66Moderates seem unwilling to grapple with the
fact that all scriptures contain an extraordinary
amount of stupidity and barbarism that can always
be rediscovered and made holy anew by fundamen-
talists— and there’s no princi ple of moderation
internal to the faith that prevents this. These funda-
mentalist readings are, almost by defi nition, more
complete and consistent— and, therefore, more
honest. The fundamentalist picks up the book and
says, “Okay, I’m just going to read every word of this
and do my best to understand what God wants from
me. I’ll leave my personal biases completely out of
it.” Conversely, every moderate seems to believe
that his interpretation and selective reading of scrip-
ture is more accurate than God’s literal words.
Presumably, God could have written these books
any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be
understood in the spirit of twenty- fi rst- century sec-
ular rationality, He could have left out all those
bits about stoning people to death for adultery or
witchcraft. It really isn’t hard to write a book that
prohibits sexual slavery— you just put in a few lines
like “Don’t take sex slaves!” and “When you fi ght a
war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don’t
rape any of them!” And yet God couldn’t seem to
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