If the devil is the father of lies, then a few observations need to be made.
1. It is not lying per se that is forbidden in the Ten Commandments, but "bearing false witness." This is a legal term, and means that you cannot lie to either harm an innocent or to help a guilty person. In other words, you cannot tell the kinds of likes that harm society. Thus, fictional stories are not covered by this commandment, as fictional stories not only do not harm society, but in fact benefit them by showing the truth and giving moral examples. It is for this reason that bans on works of fiction, especially novels, are often called for – because the people who call for such bans are afraid of the truth, and are acting immorally. Nietzsche says that "Art tells the truth in the general form of a lie." And Aristotle prefers fiction to history precisely because history says what did happen, while fiction says what could and ought to have happened.
2. God—Jesus—Satan form a legal system. God is the judge. "Satan" means "adversary" in Hebrew, and an adversary is the person who brings charges against the accused. In the Old Testament, this was the entire system, and we see this system at work in Job. The Adversary brings charges against Job, and God subsequently tries Job. Job is left with no recourse but to bear what happens to him, and even to challenge to God himself the justice of what God is doing. Job gets chastised by God because the error Job makes in questioning God is not in realizing, as Heraclitus did, that "to man some things are just, some unjust. But to God all things are just, good, and beautiful." Job also did not have the advantage of having a Defender – which is the role of Jesus, and why he came to earth. Now, when the Adversary brings charges, Jesus defends us.
3. If you support lies, or use lies, then you are in league with the devil – the father of lies. This puts most churches, especially in the United States, in league with the devil, as most churches preach and support lies of various kinds. It has been said that the greatest trick the devil ever performed was to convince the world he didn’t exist. I disagree. The greatest trick the devil ever performed was to convince people to believe in the "literal interpretation" of the Bible. He must have had a good belly laugh when people accepted this oxymoron. All texts require interpretation – and all texts have several interpretations. Scientific texts may be written so that they can have very few interpretations – but even this statement is not entirely accurate, since scientists often argue over the interpretation of data. But most other texts have many more interpretations – as many as there are people, and readings by each of those people. Which is not to say that those interpretations should not be in context or not have a family resemblance to each other, because they should (or else they will be bad readings). You know you have a bad reading of something if you have to ignore some other part of the overall text for that reading to work.
4. The word "myth" had taken on a negative meaning since the ascension of science as "the" way of knowing about the world. But science can only tell us about the world below the human level of reality. Myth, poetry, art, religion – these all speak of things above and including the human. We need to stop thinking that a "myth" does not have the same value as science – this is a prejudice of modern-day scientific thinking. Too many people think science is the only way of knowing about things – meaning, for them, if the Bible is of any value, it must be scientific as well. But science as we currently understand and use it was developed 1500 years after the last book of the Bible was written. And scientific history (history as we now understand and practice it) was developed at the same time. So, the Bible has been falsely attributed to being a work of science and history in the modern sense. But this takes away from the value and truth of the Bible, as we see from Aristotle’s distinction (Aristotle actually uses the word "myth" in his definition, not fiction – I too have been guilty here of modernizing things and causing confusion, since fiction too is a modern idea in the era of scientific thinking). Basically, we need to do away with our modern-day prejudices against ways of knowing about the world other than science. And equally, we need to stop using modern-day usages and understandings of words and ideas for texts outside that time-context. The Bible is not science, nor is it history in the modern sense of the term – though it certainly is history in the ancient sense, as well as mythology in the best sense of the term, meaning it is a source of truth. But truth is different from scientific fact.
5. I am concerned with the lie of the Bible being science and history in the modern sense precisely because this lie has alienated more people from Christianity than anything else. And it is a lie perpetuated and preached from pulpits everywhere. Anyone with the scientific evidence before them will realize that as a work of science, the Bible is one of the least accurate texts ever written. Now, if the Bible is scientifically unfactual (untrue), then its truth must be questioned in other areas – if scientific truth is how we measure all things. And many people do indeed do this, which is why they end up rejecting the Bible – and Christianity. And it does not help when defenders of the scientific facticity of the Bible use outright lies to support their position (like saying fossil ages are determined by the geological level they are in, and that geological levels’ ages are determined by the fossils they have – which is an outright lie). Those who knowingly use lies to support their positions both know their position is weak, and are bearing false witness. They are of the devil’s party, and are helping to drive more people from Christianity.
But if the Bible is myth, it is true – and it is also not at all in conflict with science, or the truths science uncovers. The devil trembles when I say this, for fear you might understand: there is no conflict between the truth of the Bible and the fact that the universe is 15 billions years old, born in a big bang that gave rise to an earth 4.5 billion years ago, on which life arose 3.5 billion years ago, and which evolved into all the living forms, including humans, through entirely natural means. The meaning and truth of the Bible is not lost if we reject the lies of the sciences of creationism or intelligent design, and accept rather the truth of evolution. In fact, too many people have already been lost to the truth of the Bible because of the lie of creationism. The proponents of creationism as science and intelligent design are very much of the devil’s party – perpetuating lies that drive people from the Bible’s truth and meaning. Their master would be proud.
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