Fundamentalists appear to be people who lack any imagination. They believe that books written many centuries and millennia ago, often by people who didn't even personally know the characters they were writing about, and often with conflicting positions are somehow the work of God and thus are not open to interpretation.
This is particularly funny considering the fact that none of them are written in English, yet most American fundamentalists quote their passages in English, which is by definition an interpretation. Taking it literally is impossible unless you understand the original language and meaning of those words at that time. Think of how the word "gay" has changed meaning in just the past century. And who asks, "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" anymore? Shakespeare is wonderful, but his English ain't so cool, and cats can't always dig his phat rap anymore.
Headlines read, "Giants crush Seahawks." Do we really want to take that literally? Without a written history of the times, this simple headline sounds outright cruel and far fetched. If you're not interpreting, then you're not getting the real message.
Many fundamentalists don't even follow the simple, educated process of reading multiple translations to compare and contrast the texts. This also means that typos are taken literally. Typos exists in all publications and the Bible is no exception.
But then there also are the seemingly silly bits in the Christian Bible (using The New American Bible translation for my references), such as the fact that the Earth was created in seven days. I've heard some suggest that a "day" to God is different than our 24-hour day, but it seems odd that God wouldn't have known better since his audience and "transcriber" lived in a world in which a day didn't last millions of years.
Of course, God works in mysterious ways, a catchall statement meaning that God makes no sense to the religious folks either. Perhaps God just has a bigger sense of humor than we imagine. After all, he managed to create a physical universe that our tools and instruments and intellect can show must be billions of years old, having taken millions of years to create the Earth as we know it today, but it really only took 144 hours. Now that's what I call productivity.
In Genesis 1:11-12, God said, "The earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it. God saw how good it was." But then religious folks will tell me that some of God's "good" plants are really bad. For example, we have poppies, marijuana, kava, tobacco, hemlock, peyote and more that are illegal even if God created them and found them to be good. Good Christians are locking up more people in American prisons just for agreeing with God. Go figure! The road to hell, well you know the rest…
Right after God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, even though most readers can only find nine of them, he also spoke about how to treat your slaves (Exodus 21). Apparently, slavery was okay by God. This is followed by more nice laws, such as "A kidnapper, whether he sells his victim or still has him when caught, shall be put to death. Whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:16-17) But if it's a slave who dies, then the owner shall be punished, and if the slave doesn't die, well, no problemo, "If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property." (Exodus 21:20)
Catholics often eat pork, especially ham (a specialty on Easter, perhaps designed to thumb their noses at Jews on the day Jesus rose from being executed by the powerful Jews and Romans), yet God clearly wrote, "and the pig, which does indeed have hoofs and is clovenfooted, but does not chew the cud and is therefore unclean for you."
How many fundamentalist women, after their monthly menstrual cycle do the following: "On the eighth day, take two turtledoves or two pigeons and brings them to the priest at the entrance of the meeting tent. The priest shall offer up one of them as a sin offering and the other as a holocaust. Thus shall the priest make atonement before the Lord for her unclean flow." (Leviticus 15:28-30)
The New Testament has some nice bits, too. Jesus said, "You have heard the commandment, 'You shall not commit adultery.' What I say to you is: anyone who looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his thoughts. If your right eye is your trouble, gouge it out and throw it away! Better to lose part of your body than to have it all cast into Gehenna." (Matthew 5:27-29) I don't know what Gehenna is, but it must be nasty if poking out our eyes for checking out the babes is better than it.
Our courts require people to swear an oath on a bible, yet Jesus said, "What I tell you is: do not swear [as in oath, not in foul language, perhaps open to interpretation since this is English after all] at all. Do not swear by heaven (it is God's throne)… Say, 'Yes' when you mean 'Yes' and 'No' when you mean 'No.' Anything beyond that is from the evil one." (Matthew 5:34-37)
When contemplating the war in Iraq, lead by a fundamentalist Christian, one has to wonder how Christians read Jesus's spoken words: "You have heard the commandment, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' But what I say to you is: offer no resistance to injury. When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other." (Matthew 5:39) Followed by, "Do not lay up for yourselves an earthly treasure. Months and rust corrode, thieves break in and steal…. You cannot give yourself to God and money." (Matthew 6:19-24) And, "Treat others the way you would have them treat you: this sums up the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12). And then Jesus said, "Whoever makes himself lowly, becoming like this child, is of greatest importance in that heavenly reign." (Matthew 18:4). And he reiterated, "It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)
Does any of this sound like a rich nation attacking a poor nation, without U.N. approval because countries are "either with us or against us"? There's no turning of the cheek. There's no lack of greed. We attack without being attacked, yet would never accept being occupied ourselves by a foreign military despite our own record of greatness and nastiness.
Well, that's enough on that topic. Literal readings of the Bible or Koran simply seem fraught with peril and often put many of us in peril.