Why The Bible Is Still Important Today

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/20/hfr-my-take-read-the-bible-even-if-you-dont-believe-it/

http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/whats-it-be-crucified-501065#ixzz1JyCX2oL5


Since Easter weekend just recently passed, and I was at a convention last weekend, I thought it’d be appropriate to do a catch-up commentary on the relevance of the practice of crucifixion for devotional purposes. For most people, this would seem quite bizarre, since it’s not crucifixion in a limited sense. These people actually get nails hammered into their palms and feet, albeit temporarily, and hang on the cross for a predetermined amount of time. Some have been doing this for 30 years or more as an act of devotion on this holiday of importance to Christians around the world. But to many people, even those moderately familiar with the story of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, death and alleged resurrection, this is not only bizarre, but outright unimaginable. To think that people in this modern age would subject themselves to a form of capital punishment that was used thousands of years ago, and for the most part is barely prominent except in archaic jurisprudence in the Middle East, boggles the mind. But the devotional nature of crucifixion to make any sense, it behooves people to read the book from which the significance of that act to Christians today comes from, the Bible.

The practice of devotional crucifixion is done mostly in the Phillipines, though there is a group called the Brothers of Light, or Hermanos de Luz, who have done it since the 19th century. The nature and sequence of the acts are a reference to the Passion of Jesus as he was tortured and beaten before being crucified on Good Friday. The Stations of the Cross, commonly enacted in Catholic and sometimes Anglican and Lutheran churches, are a related ritual, though there isn’t so much of the self flagellation and actual nailing of one’s hands and feet to a cross that is done by the devout in the Phillipines and Mexico. There is much preparation done beforehand and a long process of self mortification, meditation and the like to truly have as much of a connection with the suffering of their Messiah as possible. The wounds they get from the nails, along with the severe damage to their backs from whipping, can take as long as two weeks to heal, but the believers insist it is worth it to gain the closeness they desire to feel with the man that died for their sins. Of course, the duration of the crucifixion is much shorter than Jesus’, but there are many other parts to this process, such as the self whipping mentioned before as well as a part of the ceremony where, similar to the Stations of the Cross, a cross is carried partway to the site of the actual crucifixion. So many people would be unwilling to go this far, primarily for the amount of time put into the whole process, but also the degree of pain one has to go through in mere imitation of Jesus, who didn’t even die from the crucifixion itself necessarily in a Christian understanding. And even if Jesus did die from the crucifixion itself, his death was quicker than most, who usually take at least a few days to slowly waste away from starvation and dehydration. Aside from the literal risks to many people of even being crucified for a short period of time, many people don’t necessarily read the bible, even as believers in Jesus, to the extent that they are focused on Jesus’ crucifixion, but moreso, his resurrection. This kind of focus may not be the case everywhere, but one can argue that even many strong believers in Christianity may not focus so much on Jesus’ passion, his suffering and punishment before and during crucifixion, including the well known wound in his side from the mythical Spear of Longinus. The centrality of Jesus suffering doesn’t seem as pertinent as the dying and coming back from the dead to a common everyday believer, one can claim. And this is where a bigger issue comes up with the topic of religious, and more specifically Biblical, literacy.

The overall importance of the Bible in the United States cannot be overstated. Regardless of whether one agrees with the overall message it communicates, myself included as one of those skeptical of such claims about the prophecies in the holy book, the relevance of its story, particularly that of the Gospels, is important enough to people that you find copies of the book in hotels, and they are handed out by the Gideon group at colleges, high schools, and other public areas across the country. The book has been translated into hundreds of different languages across the world, and has sold billions of copies. Many people would use this to suggest that the Bible must be true, but one could propagate anything across the world with enough money and connections, but it wouldn’t make its claims more or less true because you can find it in virtually every inhabited area of the world. If anything, the popularity and general propagation of the Bible as a literary phenomenon only attests to the accessibility it has to everyone. One can read it as literature, as a cultural text for the Israelites in the case of the Tanakh and Old Testament, as religious wisdom, or other messages of salvation and devotion. The importance of knowing the basics of the Bible in any of the humanities, such as history, English, music, and even philosophy, is unavoidable, particularly in the South (I should know).
Lots of versions of the Bible exist, some of them less reverent than others. I’m partial to satire, so I’d recommend the Brick Testament or if you want a nonbeliever’s take on it, the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible is good. Most people prefer the King James Version, though the popularity of that translation might owe more to tradition that accurate translation, such as the infamous “virgin” translation in the Old Testament prophecy that relates supposedly to Mary. English Standard and New International Versions are also relatively popular, from what I’ve found. I have a physical copy of the Bible in my collection, in the Oxford Annotated style, which is supposedly the most academically rigorous translation, though I’m never certain on these things.

