INTRODUCTION TO THE SECULAR HUMANIST'S BIBLE:

This is the introduction to my post of 08/29/09 entitled "A Secular Humanist's Attempt to Understand the Bible."

It has comedy, it has drama, it’s full of the things that the Christian Coalition would picket you for promoting, “SEX AND VIOLENCE.” It has songs and poetry, and stories where the heroes are villainous. I enjoy reading the Bible, but . . .

I find that reading the Bible is like when I first started typing. Every letter had to be translated into a finger, then thought about, then punched. It made the typing slow and tedious, and not much fun. Now that I’ve typed for more than 35 years and have it down fairly well, the typing goes fast and not much translation needs to take place. When I read the Bible, I have to translate it into terms that mean something to me.

What I have done for myself is to translate the first three Chapters of Genesis into something that has meaning to me. I am not asking you to agree with my translations, after all, this is for me and I’m just sharing it with you. My challenge is for you to do the same thing, work out your own translations.

I am fully aware that these occurrences did not happen separately. Flowers, fruits, and vegetables need insects to assist in pollination, and a full food chain needs to be in place for the interdependent web of life to flourish. When it is stated that, “over a long period . . . “ one has to assume that all of these evolutions occurred simultaneously, in other words there was only one “long period of time.” And the writers were taking each category through that same period. I say writers because Genesis 1 is so different when compared to Genesis 2, and various other parts of Genesis are more lyrical and literary, then others are blunt and matter of fact. Some of this has to do with the many translations the bible has gone through.

Now go to my post titled "A Secular Humanist's Attemp to Understand the Bible" posted August 29, 2009.