Christian Fundamentalism

This article is a discussion of fundamentalism. For the purpose of this page I will define a Christian fundamentalist as anyone who operates under the delusion that they believe the Bible to be literally true.

The reason I have to say they operate under a delusion is that I have found quite often the "basic beliefs" of fundamentalists actually contradict what the Bible says. Instead, their belief is in what other people say that the Bible says. Often that "other person" may be a priest, or (as often as not) a parent.

For example, every fundamentalist I know of says the Jesus was nailed to a cross. A few years ago I decided to read the scripture that says that - since the period of time this takes place is obvious, it should be easy to find it in the Scriptures. The problem is that I couldn't. I found scriptures which said that Jesus was crucified, but not that any nails were used. It may be that they were, I don't know, but the Bible doesn't say that.

If this were the only problem, I would ignore it, as it is neither here nor there as far as actions are concerned. But the problems are much larger than this.

The problems in the beliefs come from many places. First, and most obvious, is that the words have changed their meaning over the years. That is, I've seen it pointed out that the word "kill" at the time the King James version of the Bible was written actually meant "murder" as slay would have been used if it had meant killing an animal. Therefore, many "modern" translations of the Bible give the commandment as "thou shalt not murder" rather than the King James "thou shalt not kill."

Another problem is common among people who translate anything from one language to another. That is, there is no such thing as an exact translation. Therefore, some translations give the Lord's prayer with the statement, "forgive us out debts" and others say, "forgive us our trespasses." Yet, Jesus did not use either because he didn't speak English. He probably used a word which could mean either debt or trespass, or maybe something in between.

A third problem has to do with context. I hold that the major concept that causes this is the "memory verse." That is, children are taught to memorize one verse of scripture, and assume that they understand what it means. Yet scriptures cannot be taken out of context without loosing some of their meaning. The most obvious example of this is the scripture where Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive his brother. Jesus says, basically, indefinitely. Therefore, people say that a Christian should should always forgive other people. The fact is that this statement is made immediately after Jesus preached a sermon in which he talked about when a person should be forgiven. The sermon says that, in essence, repentance is required, so the question by Peter could more properly be understood as, "How often should I forgive my brother when he is willing to repent?"

This brings a fourth cause for misunderstanding scripture. This might best be understood as a manifestation of the old saying, "power corrupts." That is, if a priest can convince people to believe what he says the Bible says without question, then that gives him power. Therefore, he can use that power to literally get away with murder. Going back to the question by Peter above, it should be obvious why a person in power would always want the answer interpreted as "always forgive." If a political leader can get people to believe this, then they can do whatever they want, and if there is a negative impact on the people, they can say, "The Bible says you have to forgive me."

Other examples of this could also be brought to mind. The most extreme case is where the power is actually accumulated by a stupid belief. This is probably the most common reason people believe in creationism. That is, a priest says that creationism is true, therefore it is true, and the priest has power over you.

In fact, the "six day creation" is not scriptural. In the first chapter of Genesis the Bible talks about six days, and about creation, but at no point does it make a connection between the two. The six days could refer to something else. For example, if this information was given to Moses over a six day period, then the six days could refer to the length of time it took Moses to get this creation story, not to the length of creation. Both are consistent with the story given in the Bible.

I would hold the only point really important in this story is, "In the beginning, God created."

Another problem, which is related to this last one, is the attempt to understand every scripture as if it were written for our day and location. When I was younger I recall people quoting a scripture which talks about people from out of the north. Therefore, they concluded that there has to be a section of northern Canada that has people in it that the government is hiding. Yet, that is ridiculous. The scripture in question was written in what is now called Palestine. Therefore, the "people from the north" would be from Turkey, Russia, or even Europe. Heaven knows Palestine has been invaded by people from these areas over and over again.

I've also seen people talk about, in particular, events which the Bible purports to foretell. For example, the great "battle of Armageddon." This is supposed to be some mythical battle at the end of the world. Yet, as it turns out, Armageddon is a real place, and is the scene of many battles, the latest one being the battle during WW I when the British finally defeated the Ottoman Empire. Therefore "Battle of Armageddon," if it refers to a real battle, probably refers to a battle that has already happened.

