the so fallible Bible

[xpastor]

I'm afraid I am woefully ignorant where the bible is concerned. I am interested in your views on these matters. The part of Christianity I have a hard time understanding is the leap to enthrone the bible as the highest authority. To my mind, the many fundamentalists who argue scripture like lawyers, have very little faith at all. They are not able to suspend disbelief in common sense without attributing an even greater certainty to the 'word'.

Hopefully someone here will engage you at your level of understanding. I'm not that person but I am happy to hear more from you. I wonder if when you lost your own faith if you were an agnostic theist for a time. It has always seemed to me to be a viable position. But I don't mean to highjack the thread unless you need something to do while you wait for more worthy responses.

To answer your question, for many years after my deconversion from Christianity I liked to think of myself as "sort of a pantheist." I wanted to believe that there is some force or "ground of being" behind the beauty and majesty of the universe, something to receive our thankfulness, maybe something we could connect with on a deeper level. I imagined this force working through the process of evolution to produce something as wonderful as a dog, but eventually I realized that this presupposed intelligent design, and as I read more about evolution, I realized that the process must be random and chaotic. So I dropped my theistic inclinations.

As a critic of religion I am especially hard on fundamentalist claims of biblical inerrancy precisely because I allowed myself to gradually slide into that position for some time. I feel ashamed of my carelessness in gliding over problems in the bible for many years, especially as I am well trained in careful reading with graduate degrees in English. When I slowed down and read the bible carefully, it was the frequent presentation of God as a moral monster that turned me off far more than the contradictions.