Sebelum kita melihat lebih jauh (meng-kritisi kritik) Skeptic's Annotated Bible (SAB), kita perlu melihat terlebih dahulu latar belakang si pembuat SAB ini, yaitu: Steve Wells, sehingga kita bisa lebih memahami motivasi dan tujuan ybs membuat SAB ini.
Berikut kutipannya dan tanggapan saya (dalam bentuk wawancara)
How did
you come to be non-religious? Were you raised that way, or did you have a
deconversion experience?
I was
raised in a non-religious environment, with an agnostic father and a vaguely
Protestant mother. By the time I was twelve, I considered myself an atheist and
I argued with anyone with any form of religious belief. It always seemed
obvious to me that God was imaginary and religion was only superstition.
But
then, after graduating from high school, I read the New
Testament. I didn’t immediately believe it, of course, but I was
taken by the personality and sayings of Jesus. I was primed and ready to
believe, and when it comes to religion, that’s all it takes.
While I
was in college, my older sister became a Catholic, and she and I had many long
conversations about religion. I began to attend mass occasionally with her, and
while I didn’t actually believe any of it, I started to admire the teaching and
tradition of the Catholic Church. Before I knew it, I had convinced myself that
I actually believed it, and decided that I wanted to become a Catholic priest.
This was
in the seventies, and the Church was still trying to figure itself out after
the Second Vatican Council. I wasn’t interested in being a new Catholic; I
wanted the old Church, with the old mass in Latin and the theology of St.
Thomas Aquinas. So I entered a traditionalist seminary, which is where I
started to lose my faith.
I began
to argue with the seminary professors about the doctrines of the Church. How
could there be no salvation outside the Church? Does that mean my family is
going to hell, along with all other non-traditionalist Catholics (which is
pretty much everyone)? I had problems with nearly every teaching, but it was
the idea of hell that did me in.
So I
left the seminary, but I remained in the Church. A few years later I was
married with four kids, all of which were baptized Catholics. But by the time
our last child was born, my faith was pretty much gone. One day while returning
from a camping trip (I still remember the exact moment), I told my wife,
Carole, that I no longer believed any of it and I wasn’t going to pretend any
longer.
Poor
Carole (who was raised a traditionalist Catholic) was pretty upset over that.
She got out all our catechisms and theology books, saying she was going to
convince me that I wrong. That lasted about a week or so, and then she decided
she didn’t believe any of it either. We’ve both lived a lot happier ever after.
What
made you start up the SAB? Why do
you think it’s a necessary
resource?
I
started the SAB while trying to talk my sister (the
one who had previously converted to Catholicism) out of becoming a Jehovah’s
Witness.
You see,
I’d never actually read the Bible before, not all the way
through, anyway. Oh, I tried back when I supposedly believed in the darned
thing, but I just couldn’t make it through Leviticus. But I decided it had to
be done to keep my sister from becoming a JW.
It
didn’t work, of course. She became a JW anyway, and she still is to this day.
But I managed to finish reading the Bible, and I was shocked
with what I read.
I
started to highlight the interesting stuff: yellow for absurdity, red for
cruelty, green for contradictions, blue for sex, etc. And then it occurred to
me. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? Why hasn’t a skeptic created an
annotated version of the Bible with all the interesting stuff
highlighted? And with that idea, the SAB was born.
I
originally hoped (and still do) to create a print version, but then the
internet came along and I knew it would work there. So I created the SAB website in November of 1999 and have
been working on it ever since.
What do
you tell religious people – Christians, for instance – when they ask you why
they should read your version of their texts?
Well,
it’s not really my version. It’s just the Bible, with my unimportant
remarks attached. The important thing is for people, believers and skeptics, to
read the Bible and to think about
what they’ve read.
I try to
highlight the things that would be of most interest to someone who is trying to
decide what to make of the Bible. Is it a good book?
Could it have been inspired by a kind and loving God? Does it contain any
contradictions? Does it conflict with science and history? What does it say
about women, homosexuality, and family values?
If after
reading the Bible a person decides to believe it
is the Word of God, well and good. But a sane, kind, intelligent person is
unlikely to do so.
You’ve
also done the Koran and the Book of Mormon. Do you see any commonalities in
argument across the texts?
Yes,
there are many similarities. Joseph Smith tried hard to make the Book
of Mormon sound like
the Bible –
way too hard, in fact. Mark Twain said that if you took the
and-it-came-to-passes out of the Book of Mormon, it would
be nothing more than a pamphlet.
The Quran is the only book I know of that
might even be crueler than the Bible. It is a short, very
repetitive book that can be summed up with these words: “And for the
disbelievers, Allah has prepared a painful doom.” Of course that is the same
message as the Bible and the Book
of Mormon (Believe or
be damned), but theQuran is much more explicit about it.
TANGGAPAN SAYA:
Kesan pertama yang saya tangkap dari kutipan wawancara tersebut adalah: Steve Wells (SW) bertumbuh tanpa dukungan yang cukup (proper support) dari keluarga alamiah dan keluarga keduanya.
Memiliki orang tua yang 'non-relijius' jelas membuat SW harus membentuk pattern berimannya sendiri, dan ini membutuhkan effort dan kesempatan ekstra dibandingkan mereka yang memiliki orang tua yang 'relijius'. Memang ada pengecualian-pengecualian yang berlawanan dengan statement di atas, tapi secara umum kita tentu setuju peribahasa: 'buah jatuh tidak jauh dari pohonnya'. Keluarga keduanya, yaitu teman-teman dan seminari Katolik konservatif ternyata tidak cukup untuk membentuk pola keberimanan ybs, bahkan membuat ybs jatuh ke 'dekat pohon' yaitu dunia non-relijius, antara lain akibat doktrin non-Alkitabiah seperti tersebut di atas yang tentu sangat disayangkan ke-masih-beradaan-nya di masa kini.
Sebagai 'bekas mahasiswa seminari', ybs kemudian mengembangkan dirinya sebagai kritikus Alkitab (dan 2 kitab suci lainnya), dengan memakai pendekatannya sendiri, yaitu: hanya memperhatikan hal-hal yang menarik perhatiannya. Ini sudah jelas merupakan cara memakai Alkitab yang keliru (bnd. 2 Timotius 3:16) sehingga tidak mengherankan apabila output-nya pun menjadi begitu 'mengarah' dan tendensius pada hal-hal yang memang SW-sentris (yaitu pada apa yang memang sudah menjadi syak/hipotesis ybs).
Lewat SAB, SW mengajak komunitas Kristen untuk melihat apakah Alkitab adalah buku yang baik (diinspirasi oleh Tuhan yang baik dan mengasihi, ada-tidaknya kontradiksi dan konflik dengan sains dan sejarah, dan selaras dengan pemahaman modern tentang perempuan, homoseksualitas, dan nilai-nilai keluarga). Hal ini tentu merupakan ajakan yang baik, namun menjadi tidak baik saat ajakan tersebut sudah 'diarahkan'.
Dan pernyataan tentang manusia yang 'waras', 'baik', dan 'terpelajar' telah menutup semua kesempatan berdiskusi saat ybs telah merasa dirinya superior ketimbang manusia-relijius, yang - tentu saja - dianggapnya: sinting, jahat, dan bodoh.
Untuk itulah saya tergerak untuk meluruskan penyesatan yang telah dimulai oleh pemikiran-pemikiran SW tersebut, paling tidak agar yang miring itu menjadi lurus kembali, dan bukannya miring ke arah yang berlawanan.
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