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My videos on self-contradictions, absurd statements and horrifying immorality in the Bible, from the sky dome to the pillars of the flat earth, from the ridiculously long lives of the early prophets to the idea that demonic possession cause diseases, from the rape and genocide commanded by the Bible to its rules regarding slavery, is often met with the predictable response from Christians:
"When the Bible says... it really means..."
That's the basic theme, anyway. The variations on it invariably involve unbelievably obtuse interpretations contrived to work backward toward a desired a prior conclusion with a heavy dose of confirmation bias. When necessary, the defender of the faith can conjure an unlimited stream of ad hoc hypothesizes, in some extreme cases writings elaborate "fan fics" to square the circle.
At times, assertions about the "real meaning" are made up completely. One classic example is the reference in Matthew to Isaiah chapter 7, a supposed prophecy of the future messiah being born of a virgin. Setting aside the "bethula/almah" issue, Isaiah 7:14 relates to the time of the author, not to a messiah born centuries later. Without batting an eye, the apologist will simply assert that Isaiah 7:14 is a "double prophecy". There is no reason to think a double prophecy was ever intended by the author nor is there any reference to a messiah born centuries later. This assertion about the author's intent is simply made up.
Typically, debates on a straightforward skeptical reading of Biblical passages vs. the Olympic-level mental gymnastic readings performed by the apologist end with the skeptic invoking Occam's Razor and the apologist ironically accusing the skeptic of reading the passages with an agenda.
Tiring of this merry-go-round, I've recently taken a new approach.
Why didn't the early Christians read the Bible the same way?
John Calvin, founder of one major sect of Protestantism, wrote in his exegesis on The Book of Genesis, that the sun runs its circuit around the earth, which is placed in the center of the universe.
At roughly the same time, Cardinal Bellermine, one of the chief prosecutors of Galileo (who's name a local community college in my town has taken), worried in a letter written to a colleague that if it WERE true that the earth really did revolve around the sun, that "we should have great difficulty in explaining all the passages in scripture that teach to the contrary."
But modern Christians read the Bible and accuse me of being dishonesty when I quote these very same passages that Cardinal Bellermine worried so much about. Of course these passages are only metaphors! Of course the Bible really teaches that the earth revolves around the sun!
Why was it not so obvious to Christians of the time of Galileo and before? Are modern Christians so much more versed in scripture than the greatest Christian scholars who lived centuries earlier?
And the presuppositionalists who insist that knowledge is impossible without their god, why were the men of faith so ignorant back then?
The answer to that question is that the early Christians didn't have the Bible. All they had were bits and pieces of assorted manuscripts, which most of them never saw nor could they have read them if they had seen them. Heck, almost everyone in America has a Bible or easy access to one and hardly anyone ever reads more than one or two verses from it. They simply make up stuff that they think is in it. You can see that from the comments people post of forums such as this one.
The Bible as such didn't exist until a committee of Englishmen wrote it. And they included most of the discrepancies to show that it was all BS.
