Fundamentalism is a Trainwreck of Contradictions
It's worth noting the contradictions of religious fundamentalists for posterity.
Who Generated These Contradictions?
Nature didn't because nature can't have any contradictions, paradoxes, oxymorons, or other logical absurdities. So first, I would like to bring to your attention that this latest bible is an anthology of fictions, not works of history, or anything approaching a moral guide, and for which canonization, whether it was some 1,617 years ago in North Africa, or when the various books of this anthology of mythology were forged, plagiarized, transliterated, redacted, interpolated, repurposed, confiscated, and buried in the centuries subsequent to the fifth century CE to conceal the scientifically falsified claims, absurdities, and contradictions was merely a stamp of controlling authority not authenticity or anything close. In fact, the Council of Trent in 1546 was a redress of biblical absurdities exposed by the printing press and Martin Luther's conservative zealotry. The canonization concept, like the Bible itself, has always been about control.
The books are constantly changed, reinterpreted, and retranslated into a form markedly different from the collated works as originally written. This is because the writings were ridiculous psychobabble and useless to the Roman Aristocracy as originally written. Think of that acid trip in print pseudonymously called The Revelation of John without the Roman editor that came later. What? You thought a bunch of poor Middle Eastern fishermen wrote even a single word of this anthology? In Greek? Latin? Aramaic? No, Aramaic doesn't even have a written form, and that would have been their language.
The Roman Aristocracy put this anthology together as a means of controlling the slave caste, especially in Eastern reaches of the Roman Empire. They were the only group with the means to do it. Written works were at the cutting edge of civilizing organizations financially and technologically. Think moon landing in a tunic and sandals and the engine wore shackles. And the evidence supporting this claim is, besides the fact that they wrote it down (Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica [c. 306-337]), that the Roman Aristocracy maintained copies of these works for centuries at great expense, while neglecting works more important to the health, happiness, and fulfillment of the plebes. One does not spend that kind of time and money unless there is something to be gained. They made changes when control seemed to wane because the absurdities became too conspicuous, or there was power to be gained, etc.
Everything about this collection of fictions is constructed to mislead, not congregants, from whom only a very small minority could read in the first place, and an even smaller minority of those would understand what they read if they had permission or the nerve to get near the thing. Remember, the written word was said to be powerful magic (how do they get knowledge from chicken scratches?), and their god's word more so. When smart literate people actually picked it up, read it, and understood it; they rejected it like Spinoza and Voltaire, tried to salvage the educational chunks by removing the garbage like Thomas Jefferson, or demonstrated that the books and epistles would be rejected by their original authors as heretical frauds, and historians of the era would have rejected the current interpretation of these falsified works laughable. These books were manipulated and collated to mislead newly initiated clergy. The collated collection was ordered to get the easily befuddled to read into the next book what they think they read in the previous book. Their thought processes are already compromised, compartmentalized, and the virus is already working its way through the biology and psychology of their brain. For these deranged initiates, imagining these books were authentic and written about the same anointed savior was predictable.
Where Did Their Gods Go?
Now, due to the advances of science, that anthology has been completely discredited as a collection of plagiarized ancient lies and myths. The only consistently honest story, one that gets stronger with every new discovery related to these bibles is that sacrosanct texts of superstitions have always served the racial, cultural, and national ambitions of the existing plutocracy. Every other interpretation, claim, or translation from these pious pundits is a lie that must not only change, but must actually recede into the fog of inconvenient fraud in the face of intellectual advances. That this is well known has not changed the fundamentalist diatribe, or the apologetics, that continually start with the conclusion that the Christian god(s) exist then reverse engineer the story to camouflage the god-fraud. One could almost pity these wretched people until some current event recalls their history of atrocities to mind and we realize that the danger remains as long as the dogma remains the same.
This misanthropic mentality is the only consistent part of this rarely ending bender that clergy so arrogantly protect behind their ecclesiastical deceit. When every inconsistency points to the fact that religious apologetics, like the political and economic versions, are the greased pig in a tyranny of interpretation, it becomes easy to see why religion, as absurd as it is, is still around. Ask any intellectually honest blogger, it is next to impossible to nail down a sophist, especially, when they are moving around in a sea of protective ignoramuses.
Today most "progressive" theologians no longer hold to the interpretations of 100 years ago, let alone a thousand or more, and most would disagree with fundamentalists' views today. But the mental gyrations these apologists go through in their attempt to rationalize how this reality and their theology could be true blows up a bingo card for crazy in short order. The oxymoronic "progressive theologian" cannot exist as that, so the "progressive" burns exceptional amounts of effort compartmentalizing his progressive worldview and apologizing for his theological worldview, which is what we witness today. Wherever there is leakage or overlap in these compartmentalized worldviews psychological suffering ensues, cognitive dissonance festers, open-ended and incomplete rationalizations lie about like debris from the last day of school. Evidence, like a sunken sunset over a distant horizon, moves beyond the reach of the senses as the theologian scrambles to escape his Orphic Abyss and save some sanity.
Still, every time science advances evangelicals deny the validity of science until they can no longer, apologists and ecclesiastics take a step back, purposefully positioning their deity ever deeper into a sophistic Orphic Abyss and further out of reach of scientific inquiry. But the bonfire of lies soaked in sleaze has made both sophists and theologians irrelevant.
There are tools, fools, and you. The ball is in your court.
