Further Thoughts

I have some further thoughts related to my previous post.  I was surfing around the internet (why is it 'surf'?) yesterday when I came across an interview with Micheal Behe's son, Leo.  Micheal Behe is a Roman Catholic Intelligent Design proponent.  In the interview, Leo states that growing up he was involved in church, attended mass, etc. etc.  He debated with people about God and such.  Then he read Dawkins' The God Delusion, and he basically did a complete turn around in the space of a few months and is now an ardent atheist.  It's not so important who Leo is, or that he read that particular book, those are just the facts of the story (uninteresting people don't get interviewed).  What I found so interesting was his reason for the turn around.  He said that he had never really thought about 'the fallible origin of scripture' before and it complete shook his faith.

So what I'd like to say is, "So What?"  Why is the fallibility of scripture such a devastating thing for this guy?  I don't know off hand, but I have an idea.  I think in general, Christians (and I would wager especially strong Catholics) have come to hold the bible as infallible, meaning without any mistakes.  In some cases, the idea is that the bible is completely perfect, transmitted word for word from God's mouth to your ears.  Perfect.

But what happens when we realize that it is a collected work, produced over a huge time span by different people in different places, edited by others, compiled by still others...  At some point, more people decided what got to be included in the bible, and what didn't.  If you look at the variation in the manuscripts that we have, it isn't immense, but it is there.  And then it gets translated into a different language (say English), with different understandings of how the world works and in some cases no real way to say exactly what you are trying to say (lost in translation).

Before you get upset at me, I'm not trying to say the bible isn't trustworthy, just don't think it is in the way we are popularly lead to believe.  Someone can point out a few discrepancies in the Bible, and thereby shake the foundations of someone's faith, because that faith is built upon the idea that the Bible is this perfect thing.  The Bible is trustworthy, but only in as much as anything else is.  Let me explain.

Most of the knowledge we have comes second hand.  Everything I've ever learned about India, I've learned from the accounts of other people.  I don't expect their accounts to be perfect, but that doesn't mean I can't trust it.  Why should we automatically stop trusting the Bible if it wasn't magically delivered to us on a silver platter?  If the foundation of one's faith is built upon that idea of perfection, then it becomes easy to topple that over by poking a few holes in it.  It doesn't have to be perfect in order to be trustworthy.

Anyway, I hope that makes some sense.  I love the Bible, and I trust it, but I don't expect anything of that it isn't.