The basic form of my question is: Can certain (plausible) interpretations of texts be wrong for moral reasons, because they are in obvious opposition to the interpretation the author intended? An example of this might be someone interpreting a clearly conservative piece of literature as highly liberal.
I do not think that such an interpretation would be actually immoral, so long as the interpreter recognised (and freely admitted) that the original author would disagree with the interpretation. This way, the interpreter is making no false assertions about the true meaning of the text; they are merely suggesting alternate meanings, which are untrue but not ridiculous or contradictory.
Despite the above paragraph, I am not at all sure of my conclusion. I can imagine many highly controversial examples of someone interpreting a text in such a manner - saying that the Bible could actually, in theory, support atheism would doubtless cause a huge outcry over much of the world. While mass disagreement is not always enough to condemn a theory, it does hint that the theory may not be right; as such, I would welcome any comments on the above issue.
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