Intelligently Deceived

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One of the most difficult things about the life of the academic gypsy is having tons of books. Literally tons. Having been cast from institution to institution in search of that mythical full-time teaching post, we’ve put books in storage and sometimes even forgotten that we’ve had them. So it was that when I was looking for a copy of Great Expectations for my daughter’s English class assignment, I was in the dusky attic, hoping the upstairs neighbors didn’t burst in on me, up to my armpits in boxes of books, that I rediscovered a treasure. Taking a leaf from Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop, I decided I would review a few of the Creationist books I grew up with. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to keep them although I’d long dismissed their facile, often juvenile, point of view. They have provided great entertainment and even some poignant instruction in the ways of manipulating the minds of the young. Fear of Hell is a great motivating factor to a kid who sees ghosts in every corner and finds bats on his pillow!

So, without further ado, I present the top 5 creationist books of my youth. (Those that I purchased as an adult I bought from used bookstores so as not to add any royalties to the fundamentalists’ already bursting coffers.)

Textbook

We’ll begin with the textbook. Scientific Creationism makes no pretense, such as the “Intelligent Design” school does, about being non-(necessarily-but-we-all-just-happen-to-be)Christian specific. Here Henry Morris begins with the assertion “the Bible and theistic religion have been effectively banned from [public school] curricula” and offers the present book as a corrective to the situation. A better title for the content, however, might have been Scientific Fiction.

GenFlood

The work that really opened the flood-gates, so to speak, was The Genesis Flood. This craftsterpiece was penned by Henry Morris (again) and his compatriot John Whitcomb. Both proudly proclaiming themselves “doctors” they point out “evidence” designed to confuse the unsavvy into believing that there is a physical way the world could be entirely flooded. They even make room for dinosaurs on the ark, noting that they would have been juveniles of the various species. I’ve been in academics long enough to know that a Ph.D. does not guarantee credibility (or even sanity) on the part of the holder. The fact that Whitcomb’s doctorate is from Grace Theological Seminary ought to speak quite plainly as to its objectivity.

Gish

Written by Duane “the Fish” Gish, Evolution, the Fossils Say No! is an attempt to demonstrate that since not every single phase of the fossil record has been uncovered, the whole theory of evolution is in shambles. Gish, one of the few authentically scientifically credentialed Creationists, should have been able to see that his “back-and-fill” technique was going to fall on hard times as new fossil forms were discovered. As the fossil record grows more complete each year his book becomes more and more outdated.

EvolutionHS

Evolution and the High School Student terrified me in my delicate years. This booklet intimated that when I reached high school the unending assaults of the atheistic non-believers would be unrelenting. I feared for my very soul. Instead, in high school I found nose-picking, pocket-pool playing, and chalk-print-on-the-pants-seat teachers were among the openly committed Christians. Some even kept Bibles on their desks. (This was a public school.) The book lost its teeth.

GooZoo

My personal favorite is How Did It All Begin? (or From Goo to You by Way of the Zoo) by Harold Hill (obviously when he was not out swindling River City, Iowa folk of their hard-earned cash to start a bogus boy’s band). This booklet, complete with cute, cartoon drawings, convinces grade-schoolers that evolution answers no questions at all. He had me going as a kid, until I got to the part where he claimed scientists had invented a machine that could indicate if you were “saved” or not. Even as a gullible child I couldn’t buy that.

The efforts of the Creationists are tireless. Even this brief survey of books that I happened to chance upon is nowhere near a comprehensive survey of what is out there. What it does serve to demonstrate is that all reasonable people should be wary. After all, even Jesus knew that a person in the wrong, if persistent enough, could convert even a hard-hearted judge.

Good Book, Bad Seeds

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A gray day in September. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. A stark melancholy races on the winds of a distant nor’easter. It is a perfect day for The Boatman’s Call.

Searching for land

Searching for land

I have to admit up front that I found out about Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds from the Shrek movies. The soundtrack crew from the first two movies did their homework exceptionally well, tapping some truly desultory, lugubrious tunes from artists who don’t make the top twenty. I was so taken by “People Ain’t No Good” that as soon as I could afford it I purchased the album (The Boatman’s Call, not Shrek II). The album begins with the line “I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but I know darling that you do . . .” Throughout the album the achingly sacred and profoundly profane are blended in an eerily subdued way. The music is haunting and thought-provoking. Almost each track on the album has a biblical reference, but these references are mixed with what would be crude if handled with any less artistry.

