The Imbeciles Decide: Shopping Or Junk Religion?

A hidden saving grace of those that champion free market capitalism and materialism while at the same time espousing so-called christian conservative values, is that for practical reasons people generally choose one or the other and the overwhelming majority choose secular materialism. It’s difficult being a religious zealot when you’re working all the time to buy junk you don’t need. It also takes much more self-discpline and self-sacrifice to act on behalf of the poor (you know, what Jesus spoke of) than it does to shop til’ you drop. Incidentally, Jesus never once mentioned the virtues of the free market but he often spoke of the need for a multi-lateral foreign policy i.e. “blessed are the peacemakers.”

The point is that you can generally have one or the other but as groups of people become more educated, they typically become more prosperous and with prosperity comes selfishness and material secularism, we know it here as the American way. The only way that religious fundamentalism will ever gain a strong footing in this country is if the economy takes a severe nose dive and the only way that secular democracy will take root in a country like Iraq is if the people have self-determined prosperity.

By the way, it should come as no surprise that many people who have the ability to either influence or create public or foreign policy don’t have a blasted clue as to what they are talking about at even the most fundamental levels, such as having a basic understanding of a major world religion. The irony is that many of them are the most highly educated, the most elite, the most privileged and they’re usually the most charismatic and handsome/beautiful and yet they share the same weaknesses as most of the rest of us i.e. intellectual laziness, ideological stubborness and hubristic superiority complexes.

The Infallible Word of Man?

Let’s assume that there is a God. Let’s also assume that God spoke with man and that the bible is the inspiration of that interaction. Forgetting about burning bushes, loaves of bread miraculously multiplying and other stories that if told as if they happened today would most likely find the storyteller being shot up with lithium, what I don’t understand is how the bible can be considered to be an infallible work by rational people. Now I’m not going to get into a theological discussion because I honestly can’t quote the bible chapter and verse but it just seems to me to be beyond the realm of faith and bordering on the insane to honestly believe that the bible is a perfect book.

In a nutshell here’s my point. Remembering our assumptions that God is real and actually spoke to man and adding a new assumption that we take for granted, that man is infallible and every thing he touches or creates is imperfect and I am left wondering how could the bible, a creation of man, be perfect? How can this document be without error when the words spoken by the infallible God were heard with an imperfect ear, processed through an imperfect brain, written with an imperfect hand on a piece of imperfect paper created by a man with a imperfect pen?

Let’s look at it another way but this time let’s assume that the bible IS the infallible word of God. Is it possible for the message to be interpreted perfectly by a fallible human being? We can pick up the book and read it with our imperfect eyes, process it through our imperfect perception, biases and prejudices and preach it with our imperfect mouths but how is it possible that the message comes out perfectly?

I’ve racked my brain but can’t seem to come up with a rational answer to these questions.
Is it possible that believing that the bible is the infallible word of God is not faith but irrational folly perpetuated by irrational men?