Quotes About Interpretation

The best way to undermine extremists' insistence that truth is on their side is to argue that theirs is merely one way of looking at things. The only truth is that there is no correct way to interpret scripture. When you open it up like that, you're effectively saying that there is no right answer. And in the absence of a right answer, pluralism is the only option. And pluralism will lead to secularism, and to democracy, and to human rights.

I would argue that no approach to a text is without method—even what you would call literalism and what I call "vacuous literalism." (In

The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there.

A close study of these books, and of history, demonstrates that there is no act of cruelty so appalling that it cannot be justified, or even mandated, by recourse to their pages.

If you believe anything like what the Koran says you must believe in order to escape the fires of hell, you will, at the very least, be sympathetic with the actions of Osama bin Laden.

They believe in the literal truth of the Koran.

literal reading of the Old Testament not only permits but requires heretics to be put to death.

it is actually a powerful distillation of the Muslim worldview.

Hal Lindsey

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything—anything—be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside. The

Why didn't Noah save the dinosaurs, if God told him to bring two of every creature?

Language is the dress of thought.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

He that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist,While he that hears makes fearful actionWith wrinkled brows.Shakesp.King John.

ACCEPTATION  (ACCEPTA'TION)   n.s.[from accept.]1. Reception, whether good or bad. This large sense seems now wholly out of use.

Shakespeare regarded more the series of ideas, than of words; and his language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience.

Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.

That she thought me the prettiest creature she ever beheld. — Creature was her word — We are all creatures, 'tis true: But I think I never was more displeased with the sound of the word Creature, than I was from Lady Anne.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

Life's truths cannot always be reduced to 12-point Times Roman.