Atheists Apparently Can't Handle the Truth

Speaking of contempt for non-believers on the part of Christians, there's a revealing letter to the editor in the new Isthmus.

The past few weeks have seen a mole hill being made into a mountain in the Letters section over Kenneth Burns' review of Higher Ground with some people disputing Psalm 137:9. Burns was critical of the film for how it utilized that particular passage which it quotes. In today's issue one Warren Brown of Menasha steps up to the soap box.

His exegetical powers are limitless and his contempt for non-believers is seemingly without end as well as he states that atheists can't understand the Bible.

This is the trouble that arises when someone who can read but does not believe tries to read the Bible. You may understand the words, but you don't understand the message.

What a maroon. Why is it that, if only believers are smart enough to bypass the Biblical encryption to understand the message, Christians take away different messages from the Bible?

I am reminded of a spat Jerry Coyne had with Andrew Sullivan. It related to the above and an earlier bit of Brown's letter where he writes:

Yes, we Christians do consider the Bible the word of God, but we are not so absurd as to think that every saying in the Bible is God's truth.

Really? What about Ken Ham and other Biblical literalists who go around insisting that, not only was there a guy named Noah who built an arc, but that there were dinosaurs on the arc?

So how do people like Andrew Sullivan and Warren Brown actually go about deciding what is Yahweh's "truth" and what isn't?

Take passages from, say, Deuteronomy, where Yahweh is in a genocidal mood. You have apologists like Paul Copan who seem to share Brown's attitude of "atheists just don't understand" but you also have theologians like William Lane Craig who take the pro-genocide stance. Who is "right" here? Who has comprehended Yahweh's "truth"?

Brown's letter is the height of conceit. Only believers can understand the Bible and, furthermore, they have this additional super-power that allows them to cherry pick what is true and what isn't from the Bible.

Burns replies to Brown and says that his priest taught that "Christians should take troubling Bible passages seriously." What does this mean? Leviticus has its famous invectives against homosexuality. What does taking "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" seriously involve? Should Christians take the admonition to not covet thy neighbor's ox seriously?

I feel like the woodcutter in Rashomon.