Jagella

1. Make your book very long. That way you’ll keep both believer and skeptic busy with its unwieldy load of content.

2. Put lots of weird stuff in your book. Dragons, unicorns, and even ghosts will pique people’s interest.

3. Include a god or two in your book. Males gods work better than goddesses because you can then subjugate women. Keep your god as vague as you can so he’ll be hard to pin down by skeptics. You can cover many theological bases by saying your god is “one� then split him up into two or more “persons� to satisfy both monotheists and polytheists!

4. Offer people something in your book. Some paradise in some unknowable place seems to work with a lot of people. Tell them that they cannot check if this paradise exists because they need to die to get there! That should dissuade the curious.

5. For those who aren't snagged by your offer of paradise, threaten them with punishment for not believing the stuff in your book. Make the supposed punishment something your god inflicts, and make it eternal for even more oomph!

6. Market the book! As any successful business knows, you’ve got to get the word out on your product, and your book is no different. Make sure it’s attractively bound—leather looks nice—and use all the latest technologies to distribute it. Just be careful to avoid the obvious problem of reconciling the omnipresent trait of the god you put in your book with needing to go places to sell your book.

7. Write your book in one or more languages—ones most of the book’s readers don’t know. That way mistakes you make in your book can be attributed to “translation errors.�

8. Make up a lot of confusing concepts to include in your book. You’ll keep the skeptics so busy trying to figure out what you’re talking about that they’ll not see the obvious fabrications in the text.

9. Borrow myths from other religions. People just love myths, and the tried and true myths should not be overlooked! Just be careful to alter those myths to your own purposes.

10. Claim that your book is “inerrant.� It has errors, of course, but people don’t need to know that. Your god can’t be perfect while authoring an errant book, now can he?

11. Include boatloads of prophecies. People eat that stuff up. But be very careful: It would be so embarrassing to get a prediction wrong. To be safe, you can claim you predicted something that already happened before it happened! Moreover, you should never say when a prophecy will be “fulfilled.� Your gullible followers might believe your book for centuries without getting wise to your trick!

12. Defend your book! Recruit “apologists� to tell people that despite all evidence to the contrary, your book is indeed true. These apologists will need at least a superficial knowledge of science, history, philosophy, and rhetoric, of course.

13. Make sure your book has a nice name. Include words like “sacred� or “holy� in the title. That way people who are ignorant of its true contents will laud it.

14. If people ask why they should believe that your book is true, tell them that the god that authored it cannot lie. If they ask why they should believe in your god, then tell them that he’s in the book!

15. Keep your book going. Despite the pack of lies in that book and all the trouble it will cause, never admit it’s not true. You’d be amazed at the people that “keep the faith.�

Kydka

lol, I wanted to write something like this too.

Twyll The ChyllTyran

that's how to write a book of evil...

why would anyone want to do that?

how to write a holy book...

1) realize everything is nothing.
2) realize that you are not the only one to know the truth.
3) write about it, in as short amount of space as possible.

Aravnah Ornan

It also gives you an out when your followers dare to think critically about your book. When they reach a conclusion you don't like, you can simply say, "If you haven't read the book in the original Ancient Swiss, you're not qualified to make comments like that."

Also, include prophecies that are so vague and all-encompassing that they cannot possibly fail to be fulfilled. A good example is "wars and rumours of war," which ranks right up there with "Yea, verily, a celebrity or politician shall say something really stupid, and thus shall ye know that this prophecy hath been fulfilled."

16. Include widely varying and even mutually exclusive sets of infallible and universal dogmas, so that your holy book supports whatever conclusion you have in mind. For example, if you screw up, then G-d is a G-d of mercy; it says so right in the New Testament. Praise! But if someone you don't like screws up, then G-d is a G-d of justice; it says so right in the Old Testament. Praise!

Vinnie

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Goes good with my article:

How to Harmonize Your Holy Book

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/harmonize.html

Maybe we can co-write one of those idiot guide things

Fifteen Key Methodological Principles for Successful Exegesis:





[1] Assume the Biblical Works are not Like other similar Ancient Works Which All contain Errors (e.g. Josephus). Also assume your Holy Book is true while other holy books are false and apply different standards to each.

[2] Assume the verity of the Bible and Assume it is a Valid Practice to Interpret Scripture in Light of Other Scripture as if it was all Consistent.

[3] When Moral Atrocities come up (10th plague, God murdering children and so on) tell the skeptic that he is in no position to judge God. Then require that the skeptic supply you with a Proven Objective Moral Standard.

[4] To defend inerrancy, all you need to do is come up with a logically possible solution. It doesn't matter how improbable it may be. If it can be harmonized in any way imaginable, it is not a demonstrable error. Be creative as we are dealing with a "high context" society.

[5] Assume the Bible is all one work and not rather a collection of individual books. Canonization has been proven and can be ignored in ALL discussions on the Bible.

[6] God wrote the Bible and God can't make mistakes. So even if two passages look like a plain example of an error, try real hard for Jesus to harmonize them.

[7] Take into account ancient written conventions. If it was the norm then to make things up and lie in written works, false statements in the Bible are not really errors since this literary practice was the norm at the time.

[8] Skeptics have the burden of proof. No errors have been demonstrated in 2,000 years. The Bible shows its divine origins by 'mediating the sacred' effectively and it purports to be a work of nonfiction. It must be granted the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise. It is innocent until proven guilty.

[9] An incomplete report is not false. It doesn't matter how many details one author leaves out. Even if it is very unlikely that this author would have left all the details in question out, it is still technically not an error.

[10] General statements do not necessarily mean universal principles. You are free to pick and choose, at will, what you want to interpret as binding versus what has been "fulfilled by Christ". You are free to choose what you feel only applied to a certain culture and is simply no longer applicable. You need not supply a methodology for such a procedure.

[11] Do not trust skeptic, Biblical Scholar or liberal Christian interpretations. Only a person of spirit can understand the word written by the Spirit. Fallen man cannot understand the word of God. Biblical Criticism is God-hating secular communism and nothing more. Liberal Christians are spiraling to this dark side.

[12] Ignore worldview differences and that the Bible was written thousands of years ago by authors with many different beliefs and different sets of background knowledge. Read the Bible as if you would read a modern book written in our own era. God would have made sure it is adaptable and readable to all cultural situations.

[13] When science errors are posed, point out evolution is just a theory. Say that half a wing is no good. Point out that dinosaur and human footprints have been found together and that a young earth has now been proven by scientists.

[14] Ignore textual errors and the fact that God let his word be altered and corrupted through time. Despite not having any autographs or very early (50-100 years) copies of any of the works and no way of knowing what many passages originally looked like, point out that we have thousands of copies of later copies of the Bible.

[15] Ignore all relevant philological studies into the culture and language in question. Lacking formal expertise, simply use a lexicon casually to reinterpret anything that seems to create an incongruity in scripture. God will certainly guide you.

Jagella

I like your responses especially 7 above. In The Case for Christ one of the radical, fundamentalist Christian apologists (no doubt unbiased) that Straub interviews used just such a tact to "explain" an obvious error in the Bible! Talk about intellectual dishonesty.

Jagella

Tubby Lardmore

And don't forget the promise of carpetloads of virgins waiting lustily in Paradise.

skepticdude

That's just for Muslim extremists.

But then, that would create a contradiction, and we can't have that

My bad :Cheeky:

Vinnie

Shit, now we are talking. Where do I sign up for my conversion?

CX

While this is terribly clever and amusing, we in BC&H have no sense of humor we're aware of. I think this might be better off in humor. Peace out, dog.