I remember reading a news story about the discovery of some old copies of bible texts not previously known and how the vatican planned to use them to update a few passages in the bible. There was something of surprise in some quarters that the vatican would consider changing the bible at all. When asked about it, a vatican spokesperson said something to the affect, "I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like God faxed us the bible or anything."
Since I doubt that vatican spokespeople actually talk like that, I'm fairly sure that I've munged the quote up, but I do remember that the metaphor used was God faxing the bible. I really liked that image. And unfortunately it's far too relevant to what too many people believe. (Note: for the purposes of this essay I'm going to use 'fundamentalist' to mean one who believes in the literal truth of the bible.) I often listen to the radio while I drive, and there seem to be at least two different fundamentalist radio stations around me (btw, has anyone else noticed that fundamentalist christian DJ's seem to be the most sanctimonious people on American airwaves?)
These people could really use a good re-reading of Luke 18:9-14. Ah, what the heck, I'll type out the quotation:
He spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else, 'Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, "I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get." The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heave; but he beat his breast and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner". This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.'
And I thought that fundies were supposed to read the bible. I'm not saying that they should not discuss the moral failings of the world, but they have a tone which seems to say that they don't participate in the moral failings of the world. Really, I think that what makes them so distasteful to me is that they seem to be condeming the world for not being as holy as them, rather than feeling sorry for the world for its iniquity. But I am digressing, and the morality of fundamentalist DJ's doesn't need my judgements.
The point that I mean to discuss is the view that the bible is literally true, and that it was essentially faxed down from God. I think that this belief is expressed so often and so fervently that noone ever notices that there is no reason to believe it. I don't mean that the reasons used to justify that position are not good reasons, I mean that they basically just don't exist.
Now, most people tend to dislike circular reasoning, and even more so using a source to justify itself. Thus the argument "Jesus is the Son of God because the bible said so, and the bible is correct because Jesus said so, and he wouldn't lie because he is the Son of God" tends to find understandable dissaproval among those who like sound arguments. But even if one were to grant the use of circular reasoning, it wouldn't help fundamentalists out. There isn't even a circular argument to be made on the side of the literal truth of the bible. Nowhere in the bible does it say, "this book is literally true" or "the bible is literally true". Even stepping outside of the bible, there are no contemporary sources which claim its literal inerrancy. You can't even find a claim in the bible that it was faxed down by God. Well, this isn't strictly true. This claim is made in the Book of Revelation, but it only covers that specific book (and there is certainly no claim to literal truth).
Think about this for a moment: People are actively engaged in shouting the literal inerrancy of the bible from rooftops, and you can't even find this claim in the book itself!
The significance of this is hard to overstate. The literal truth of the bible is not a claim supported by revelation from God. As much as many people dislike the appeal to authority, it is a legitimate form of proof. But no such appeal is even here possible: there is no evidence, whatsoever, that any authority, be it God or otherwise, ever claimed that the bible is literally true. No divine revelation ever bore this message.
So where the heck does this claim actually come from? Well, as far as I can tell it comes either purely from stupidity or purely from wishful thinking: "God wouldn't lie, and saying things that aren't literally true would be lying" or "God gave us the bible to guide our lives so that we can worship him and do his will".
Hopefully nothing needs to be said about the first assertion, it should be clear that a metaphor is not a lie. Even if it isn't fully obvious, one only needs to look to the bible to refute this: Jesus taught in parables which are stories that are not literally true.
This, by the way, has always been a sticking point for fundies, whose position has usually been, not that the bible is literally true, but that the bible is literally true except where it needs to be interpreted (e.g. the line in the epistle of James which states that salvation is not through faith alone (James 2: 14-26)). It has always had the stench of believing something only when it is convenient because it is convenient. And the more that I think about it, the more that I can't see any other reason for a person to believe in it.
Of the other reason generally given, the most direct answer is simply to ask, "It is nice that you have faith that God gave you a book of literal truth to guide your life, but do you have any grounding for this faith?" It is true that faith is a virtue, but faith is supposed to be based on something. Divine relevation is a perfectly good reason to have faith in something. So is rational justification. But people are not supposed to just make things up, out of the blue, and have faith in them.
And yet this really does seem to be the case: at some point someone just decided that they were going to believe that the bible was faxed down by God as literal truth, and this decision has acquired the status of dogma. The part that I find so strange about all of this is that the people trying to argue against a literal interpretation of the bible never seem to notice this. They bring out all sorts of evidence, both simple and complex, to disprove the literal truth of the bible on a factual basis, but they never seem to ask the most basic question: why on earth does anyone believe that it is literally true?
And this is really the thing that makes me wonder so much about this very simple question -- it seems like the fundamentalists somehow hoodwinked everyone else into believing that they actually have some unasailable justification for their beliefs and that the only way that they can be disproved is through factual contradiction of the bible. But there is no reason to play by the fundamentalist's game; life is easier than that: just ask these people for some proof that the bible is literally true. I strongly suspect that all that you're going to get is a bald-faced assertion. I've yet to see a fundamentalist bring out even a bad argument on this subject.
N.b.: some fundamentalists will, when challanged, try to bring out confirmations of some of the things mentioned in the bible, such as archaelogical evidence that the Jews really did escape Egypt, or that outside historians (especially Josephus) confirm that Jesus actually did exist. It is worth while, if difficult with them, to point out that some things being confirmed to be literally true does not make the entire thing literally true. Part of the problem seems to be genuine ignorance of history: they seem to think that the bible was written at roughly the same time by people who knew each other for the purpose that the fundamentalists want to use it for. They don't realize that the way that they've been taught to treat the bible has nothing to do with what the authors intended when they wrote it. You'd think that this would be just too obvious to miss with the epistles, which are literally the surviving records of the personal correspondance of a few of the (influential) early church members. But no, even those they treat as if they were meant to be taken without context for audiences spanning more than twenty centuries. And they somehow even miss the tone that most of them have that they are fallible men. This is especially true with Paul, who is careful to delimit what Jesus said from what he (Paul) said.
I think that it is for this reason that I have been a little harsh on the fundamentalists. For the most part they were taught their view of the bible and read it with tinted spectacles that allowed them to somehow see the claim to literal infallibility in the text. But I still think that it is a worthwhile exercise to point out to them that it isn't in fact there.