The Bible Skeptic: The Clarity Complaint Complainer

The Clairity Complaint Complainer

Why Isn't the Bible More Clear?

Certainly one of the most devastating skeptical observations of biblical inerrancy is the fact that, despite the believers' claim that the Bible was inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent supernatural being –with vision of past, present and future—the divinely developed text of Scripture is nonetheless discrepant, contradictory and extremely hard to understand at times. Hardly the hallmarks of a narrative meant to inspire confidence and solicit belief in the mortal hearts of men (and women!).

Apparently alert to this observation, internet apologist James Patrick Holding has responded with self-described sarcasm to the complaint. One of the recession-proof benefits of Christian apologetics is that the Bible is so filled with culture-bound language, archaic imagery, apparent contradictions and discrepancies --hardly the constraints one would think could be imposed upon an omnipotent god were his desire to inspire a handbook for all of humankind regardless of culture or time—that the apologist is assured a never ending stream of skeptical criticisms of the doctrine of inerrancy to which he can respond. And, to the apologists’ delight, each of them can compose their own defense of the text and call it legitimate, even when apologists don’t agree among themselves on the solution! Instead of battling skeptics, they can battle themselves for a change every once in a while!

In Mr. Holding’s article, “The Clarity Complaint,” he whines that “[o]ver the years I have heard too darned many times a complaint like this from less informed Skeptics: 'If God wanted us to believe the Bible (or maybe, "if He wanted His church to be unified") then why didn't he make the Bible more CLEAR?'"

Of course, to an apologist, the Bible is clear and anyone who disagrees –in Mr. Holding’s estimation—is a “lower-rent Skeptic.” Mr. Holding believes that “the Bible is clear to anyone who wants to invest the tiniest smidgen of effort in coming to it on its own terms.” Those “terms,” obviously, are those that Mr. Holding (or any other apologist, if you happen to be visiting their website or browsing their book) has determined for correct Bible reading.

But, that is not the real point of Mr. Holding’s article. While he believes the Bible has terms upon which anyone with a smidgen of intelligence could understand the texts, his real complaint is that skeptics are just too stupid to ever understand the Bible: period. He notes that “[i]f the real problem with the Bible is ‘lack of clarity,’ then it seems that all of these complaints are misplaced, because it seems that many Skeptics aren't helped much by crystal-clear statements. Perhaps the real problem is stupidity.” He then gives a few examples of people who have misunderstood him in the past and believes this is evidence of skeptical stupidity, or perhaps “laziness.” It’s as if Mr. Holding has never been guilty of misunderstanding something someone else said or wrote. We know God is supposedly perfect, but does this extend to Mr. Holding: Apologist Extraordinaire?

In all his whining, however, one will notice that Mr. Holding never answers the complaint. He trolls up these few skeptics who have rubbed him the wrong way and tries to imply that because they can’t understand him then skeptics generally would never be able to understand a “plain” Bible, should the fancy have struck the All Mighty to have inspired one. Mr. Holding’s rather inflated opinion of himself notwithstanding, how on earth does his irrelevant argument get the Bible off the hook of the original observation? It’s hard to understand how Mr. Holding can extrapolate from a few skeptics that everyone else who’s made the observation that the Bible babbles in places it needn’t have done so would be equally obtuse were the great deity to take a bit of his omnipotent energy into breaking free of ancient cultural restrictions, customs and habits and inspire a document even a smidgen closer to something that could be understood by most of the people in creation’s history most of the time. That this is clearly not so is never addressed in Mr. Holding’s temper tantrum.

