Sunday, September 19, 2010

You can't make this stuff up - even if you try (conservatives to edit Bible to remove liberal bias)

sometimes a story comes along that appears too good to be true.  Like one that conforms to all our biases and preconceptions.  Like "yeah, that's what the cons/neo-cons/tea-partyrs/etc *really* think"  And then you find out that it is authored by the Yes Men or the Onion or a like web-site.

Like the following link, from The Chicago Dope:  "Texas School Board removes words of Jesus from the Bible," because they are too liberal.  The text containing Jesus' words (according to the site) are   to be replaced with references to Ayn Rand.  Now that detail surely shows that the story is over the top, right?  Not quite on a par with The Onion, but up there in the same range.

However, proving that wing-nuttery knows no bounds, we find a story from December of last year, that there are conservatives who, yes, want to remove Jesus' words (at least some of them) from the Bible, because of "liberal bias."  Our good friends at Conservapedia are crowd-sourcing a new compilation of the Bible (I hesitate to call it a "translation") so they can remove the "liberal bias."  The MSNBC article identifies one passage that the Conservapedia crowd wants to delete -- The passage in Luke 23:34, Jesus's forgiveness of those who crucified Him (But Jesus was saying, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.).  In regards to the reasoning involved with this new effort, Andy Schlafly is quoted:
  "Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it's professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible..." 

No, you can't make this stuff up, even if you try.