There is also a tendency to ascribe events which are the actions of people to God simply because they are in the Bible. This can be true of the people who wrote the Bible, as well as the modern reader. For example, recently I've had to reinterpret the story (quite often told to children) about Elijah and the prophets of Baal. That is, he agreed to a "contest" to see who the true prophets were. The prophets of Baal assembled a pyre for their god, and they prayed to their god all day, asking for their god to light the fire. Nothing happened. Then the story continues that Elijah built a pyre as well, and doused it with water, both the wood, and the alter the wood was laying on. He prayed for just a little while, then there was a burst of lightning, and the fire was lite, consuming not only the wood, but the entire alter.

When I was in high school I decide to see how gasoline burns, one of my many little experiments. I took a small can and put maybe half an inch of gasoline in the bottom of the can. Then, after putting the gas can a long way away, I took a match, lit it, and literally tossed it at the can. What I saw was a fireball, roughly three to four feet across. Then the remaining gasoline, which was still liquid in the can, just burned slowly, almost like kerosene.

Suppose that "water" that doused the alter was really gasoline. That might sound ridiculous, until one considers that the Middle East has had oil and gasoline spilling out of the same oil fields that are being used today since the beginning of time. Therefore, it is possible that some form of petroleum may have been used. This would have resulted in a huge fireball, as the fumes finally reached the closest cooking fire, which would look like a bolt of lightning. Then, of course the alter would have burned - not the alter proper, but the petroleum on the alter.

This would be consistent with the Biblical account, if one is willing to admit that this was not some sort of miracle. How many other "miracles" may be similarly explained?

I recall a "miracle" from my days at Iowa State University. I didn't see the original, but remember a response. Some priest had decided to demonstrate the power of God by holding a watermelon in front of him. Then a person would swing a machete such that is would cut the watermelon in half, but not injure the priest. This was done, and presented to the crowd as a miracle. The response was from someone familiar with magic (as an illusion). He pointed out that it was a common magic trick. One runs a piece of piano wire behind the watermelon. The machete cuts the watermelon, but the wire keeps it from going any further. I think the priest may have admitted that was the case when pushed - it was all a put on for the crowd.

Another problem with interpreting the Bible is the cultural differences between now and when and where the scriptures were written. The clearest indication of this to me came not from the Bible, but rather from the book, Diary of a Chinese Woman. The author (a Chinese woman) made the statement at the beginning that she was writing in Chinese because she didn't know English well enough to write, but that she was writing to an American audience. If she were writing to a Chinese audience, then she would not bother describing many of the practices used because someone who was Chinese would know the meaning.

This is similar to the Bible. The audience was someone from about 2000 years ago or more. Therefore, things that were said was altered because the audience was expected to know some things. An example of this is the number of the beast (666) from the book of Revelations. While I am not an expert on this, I think all interpretations I have heard are wrong, because people don't think about things. Yet, what was actually written. As it turns out, Greek numbers were simply made from the Greek alphabet. That is, the first nine numbers represented the numbers 1 to 9, the next nine the numbers 10 to 90, etc. Therefore, the "number of a person" was simply three letters, something like his initials. Therefore, if people understood this from the ancient Greek point of view, the meaning would likely be clear, they may have been able to identify who was being referred to directly

Another problem with interpreting the Bible has to do with what does the Bible say, exactly. That is, I've heard references from experts who have actually read the Dead Sea scrolls which indicate that the same verse might be rendered differently in different versions of the same book, even though both versions might be in Hebrew at the same time. Therefore, if one is committed to believing the Bible literally correct, one has to decide which literal version are you going to believe?

This list is not complete, but this is all I am going to present here. To believe the Bible literally true is full of traps. Since my experience with Fundamentalists tends to indicate that they really don't understand this, such that their literal belief in the Bible is really a dilution. How many people remember the year of the Jubilee, and how few people practice it?