All that I know about Nick Cave is what I’ve read on Wikipedia, but it is clear that he is well versed in the Bible and makes effective, if dark, use of religious imagery. Perhaps the reason I admire this album so much is that Cave’s ambivalence toward religious structures is so honest. He isn’t out to convert anyone, nor is he willing to let go of his religion. The religion that wafts out of the drafty attic of this disc mirrors the complexity that faith ought to possess. Especially on a dark and rainy autumn day.

Sternutation Salutation

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Perhaps it’s the specter of swine flu or perhaps it’s the onset of the autumnal allergy season, but sneezing is unmistakably prevalent. While meeting with one of my students this past week, I was asked why people said “God bless you” after someone sneezed. Immediately my mind went back to the explanation I’d learned in some history class that superstitious folk in less enlightened times supposed that your soul flew out your nose and mouth during a sneeze and wished to ensure a safe transition of a person’s spirit back inside. Others trace the phrase to the period of an early plague when Pope Gregory had Kyries sung at sneezes to prevent the spread of disease (although plague was not really characterized by sternutation as much as buboes). Still others continue the myth that one’s heart stops during a sneeze and the comment is simply a verbal defibrillator of sorts.

In my mind a cough is much more sinister than a sneeze, but we have no standard verbal accompaniment to coughs. The same is true for hiccups, belches, or, God forbid, something even worse. How does the humble sneeze achieve a status so as to invoke the divine? Soul-spewing aside, sneezes are naturally violent events. Some medical experts clock dramatic sneezes at up to 650 m.p.h., inciting the question of how we might harness such energy. Unlike coughs, hiccups, burps, or — ahem — other expulsions, the sneeze solely involves the respiratory tract. In the ancient world breathing is life. The standard measure for viability in the Hebrew Bible is not a beating heart or even a functioning brain (a relief to many Republicans), but breath. Those who do not breathe do not live. The sudden loss of breath via a sneeze could be cause for alarm.

Zeus seconds the motion

Zeus seconds the motion

The humble sneeze is even mentioned in the Bible, although the “God bless you” part is not. In 2 Kings 4.35 Elisha, emulating his master Elijah, revives a dead child. Significantly, when the child reanimates, he sneezes seven times. He is breathing, but not yet out of danger. In ancient Greece it was supposed that sneezes were messages from the gods, a kind of Hellenistic “Amen!” to eloquent rhetoric to which the gods just couldn’t hold their applause. No one knows just when “God bless you” was attached to the sneeze, but it is difficult for those accustomed to remark on sternutation to hold still. Even in classes of 70 students or more, a sneeze out there in the audience is always followed by a “bless you” from across the room. Whether it is a message from God or a harbinger of H1N1 I’m just not sure.

By the Numbers

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the airport, the Bible Code strikes again! This morning’s newspaper carried the story of Jose Flores, a would-be hijacker of Aeromexico Flight 576. Flores boarded the flight with a Bible and fabricated a pretend bomb out of a juice can (the story doesn’t specify exactly what kind of juice —) and instructed the pilot to fly around Mexico City a Jericho-esque seven times. Flores informed the flight attendants that he was part of a set of four hijackers, the other three, he later revealed to police, were the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The flight landed safely and Flores was extricated from the plane. Why all the fuss? Yesterday was 9/9/09. Flores realized (with or without the help of his three co-hijackers) that upside down this would be 666. Safely on the ground he told reporters “Christ is coming soon!”

So once again we meet a believer in coded messages in the Bible. Clearly one of the most misrepresented books in the Bible is Revelation. This book is a textbook example of apocalyptic writing, a genre wide-spread and easily recognized in the ancient world, but which suffers from being taken literally by people living a couple millennia after it was penned. Even before the ink slipped from John’s pen (we don’t know John’s last name), people were looking for a new world to burst in on this old one in need of radical repair. That urgency has continued unabated for two thousand years.

