations and also has more murders, abortions, teenage pregnancies, et cetera, most of the graphs don't show any discernable pattern. (The exceptions, which look very linear, are abortions, teenage pregnancies, and under 5 mortality, which is sufficient to get an interesting discussion, and also, I think, all symptoms of the same characteristic.) Thus my argument is that the US is too much of an outlier to include, as its differences from other nations is more than just religiosity: it lacks the social welfare programs, is more ethnically and culturally diverse, places higher value on individual freedoms as opposed to community conformity, the list goes on and on... A real trend in a set of data should survive the removal of any single point. If removing one point, or even a couple, eliminates the trend, then it isn't real.

Going back to my plot and its striking outlier: that outlier is Washington, D.C. "Wait a second," you say. "That's not a state." For the purposes of voting and crime statistics it is, which is why I included it. It also has a population higher than Wyoming. "But," you continue, "it's one large urban center, mostly poor and disadvantaged. It's an outlier!" And that, I believe, is my point.

The Evangelical Atheist argues that it's impossible to take the Bible to be partly literal and partly figurative:

If some passages (aside from the “literal figurative passages” previously mentioned) are taken as literal and others are not, one must be able to defend the distinction. When challenged to do so, these people offer a few typical responses. One is to imply that all of the self-contradictory parts are figurative. This is a convenient but baseless argument that works backward from a comfortable conclusion. Another response is to say that some of the miraculous passages are figurative because they couldn’t really have happened the way they’re written. However, which is more absurd: the resurrection or the burning bush? If any of the extraordinary portions are taken as literally true, this argument falls apart.

The main problem with this argument is that it takes an overly simplistic view of the Bible, as if it's a single book written by a single person, rather than a collection of 66 books, many of which, arguably including Genesis, are also collections of stories from different sources. Thus it makes sense to look at each book on its own, for what it claims to be, in order to decide if it's literal or figurative. The gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life and ministries. They contain repeated refrains that this is either the account of witnesses or painstakingly researched (the end of John and the beginning of Luke, in particular). You may disagree, but if so, you have to conclude that the account is not just figurative, that it is inherently dishonest.

Some books can be taken either way. There can be disagreement over Job, for instance. Its poetic form, with the prologue and epilogue recounting events in Heaven, suggest a figurative account to some, while others see no reason to discount the events, even if they've been rendered into poetic form. The poetic dialogue may summarize the central arguments of a real debate among real people, even if they didn't speak in poetry at the time.

Genesis, if taken to be what the most literal interpretation of Divine Inspiration calls it, is God's description to Moses of his actions in history and relationship with his chosen people up to that moment. Others believe that it is a collection of the oral stories of the Israelites collected by Moses. Taken that way, these stories can be treated individually according to their genres, and the question of figurative or literal meaning dealt with for each story separately, not as a whole.

The creation account of Genesis 1 has some formulas which suggest a figurative meaning. The first three days consist of the creation of the kingdoms: light and dark on the first day, air and water on the second, and earth on the third. The second set of three days concern the creation of the rulers of those kingdoms: the sun and the moon on the fourth, the birds and the fish on the fifth, and animals and man on the sixth. Some Christians find this convincing evidence that the story is not meant literally, while others say that just because it follows a storytelling formula doesn't mean it didn't actually happen that way.

Thus I think the figurative vs. literal interpretation of each book has to be dealt with separately, and is often open for debate.

God blogger Mathetes argued in his contribution to the last God or Not Carnival that sola scriptura was illogical:

A question that has always been at the forefront of all of my endeavors with sola scriptura or, strictly text-based religions, (i.e. religions that take their meaning, truth, guidance and importance from scripture; religions like Judaism, Islam and protestant Christianity) is the problem of interpretation. The problem, as it pertains to Islam and protestant Christianity, goes something like this:

1.There are many interpretations of the Qur’an/Bible
2.Islam and protestant Christianity claim to be absolutely true (in most cases)
3.Therefore one interpretation of the Qur’an/Bible is the correct interpretation
4.There is no authority under either Islam or protestant Christianity that tells which interpretation is correct.
5.Therefore the Absolute truth claims of Islam or Christianity are either
a. false, because they are wrong
b. irrelevant, because the correct interpretation under the presuppositions of the two positions is impossible to be known leaving us skeptics.

This is most certainly a big question for Muslims and protestant Christians alike. If they do not have a correct interpretation of the Qur’an/bible, they don’t have truth. How would a protestant Christian or a Muslim go about finding an answer to this? I hope to be able to show what resources, faculties and thoughts both Muslims and Christians might begin to use to examine this argument.

I believe that this is an incorrect interpretation of what sola scriptura means. From, of all things, the Wikipedia definition:

Sola scriptura reverses the order of the Church's authority, as it is understood in the Catholic tradition: Instead of the Catholic Church's teaching authority being the interpreter of Scripture, sola scriptura makes Scripture the interpreter of tradition. For this reason, it is called the formal cause of the Reformation.

Sola scriptura did not originally signify a radical rejection of all authority of the Church to interpret the Scriptures, but rather represented a claim that the teaching authority of the Church is regulated by the Bible, constrained by Scripture in both a limiting and a directing sense. As John Wesley stated in the 18th century, "The Church is to be judged by the Scriptures, not the Scriptures by the Church." The Reformers argued that the Scriptures are guaranteed to remain true to their divine source, and thus, only insofar as the Church retains scriptural faith is it assured of all the promises of God.

Sola scriptura holds that the Bible is the most reliable source of authority on the Christian faith. It is not, however, the only source of authority.

If I believed that the tradition of the Church (not referring narrowly to the Catholic Church, but to the broad family of believers throughout history), other historical sources, archeology, and reason had no authority, then indeed I would be hard pressed to find a non-circular reason to believe in the Bible's authority. However, these things do have authority, and even though none of them have the same authority as the Bible themselves, they do affirm its greater authority. You may wonder how a greater authority can be derived from lesser ones. It is basic inductive logic, the same as is used in science all the time. No particular experiment has any great authority, but the sum of them allows us to derive the scientific laws which have great authority.

The same principle is used in interpreting scripture. While none of these things are the ultimate authority in interpreting scripture, they each can contribute to our understanding. The ultimate authority in scriptural interpretation, though, is the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Spirit works to teach us truth when we study the Word of God with humility. But what should we make of the wildly different conclusions reached by Christians about various theological points, such as free will and predestination? I would argue, and I think most Evangelicals feel this way, that those points of contention which Christians have argued over for hundreds of years may not be as important as we think they are. Our specific beliefs about the details are a lot less important than an active faith that lives out the clear teachings of Jesus.