Because it’s even more blatant nonsense than normal Christianity, and extremely easy to poke holes into and mock. I wouldn’t expect to see it much on any forum that allows people to criticize it.
:smack: I didn’t intend to put one in - must have been muscle memory.
(Or Satan)
You are a fascinating case. So, things outside of your current worldview just don’t exist at all, do they?
“I have repeatedly said that the idea of a belief in a personal god is a childish one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to the painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in their youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and our own being.” - Albert Einstein
That’s one scientist take on it, at least.
The authority of one’s beliefs must rest within oneself. Only you are responsible for your own beliefs.
To put it in Christian terms: God gave us the will to make our own choices. Coercion is antithetical to God’s love.
That is a valid viewpoint.
Others will try to answer the big questions. Yes, science cannot help us, so we have to use less reliable methods. Complaining the answers generated thus are unscientific is exactly the point: science does not answer these questions.
It’s each person’s choice for what they find acceptable or not.
You made clear that I’m not the type of Christian you’re looking for, and I felt no need to answer your original question. I think a literalist interpretation of the Bible is wrong and I will not defend it.
I am scientifically minded and came to my religious beliefs through my own life experiences and reflections on the matter. (I have a PhD in physics, although my employment is more engineering than science. I grew up in an old-fashioned, although not conservative, United Methodist church. I am currently active in a similar church.)
It is easy to see that religious belief cannot be scientifically supported. That is not proof that religious belief is false, however. A scientist is capable of keeping in mind how well supported any given theory or hypothesis is. That is a separate issue than what the scientist believes is correct. In fact, scientists often test the hypotheses they believe are true without support; there’s more credit for proving than for disproving.
Of course, hypotheses that are falsified must be discarded. That applies to religious beliefs as well as scientific ones. (And Christians who do not reject falsified hypotheses are violating the greatest commandment.) The catch is that many religious beliefs cannot be falsified. Or proven.
When a hypothesis cannot be scientifically proven nor falsified, then a scientist’s response must be “I don’t know”, because it can be neither supported nor rejected. But that does not mean the scientist cannot form a belief about the hypothesis. That is, “I don’t know, but here’s what I think…” is a reasonable option.
The creation stories are mythic parables. Using a literal interpretation or trying to find some mapping to geologic history is completely missing the points.
Jesus is the Word of God. See the Gospel of John: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. 2 The Word was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. 5 And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it. … 14 Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.
Most Christian traditions have never used a literal interpretation.
I hadn’t seen that quote before. It’s interesting, especially because Christians are explicitly told to be childlike. Luke 18: 15 Now people were even bringing their babies to him for him to touch. But when the disciples saw it, they began to scold those who brought them. 16 But Jesus called for the children, saying, “Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”
The complaint isn’t that religion offers a less reliable answer-it is that religion’s “answers” are based on nothing substantial or verifiable and thus is no answer at all, so the best thing to do is put the question aside as unanswerable and not accept the blind guess.
It would be better to refer to a Muppet than Benny Hinn.
That is a reasonable opinion.
No matter how many times I hear this, I cannot forget what I observed in the churches I attended in my youth, where God creating everything in six days, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Flood, and various other stories were taught as fact in Sunday School, and recited as fact from the pulpit. The Church of the Nazarene, the Presbyterian church and a few others-there was no mention of metaphor or myth by the preachers when they spoke to the crowds.
Do you know how many people follow Benny Hinn and believe the same things he does?
I just read Karen Armstrong’s “The Bible: A Biography”, which is simplistic in a lot of ways, but makes the point that biblical literalism is a product of the 1800s. Prior to that while people may have read the stories in the Bible as literal happenings, they mostly tended to look at the allegorical point behind the story and were willing to entertain the notion that the stories weren’t 100% literal.
As St. Augustine in the 5th Century wrote:
“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we may find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. We should not battle for our own interpretation but for the teaching of Holy Scripture. We should not wish to conform the meaning of Holy Scripture to our interpretation, but our interpretation to the meaning of Holy Scripture.”
And if I needed to make a point, I could mention Huck Finn’s journey down the Mississippi without needing to mention that the person and the voyage were fictional, although the river is real.
And what point would you be making, besides the fact that at least the river is real…which people already knew? When it comes to the Bible, how much inaccuracy can it contain until it starts to taint any good that may come from it? Is real history and science so bereft of lessons to be learned that we have to resort to false history and bad science to get points across?
Correct.
The bible and other just-so myths have always been what we had to go on and were presented as fact.
Now that most of this has been proven wrong, all of a sudden it’s: “Well, of course this is stupid, so it must have been intended as a metaphore!”.
I find this pretty disingenious and quite annoying to boot.
The simple conclusion is that it has always been a bunch of made up bollocks. People really actually believed it. People were ignorant.
What point? Any of the points that Twain made - a talk on race relations, an overview of history, a discussion of raft construction. Like it or not, the Bible is one of the default documents of Western civilization, and will be quoted and referenced as much as Shakespeare, if not more. Often without a disclaimer.
A scientist who believes something that isn’t supported is being a bad scientist. They should not, in theory, test a hypothesis with the belief that anything in particular will be proved. Obviously this is not how it works in reality most of the time, but that’s why there is peer review etc., because people essentially can’t be fully trusted to not twist the evidence to support their beliefs. This is the problem with “deciding for yourself”. You say you’re scientifically minded, and I’m sure that’s true most of the time, but when scientifically minded people talk about their religions, and try to justify them in some way, they seem to be using a completely different part of their brains.
I keep seeing this, but it’s far too general. Most Christian traditions may not believe in a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible, but I’ve never heard of one that doesn’t believe something completely unreasonable there is literally true. Do/did most Christians not believe Jesus was literally born of a virgin? Or that there is a god who gives a damn? Significant elements of the religion seem to be based not just on believing a particular illogical thing, but on the very idea of “faith” - i.e. believing without evidence - as a virtue.
Too many, but in the big picture, a smallish minority of Christians.
Now add in the followers of Pat Robertson, Bob Larson, Orel Roberts, Kenneth Copeland and a multitude of others.
3/10 of American’s say the Bible is literally true, including 41% of protestants:
46% of American’s are young earth creationists:
It’s really not that small a minority.
From that same Gallup Poll: