This week’s Cectic illustrates common fundie logic:

We all know of the problems of the authenticity of the Bible. It was originally a loose conglomeration of fables by desert dwellers, passed down by oral tradition. These stories were a mishmash of original ideas, imported legends, fanciful embellishments, and gross exaggerations. Eventually, they started to get written down, by widely-scattered people. That left us with a lot of stories, many duplicates and variants, and even more contradictions. Eventually, somebody had to sit down and figure out which books belonged, which version of those books belonged, which didn’t, and what to do about all of those contradictions.

This process happened at least twice. The first time was by the Jews, to compile the Hebrew Bible (later called the “Old Testament” by the holier-than-thou Christians). The second time was by those snooty Christians, around 325 C.E., because Constantine ordered 50 copies of the Bible. At that time, there wasn’t one unified set of stories. Kind of hard to deliver to the emperor 50 copies of something that you don’t even have one copy of. The priests had to quickly get together and figure out what to include and what to throw away. Both scholarship and politics figured heavily in this process. Thus, the Bible is a book of tall tales written by committee. Divinely inspired, my ass.

It would be bad enough if the Bible had stopped mutating like a bad sci-fi movie monster by the time it was originally canonized in 325 C.E. But no. These were the days before the printing press, so every time you needed a Bible, you had to find some monk to hand-copy another one for you. Many errors, omissions, and deliberate insertions crept into the book as it progressed through the centuries, giving us today thousands of variants.

Along the way, various influential people with one particular ax or another to grind decided they wanted a different version, so they commissioned their own committees to create their own new versions.

Quite a mess.

Finding a Less-Error-Filled Version

If you’re going to read the Bible—either because you believe this crap, or because you just want to see what crap the credulous actually believe—you’re going to want to find a Bible that is as close as we can get to the original stories. You don’t want to be reading fantastic, incredible stories that were put in later. No. You want your fantastic, incredible stories to be pure, unadulterated fiction!

Paul Tobin has an extensive web site called The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager. He has dozens of pages about the Bible and its history. It’s all very heavily footnoted, so you can check up on his claims. The writing sometimes gets a little dense, so it’s not always a breezy read.

Among his many pages is one titled “Not All Versions Are Created Equal”. He starts by telling us that there are two major problems with Bible translations:

The source documents. As there is not a single extant original (or autograph) copy of any of the books in the Bible, the reliability of the translation is affected directly by the quality of the source documents. For instance, the King James Version…, which was first published in 1611, is no longer considered reliable since it was not based on ancient texts. Modern versions are based on newly discovered, more ancient texts [as] well as scientific textual studies. So in general, more modern versions are more reliable than older ones.

As fundamentalism grows, the second issue, that of theological preconception becomes very important.This is what we will be looking at in depth on this page.

So here’s Tobin’s list of techniques that fundie translators use to produce a Bible that says what they want:

• Removing Contradictions by Quoting or Using Less Authoritative Texts
• Removing Difficulties by Translating in “Soft Focus”
• Removing Reprehensible Passages by Mistranslation
• Leaving Errors in Translation Unchanged
• Adding Words into the Bible Text

He gives some strong examples of each of these on his site. Go check it out.

Examples of bad Bibles, with particular fundie agendas, are The Book, The Living Bible, and The New International Version (NIV). I know I’ve encountered the NIV.

If you want to get yourself a better Bible, Tobin says that the best version available today is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). It has the best scholarship behind it, and they tried to translate as bias-free as they could.

Of course, the NRSV is still a Bible. As the saying goes, that’s like putting lipstick on a pig. (No disrespect to pigs is intended!)

There’s a comedy group calling themselves National Banana. Here are two of their videos.

Priest Off

(YouTube page is here)

The Politics of Stem Cell Research

(YouTube page is here)

This is too funny not to repost here. (via Pharyngula)

(YouTube page is here.)

Last night, Comedy Central premiered Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil. I was looking forward to the show, so I tuned in with great anticipation. I was actually disappointed in the program. It had some funny moments, thanks primarily to Greg Giraldo, but overall the show wasn’t very good. I might give it another shot at some future date, but I’ve already pulled it out of the season passes on my Tivo.

The premise of the show is to find out who is the root of all evil. Lewis Black is judge. Two comedians act as lawyers and make their cases. On last night’s program, Paul Tompkins argued that Oprah is the most evil. Greg Giraldo argued that the Catholic Church is evilest. (You can watch a few clips on Comedy Central’s website) Tompkins’ case for Oprah was only mildly funny, but Greg Giraldo’s case against the Church was quite funny. He slammed the Church pretty hard. While I was watching it, I was thinking “I bet Bill Donohue is having a conniption right about now!” Sure enough, he did!