I could probably go on longer, but I’d probably seem disingenuous in praising a book that I’m only familiar with by cultural background and required courses on the Bible in my religious studies’ education, though a great deal more of my studies in Christianity are in theology, with a backdrop to the Bible, instead of direct study of the text itself in context. But I can’t recommend the text enough. The only problem is that, as Isaac Asimov said, “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” Of course, there are always going to be disagreements about proper reading, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is that we see the Bible as important in one way or another. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

A 'Bible' For Believers and Nonbelievers Alike

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/11/leading-atheist-publishes-secular-bible/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9446000/9446028.stm

What if you took the Bible and edited out all the supernatural references and got to the core of its ethical teachings? That’s not quite what the new release by philosopher A.C. Grayling purports to be, but it’s certainly an equally interesting read. His idea is to take what are more secular, humanist and philosophical texts and draw the ethical principles from them. I haven’t read it yet, but it already promises to be an excellent read just from the idea it presents to any reader, religious or nonreligious. Confucius, Siddhartha Gautama, Lao Tzu, Aristotle, and many other thinkers would probably feature in such a text, and probably Jesus to an extent as well, though certainly taking a backseat to someone like Mencius for another example.

The arrangement of the text itself resembles the Bible, with the two column method commonly seen. Some might jump to the conclusion that this is meant to offend in some way; borrowing the style of the Bible to present a counterpoint. But I don’t see where you’d get that unless you think borrowing a text’s style is anything like plagiarism, which it really isn’t. Formatting for books doesn’t have nearly as strict copyright laws around it as the content of a book itself looking oddly familiar. The very idea of the Bible itself just being edited of all the supernatural stuff may already have been done, but this is another species entirely. When you’re talking about a collection of humanist and secular thinkers of various stripes and their thoughts on ethics and values, it probably will bring more people in with the inclusivity and the subtext only implying that the book is humanist in focusing on the human condition and relationships thereof. There’s no reason to think of this as some literal bible for Secular Humanism or even Religious Humanism of the various types that exist. The main title: The Good Book, is a tongue-in-cheek nod to what many people have historically called the Bible, popularized in the South culturally, from what I understand.

More importantly, when people think of the word ‘bible’, they usually associate it explicitly with a religion and its tenets. But the term can simply mean book in a more archaic sense or a text that is widely read by a group in a sense of being authoritative about that subject (e.g. the fisherman’s bible). But neither of those definitions imply that this is any attempt to formulate an extensive enumeration of atheist beliefs; especially considering that beliefs of any one atheist are as variable as the beliefs of any one theist. Atheist creationists exist, atheist deontologists exist, and other seemingly contradictory beliefs can be held by an atheist as long as they don’t directly contradict the general principle that all atheists can be said to share: skepticism towards God and claims about it. So in this way, the so called “humanist bible” is moreso a humanist “collection” than a “bible” in the common understanding.

Another example of this explicit “parody/satire” of sorts on the ironic notion of an “atheist bible” was published four years ago by Joan Konner, aptly called The Atheist’s Bible. It’s notably shorter, barely a third of the length of A.C. Grayling’s near compendium sized text, but I enjoyed it so much when I first got it, I read it straight through over an hour. It admittedly has flaws that reviewers have aptly pointed out, even though they’re in the minority, since many people enjoy it for simply being a collection of clever quotes. The main flaw is that there are people referenced that are decidedly not atheists, such as Benjamin Franklin and even Paul of Tarsus at a few points. The majority of the book is atheist in nature, criticizing God, decrying the ideas in one form or fashion and otherwise being snarky about believers in God or God itself. Woody Allen features in his own chapter, as well as Bertrand Russell, so clearly the focus is there, though one may wonder why certain atheists aren’t included as much. Part of the intent of the book may have been a sampling or just a particular group of atheists, skeptics and the like. This would not be unlike the collection of essays put in The Portable Atheist, which includes pantheist writers and general critics of religion that might still be believers in a private sense, like Baruch Spinoza or David Hume, who nonetheless merit being considered in the category of skeptics, which is only a slight step apart from disbelief outright.

All in all, the book should be a nice contribution to comparative ethics, and humanist ethics in particular, since the goal was to convey a more natural philosophy in contemplating what the good human life is and how we can live it. The Bible posits ethics from a source that has no real bearing on human life, something that’s superhuman, which reminds me of the graphic novel Supergod, where the ‘gods’ people have created to solve worldwide problems, including Krishna and Dajjal (the Antichrist figure from Islamic eschatology), don’t think like humans, so their solutions to the problems don’t even consider humans as ends in themselves, but means to whatever end they have in mind.

The book’s goal can be said to be in contrast to, not outright opposition and hatred of, ethics based on positing absolute principles of behavior that apply equally to all situations, not unlike say anti abortion advocates that say abortion is always wrong, even in cases where the mother would die or if she was raped. To have an ethics that doesn’t consider the situation could even be said to be un-Christian, even if we assume that there are certain beliefs about morality that are held more commonly by Christians, such as judging that particular sexual behaviors or even sexual orientations are bad things and should be opposed. The example that comes to mind is the term “situational ethics” which most people, including myself for a while, associated with humanist ethics in origin. But it appears that it was first formulated by a Christian in an explicitly God derived context. The idea is that there is one overriding principle that supersedes other laws, and that is love. Not just any love, though, but agape love, the unconditional love that Jesus advocated in the Gospels. The man behind this theory, Joseph Fletcher, eventually became an atheist, but that doesn’t mean that the idea cannot still have a similar humanist application in saying that the highest good is love and that in every situation, with all other laws alongside it, love stands above them as a principle that is not only common, but accessible regardless of beliefs or education. And that kind of ethics is a better start than creating a system that works only for those that refuse to think or don’t have the intellectual capacity to think beyond obedience to the law. Here’s hoping I either splurge on the book or wait until my birthday. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.