Since many of our rational Christians attack atheists for supposedly claiming that Christians are literalists, I was struck by the recent Gallup poll (link ) showing that 31% of Americans think the Bible is the literal word of God. (Highest in the South and among the uneducated, natch.) About 50% think it is inspired, but not everything should be taken literally, and 20% think it is a book of fables and stories, human in origin.
Literalism is down 7% from the '80s. It is taking longer than we thought.
The “atheists think all Christians are literalists” meme appeared in a letter to the Times Book Review about the review of Hitchens book. Not having read it, for all I know he might have said this, but I doubt it. In any case, 30% is a non-trivial number of literalists, especially considering how easily refutable literalism is.
This is offered as a point of information for other debates. For a debate, if anyone is interested, I think that this attack on atheism is a bit of a strawman. The real questions to theists I have seen (and have) lies around how do you distinguish the inspired from the uninspired parts, and how is the evidentiary backing of parts which are believed (like the Resurrection) any better than parts not believed for which there is not directly contradictory evidence?
I’m surprised it’s that high. And (assuming it’s a good poll, good questions, etc) it’s actually a conservative count; that’s a third of all Americans being Biblical literalists. The proportion of Christians would have to be higher.
OK, so 58% want creationism taught in school alongside evolution. This is a problem. We’ve had some success repelling the intrusions, we’ve had some favorable school board elections in a state or two and a nice court decision in Dover. But the belief is still there, waiting. Should we be concerned?
In fairness to the literalists, if you’re not taking the sacred books, the holy word of God, literally, then what are you doing, if not picking and choosing on the basis of completely extra-biblical criteria?
It’s a basic problem with the Christian religion: if you’re not taking things literally, then you’re basically just making up the religion that suits you, while if you are taking things literally, then you’re sort of an idiot, because the Bible contradicts itself in many, many, many ways, and has abundant counterfactural assertions besides.
We should always be concerned that what we’re teaching our kids is as agenda-free as possible. We’ve failed pretty badly in a lot of ways, of course, but nobody’s saying that we shouldn’t be worried and work toward improving it.
What do we do, though? We can’t force people NOT to think that creationism should be taught in schools. All we can do is exactly what we’re doing - fighting it through our election process and court systems, and hoping that it lasts long enough for a generation of educated people to grow up.
I have the book. Hitchens doesn’t say that. He does say that attempts to understand the Bible as having metaphorical truth are “feeble,” but he recognizes that such a stance exists. His critiques of the Bible (he has separate chapters for the Old and New Testaments) are designed to support his argument that the Bible is “manmade,” but he does not say or even imply that all Christians (or Jews) are literalists. He just thinks that the non-literalists are reaching.
Right, that’s the other piece of it, which is that it’s really, really hard to be a literal literalist, as opposed to a pick-and-choose literalist, since the Bible gives so many mixed messages. As in: cotton-poly blends, okay or not?
I don’t think 30% of the American public believing in an obvious absurdity is trivial. But this has nothing to do with moral and ethics. It is possible that a non-literalist only believes in the nasty parts, and acts worse than a literalist does. Most literalists have figured out a way of not obeying commandments that are against the law. This is all about the difficulty of underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
I think you will find that the majority of that 31% also believe in non-biblical superstitions.
Most religious people, if I recall prior polls correctly, also believe in one or more of non-biblical supernatural ideas, like fortune telling, visible/audible ghosts and communcation with the dead, telepathy, UFO’s, the Mummy’s Curse, bad luck from breaking mirrors, . . .
Not to mention faith. I’m not sure I’d consider guidance by the Holy Spirit evidentiary, unless there is supporting information. And one has to wonder why people accept church tradition.
Not arguing with you, but only with those whose opinions I think you accurately reflect.
There was an article in the Skeptical Inquirer about this. I’m not sure deeply religious people were more prone to other superstitions, since many of them are specifically forbidden in the Bible. I’ll have to look for it tonight.
