The Bible Delusion

Christianity’s holy book disappears into thin air

I know, it’s my first post on this site in nearly 9 months. I can’t say I have a great excuse, although I have been incredibly busy recently trying to figure out a vision of what my life will look like post-grad. That journey is still ongoing.

The other day, I was browsing Reddit like many in my generation do, and eventually made my way to r/DebateAnAtheist, a community I visit frequently. There, I noticed a post in which the Christian author was essentially asking for advice on how to rationalize several Old Testament teachings he found disagreeable. The basis of the post was bizarre, to say the least, but it struck a chord with me. The original author, in a grand sense, was grappling with a fundamental question: how can these teachings exist if his God is supposed to be all-good?

This isn’t a new question, and not one unique to Reddit or even to modern times. It’s a dilemma that many believers have wrestled with over centuries, often employing theological and philosophical acrobatics to reconcile these contradictions. In this post, I want to explore why such rationalizations fail and why the Bible, under scrutiny, struggles to sustain its claims of divine morality and inerrancy.

The Problem of Divine Morality

The Old Testament depicts God commanding actions that, by modern moral standards, are abhorrent. Examples include the genocidal conquests in the Book of Joshua and the endorsement of slavery in Exodus. Many Christians grapple with these stories, attempting to them rationalize them against their belief in a benevolent, omnipotent deity. The most common approach, at least that I’ve seen, is to invoke divine command theory: the idea that morality is defined by God’s will, and therefore what appears immoral to humans may be righteous in God’s grand design for the universe. However, this line of reasoning is inconsistent, for several reasons.

If morality hinges solely on divine approval, then morality becomes arbitrary. Under this framework, genocide or slavery is only wrong when God deems it so. Moral relativism to such as extent undermines any attempt at a consistent ethical frameworks and gives way to a troubling precedent: if divine commands justified atrocities in the past, what prevents similar commands today?

Jesus as a Moral Pivot

Another common rationalization many Christians employ is to suggest that the New Testament, with Jesus as it’s focal point, supersedes the Old Testament’s retrograde teachings. Jesus’s teachings of love, forgiveness, and mercy are often cited as the corrective lens on which to view the Bible’s overarching moral framework. For instance, theologians like Randal Rauser propose that the Bible’s narrative evolves toward the ideals embodied by Christ.

However, this argument raises it’s own contradictions. If Jesus represents the culmination of the Bible’s moral journey, why did an omniscient God allow earlier scriptures to misrepresent His nature? Moreover, even the New Testament includes troubling passages, such as Jesus’s proclamations of bringing “a sword” rather than peace (Matthew 10:34) and his participation in apocalyptic vengeance in Revelation. This new testament-inspired pivot is inconsistent at best

The Problem of Inerrancy

But, to closer address the foundational question of the original reddit post, one must first realize that the author is not engaging in a good faith search for knowledge. He, as many Christians do, approaches the discussion with the unshakeable belief that the Bible CANNOT be wrong, and seeks alternative solutions instead of truly understanding the text.

Many Christians cling to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy: the belief that the Bible does not contain error in its teachings. But this claim often leads to confusing rationalizations. When confronted with the moral atrocities and factual inaccuracies present in the Old Testament, believers tend to argue these elements are either metaphorical, misinterpreted, or meant to teach a larger lesson. One such argument I’ve heard fairly often is that the violent depictions in the Old Testament were not literal commands, but instead the result of the ancient author’s flawed understanding of God’s will.

This position, however, undermines the very foundation of the Bible, and it’s veneration by modern day Christians. If certain passages are the result of human error or cultural bias, what exactly guarantees the reliability of any other part of the Bible? By selecting labeling problematic sections as erroneous while maintaining others are divinely inspired, believers engage in a form of cherry-picking that compromises the Bible’s credibility as a unified text. Christians believe what they believe principally because they read it in the Bible. But as some Christians maintain, you can’t trust everything written there, as it could be human error. And there goes the entire foundation of Christianity.

The last common Christian objection to my points in this section, is the god deliberately inspired or commanded these erroneous accounts to serve some sort of greater purpose. While this does raise some serious theological concerns, I won’t get into them here. But I will say, the Christian god is darn confusing. I found this logic best summed up in this humorous bit by u/leekpunch in the original post.

“Hey, Scribe. It’s Yahweh. Why don’t you include some stories that make me look like a bloodthirsty vicious bastard!”

“Er, why do you want that, Lord?”

“Well, obviously people won’t take it literally. They’ll know it’s just included as a thought exercise for later generations!”

“Er, I’m not sure they will think that, Lord…”

“Well, I don’t pay you to think! I pay you to scribe so start chiselling those tablets!”

“Yes, sir!”

It’s a confusing explanation at best, and at worst represents a deeper insecurity about the very book many Christians base their whole lives on. Is the Bible the word of god or not?

A Simpler Explanation

The mental gymnastics many Christians perform to harmonize the Bible’s contradictions often come from an unwillingness to entertain a simpler conclusion: that the Bible is a human document, reflecting the beliefs, biases, and limitations of its authors. Viewed from this perspective, the moral atrocities of the Old Testament are merely accounts of an ancient, tribal worldview, instead of divine teachings. Similarly, the New Testament’s focus on love and mercy can also be seen as a product of the cultural and historical context of the period in which it was written.

By acknowledging the Bible as a human creation, the need for elaborate rationalizations and pseudo-conspiracy theories disappears. The contradictions and moral failings contained within the Bible no longer necessitate justification, as they simply reflect the evolving moral and theological perspectives of the people who wrote it.

Conclusion

All in all, these attempts to rationalize the Bible’s troubling narratives often tells us more about the lengths to which believers will go to preserve their faith, than about the nature of the text itself. I’m not without emotion, I understand that the idea of divine inspiration may offer comfort, but it collapses under scrutiny when compared with the Bible’s inconsistencies and moral failings. It might be controversial to say, but perhaps the most honest approach is to recognize the Bible for what it is: a complex, multifaceted collection of stories that offers insights into humanity’s spiritual journey, but one that ultimately fails to withstand claims of inerrancy or divine authorship.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on this topic. It’s funny to see how a simple reddit post inspired this whole rant, but hopefully I get more of such inspiration soon, as I enjoy this tremendously. Till next time.