I am an atheist raised in a American Protest culture, so I take that view in my reading. As a consequence, my comments will be skeptical but are unlikely to significantly deviate from social and cultural context provided by Protestant America.
My interpretation style will be mostly literal. By that, I mean that I will interpret my readings literally even though I realize that most Christians do not interpret the whole Bible literally. Since each group of Christians uses different criteria for choosing which parts to interpret literally, I cannot hope to make the "right" choices, so instead I will try to apply a uniformly literal interpretation to all passages presented as historical fact.
The Tyndale One Year Bible has 365 readings which go through the whole Bible. Each day's reading includes a passage from the Old Testament, the Psalms, Proverbs, and the New Testament. Within each section, passages are in order. The translation is the New Living Translation
I will comment on each day's reading. In addition, each post will have reference links to that day's reading in the Bible Gateway version of the New Living Translation, links to the Wikipedia articles on the books that day's readings come from
I may occassionally make supplementary posts which provide further discussion of the Bible itself. However, I will avoid posts on current events. Although I may feel tempted to comment, I feel that distracts from the core purpose of this project: to read the Bible and comment upon it.
The name of this blog is a play on the idea of a One Year Bible. I would like to state, for the record, that I am always a skeptic, not just for one year. =)
I'm wondering: What is your goal or purpose in doing this? Is it simply to familiarize yourself with the contents of the Bible? To understand better what Protestants believe? To reinforce your own skepticism through remarking on specific things you find absurd in the Bible? Or something else entirely?
ReplyDeleteNewt
If I had to choose one of the three, probably a combination of the first and third one. But overall, I would say that I am mostly looking at this as a chance to compile notes of things that have struck me as particularly noteworthy in the past.
ReplyDeleteI don't reading the Bible will help me understand better what Protestants believe because my experience and, I believe, public surveys have shown that most Protestants are woefully unfamiliar with the Bible, especially the less commendable parts.
All that said, I am doing this as a public project because I believe that a lot of people, especially a lot of Christians, think that skeptics would be convinced if only they took the time to experience the wonder that is God's supposed word. I want to show them why, however the Bible may look from an insider's perspective, it is completely unconvincing from an outsider's perspective.
Ah. Very well, then. I had a strong internal reaction while reading the posts from your first two days of reading of, "But you're totally missing the point! If you could just look at it this way, it'd all make so much more sense!" But of course, trying to express "this way" would have meant writing a long and (preferably) eloquent essay for each day, possibly for each passage, which is something I totally don't have time for even if you wanted it, and your choice of extrabiblical reading made me suspect that your goal probably wasn't to elicit long essays on what you were missing. I probably won't be checking in here terribly often -- turning my back on the essays your posts conjure up in my head is actually a bit painful, and a year of doing that every day sounds absolutely exhausting. But for what it's worth, you have certainly managed to convey how thoroughly unconvincing the Bible appears to you.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever want to read something from a Protestant with an excellent knowledge of the Bible and a wonderful grasp of how the whole thing paints a beautiful, consistent picture from start to finish, I highly recommend Edith Schaeffer's Christianity is Jewish. If I had the time to write the essays your posts conjure up in my head, and about twenty more years to study the Bible first, I might hope to write something like her book.
Newt
Newt, if you ever do have the urge to write any of the essays inspired by my posts, I would love to read them (or even make them guest posts with your permission).
ReplyDelete"Urge" is not the issue so much as time. But I'll let you know; thanks for the offer!
ReplyDeleteNewt
I have been reading through "Christianity is Jewish" online and so the author seems to be depending on the faulty reasoning, "I cannot imagine that my life has any meaning without the universe having been created by God, and I feel like my life has meaning, therefore God exists."
ReplyDeleteAlso, the author claims that Genesis is history to be taken literally. However, the Bible is neither internally consistent (without painful mental gymnastics) nor consistent with our knowledge of history, science, anthropology, etc. Thus, no matter how beautiful or inspiring a narrative she can weave out of it, it cannot be true.
I wandered over here from one of your comments at Luke's blog; ambitious project! I'm already a month behind you, and you are doing impressively detailed accounts.
ReplyDeleteAre you planning on doing, say, monthly summaries of where you find yourself in this process? (hint, hint...)
ildi, monthly summaries are a good idea! I'll try, but, as you can probably guess, this project takes up a good amount of time already. =)
ReplyDelete> I cannot imagine that my life has any meaning without the universe having been created by God, and I feel like my life has meaning, therefore God exists.
ReplyDeleteI love the formalization of this argument into the argument from sadness:
1. If there is no God, there is no heaven.
2. If there is no heaven, life has no purpose.
3. If life has no purpose, that would make me sad.
4. I am not sad.
5. Therefore God exists.
Hi, there. I'm a fairly young atheist (3.5 months unborn again, if you will).
ReplyDeleteI found this blog through a friend of a friend of a blogosphere acquaintence. I hope the fact that I cannot spell acquaintence correctly (unless that is correct) will not lead you or anyone else to judge me too harshly. I also hope that my possibly commenting on posts that may be several months old will not upset you.
Looking forward to this.
I don't have a profile name of any sort, so I'm not sure how to publish aside from anonymous. Either way, my name is Tusk. Yes, Tusk.
Tusk
Welcome Tusk!
ReplyDelete