Bettina, I wasn't talking about origins--creation/evolution--but rather Biblical interpretation. I know my earlier response to you was pretty harsh, but the truth of the matter is that I don't have much patience with people who distort the Bible in order to discredit it. I guess I have the "tech support" problem: I've made the same point enough times, to enough people, on enough different forums, that I feel everyone should have gotten it by now and anyone who's still confused is stupid.
Beg pardon, if you were the recipient of unjust wrath...
I can't tell if your class is good or not from what you've told me, but it does seem they don't tell you a lot about how to read the Bible, if you can ask me a question like, "Why does the Bible need so much interpretation?" I guess that's to be expected in a Catholic school--I know they used to make a big deal out of having clergy, not laymen, intepret scripture. I don't know where they stand on that these days, but I guess that figures.
Here's the key principle. It's important, as a rational thinker, to be able to judge things fairly--and that means to appreciate their strengths as well as weaknesses. This is true in a lot of places--it's true in politics, it's true in religion, it's true in science, it's true in relationships. What I basically mean by this is that you should investigate things, determine their strengths, see why they make sense to others--and if you're going to discard them, do it gracefully, in full acknowledgement of the value it holds.
For an example in origins (since you seem so interested in the topic), have you ever read arguments by people who only study biology in order to oppose evolution? There's a creationist argument that is like that--people talk about evolution as adding information and thereby breaking the second law of thermodynamics. It's like someone read a physics book only looking for things they could use against evolution--and as soon as they saw something that looked promising, they jumped on it. They didn't take the time to full appreciate the physics or the theory of evolution--and so they end up rejecting something without fully studying it and appreciating its strengths.
Some people do that with the Bible, too, and it peeves me to no end. People read it looking for things that they can use to prove it wrong, and as soon as they see something they can use, they jump on it--and don't take the time to fully appreciate the meaning or the relevance. So they end up rejecting something without fully studying it and appreciating its strengths.
The goal of a thinker should be to strive for twin virtues of open-mindedness and sound judgement. Open-mindedness means pursuing ideas that oppose your own, seeking out the strengths of opposing arguments, really listening to opponents rather than simply dismissing them. Sound judgement means pitting ideas against each other and judging which prevail. It means determining which ideas are stronger, and not being afraid to say you think certain ideas are foolish or outright wrong.
To read anything--an opposing political view, an opposing religious view, an opposing logical argument--and view it with an eye toward criticism, rather than understanding, is to fail as an open-minded thinker. It means you aren't giving the argument a chance--and so you're denying yourself a chance to grow. It means you'll never understand the people who hold the opposing position, and so you'll never be able to reach them and persuade them. And it means you'll never understand their argument, so if they're right, they can't persuade you.
There are people inside, outside, and all around the church who use the Bible in stupid ways--and a lot of the ways critics interpret it are inherited from stupid ways people in the church interpret it. I don't deny that, it's justified. But for you who claim to be a serious thinker... you can do better. It is better to study it fairly, interpret it responsibly. If you reject it, reject it out of sound judgement, not closed-mindedness.
"Why does the Bible need so much interpretation?" It doesn't. It needs
sound interpretation. There's nothing mystical about interpretation--at least, there shouldn't be. It's simply the effort to get meaning out of text.
Historically, and currently, the methods of Biblical interpretation have been inconsistent. In the middle ages, people would ask a question, open the Bible to a random page, and take the first sentence they read as the answer. Some today are hardly better--they memorize a few verses, and when they seek guidance, they sift through memory until they find a verse that seems applicable, and there's their answer. Some take a Bible verse, and use the words to mean anything convenient at the moment--anything they can sound like they mean. Some have even taken to very mystical forms of interpretation, reading something like, "The twelve tribes of Israel were..." and interpreting it by saying, "The twelve tribes are representative of the twelve virtues..." All of these are silly modes of interpretation, in my view.
