The Gospel according to Dick

22Oct09

I’ve always found that the quickest way to piss off a fundamentalist (which I must distinguish from Christians who actually practice what their messiah preached) is to actually read the Bible to them, especially the Gospels. They always seems to be wrenching selected passages, frequently out of context, and usually from the epistles of persecutor-turned-self-appointed-infallible-interpretor-of-Christianity Paul (any of you gals read the books of Timothy lately?), and a handful of obscure passages from Leviticus. I’ve always wondered why the actual words of Christ seemed to agitate these people so. Now I know.

by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Syndicated columnist, Miami Herald

SO WE may soon have ourselves a conservative Bible. Besides Fox News, I mean.

This new Bible is from Conservapedia, a Web site that bills itself as a conservative alternative to the perceived liberal bias of Wikipedia, the user-edited online reference.

I was thinking they should call it “Wackipedia”.

You may judge Conservapedia’s own bias by reading its definition of liberal: “someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing.”

Now, having protected unwary Americans from — ahem — Wikipedia’s bias, Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly (son of Phyllis) tackles perceived bias in the Good Book. He proposes to correct the Bible by creating a new translation based upon 10 principles, including: concision (as opposed to “liberal wordiness”); an emphasis on “free market parables” and the exclusion of “liberal passages” he says were inserted into the original text. One such would be the well-known story of the adulterous woman brought before Christ by a crowd eager to see her punished; Jesus says the one without sin should cast the first stone.

[This ]is part of an ongoing crusade to delegitimize any institution, any information source, any inconvenient “fact” that contradicts conservative beliefs. Rather than trust those beliefs to stand or fall in the free market of ideas, some conservatives now apply a kind of intellectual protectionism. So now you have your conservative newspaper, your conservative radio station, your conservative university, your conservative “facts,” and, apparently, your conservative God, and you may build yourself a conservative life in a conservative bubble where you need never contend with ideas that challenge, contradict — or “refine” — your own.

And HERE, from the horse’s mouth, is the entry from Wackipedia– excuse me– Conservapedia:

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent; Defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”. [My note: obviously the scholars that King James rounded up to translate the Bible into English were a bunch of peace & love commies]
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

For all you wordy liberals out there: they’d probably blow a gasket if they knew that the Hebrew name Elohim, the first name in the Bible translated as “God”, is actually plural! (oh, and then there’s that business of the name “God” being a derivative of the German word for “good”, a concept which actually derived from the neo-Platonism of Plotinus, etc.)

Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.

Or perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps Dick Cheney represents the second coming, and the Iraq War is ushering in a new millennium of peace and prosperity, and Halliburton will use their ill-gotten trillions to watch over us from Heaven (now referred to as “Dubai”)

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