Michael Shermer on The argument from scripture

Michael Shermer approaches Scripture as a historian and a sceptic. He argues that the Bible — like the sacred texts of every other religion — is a human product: written, edited, compiled, and canonised by fallible human beings with specific cultural, political, and theological agendas. The process by which the biblical canon was assembled is well-documented by historians, and it is a story of human decision-making, not divine dictation.

Shermer is particularly interested in the psychology of scriptural authority. Why do people treat the Bible as uniquely authoritative while dismissing the equally fervent claims of the Quran, the Vedas, and the Book of Mormon? His answer draws on the psychology of in-group loyalty and cultural transmission: people accept the scripture of the culture they were born into, not because they have independently evaluated its claims but because it was presented to them as truth during the formative period of their development.

He has also written about the hermeneutical problem: the Bible contains passages that endorse slavery, genocide, and the subjugation of women alongside passages of genuine moral beauty. Believers select which passages to emphasise and which to explain away, using their own moral judgment as the filter — which means they are not actually deriving their morality from Scripture but imposing their morality onto it.