Atheists typically don't know a lot
about Christianity. This is true of prominent critics like Richard Dawkins and
PZ Myers, as well as the run-of-the-mill atheists you may stumble across on
YouTube. Indeed, much of the apologetics material available today exists simply
to correct skeptics who have a poor understanding of Christian history and
theology, because their arguments often crumble as soon as you inject some good
scholarship into the debate.
One of the best ways to expose their
ignorance is to tell the skeptics that they share a lot common ground with
fundamentalist Christians on a variety of important issues. This approach
highlights the fatal flaw in their argument by comparing them to the people
they most detest. It's terribly effective.
Having recently reread James White's The King James Only Controversy, I think
there's another, often overlooked, way to expose the fundamentalist tendencies
of the skeptical crowd: compare them to the King James onlyists. Though their
motivations are very different, both groups foolishly believe that some kind of
conspiracy produced the Bible as we have it today, and they often make the same
arguments in support of this thesis.
If you're unfamiliar with the King
James only advocates, they believe, as their name suggests, that the only
trustworthy English translation of the Bible is the King James version. Modern
translations like the NIV or NASB are "corrupt" and were produced to
intentionally distort the text.
Anybody with a cursory understanding of
the textual history of the Bible knows that that's not correct, but atheist are
liable to say something remarkably similar. Richard Carrier, for example,
argues in The Christian Delusion that
many verses that made it into our Bibles "were snuck in later by dishonest
Christians," a point JP Holding called him out on during a debate a few years ago.
Proponents of King James Onlyism are
fond of alleging that such dishonesty was rampant among the scribes who copied
manuscripts that belong to the Alexandrian text-type, because they weren't
utilized by the King James Translators. But as even Bart Ehrman points out in Misquoting Jesus, most of the changes
that were introduced into the text were unintentional--misspellings, slips of
the pen etc. And when the scribes did make intentional changes to the texts
they were copying, it was because they thought they were correcting the
mistakes of previous scribes.
The similarities go deeper, however.
Both atheists and KJV onlyists will note discrepancies between different
manuscripts, often citing the same passages, to support their corruption
charges. The only difference is that the latter mindlessly defend the Textus Receptus. But in either case, we
can rely on New Testament scholar Dan Wallace for an answer: the original
readings of the text are preserved in the extant manuscripts. Moreover, the
textual variants both groups cite are usually insignificant, not affecting any
serious Christian doctrine. There's no reason to believe that no reliable
translation of the Bible exists today, or that the KJV is the superior
translation.
In a roundabout way, White discusses
this similarity in his book, explaining that KJV onlyism makes the practice of
apologetics harder by attacking some of our oldest and best New Testament
witnesses. "In other words, King James Onlyism cripples its adherents
apologetically in a day when such can have devastating results." (p 88)
So be sure to tell your skeptical
friends, their understanding of textual criticism is identical to that of the
crankiest, most irrational, tradition-driven Christians who have ever lived.
Hopefully that will give them pause before attacking the textual reliability of
the New Testament again.
- Will Lawson