An overarching rule of interpretation is that a text ought to interpreted as the author intended. If the author intended some text as a riddle or koan, to be puzzled over and sought for deep mystical meaning, then we ought to puzzle over the text and search for deep, mystical meaning--it would be distorting it to do otherwise. If the author intended the text as a historical report, we ought to take it as such. If it was intended as hyperbolic poetry, or sarcasm, or propositional teaching, or whatever... that is how it ought to be taken. (And I can tell you, as someone who studies the Bible, that it wasn't intended as a koan or mystical meditative document. Almost everything in it has an intended point, an idea to communicate--in a particular historical context, to a particular person or group of people, for a particular reason. Those need to be appreciated to give a fair interpretation!)
This principle seems self-evident to me, yet it is amazing how many people approach the Bible without it. Some seem to come at it with the line of thought, "I live in the twenty-first century, and I am engaged in a philosophical debate. Therefore, let me examine this verse in the Bible as if a twenty-first century philosopher had written it in the course of a philosophical debate--placing on it all the cultural expectations of twenty-first century Europe." Is this not as random as opening a page and looking for an answer to a preconceived question? Far better to take the author on his own terms--if he is writing poetry, don't pretend he is writing philosophy. If he lives in the ancient near east, don't pretend he lives in modern Europe!
Here is the overarching rule, then:
Read the Bible in the way that makes the most sense, not the most nonsense. Look for what the author evidently means, not for the answer to a preconceived question. Look for what he is sensibly saying, not for what nonsense and criticism you can make out of his words. Read him on his own terms, not on yours.
In practice, this means...
If stories in the Bible don't teach sensible moral lessons, maybe they weren't intended to teach moral lessons.
If propositions in the Bible are flaming nonsense, look again--maybe they don't say what you think they do.
Take the time to look up the context of any quote. Have the familiarity to understand the style of teaching, and the applicability of different kinds of passages. If, for example, you don't know
why Jesus said, "go, sell all you have and give the money to the poor," don't make up your own meaning ("so it's easier to get to heaven"). Rather, look up the passage, try to understand the worldview of the author and the point he was making, and figure out what his meaning was. Or if you don't have the background or scholastic stamina to do that... ask somebody who has more interest in and experience on the topic.
It is an intellectual conceit to suppose that all your opponents are stupid or psychologically confused. There seem to be a lot of atheists online who feel that all Christians are stupid, or all Christians are merely responding to a psychological need for humanity to not bear ultimate responsibility in the world. But this is conceited, and obviously false. Christianity has a lot of tolerent, thoughtful, intelligent followers. There are people who spend a whole lifetime studying the Bible--and not just pastors, but academics at seminaries. And not pseudo-scholars, but real scholars; I can vouch for them, because I read their work on occasion. These are men and women who are intellectually honest, brilliant, wonderful thinkers. The Christian world is a bigger place than you may have been exposed to, and home to much debate. And if Christians as a whole aren't always brilliant (and God knows they aren't...), there are at least some brilliant people among them.
In light of that, it's foolish to go assuming that the Bible is full of nonsense. And it's more foolish to go reading it by making up foolish interpretations for everything, interpreting by the seat of your pants and looking for things to ridicule. That's just as foolish as studying evolution looking for things that sound silly, or which you can ridicule by taking out of theoretical context. Don't do that. That's not thoughtful criticism, that's bitter mockery.
I worry about you, Bettina... I know you're bitter about losing your mom, and I know you don't like the classes you have to take. But don't let that spill over into your intellectual life--don't be overly cynical and bitter when you study the Bible. Don't suppose that those who take it seriously have never heard the adage, "You can't believe everything you read." You can discard Christianity, you can discard the Bible, but if you do so by distorting it, studying it cynically and bitterly... you aren't doing yourself any intellectual favors.
Hmmmm....something Bin Laden and the clerics have been doing.
I guess you don't really hear it at church since it falls between two more well-known passages. I guess you learn something every day. 
.... o_0 ... 
... are you mocking me? 
)
If anyone can do it I think Drakona would be the one. 