Is life really so bad that we need it to end? Apocalyptic outlooks are perfectly understandable among the disadvantaged and persecuted that they were intended to console. It is a strange phenomenon, worthy of a sociological dissertation, why many affluent, educated people strain for the end of this god-awful world where they are so comfortable. Perhaps it is that we evolved from lemmings rather than primates, but it seems to me rather another example of the wealthy taking from the poor. Even their hopes of sticking it to the rich have been co-opted.

Something to look forward to?

Something to look forward to?

The Fear of the Lord Is Pure

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This is the 9th podcast for this blog. The topic under consideration here is why fear is so closely associated with religion. I ponder the origins of the concept of deity and try to make a connection with other dark areas of the imagination.

Lost and Found

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As a young lad I was fascinated by the supernatural. This may explain, but in no wise excuses, my choice of a career in religion. As I grew in years and skepticism, this interest began to feel like a security blanket in a college dormitory — an embarrassment to be jettisoned as quickly as possible. Along the way, of course, I’d given away what I thought to be the detritus of childish fantasy, including my collection of cheap, pulp fiction, tending toward the Gothic.

As I grow more ancient, and more observant, I see that sometimes the impetuousness of youth cradles a profound wisdom. Sometimes we do get it right the first time. I still haven’t figured out if that’s the case with me, but it seems to be a hypothesis worth the exploration. Part of my current search for reality is the reassessment of my childhood learning in the school of classical Gothic fiction. The books are no longer as cheap as they used to be, and when I take them out in public I hide them inside a larger, more academic book so that no one really knows what I’m reading. As a friend once observed, people think that those of us who hang out in the religion sections of Borders are immediately suspect. More so the adult toting a beaten-up paperback written for a teen readership a number of decades ago.

One of my lost memories was a juvenilized version of Rod Serling’s Stories from the Twilight Zone. I had shoveled my copy off to Goodwill along with many other shards of my childhood when I “grew up.” The memories of the angst that the very cover generated in me led to a frantic online used book hunt a few years back. Inside the stories seemed flatter than I’d recalled, but the larger ideas they generated were still worth paying attention to. Perhaps the real lesson is that childhood should not be dismissed as wasted time playing and indulging in carefree amusements. Our childhood proclivities, it now seems, preset the trajectories for our lives. So I still have a quasi-career in a religion department, and I have a copy of a book that started me asking the bigger questions.

Anybody else remember this?

Anybody else remember this?

Go and Dust No More

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Finally getting around to reading Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (I hate to admit that it took the movie ads to prod me into reading the book), I have been surprised by the depth of the story. Spoiler warning! From the very first chapter I have been pondering what dust might be, and I have just discovered that it is Pullman’s metaphor for original sin. In the chapter where this is finally revealed to the protagonist, Lyra, her father reads an explanatory passage from Genesis 3 (somewhat altered). Indeed, dust drives the plot of the story.

With apologies to the magisterium

With apologies to the magisterium

Pullman’s treatment of the topic once again throws into relief a popular, but mistaken, concept. “Original sin” is simply not a biblical idea. Nowhere in either the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Scriptures does the text suggest that people are born with the taint of a physical liability passed on from the first human coupling, as Augustine hypothesized. In fact, the Bible hosts several potential explanations for the origins of human troubles. One solution that it never reaches is a genetic passing on of an original sin.

Tradition often makes Scripture into its own image. Ideas are inevitably read back into the story and a chimera of hazy concepts emerges. Pullman’s treatment of the human condition is to be applauded, and to his credit he does not attribute the concept of original sin directly to the Bible. Although he alters the text a bit he doesn’t add this most damaging concept to it. The belief that people are inherently defective has allowed for some of the worst crimes imaginable against our species. As a concept original sin is dust in the wind.

Bible Land

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Once upon a time I took a trip to visit a friend in West Virginia. I made the drive from New Jersey across parts of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Having grown up in Pennsylvania I never supposed it to be considered part of the “Bible Belt,” but it seems that some of the spillover may be making its way north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Interstate 78 has recently struck me as being highly evangelized. I saw a billboard reading “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” and remarked at how out of context this verse was taken. Last time I checked, the Bible tended to be concerned with Israel, not the United States. Further along I saw a church near Bethel, PA called the Assembly of Yahweh. Not being aware that there was confusion as to who the God of the Israelites was, it amazed me to see that they have their own radio station called “The voice of the Assembly of Yahweh.” This struck me as a missed opportunity; the real message could have come through more clearly with “of the Assembly” left out. Yet further along was an ominous billboard from a local Mennonite Church that sounded eerily like Amos. “You Will Meet God” it announced.

