The recent letter to the editor [“The Bible Matters,” July 12], about the primacy of the Bible is truly horrifying. The writer states: “The Bible is the very word of God. It is the final authority on all matters of faith and life. The Bible is both infallible and inerrant.”
The Bible was written by people in a time when humans were still scratching in the dirt and knew absolutely nothing about the world, no knowledge of how anything works, from biology to physics, and virtually everything else in the known universe. Yet it is infallible and should be taken on faith? Faith is only required when no evidence exists.
But worse, the Bible is riddled with 1,312 passages sanctioning violence and cruelty, and not just the Old Testament. Jesus even uses words that invoke the slaughter commanded by Moses at Mount Sinai: “Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword. I am sent to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law” (Matthew 10:34-35).
Here’s just one more example from Samuel 15:3, referring to the Amalekites. “Now go and smite and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
The Bible has been used to justify slaughter, oppression and violence from the day it was written. We certainly do not need it in our schools. Our schools need to teach tolerance, respect, and compassion if we are ever to have a peaceful world.
Debbie Kates
Greenfield