Andy Schlafly does the Bible... again

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And Andy Schlafly saw the Word and said, “That ain’t right!”

It must be nice to be Andy Schlafly. Firstly you get to use Mummy’s money to fund your little on-line hobby and secondly, you get to have your own personal Stepford. In this case, however, it’s facts that enter Stepford all dull and boring and, well, factual and end up shiny, hollow, manufactured shells of their former selves. If I want to expand the metaphor a bit further, he can also lie back and hear the moans and cries of “Oh! Andy! You’re so great! You’re fantastic! You’re so clever!” provided by his personal echo chamber of Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, who also do a fantastic job of censoring anybody who might dare criticise Andy’s way of thinking, thus leaving him to wallow in the mud-pool of his own self-importance.

So what has our little bastion of conservadom done this time, you ask?

Hot on the heels of his "Bible Re-translation Project" and "Best New Conservative Words" comes... the Conservative Bible Project. Yes, Andy wants to re-write the Bible, because "there is no fully-conservative translation of the Bible." Bear in mind that most Christians see the Bible as the definitive Word of God (which just happened to be written down by a bunch of guys who weren't exactly eye-witnesses to events and then collated into a book during the 4th century), yet Andy isn't happy with this. No, he's going to translate God's Word, so that it fits his own very, very narrow-minded world-view. I think running Conservapedia (and the constant *ahem* ego rubbing from Terry Koeckritz and John Patti - haven't forgotten you Johnny boy - just waiting for confirmation from the US on what the authorities think of you Twittering about Obama and your gun collection all the time) is finally bringing Andy's Messianic complex to the fore. Hah! Zero mental problems indeed. condron.us

Of course, you must realise that this new project doesn't mean that Andy has finished the "Bible Re-translation Project" or the "Best New Conservative Words." No, no - what happens is he gets a bee in his bonnet, works feverishly on it for a day or two, then sporadically for a few more weeks, before moving on to something else (just think of Dory and her 'Something shiny!" moment). Conservative words we've already dealt with, but the re-translation project actually started off quite well, before Andy's humongous ego got in the way again. Andy even had an editor - Denise - who knew her stuff when it came to translating Hebrew to English. Unfortunately, she didn't know not to criticise her lord and master and so it was time for her to go. Andy muddled on for a bit - famously using an example from a blog (that agreed with him) over three examples from linguistic sites that disagreed with him, before even he realised he was no linguist (or anything else for that matter) and let it slide.

His reasons why such a Bible (besides God being, you know, wrong) in necessary are equally laughable and it is, of course, the liberals' fault. Yes, that liberal Catholic Church with their liberal Inquisition and liberal auto de fe. The liberal story of the adulteress needs to be removed, more conservative words (like transistor?) need to be used, Mark and John were teenage prodigies and need to be acknowledged as such and "recognizing that Christianity introduced powerful new concepts that even the Greek and Hebrew were inadequate to express, but modern conservative language can express well." Yes, trust God to dictate his story to mankind in terms they couldn't understand... but wait... didn't God invent these inadequate languages too? But he's adamant that "shrewdly" should be replaced by the better conservative word "resourceful," even if it was Andy who deemed the word to be conservative in the first place.

Andy claims that by "translating" 4 verses an hour, it can be done within a year. Personally, I'm not going to hold my breath. This little example of just how unhinged Andrew Schlafly is becoming (not to mention why "respectable" conservatives avoid Conservapedia like it has herpes - although Terry Koeckritz is probably slightly more odious) will probably stutter along for a week or two and then get left to gather dust, as have so many of Andy's other projects, including running Conservapedia as an encyclopaedia, rather than Andy's personal anti-Obama blog.

However, it would appear as if asking for forgiveness is not a conservative trait, given that Andy wants to remove the "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" line. It seems that only one gospel mentions this (and  here Andy ignores all the other differences between the gospels), plus "the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing." Oh dear. So Jesus must have been conservative and in Andy's mind a conservative would never have said that.

With John and Terry making sure that any attempts to question Andy's methodology (or sanity) are quickly censored, erased and oversighted from the system, we should be in for a few more laughs, until Andy himself loses interest.