The
Psychology
of
Biblicism

If the bible may be taken to mean just about anything, then the bible becomes a Rorschach inkblot.
 
Robert M. Price has an interesting view of Christian fundamentalism. To the question: "Why is God needed to break the silence of the ages with a revealed word, an inspired book of infallible information?" He answers, "Perhaps, paradoxically, this need stems from a kind of skepticism, a lack of confidence in the ability of the human mind to discover necessary truth by reason and observation alone."
Freethinkers continue to believe
that one can live perfectly well in this life
on the basis of common sense and mere probabilities.

Why don't biblicists adopt the same attitude? Is it because they hold an unexamined assumption that God is some kind of punitive theology professor who stands ready to flunk them if they write the wrong answers on their exam. The God of their childish fears doesn't excuse honest mistakes.

 
To Robert M. Price
the concept of an obnoxious God
can only be understood as a matter of psychology --
not orthodox theology.
 
Despite the claims of their theology, when Christian fundamentalists read the Bible for the comfort of final, complete, and absolute answers, they don't actually discover them there; they put them there, thus fulfilling their own emotional prophecies.
 

I quote an article from THE HUMANIST a magazine of critical inquiry and social concern. Many freethinkers confront bible thumpers with biblical quotations full of contradictions, expecting that such evidence will magically convert the bible clutcher.

To convert a believer who has made the bible the ultimate source of a truth, which that individual holds, is futile. Appealing to the bible is their way of asserting the truth of their opinion, from wherever they got it.
 

"If one wishes to get anywhere when reasoning with fundamentalists and biblicists, I suggest one try to determine the emotional issues that attach believers to their beliefs. The beliefs themselves are, I think a function of certain psychological needs that would be better met in other ways. But until those psychological needs are identified and met in other ways, we will have no way of getting believers to budge from their beliefs, and we might not even have the right to do so."

Get a copy of THE HUMANIST and read this philosopher's logic. Robert M. Price is editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism and author of the book Deconstructing Jesus.