I'm an atheist, but that doesn't mean I automatically think religious people are stupid. I do a lot of things that other people think are stupid: I enjoy parades, I eat outdated sushi from the Bargain Bin, I buy CDs. Obviously I'm living in a glass house, so who I am to say somebody's dumb to believe in God?
Personally, I don't think the Bible is the word of God. I mean, if God had exactly three hundred pages to tell earthlings how to act, from the beginning of time all the way to the Rapture, I'm thinking there probably wouldn't be a chapter on the moustache.
If you're going to say the Bible is the word of God, though, you've got to follow through, and Christians just don't. They divide the Bible into two parts: the sensible stuff, and the crazy shit. Jesus, obviously, is sensible. He's cool. He's like a zen master always ready with a sound bite. Luckily he's in a whole different chapter, far away from the parts that say you should kill people who sprinkle parmesan cheese on fish. But then there's all that wacky stuff about shunning and stoning and human sacrifice. Whereas something written by an omnipotent creator should be a pretty cool read, the bible is the novel equivalent of a road trip across the U. S. It's really cool when you drive through Yosemite or Zion, but then there's those long stretches where everybody's toothless and has beer-bottle windchimes.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why religious people think editing the Bible is okay. I mean, God was all-powerful, right? He knew everything. He wasn't Norman Mailer. Was God schizophrenic? Did he drink? How come he needs this kind of leeway? I mean, after he realized vast portions of the book were total crap, couldn't he have rewound time and replaced it with an edited version?
I don't see them cutting regular folks that kind of slack. Einstein was nearly super-human too, but people would have written him off if he'd drunk-called them at night saying they should kill their kids with rocks.
Orthodox Jews, though, wholeheartedly embrace the Torah's crazy. When they decided to believe in the book, they threw themselves in whole hog. Christians would read the part about mixing dairy and meat, and think to themselves, "Whoa, that's weird. Wonder how that got in there. God musta had a bad day." Orthodox Jews, though, go, "Looks like I need more pots and pans."
When Christians read the Bible's words about how disgusting menstruating women are, they say, "Wow, that is so freaky I'm just gonna pretend it's not there. Orthodox Jews, though, think, "Hmm -- I guess I gotta get some kind of special tub."
It's easier for me to accept somebody's homophobia when I know it's part of a giant package of weird. If you're laying on the couch all Sunday drinking beer and watching football and you say God don't like gays, you're not religious: you're an idiot. But if you stay home because it's a sin to press elevator buttons and you think God doesn't like gays, I got no problem with that.
I might disagree, but I'll admire your courage. And if your God is okay with dollar shellfish, I might even offer you a snack.
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