Another look at Psalm 14:1

26 November 2006 · Comments Off

This has been bothering me for a while now, ever since I saw Zak’s Atheist video on YouTube, and I thought that I’d take a closer look at what Psalm 14:1 actually says.

The fool says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no one who does good.
New International Version

Only fools say in their hearts,
â€œThere is no God.â€
They are corrupt, and their actions are evil;
not one of them does good!
New Living Translation

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
King James Version/American Standard Version

To the Overseer. — By David. A fool hath said in his heart, `God is not;’ They have done corruptly, They have done abominable actions, There is not a doer of good.
Young’s Literal Translation

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They have corrupted themselves, they have done abominable works: there is none that doeth good.
Darby Translation

Fools say in their hearts,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;
there is no one who does good.
Today’s New International Version

(All of the above have been taken from BibleGateway.)

I’m not going to mention inconsistencies in translation, nor the blatant ad hominems, I’m just going to take on what this says at face value, which is, in my opinion, the only way to read it without introducing wriggle-room for those believers who find calling other people names personally distasteful.

Ok, so the general gist of this is “those who say that there is no god in their hearts are bad people, corrupt and evil and they don’t do anything good”. Can we agree on that? It seems to fit a general consensus among those seven versions above.

I’ll take the NIV version as the starting point, seeing as it’s written in plain English.

The fool says in his heart,
“There is no God.”

Most people seem to put the emphasis where I have here, on the fool bit. And this seems fair enough, at first glance. However, I would like to emphasis another bit:

The fool says in his heart,
“There is no God.”

I don’t say ‘in my heart’ that there is no god: I say in my head that there’s no god, and I have some very good reasons for doing so (you know, the lack of evidence thing, Biblical inconsistency, the usual stuff) My heart doesn’t speak to me about this — my heart is empty on such an issue, as if there was nothing to be concerned about.

But before you may jump to any judgements that I lack a (metaphorical) heart, I will say that it does “speak” to me of other things. Things like the love I have for my partner, my family and friends. Strangely enough, my head happens to back this all of this up, so there doesn’t seem to be any contradiction there. Indeed, this seems to be additional evidence of my feelings, rather than a refutation of them.

My heart also speaks to me when I am exposed to cruelty, to music, to unfairness, to beauty, to kindness, to angry words, to pain, to pleasure, to art, to wonder. It speaks to me all the time.

But my heart is strangely silent on the matter of gods. You know, as if there weren’t any. I can only infer from this that the verse isn’t talking about me.

I’m so glad that I’m not a fool.

Tags: <bible, exegesis, response, thought>