Storm's a-comin'

Storm's a-comin'

As I entered Maryland the sales tactics intensified. In Frostburg there was God’s Ark of Safety Church where an actual replica of Noah’s Ark is being built right along Interstate 70/68. Since the steel frame is all that was currently finished, I was glad that it hadn’t recently been raining. Perhaps a more recent translation of the Bible has updated gopher wood to Bethel steel. Further along I spotted a lighthouse atop a hill over a hundred miles from the nearest substantial body of water. This was the World Lighthouse Worship Center. While visiting an actual lighthouse on Lake Superior a few years back the docent informed me that lighthouses were now considered superfluous with the advent of Global Positioning Systems. (Shhh — please don’t inform them that science has again trumped a quaint piece of folklore! I can imagine that the lighthouse may be useful when the new ark is completed.) Along route 219 in McHenry, MD I saw “A House of Love Gathering Place” that I just couldn’t dissociate from the B-52’s for some reason. Just about on the border to West Virginia was the Fresh Fire Church of God.

The United States is truly an impressive reservoir of biblicism. Perhaps university administrators who believe the study of religion isn’t worth the meager salary of an assistant professor should take a road trip. It would be a learning experience.

Lost in Translations

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Furor is up like storm waves concerning a revision of the New International Version of the Bible according to the Associated Press. Evangelical groups, fearful lest the word of God be misrepresented (!), claim nothing is wrong with the Old New International Version. The story of biblical translation is long and colorful and peppered with more than a few deaths. People, originally especially Europeans and Americans, but spreading like swine flu around the world with the missionary movement, are very concerned about being certain they have they exact words from the Author himself.

Concern with having the correct answer is natural enough, but the goal of a perfect translation is unattainable. The basic reason is that translation, like Bible-writing, is a human endeavor. And people just don’t achieve perfection. Also, words often betray us. I used to ask students what the word “die” means. Some would say to cease living, while others would say it was the singular form of dice. Some even recognized it as the nominative, feminine singular definite article in German. The truth is, however, that words do not have meanings. Words are symbols that have usages, but the letters “d-i-e” in that order mean only what we intend for them to indicate in any given circumstance. Certainty is a mirage; it can never be reached.

A few years back Today’s New International Version was published and it has been called “an emblem of division in the evangelical Christian world,” by Moe Girkins, president of Zondervan (owned by Rupert Murdoch). Even among self-identified evangelicals unanimity is illusory. Each person’s religious beliefs start to differ from everyone else’s in the privacy of his or her own head. That is because everyone is unique. The Bible can be made to “mean” whatever an individual wants it to mean. Until we became merged into some Borg-esque entity new translations will be loved by some and hated by most.

Bosnia Jones meets Egypt Jones

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Scholarship is a remarkable human achievement; so many people from countless backgrounds sparring over ideas with comparatively little bloodshed should be applauded. In the political and religious worlds where armaments are often thrown into the mix, well, the results are colorful but often less kind. I was reminded of this when one of my students recently showed me a copy of a letter regarding a somewhat outlandish claim by Sam Osmanagic (see Momma Maya: Is It the Apocalypse Already? for more on him). Osmanagic, who is studying for a doctorate, has recently added another hapless cause to his dossier of unlikely mysteries of the human past. Investigating Visocica, a hill in Bosnia, Osmanagic has concluded that it is really a pyramid.

The letter to which I referred, written by the irrepressible head of the Antiquities Council of Egypt, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is very gentle. Hawass, a kind of self-styled Egyptian Indiana Jones, notes in a letter to Archaeology magazine, “What was found there is really just a mass of huge stones, evidently a natural geologic formation.” He does, however, also note “His [Osmanagic’s] previous claim that the Maya are from the Pleiades and Atlantis should be enough for any educated reader.” Interestingly enough, Osmanagic is a self-styled Bosnian Indiana Jones, and he has written a book arguing for the pyramid option. Meanwhile, most serious scholars are more circumspect about the claims of any Indiana Joneses. After all, to quote Raiders of the Lost Ark, “archaeology is not an exact science.”

