Civil Commotion

Some of y’all will recall that the publishers of the English Standard Version Bible announced a week or so ago that there would be no more tranlations.

Well … reset.

The publisher of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible has reversed its controversial decision to finalize the text after tweaking 29 verses.

“We have become convinced that this decision was a mistake,” stated Crossway president and CEO Lane Dennis in an announcement released today.

[ … ]

But making a translation permanent ignores the need for updates that reflect scholars’ advances in their understanding of the text, as well as the continuing development of English as a living language, said Tremper Longman III, a member of the NLT translation committee. That’s especially true for a word-for-word approach, like the ESV uses.

Exactly the objections that I raised and, as I also pointed out, an egregious departure from the universally accepted premises of translating any ancient text. Even some moderns — Nietzsche, most dramatically — are difficult to translate for these reasons. (Idle digression: I’ve seriously considered learning to read German for that exact reason.)

But: ‘Nones’ are now 25% of the population, and amongst the young the number approaches 40%. I continue to speculate that perhaps they know there will be negligible demand for new translations in 20-years.

And where does that link go? To a survey about religious beliefs conducted by Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Convention subsidiary that sells books and conducts research.

Americans Love God and the Bible, Are Fuzzy on the Details

I love that headline. “Details” — Ha!

Americans don’t know much about theology. Most say God wrote the Bible. But they’re not sure everything in it is true.

Six in 10 say everyone eventually goes to heaven, but half say only those who believe in Jesus will be saved. And while 7 in 10 say there’s only one true God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—two-thirds say God accepts worship of all faiths.

Those are among the findings of a new survey of American views on Christian theology from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.

Ho-hum. This is what you get when you parse make-believe.

Though evangelicalism can be defined as a specific set of theological beliefs, the more complicated reality is that evangelicalism is a steadily-shrinking culture; it appears that Moore doesn’t ‘get’ that yet. That’s the reason Moore and Albert Mohler were so shocked when evangelicals swarmed to Donald Trump after he announced his candidacy. Moore and Mohler were thinking of a set of theological beliefs, and had no idea that the people sitting in evangelical churches — their churches, listening to pastors they educated — don’t know bupkes about evangelicalism as a set of theological propositions. What is more, few of the people sitting in those churches have ever read the Bible, or even have that on their ‘to do’ list, or have the slightest interest in learning about theology.

What they know is that their familiar world is changing, dying — and Donald Trump trashes the people they blame for it.

Uhhh … never attend a lecture by a fundy who reads the Bible literally?

The Twitter hashtag #TrumpWon originated in Russia.

I guess our li’l buddy has fans there.

As I’ve said many times over the years, belief in anything becomes permissible under the rubric of faith. If you can believe without evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, then you can just as easily believe that an Invisible Friend wants you to steal an airplane and fly it into a skyscraper. If it’s a virtue to believe without evidence — or even in spite of evidence — why should Platt reject such an improbable story? Especially a story so flattering to his superstitions?

Science and engineering have epistemic standards; they demand evidence. That, in a nutshell, is why science and engineering have been such a positive force in human history, and why religion has nothing to show for itself but Niagaras of bloodshed.