The Problem with Using Poetry as Evidence

Wow, it's been a while since I posted an entry here. My attendance at Skepticon III this weekend (which was freaking awesome, BTW) has renewed my fervor in my pursuit to educate the willfully ignorant. So here we go…

Christians, why do you constantly cite selected verses from books of the Bible such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Solomon? Do you not realize that those books are poetry? Do you not realize that these poems are not the words of a deity? Are you purposely ignoring these facts?

My point is this: if you want to present evidence for your god and you absolutely have to use a book to do it, you honestly need to choose a better book than the one you've got, because I'm not going to accept poetry as fact. If I were to allow myself that practice as the norm, then I'd have to accept all sorts of ridiculous notions like, oh, every single deity ever imagined by mankind throughout history! You do realize that people wrote a lot of poetry about them too, right?

If I were so incredibly in love with a woman that I was blinded to every single one of her faults, I might write a piece of poetry like the following:

Her skin as smooth as milk,
Her hair as strong as steel,
Her eyes as deep as oceans,
All men bow at her heel.

In reality, this woman who seems to have a supernatural ability to capture the attention of every man on Earth and possess the most incredible qualities a woman possibly could possess, might look like this:

The fact that I'm so enamored with her has precluded my ability to see that this chick has a horrible unibrow, huge teeth, dry and damaged hair, a gnarly mole on her cheek, and nostrils the size of jet engine intakes. Not to mention the fact that I'm probably the only man in the world clamoring for her attention. That's fine, really. Each person ought to have the opportunity to see beauty and perfection however they see fit. But here's the rub:

Each person does not have the right to project their biased perceptions onto other people – especially if they're just waxing poetic.

Christians, please do me a favor in the future and remove Biblical books of poetry from your arguments for your god altogether. I think they're crap, other people think they're crap, and they absolutely, positively do not prove anything whatsoever.

Let's start thinking, people. Please.