{"id":16458,"date":"2013-08-07T13:10:38","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T17:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=16458"},"modified":"2013-08-07T13:10:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T17:10:38","slug":"bible-for-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/08\/bible-for-brains.html","title":{"rendered":"Bible for Brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p> It saddens me to realize that some may see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/nakedpastor\/2013\/08\/bible-for-brains\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\">David Hayward's latest cartoon<\/a> and think that what it depicts, having a head filled only with a Bible, is a good thing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/08\/wpid-Photo-Aug-7-2013-901-AM.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/08\/wpid-Photo-Aug-7-2013-901-AM.jpg\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>But to think that is to demean the Creator, suggesting that the fact that we have brains which can discern and reason, if we learn how to use them properly, is a flaw, and we were meant to be mindless automatons parrotting Scripture.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, anyone who simply quotes Bible verses at you is not brainless. They are just choosing not to use their brain well. But if they pretend that they are not using their minds to interpret the text, but are simply repeating what it says, they are not telling the truth.<\/p>\n<p>No one really has a Bible for brains. No one can understand the Bible, or even misunderstand it, without brains being involved, brains very much like the ones that were responsible for producing the Biblical literature in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>David's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/nakedpastor\/2013\/08\/bible-for-brains\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\">blog post<\/a> includes many important points about the use and abuse of the Bible in our time, and so do <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/nakedpastor\/2013\/08\/bible-for-brains\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\">click through<\/a> to read the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It saddens me to realize that some may see David Hayward&#8217;s latest cartoon and think that what it depicts, having a head filled only with a Bible, is a good thing. But to think that is to demean the Creator, suggesting that the fact that we have brains which can discern and reason, if we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,139],"tags":[1140,1350,1351,1352,1625,2484,3675],"class_list":["post-16458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-fundamentalism-religion","tag-bible","tag-brain","tag-brains","tag-brainwashing","tag-cartoon","tag-david-hayward","tag-fundamentalism-religion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bible for Brains<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It saddens me to realize that some may see David Hayward&#039;s latest cartoon and think that what it depicts, having a head filled only with a Bible, is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/08\/bible-for-brains.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bible for Brains\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It saddens me to realize that some may see David Hayward&#039;s latest cartoon and think that what it depicts, having a head filled only with a Bible, is\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/08\/bible-for-brains.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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