The (Only?) Catholic Fundie is Apoplectic!

This morning, I cruised by the Catholic League website to see just how bonkers it made old Donohue. Holy weird-shaped oil stain on my driveway that looks nothing like the Virgin Mary! There were two diatribes to read!

The first is a blog post from yesterday, before the program even aired:

The first episode, “Oprah vs. the Catholic Church” will ask whether the talk show host or the Bride of Christ is more “evil.”

I’ve never heard that term before. But if your nickname reminds people of the Bride of Frankenstein, then of course you’re evil!

According to preview videos and printed reviews, Black charges that the Church hinders “social progress”…

Oh, I’m sorry, Bill. I thought you were going to point out some fallacies.

…and that the pope gives lectures bashing other religions.

Like I said.

The program features abundant jokes about molester priests. One would hope that a network devoted entirely to comedy would be able to come up with a few new gags rather than rely on the old bigoted chestnut about the priest and the altar boy.

You know, Bill, if the molestations had been an isolated incident, you’d have a point. If it had been one aberrant priest, you’d have a point. If it had only happened over a short time period, you’d have a point. If there had only been a few victims, you’d have a point. But none of those things is the case! The Catholic Church knew about these incidents and allowed them to continue. The Catholic Church actively covered up these incidents and moved the priests to other parishes, where they could find fresh meat. What the Church did was abhorrent. It’s going to take many decades for these wounds to heal, and until that time, your Church must be reminded constantly that civilized societies do not tolerate this behavior. For an institution that holds itself up as a bastion of morality, it did one of the evilest things imaginable. So no, Bill, we are not going to forget it and move on.

Not as Ugly as the Church’s Behavior

Now let’s move on to the press release that Bill Donohue issued today, entitled “Lewis Black’s Show Gets Ugly”. What’s truly amazing is that their press release links to a partial transcript of the show. This is supposed to show you how terrible it was and how harshly and unfairly they maligned the Church.

It actually accomplishes the opposite. The transcript is hilarious, and it makes a compelling case that the Church is evil. Bill Donohue has actually defeated his own case by posting the transcript. I’m also going to repost the transcript at the end of this article in case old Bill realizes what he’s done and pulls it down.

Let’s now look at the meat of today’s press release:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue raised questions about [the show] today:

No group in the U.S. sexually molests minors more than public school teachers; their rate is estimated to be 100 times that of Catholic priests (see the work of Dr. Charol Shakeshaft.) Moreover, the teachers unions still make it near impossible to fire a molesting teacher. Yet it wasn’t the public school industry that was labeled evil by the show, it was the Catholic Church.

What? That’s the best you can do, Bill? “It’s OK! We can molest! As long as we’re not the #1 molester, it’s OK!”

Radical Muslims behead their enemies, real and contrived, terrorize non-combatants, run planes into buildings, shoot nuns in the back, kidnap and kill bishops, burn churches to the ground, legally murder those who want to convert, but no one associated with Lewis Black’s show has the guts to get them.

This quote and the one above are typical examples of what Bill likes to do. He cites somebody who is worse, then expects to get a free pass for his own behavior.

I get that criticism for this blog. Because radical Muslims are more dangerous than radical Christians, I should leave the poor Christian fundies alone. Fundie season is closed until the radical Muslims are wiped out. Sorry. Doesn’t work that way. You have oppose all threats, not just the biggest. I go after the Christians, because other folks are tackling the Muslims.

In the case of the Lewis Black show, they take on different subjects each week. I think next week it’s Donald Trump and Viagra. I’m sure they’d do a program about radical Islam as well, if they weren’t afraid of getting blown up in retaliation. I guess that’s Donohue’s problem. The Catholic Church was targeted because they’re merely evil, not super-evil. You’re going about this all wrong, Bill! You’ll never get people to stop making fun of the Catholic Church by issuing press releases! You have to blow them up!

So instead they rip the Catholic Church for its role during the Inquisition. And that role, if truth be told, was miniscule compared to the role of the civil authorities.

No, Bill. Stop rewriting history. The Catholic Church was the civil authority.

Indeed, the role of the Catholic Church back then, as compared to the role of radical Muslims today, was positively angelic.

Yes, if by “angelic” you mean like a fallen angel.

The worst part of the show was the assault on Our Blessed Mother and Pope Benedict XVI.

He then quotes some very funny lines from the show. Since those lines are included in the transcript below, along with some other very funny stuff, I’ll just direct your attention there.

Bill finishes his diatribe with a request that we all write to Comedy Central and express our outrage. I want to know where we can write in order to express our outrage over Bill Donohue.

