Because The Bible Said So

I was reading a column today where the author was discussing a lesbian’s campaign against a church. The lesbian wanted to remove the church’s charitable status, so that it couldn’t continue to get more tax benefits while also practicing discrimination against members of its congregation.

I had read the author’s columns before, and this was the first political one I can remember. The author’s arguments are usually well thought out, but religion has a way of short-circuiting reasoning. The column consisted of the “the Bible says so and if you disagree you’re the real bigot” argument. Like Rust Cohle says inĀ True Detective, “Certain linguistic anthropologists think religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain and dulls critical thinking.”

If you argue that someone of a certain sexual orientation doesn’t belong because the Bible says so, why is there no thought of rethinking your religion? Why does it become so infallible?

When people defend a theory about anything but religion e.g. science, sports, politics (which sometimes intersects but not always), they try to present facts to argue their point. Now, their “facts” might be completely inaccurate but their is usually some attempt to present them. It might be the words of a politician who doesn’t bother to fact-check, or some document that has long been discredited. Yet, there is an effort.

Similar to the gun-clutchers, people point to a single document to defend their beliefs, ignoring context, history and new developments that those old documents might not have taken into consideration (e.g. assault rifles). However, even with the gun-toting ‘Muricans, there is an attempt to appeal to fact. They might throw out the “good man with a gun” argument or something that is equally asinine, but they still attempt to use facts to back up their arguments.

When it comes to defending homophobia, it seems like a lot of people are comfortable saying “God doesn’t like it.” That is it.

We don’t assume gravity exists just because a textbook says so. We have proof of it. We can do experiments to show it works. We have proof that mixing x chemical and y chemical leads to z. The testing of these theories, the hard facts, came before the written word in many cases. The written word just captures learned experience.

In the case of the Bible and religion as a whole, the written word, handed down thousands of years ago, becomes better than science. There is no need to question or test, it is the word of the Lord. Although I’ve always known you can’t win an argument with someone who uses a holy book to defend something, I didn’t realize what made religion so dangerous until today. Reading the column, I was enlightened.

Religion can be a beautiful thing. It does not have to be about blind zealotry. It can be about community, about togetherness. Yet it can be tainted, just like anything else. The zealots who use the Bible as their crutch against homophobia might not have picked up a Bible in years and probably can’t read a single Psalm word for word, but they know it well enough to let it absolve them of any responsibility to exercise their own critical thinking or empathy.