Drinkers and Thinkers
One online project I've heard quite a bit about recently is the Conservative Bible Project, sponsored by the ever-bizarre Conservapedia. I've mentioned this site before, but it's basically billed as a conservative alternative to Wikipedia, which the creator deemed too secretly liberally biased, so he thought the best solution would be an online encyclopedia that ADMITS to being biased. The creator, Andrew Schlafly, is the son of notorious anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly. That someone would have impregnated her is frightening enough, but that he's one of six is even scarier. Conservapedia is apparently now identifying itself as "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia," which brings to mind the stereotype of the sleaziest merchants putting "Honest" in front of their names. And now Honest Andy's Online Encyclopedia and Used Car Parts has started a new translation of the Bible, as the old ones were all too liberal for their tastes. In other words, they call themselves pro-Christian, but when Christianity as it stands doesn't support their own biases, they see the problem being in the Bible rather than themselves. Not that the Bible DOESN'T have a lot of problems, but I guess it's more sensible to just change the whole thing instead of, like, letting people decide for themselves which parts are good and which are bad.
One of the Conservative Bible Project's decisions was to edit out some of the mentions of wine, replacing them with grape juice. Never mind that non-fermented grape juice as we know it today didn't exist until the nineteenth century. I think the only way that people in Jesus' time could have had it was to drink it directly from the grape. But this is not uncommon among churches today, many of whom have somehow decided that alcohol consumption is something God doesn't approve of, even though Jesus turned water into wine, and gave the disciples wine that symbolized his own blood. The argument against drinking certainly has some merit, and as someone who's neither a Christian nor much of a drinker, I'm certainly not arguing this to benefit myself. Hey, I'm opposed to smoking, but I'm not going to pretend the Bible even addressed that. I remember the fringe Christian radio station owner Harold Camping insisting that smoking is a sin because it's "self-murder." As much as I dislike smoking, I'd say that's going a little too far.
Some of the earlier edits to the Conservative Bible, many of which have apparently since been retracted, made Jesus a particular enemy to liberals and "intellectual types". Never mind that Jesus himself, who always had a snappy comeback to the Pharisees' criticisms, could presumably be considered an intellectual as well. It kind of seems to me that the anti-intellectual trend among some Christians originally stemmed from Jesus' favor for the downtrodden. To be a good Christian, you didn't HAVE to be a Biblical scholar. That presumably evolved over time, at least for some, as "we don't want any smart people." Church leadership wanting to TELL people what to believe instead of letting people decide for themselves was also a contributing factor, I would imagine. The impression I get about Jesus himself is not that he was anti-intellectual, but that he was opposed to people claiming to be intellectual when they were basically just holding on to dogma. Maybe I'm inserting some of my own bias there, but that's okay. I'm not planning on rewriting the entire Bible myself to better reflect my own values. Just reading the entire thing took long enough.
One of the Conservative Bible Project's decisions was to edit out some of the mentions of wine, replacing them with grape juice. Never mind that non-fermented grape juice as we know it today didn't exist until the nineteenth century. I think the only way that people in Jesus' time could have had it was to drink it directly from the grape. But this is not uncommon among churches today, many of whom have somehow decided that alcohol consumption is something God doesn't approve of, even though Jesus turned water into wine, and gave the disciples wine that symbolized his own blood. The argument against drinking certainly has some merit, and as someone who's neither a Christian nor much of a drinker, I'm certainly not arguing this to benefit myself. Hey, I'm opposed to smoking, but I'm not going to pretend the Bible even addressed that. I remember the fringe Christian radio station owner Harold Camping insisting that smoking is a sin because it's "self-murder." As much as I dislike smoking, I'd say that's going a little too far.
Some of the earlier edits to the Conservative Bible, many of which have apparently since been retracted, made Jesus a particular enemy to liberals and "intellectual types". Never mind that Jesus himself, who always had a snappy comeback to the Pharisees' criticisms, could presumably be considered an intellectual as well. It kind of seems to me that the anti-intellectual trend among some Christians originally stemmed from Jesus' favor for the downtrodden. To be a good Christian, you didn't HAVE to be a Biblical scholar. That presumably evolved over time, at least for some, as "we don't want any smart people." Church leadership wanting to TELL people what to believe instead of letting people decide for themselves was also a contributing factor, I would imagine. The impression I get about Jesus himself is not that he was anti-intellectual, but that he was opposed to people claiming to be intellectual when they were basically just holding on to dogma. Maybe I'm inserting some of my own bias there, but that's okay. I'm not planning on rewriting the entire Bible myself to better reflect my own values. Just reading the entire thing took long enough.