conservatizing the Bible
The Conservative Bible Project has drawn a fair amount of attention, mostly a combination of scorn and ridicule. Ron Chusid (Liberal Values) writes that conservatives' CBP efforts are "comparable to how they have rewritten the works of the founding fathers to deny the existence of separation of church and state," and Appletree's gordo wonders:
Why assume that every single translation of the Bible is wrong, just because none of them mesh with your own political beliefs? Isn't it more likely that your beliefs are simply unChristian? If you have to translate the Bible with a political outcome in mind, doesn't that imply that any unbiased translation would contradict your personal politics?
Mike Lux notes at HuffPo that "Conservative Christians have always had a lot of trouble explaining a great many passages of the Bible, so I guess this is their way of getting rid of them" and lists "a few they will find especially troublesome to translate." Of his choices, Isaiah 10:1-2 is my favorite:
Woe to those who enact unjust decrees, who compose oppressive legislation to deny justice to the weak and to cheat the humblest of my people of fair judgment, to make widows their prey and to rob the orphan.
Perhaps conservatives think that they will never be punished for "protecting" marriage and military service from the LGBT community, rebuffing the huddled masses at our border, cutting welfare programs for the sick and needy, raising taxes on the poor while cutting them for the rich, torturing prisoners, and lying about it all. Their own Bible says otherwise, though, which is oddly comforting for this atheist. Kazim at Atheist Experience writes that the CBP "may or may not be a joke, but enough of the regulars there take it seriously that it looks like it's taken on a life of its own." Then come the tough questions:
What difference does it make whether you take a 2000 year old book and claim that it is infallible as written literally, or you retranslate it and claim that the translation is infallible, or you make up some entirely new bullshit and claim THAT'S infallible? It's all bullshit, and the beauty of this Conservapedia project is how close they come to flatly admitting that it doesn't matter.