I am sometimes challenged by those who discover that I read such things as Drosnin (see Edoc Elbib Eht) or Osmanagic, but despite my objections to their conclusions that I inevitably reach, I want to hear them. Scholarship suffers from silencing the maverick voices. I have never ascribed to the principle that a person has to have a Ph.D. to be credible; often the reverse is true. I have met many Ph.D.s barely worth listening to while some of the most profound thoughts I’ve encountered came while I was working as a janitor’s assistant, listening to my boss. He was a man who engaged in physical labor that afforded him time to think. No, I do not buy Drosnin or Osmanagic’s conclusions, but I applaud them. Scholarship would be dull if not for those willing to take chances out there on the edge of credibility. (And wearing cool hats while doing it.)

Hell on Earth

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October 8, 1871 is remembered by many as the night of the great Chicago Fire. Few Americans ever learn that it was also the night of what many consider to be the greatest natural disaster in United States history: the Peshtigo Fire. The autumn of 1871 was tumbleweed dry in the upper midwest. A wildfire that burned over a million acres of northern Wisconsin and Michigan completely incinerated the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin on the same night Chicago burned. 1,200 people were killed in a single night. One of the most terrifying books I’ve read is Robert Wells’ Embers of October (also published as Fire at Peshtigo), a factual horror story filled with survivors’ accounts and early aid workers’ reports. Many described the scene as reminiscent of Hell.

Gehenna in Wisconsin
Gehenna in Wisconsin

Hell is an interesting concept. Following on from my podcast on the origins of the Devil, the concept of Hell is an equally interesting development. The Hebrew Bible knows of no Hell. The dead, good and bad alike, go to Sheol, the gloomy world of the dead, after they die. There is no punishment or torment beyond the languor of being deceased. People seem to be described as having some recollection of life and its benefits, but they are weak and sleepy and attached to their drying bones. The concept of an afterlife comes pretty late to the Israelites, depending on how you define “afterlife.” The book of Daniel, the latest in the Hebrew Bible, provides our first glimpses of a kind of resurrection for the righteous who died before their time. The earliest biblical Hell is the Gehenna of the Gospels, the garbage heap perpetually burning outside Jerusalem.

To picture an eternity of constant burning and torment requires a kind of distinction between an afterlife and afterdeath to be made. Zoroastrian influence on emergent Judaism provided the dualism that made a Devil possible after a few centuries. It also provided the distinction between the glorious afterlife of the good and the doleful fate of the wicked. Concepts that eventually blossomed into the theological constructs now regarded as Heaven and Hell drew their inspiration from an ancient religion of Afghanistan and Iran. Given what human imaginations are, Hell has naturally grown more and more gruesome over the centuries, but if one requires a sense of an entirely natural version of what can happen to good and bad alike, the Peshtigo Fire may also deliver many sleepless nights.

Creationism’s White Box

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It is sometimes claimed by Creationists that Darwin’s theory is a “black box” — the inner mechanism is unknown and it provides uncertain results. In this podcast I explore Creationism’s “white box.” Not the default version of Christianity it claims to be, Creationism is a modern movement with a well documented history.

Design intelligently!

Rock of Ageism

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Hanging on my refrigerator door is a quote attributed to Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha): “Do not put your faith in traditions only because they have been honored my many generations.” Not being a Buddhist scholar, I am not sure if the words originated with Siddhartha Gautama or not. Whatever their origin, however, these words are worth serious consideration. Do we believe what we do simply because of its age? Are older ideas more difficult to dismiss than more recent ones?

During a recent conversation I was interested to hear a member of the clergy say, “We need to move away from thinking of new religions as cults.” That was like a slap from the Buddha — the proverbial sound of one hand slapping. Do members of an ancient religion feel a kind of entitlement to the status earned with the inexorable passing of time? The idea goes back at least to the Romans. Wanting to stop the endless splintering of religions into new sects and potentially divisive rivals, they tended only to allow outside religions within their empire if they could demonstrate a remote antiquity (Judaism was the textbook example). Age of religion constitutes a kind of seniority; who hasn’t had a run-in with a Roman Catholic who believes their form of Christianity trumps all others on the basis of a supposed apostolic antiquity? If it has survived that long, there must be something to it — right?

