MY FELLOW columnist Ian Boyne has (not unexpectedly) drawn the ire of fundamentalist Christians as he replays the attacks that the so-called new atheists make against Christianity. But Ian must not overdo it; every age has its militant atheists. It is the modern mass media that make this recent crop seem so much more convincing.

The substance of the arguments of these 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' (as Boyne calls the main ones) is hardly new, or at least, not to students of mainstream theology. Using very similar arguments, over the last 150 years, mainstream biblical scholars have indeed discredited the sort of literal interpretation of the Bible in which fundamentalist Christians engage.

Discrediting evolution

Fundamentalists believe that every word of the Bible in the Old and New Testaments is literally, historically and scientifically true, trumping all modern archaeological and natural science. That is why they use the early Genesis stories to 'discredit' the theory of evolution and the whole science of carbon-dating (which ages Earth in the hundreds of millions of years, while fundamentalists claim that creation took place about 6,000 years ago).

Despite their undeniable reality, fun-damentalists cannot admit any inconsisten-cies and contradictions within the Bible and between the Bible and other sources. New Atheists and modern mainstream biblical scholars use these contradictions to come to quite different conclusions. The atheists conclude that since the Bible contradicts itself, it proves that God does not exist; modern biblical theologians conclude that since literal interpretations contradict themselves, it proves that fundamentalism is the wrong way to interpret the Bible, and they have developed modern exegetical methods (hermeneutics) to find out the real meaning of biblical texts.

And so, far from demolishing Christianity, the arguments of the New Atheists really demolish fundamentalist Christianity, which is decidedly not the same thing.

Lumping christians

In Boyne's first column on this subject (September 6, 2009), he writes that New Atheist Richard Dawkins "has angered Christians for years by saying he cannot see how any educated person can believe in God. He says the evidence for evolution is too overwhelming and coercive for any person who claims to be educated to deny that evidence and say he does not believe in evolution". Dawkins' comments would not anger Catholic Christians at all, since we have no problem with the theory of evolution.

Boyne must not make the mistake of lumping all Christians - including fundamentalists - into one group. In my way of thinking, what Dawkins is really saying is that he cannot see how any educated person can be a fundamentalist Christian.

In his second sally (September 13, 2009), Boyne states that some scientists have "discredited the Bible's claim to be historically accurate". That statement exposes Boyne, the fundamentalist. Where does the Bible claim to be a history book? The Bible is the Word of God - it is fundamentally a theology book - and its contents are 100 per cent true, but not all truth is scientific truth and historical truth; there can be profound truth in poetry and in allegory and in myth, and the Bible has these abundantly. It is fundamentalists who assert that the Bible must be mostly history and science.

Another difference between fundamen-talists and modern Bible scholars is how each understands the mechanism by which biblical books were "revealed". Funda-mentalists seem to believe that God dictated each book to its human writer, who had little personal input, while modern biblical theologians have a more incarnational understanding - scripture is "inspired by God but written by the hand of man", which means it appears at a particular moment in history containing some of the culture and prejudices of its times. The theology of earlier books is more primitive than later ones, showing "development of doctrine" as humanity's appreciation of God grows. Fundamentalists believe that all parts of scripture are equally true.

God's Old Testament people - and even New Testament ones - "saw through a glass darkly". Let us not respond to the primitive ethics in the Bible by throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The challenge is to worship God with the intelligence he gave us, and to approach the Bible as mature Christians.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.