Here is the partial transcript of the program that Bill Donohue actually posted on his website. Most of the jokes are fair criticisms. If Donohue doesn’t like it, he’d better clean up the Church. If there’s nothing to criticize, the jokes will stop on their own.

Comedian Greg Giraldo, making the case against the Catholic Church:

Did I mention the boy fucking? A couple of years ago the Catholic Church held a two-week conference to discuss what should be done about the sexual molestation claims. Two weeks. What are they talking about? ‘Let’s stop diddling kids fellas, what do you say?’ That’s what, half hour tops? Somebody proposed a one strike and you’re out rule. One strike and you’re out. And it was voted down! They debated it, and it lost. Someone actually got up and said, ‘Look we’re not going to kick a guy out for knob gobbling just one kid. I mean that’s not fair to the guys with a lot of hot kids in their parish. Maybe we will just move them to a place with uglier kids.’ It’s awful. Dioceses in Tucson, Portland, and San Diego, just to name a few, have gone bankrupt defending these molestation claims. The Catholic Church is sack tickling its way into bankruptcy.

The Catholic Church is also evil, because it has such a grip over the mindless masses that they’ll wait in line, thousands of them in the rain for hours, just to get a glimpse of a pork rind in the shape of the Virgin Mary. Then there is the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary. God impregnated Mary. We have a whole religion based on one woman who really stuck to her story.

And let’s not forget the Inquisition. In the 1400s, Jews and Muslims in Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism. And to test the sincerity of these conversions, thousands were tortured. Let’s say you were acting a little Jewy. You know, maybe you complained about your entree. Or, you know, ‘Paco, it is a little moist. Could you towel it off for me?’ Next thing you know, they put you in one of these [shows picture of torture instrument]. Yes that is called the head crusher. I think it was used to crush your head. These are actually implements of torture that were used by the Catholic Church. How about this one [shows another device]? It is called the breast ripper. Yeah, I think it was used to rip you breast. Sometimes they would try and soften the blow. They would say, ‘Hey, good news is you get to sit down. Bad news is you have to sit on this.’ [Shows a chair with a pyramid-shaped spike on it.] Yeah that was called the Judas Cradle. I guess ‘ass shredder’ was already taken.

Additional quotes:

Lewis Black: Greg you have been babbling on about the Catholic Church and you haven’t mentioned the pope. Do you even know who he is?

Giraldo: Ah, yes I know who he is, and the pope to me is a hypocrite in his Prada loafers and his ball gown. How can he condemn homosexuality when he dresses like he is on his way to nickel cosmo night at the Veiny Shaft Tavern?

And this:

Black: I read in Parade magazine that the Catholic Church is letting people use condoms now.

Giraldo: What did happen was because of the crisis in Africa, the Catholic Church considered allowing people to use condoms. If they were married and if one of the partners had AIDS. HAHAHA. A loophole. ‘Well we can’t have any more kids, we live on two bucks a month, and we are running out of mud pies to feed them. One of us is going to have to get AIDS.’

Ron Brown sent me an email about a contest he’s having over at his blog, The Frame Problem. He writes:

It’s a contest to cite the funniest piece of scripture from any practiced world religion/cult. The winner (as determined by reader votes) will get to choose the God of the Day on The Frame Problem later this month.

He only has a few entries so far, so get on over there and submit something!

The latest Carnival of the Godless is up over at Life Before Death. There’s a good variety of stuff there. I found a couple of articles that relate to recent events here.

We recently discussed John Hagee, the vilest of all fundies. Hagee wants to hasten Armageddon, because apparently Jesus owes him money or something. We also argued over whether Jesus existed at all. Dovetailing with those discussions is the article by Alexander the Atheist, “End Times: 2,000 Years & Counting”. A-the-A writes:

Virtually all Christians believe that we are living during the End Times…. Christians have major issues to address regarding Biblical scripture stating that Jesus would return within the lifetime of his original followers and Jesus not actually being a historical figure, making any debate on End Times specifics pointless because the Biblical end of the world just isn’t going to happen.

To which I would counter: The Biblical end times may not be nigh, but if Hagee and his followers manage to convince President McCain to drop nukes on Iran, we may all end up just as dead.

Vjack at Atheist Revolution is rubbing one of my sore spots with “‘In God We Trust’ Must Go”. I’ve railed against this thorn in the side of separation before. God doesn’t belong on our money or anywhere else in government that the theists keep sticking it. VJ argues against the slogan from three different directions:

• The Tyranny of the Majority
• Argument From Tradition
• The Legal Rationale

After you’ve read those two articles, you should head over to the Carnival and find some more good reading.

Don’t let your co-workers overhear this. Someone’s bound to throw a tizzy.

(via God is for Suckers)

(YouTube page is here)