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.
If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.
The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.
When sitting in meditation, say, "That's not my business!" with every thought that comes by.
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
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