Though apologists frequently insist that sacred scriptures must be interpreted rather than taken literally, such defenses often mask a more troubling evasion: the refusal to confront the weight of words and the lasting imprint they leave on the human psyche. Theologians and self-anointed exegetes habitually assert an interpretive dominion—one that cloaks their dogmas in the guise of intellectual sophistication—yet they rarely acknowledge that their authority rests upon texts authored in epochs steeped in superstition, tribalism, and epistemic naiveté. To suggest that modern hermeneutics can retroactively refine Bronze Age cosmologies into timeless wisdom is less an act of scholarship than of hubris. These sacred texts, far from transcendent, are reflections of their era’s crude approximations of reality, inscribed by men whose understanding of the universe was bounded by ignorance now long surpassed. That scholars continue to venerate these narratives as moral or metaphysical foundations reveals more about their institutional allegiances than about any universal truths. In truth, evolution—social, cognitive, and ethical—has moved on, while theology clings to relics, polishing them into illusions of profundity.

Joe Santos