David Plotz read the entire Bible and wrote about it for Slate.
He gains a great appreciation for this greatest collection of literature, but nonetheless remains an agnostic. It's not so strange really, Christopher Hitchens, stubborn and articulate atheist, has a great appreciation for religious literature and architecture. Plotz explains his realization that The Bible is the source of so many things:
You can't get through a chapter of the Bible, even in the most obscure book, without encountering a phrase, a name, a character, or an idea that has come down to us 3,000 years later. The Bible is the first source of everything from the smallest plot twists (the dummy David's wife places in the bed to fool assassins) to the most fundamental ideas about morality (the Levitical prohibition of homosexuality that still shapes our politics, for example) to our grandest notions of law and justice. It was a joyful shock to me when I opened the Book of Amos and read the words that crowned Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.Unfortunately, Plotz "leave(s) the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I'm brokenhearted about God." He is disenchanted with God because he cannot understand him. A modern day Grand Inquisitor, he puts God on trial and finds him guilty of murder, but more importantly, vindictiveness, capriciousness and inscrutability.
So I must submit Him to rational and moral inquiry. And He fails that examination.How ridiculous. What is his basis of rationality for judging an omnipotent creator and his role in events that happened thousands of years ago? What moral standard will he use? NY Chic, laid back LA? Would Plotz tell a carpenter how to build a house, a mechanic how to fix a car? May I suggest consulting a rabbi and listening to understand?
By arguing with The Creator, Plotz demonstrates that he believes on some level. I don't think it has occured to him that he is arguing with a yardstick over the length of an inch.
http://www.slate.com/id/
5 comments:
You come across a lot of ancient wisdom from the Bible. A lot from Gilgameesh, Mithra, Plato, Sophocles, Zarathutra, and so much more ancient wisdom.
Your premise that God is like a divine architect or carpenter, and we could not possibly conceive his being, design, purpose, etc... you're not even leaving open the possibility to doubt his existence. That's why this guys inquiry is rational and yours is not.
Rational inquiry means leaving open the possibility of verifying or falsifying something.
I leave open the possibility, but so far none of the blathering God-haters (How do you disdain something that doesn't exist?) have provided anything substantial.
Plotz, btw, is not a God hater. I agree with you that he is inquiring.
I don't hate God. That would be absurd (you're right about that). What I am asking is, is what you do with your religion (God) inquiry?
I listen to people like you.
Seriously, I read all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, Silverfiddle, I've really never understood God-hating atheists.
You know my background. I'm an atheist as a technical matter. It's a minor point to me in the course of a much larger common heritage and belief system that I share with Christians, Jews, and people of faith all over the world. Love thy neighbor and the Ten Commandments are relevant to my life probably more than some Christians I know. Morality and decency are important to me even if some people act like no big woop. I believe in a common basis for morality and trust in our lives, even as I respect a need for a liberal ethos about judgments people make with that in their lives (I will not be cheating on anyone or stealing or murdering in my lifetime, but I respect the consciences of those who might disagree around areas where there is reasonable disagreement or different choices to be made).
It is really funny, I must admit, Silverfiddle, as and independent who has spent most of my life as a liberal, to watch liberal atheist types talk about how hateful and vengeful the Bible is but how the real message of Islam is peace and moderation.
The truth is that people make choices with their religions. They can be vengeful and destructive. Or their can be liberal and decent. That goes and always has gone for Christian and Jewish traditions as much as for Islamic and other traditions.
What liberal societies is to ground us, better, to avoid rationalizing our uglier, more self-righteous, more destructive and vengeful impulses.
In that regard, I must say that liberals have looked awfully illiberal, as of late. It's a little disapppointing to watch and have people act like no big deal. It's hardly isolated to liberals, or to conservatives, for that matter. Neither is it anything I could ever tell my kids to look up to as some kind of noble or decent idea of the world.
Some people may not care about that. And that, really, is the scary part and the part that liberal peoples should be thinking very carefully about, right now, if we do not want to rationalize the kinds of ugly power battles and power grabs of terrorists and despots and various genuinely bad guys around the world.
The Bible, like the Torah or the Koran, offers all kinds of opportunities for us to act decently with one another. It also provides all kinds of opportunities to justify our ugliest impulses.
Liberal peoples are flirting with their uglier impulses, right now.
Germany did that for awhile, too. So did the Soviet Union. So does Iran, today. And Cuba. And China.
I think all the places where decency is encouraged, the Bible included, should be given their due rather than perpetually mocked and taken for granted.
And that has almost nothing to do with whether one believes that it or any religious text is the inerrant word of God or not.
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