I wonder if such a criterion is sound for systems of belief. We readily accept change in perspective in most other aspects of our lives. Religion is where many people draw the line. One of the funny scenes in Religulous is where the imam, in traditional garb, receives a text message on his cell phone in the middle of his interview with Bill Maher. The problem with allowing change in most aspects of life and thinking, but not one fundamental area, should become immediately apparent. Unless religion can be severely circumscribed and kept apart from all other facets of life, it has to fit into an entire system of thought. If one region of thought stops at the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze, or Iron Age without being reinforced by the other areas of human thought and experience that have transpired since then, can the system survive? I’m not suggesting that religions should be rejected because of age, but that they should be allowed to grow up. If that were to happen I would happily remove the Buddhist quote from my refrigerator door.

Words of wisdom

Words of wisdom

Edoc Elbib Eht

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A number of 40-year commemorations of the Manson Family murders have brought these gruesome events of my childhood years back to memory. I was really too young to understand what all the fuss was about then, and now that I am old enough, I’m not sure I want to. Nevertheless, I have committed myself to exploring sects and violence in a religious setting, and the Manson murders have prongs of both phenomena. While recently refreshing my memory on these horrific events on a gray and rainy day, I noticed something I had not seen before.

Looks like someone's been on the yellow submarine a little too long

Looks like someone's been on the yellow submarine a little too long

Charles Manson was (probably still is) a believer in hidden codes. He allegedly cracked a code in the Beatles’ White Album that led him to the belief in an apocalyptic battle that he was determined to begin. I wondered why the Manson Family tends not to be listed among other apocalyptic groups such as the Branch Davidians or Heaven’s Gate. They all share several traits, and although Manson’s revelations came from the Fab Four rather than the Holy Trinity, a revelation from on high spurred him into actions that had a tragic outcome, just as David Koresh or Marshall Applewhite.

The whole Helter Skelter code also reminded me of another, equally bogus pawning of randomness as divine messages: Michael Drosnin’s The Bible Code. When I read this bestselling bit of intellectual dry rot a few years ago, I was amazed that anyone could possibly take it seriously. God writing hidden messages in a holy book like some hormone enraged high schooler? And figuring out that a singular genius would figure it out just before the apocalyptic end without realizing that it is possible to read messages back into any media after they occur? It seemed all too much for a rational mind to take. In one of my courses at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh I gave students the option of reading it for a secondary project. To my chagrin, when I had the papers in one particularly tear-stained paper wailed (seriously) that the writer wished she had been warned sooner! This book changed her life! Everyone must know! Unfortunately I left Oshkosh without finding out what became of her.

God may not play dice, but apparently he likes crosswords!

God may not play dice, but apparently he likes crosswords!

I felt bad for introducing an undergrad to such “academic” sleight of hand; some college students just haven’t developed the critical facilities to see through the remarks of Balaam’s various sidekicks. Come to think of it, Manson’s followers accepted his revelations uncritically as well. Maybe the real lesson in all of this is that we must examine very closely those who claim special revelation, whether it be from Lenin, McCarthy, Starr, and Harrington, or just from God Almighty.

Six-Word Memoirs

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The story is told of Ernest Hemingway who once wrote a six-word novel “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” The beauty of this anecdote, whether factual or fictional, is that the mind fills in the rest, blooming full of ideas either tragic or hopeful, supposing what led to this circumstance or what might have happened after. The idea of extreme conciseness has caught on in many aspects of our society; in advertising and marketing it is called a hook, on television it is a sit-com, and in my classes it is a term paper. There is now an industry developing in six-word biographies — publishers print books full of them — and it seems there will be no end to conciseness. (My favorite is Larry Smith’s Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure, now available in a revised and expanded edition! Exponential conciseness!) My problem is there are too many six-word biographies that suggest themselves. Life seems to be made up of them. A while back my wife challenged me to come up with one. Slightly missing the concept, I came up with six:

Missed the first day of school.

Spit that out of your mouth!

The B-I-B-L-E.

The position has already been filled.

Please help; will work for books.

Can’t count either.