We are living in strange political times. Politicians running for president try "...to discern God's calling..." when making political decisions, are anointed as "kings" by fundamentalist ministers or claim that "...our civil laws have to comport with a higher law, God's law". This is all somewhat strange since the separation of Church and State is embedded in Article VI of the US Constitution. Since politicians are claiming divine justification for their actions, it is fair to ask some questions about the basis for that claim.
In science, hypothetical claims are evaluated against a null hypothesis. Scientists ask what is the evidence for a claim such as "divine guidance" and if positive evidence can't be produced then the null hypothesis is considered more likely. In this case, the null hypothesis is that divine guidance does not exists and, more strongly, that the people who claim it are delusional.
I know many wonderful people who are deeply religious but would never claim divine guidance for their actions. If they read this post, I hope they are not offended. But, by claiming authority from God, politicians have forced the question of the basis for that authority. If we're going to make an unbiased inquiry, we have to start from the assertion that it doesn't exist. Then, we can let the evidence take us where it will.
Luckily, PBS Nova has an excellent documentary that looks carefully at the basis for the Bible. Since the Bible is the direct link US politicians claim between themselves and God, in addition to being the justification for policy positions from Abortion to Gay Marriage to Climate Change, looking at the basis for the Bible is the obvious place to start.
To make a very long a contentious story as short as possible, there really is no hard evidence for divine origin of the Bible. The Old Testament was written in Babylon after the Temple of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians. It was written by men in exile to confront a nagging question: why did their God, Yahweh, forsake them and allow the Temple to be destroyed. The answer was that the Jewish people had, in addition to Yahweh, worshiped false gods before him (recall the second Commandment Thou Shalt have no other gods before me). Let's be clear, this was a guess about why the Temple was destroyed, a rationalization for military failure.
Modern scholarship has been unable to determine by whom or when the Ten Commandments were written but they do appear in the Hebrew Bible, which was written by men in exile. In other words, the Bible is its own source of authority for the word of God. Since there was no written language before the Hebrew Bible (written language being a great contribution of the Jewish people), that's the way it has to be. The Bible is the first piece of written history. It has some accurate parts and some inaccurate parts (described fully in the Nova documentary). It was written by historians, by people concerned with reasserting political power in the Middle East.
We still live in a World concerned with the reassertion of political power in the Middle East. It should be no surprise that US politicians invoke the Bible in their quest for political power. It has worked before and was written for just that purpose. On the other hand, it will probably be a mark of maturity if World civilization can ever move beyond this script. Watching the PBS documentary last night, it was difficult for me not to think that we have been fighting the same religious war over and over again for the last 3000 years. This certainly will not end in my lifetime or maybe ever.
Unfortunately, for the time being, the null hypothesis is most likely: Politicians claiming divine guidance are more likely to be delusional men in search of political power over the rest of us.
QUOTATIONS FROM THE PBS DOCUMENTARY
Read more here about the origins of the written Bible and read the entire transcript of the Nova documentary here.
As modern scholars suspect, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, takes its final form during the Babylonian exile. But dwarfed by the mighty temples and giant statues of Babylonian gods, the Israelites must also confront the fundamental question: why did their God, Yahweh, forsake them?
MICHAEL COOGAN: In the ancient world, if your country was destroyed by another country, it meant that their gods were more powerful than your god. And the natural thing to do is to worship the more powerful god, but the survivors continued to worship Yahweh and struggled to understand how this could have happened.
PETER MACHINIST: They resort first to a standard form of explanation, which is found elsewhere in the ancient Near East: "We must have done something wrong to incur the wrath of our God."
WILLIAM DEVER: It's out of this that comes the reflection that polytheism was our downfall; there is, after all, only one God.
NARRATOR: The Israelites abandon the folly of polytheism, monotheism triumphs, and the archaeological evidence proves it.
