How does one go about removing *all* bias from an interpretation? This reminds me of a discussion I had with a christian who believed in the truth of the bible. Since I'd had a few before, I refused to go through the traditional McDowell-esque hit and run tactics, and phrased one question; "How would an individual today, with no knowledge of the bible or the christian religion, arrive at faith in either the bible or jesus?" Basically this was an attempt to show the believer that without approaching the bible with unreasonable assumptions (the existance of god, divine inspiration, inerrancy/infallibility) there was not sufficient reason to conclude these things.
The circularity of the traditional christian stance is intellectually appalling. Roger, in your post that was quoted earlier, you mention that 2 conflicting interpretations conflict only because one or both did not include all of the relevant information available in the bible. This statement can only make sense if we assume that a) the bible offers complete information. If all conflicting interpretations are resolved when all relevant information is applied, and all conflicting interpretations can be resolved, then we must assume that all relevant information is supplied; and b) that all of the information held in the bible is true. This must be believed since Roger does believe that there exits a 'legitimate' interpretation to the bible's tenets, that this interpretation is *true* (or truth, as the case may be); since the interpretation is based on the complete information found in the bible, we must therefore assume that all information found therein is true.
The interesting part comes in about here. The "perfect harmony" of the bible is supposed to be a testament to it's divine origins; but as we see above, we can only arrive at the conclusion that the bible is perfectly harmonious *and* true, if we assume that it is true (and therefore, necessarily harmonious.) If this is the case, as I ask of every christian who accepts the truth of the bible, why not the vedas?
> RH
> There are good interpreters who follow strict rules of interpretation and
> others who are not so demanding. Since you seem to be in the latter group,
> I'm surprised you would be so harsh on them.
Individuals who go about interpreting literary works do not necessarily do so for the purpose of arriving at some sort of objective truth. Given the difficulty of controlling variation, reproducibility concerns, etc., literary interpretation is unsuited for "searching for objective truth". What literary interpretation can give us are different ways of understanding the face value meaning of literary works. An interpretation is more or less valid if it is more or less supported by the work in question. It is by no means an exact science. However, at no point is it possible for the interpreter to claim a "no-bias" interpretation.
As to bias, I dont think the presence of bias automatically rules out the possibility of a valid interpretation (remember however, interpretations are not representative of an objective truth; they are representative of legitimate perceptions of a work [which again, is subject to bias]). However, an unreasonable bias should make one suspect. In my opinion, it is the christian who has an unreasonable bias. Given the breadth of human history, and more specifically, human religious history, the bible-believing christian arrives at the conclusion that the bible is the inerrant and inspired word of god. Why is this unreasonable? First, many of these inerrantists will admit that there are face value errors. The same sort of errors that plague religious documents throughout human history. Second, it has been shown that no major tenet in the bible was particularly unique; in fact, many of the 'tenets' can be found in neighboring tribal belief systems from the time. So not only do we have a book that has some "surface" errors, we have a book which isn't even very original, that shares the same sort of errors as were common from the time; are the sort of qualities we would expect from the work of an omni* deity in his revelation to mankind? Third, we have the enormous gap of time between the believer and what is believed. In our own time we see religious movements evolve into positions utterly at odds with what they started out as; we see textual editing (when it comes to 'holy documents'), addendums, and all sorts of not-the-sort-of-thing-you'd-expect-from-a-divinely-inspired-book activities. Fourth, we have the history of the christian religion. We have knowledge of rather suspicious activity regarding the transmission of information from it's earlier 'fathers'. We have information about how information was suppressed which was at odds with what these christians believed. In other words, an active history of stifling unfavorable information. Last, and perhaps most telling, we have the multitude of schisms, splits, and denominations based on this "divinely inspired and inerrant work". It wouldn't be so bad if these schisms were limited to the fringe of christendom; but *mainstream* christianity is itself a hodge-podge of denominations. Christians have had nearly 2000 years with this supposedly "inerrant and divinely inspired" work and they *STILL* quibble over which books are a part of it, what those books mean, what is required for salvation, etc. Not exactly the state of affairs one would expect from a perfect revelation.
So of course, we have biases. All of us do, in every endeavor we engage in, it is impossible to remove the personal factor from anything we do. What is of issue however, is whether our biases reasonable? I believe that the circularity of the christian position, coupled with the 5 reasons I have listed above, are sufficient to show which "bias" is unreasonable.