The problem is as clear-as-glass: The Bible isn’t. And the Bible isn’t as clear-as-glass in some very glaring ways. It is not unclear in the sort of convoluted ways Mr. Holding dredges up as examples of skeptical stupidity. Trivializing the problem doesn’t make it go away. For example, in my article about the outlandish population figures of the Hebrew exodus, one apologetic attempt to answer the skeptics is to claim that the number of Hebrews leaving Goshen (nearly 3 million) was hyperbole. The apologetic argument was that the biblical author didn’t really intend readers to take literally the grand number that was written, nor did God intend via inspiration for anyone to take this number as a literal fact. Ho ho! How could anyone take God’s nod and wink so seriously? Isn’t it rather obvious that the number must’ve been much smaller? I mean, comeon! Or how about when the Bible plainly says that there was a “dome” formed on the 2nd day of Creation to cover the earth like an overturned teacup? The Bible clearly is describing a solid concave barrier over the earth, separating it from the “waters below” (seas) from the “waters above” (the ancient Hebrews were unaware there was a vast expanse of space beyond earth’s atmosphere and instead believed waters for rain and snow flowed on the other side of earth’s protective dome). But, we know that is not the case today (even though some apologists admit that the ancients viewed the cosmos in this way) so the Bible is wrong, right? No! Of course not! You just have to understand the Bible on its own “terms.” When the Bible uses a certain word in one place, for which its meaning describes a solid, beaten out surface, that same word used elsewhere really means a permeable atmosphere! Misunderstanding that is on par with misunderstanding what “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” means! Why would the Hebrew god have needed to inspire something clearer for modern readers who certainly know earth science better than their ancient fellows? What was inspired using culturally-restrictive words and terms is sufficient! Just ask the apologist! They know what God meant to say, even if you're too dumb to figure it out yourself! The Bible doesn’t mean exactly what it says! It means what the apologist tells you it's suppose to mean. See? It isn’t confusing! Skeptics are just stoopid!

Enough of my own sarcasm. I think the point is clear, even if Mr. Holding’s treatment of the subject is not. While he may not think so, Mr. Holding certainly has an obligation in answering the question of the Bible’s clarity. The question tears into the heart of every apologetic written, whether his or someone else's. Apologetics are written because the Bible is unclear. Were it clear there would be no need for apologetics. Mr. Holding certainly is free to use whatever form he wishes to answer the complaint (sarcastically, demeaning, scholarly, flippantly, meaningfully, etc.) but he should at least answer it. I don’t see an answer to the question at all in his article. He merely states that because a few skeptics misunderstood something he said, then those same skeptics (and everyone else in the world) [1] would have difficulty understanding a clear Bible (as if there were some correlation between being able to understand an internet apologist and being able to understand an ominpotent god; regardless of what Mr. Holding thinks, they are not one and the same!). Apparently, Mr. Holding believes that one documented misunderstanding by a skeptic of something he wrote is enough to judge that skeptic wholly incompetent in the ability to understand the plain language of a being who –by definition—can make anything it inspires to be written completely understandable by anyone.

To be fair, the closest Mr. Holding comes to answering the skeptics’ complaint is to say one needs to understand the Bible on its own “terms.” But nowhere does he explain why we have to come to the Bible that way. We may hear the complaint from apologists that God isn’t required to make his documents clear to everyone; why should God wipe everyone’s noses and kiss everyone’s hiney? But that doesn't answer the question, either. It’s just another dodge. Skeptics merely question why the Bible is not clear (and it is the apologist who claims it is not so they can insert their apologetics into the “difficult” biblical passages) if what God intended to say was important enough to say in the first place. God’s words, if they truly flowed from an omniscient, omnipotent being, shouldn’t need to be interpreted ten different ways by ten different apologists sporting ten different theologies.

I certainly left Mr. Holding’s article less than satisfied by his response to the skeptics’ complaint. I wish he would have put more effort into actually addressing the problem and less time trying to be cute, funny, or sarcastic. But I fear what would happen if he actually did put some thought into the problem. Would he eventually realize that there is no good reason for an omnipotent, omniscient being not to have inspired a clear book? And if he came to this realization, what next? Would he be forced to say, as so many others before him who have wrestled with this problem were eventually forced to say, that the Bible certainly is understandable by any and everyone, so long as they are filled by the Holy Kool-Aid? Or, would Mr. Holding be forced to the same conclusion as that which started this conversation? Would he have to admit, along with the skeptics, that the Bible is clear and, as such, is historically and scientifically inaccurate? Hardly the work of a divine being? I doubt the latter; and eventually will expect to read the former.

NOTES

1. Because everyone else who has difficulty reading the Bible plainly which, of course, should include every human being who is alive or who has ever lived in the era of the scriptures if they are honest; and "yes" that includes apologists since they are the ones who have to research and concoct an answer for those difficult passages –often contradicting each other, further underscoring the critic’s complaint. Return to text