Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs.
Interpretation
The Bible's compilation reflects a diverse and inconsistent nature due to its prolonged editing and multiple authors.
Steven Pinker highlights the complexities and inconsistencies found within the Bible, attributing them to its long history of compilation by various authors with differing perspectives and styles. This comparison to a 'wiki' emphasizes the idea that texts evolve over time, incorporating various viewpoints and occasionally conflicting narratives, which challenges traditional notions of the Bible as a singular authoritative text.
In practice
In a seminar discussing the interpretation of religious texts, this quote could illustrate the need for a critical approach.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again?
Realise this: one day your soul_x000D_ will depart from your body and you will_x000D_ be drawn behind the curtain that floats between us_x000D_ and the unknown. While you wait for that moment, be happy,_x000D_ because you don't know where you came from and_x000D_ you don't know where you will be going.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so.
Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.
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