Sunday, October 7, 2012

Simple Contradiction or Oxymoron?

I can't seem to make up my mind whether Beal's HuffPo piece, "BibliFact Roundup: Conventional Snippets of Uplift and Hope," is just another religious based contradiction or an oxymoron. The sticking point is that within a fictional work you can still have facts. Within the Harry Potter stories, for example, that Potter was attacked and given a scar on his head would be considered a "fact." Beal seems to be relying rather heavily on this somewhat counter-intuitive approach. There are, of course, other problems with his thinking.

"As we make our way toward the 2012 elections, many feel tossed to and fro by often contradicting claims about what the Bible says on this or that political issue. Most people just don't know the Bible well enough to say whether these claims are right, wrong, correct, incorrect or a matter of interpretation. How can we keep political Biblespeak honest? Inspired by PolitiFact.com, BibliFact roundups aim to do just that."

Actually, as long as the passage being presented exists in one translation/version of the bible or anothernit really can't be "wrong"  or "incorrect" since the whole thing is dependent on "interpretation" to some degree. He inadvertently makes the point himself. 4 out of the 6 claims he exams are evaluated as "yes, but" which means they exist as quoted but are open to interpretation. He implies that this will be the first in a series of biblical fact checking. I am interested in seeing whether he keeps up with it and how he will choose t interpet further examples. That is yet another flaw in the basic premise. It is not any where near an object view but rather is his preferred interpretation of specific passages. That is not "fact checking." I'm leaning towards "BibliFact" being an oxymoron but I'll freely admit that is due to my own bias.

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