Yup. The trope that all Christians were simplistic biblical literalists until the scientific enlightenment made that impossible, and only then did some of them begin to abandon, very reluctantly, simplistic literalism is common among the new atheists. Like the popular trope that the Christian church taught that the world was flat, it’s not supported by the evidence, as the case of Augustine shows. The true picture is much more complex than that.
In fact, the simplistic biblical literalism that we encounter today in the loonier fringes of American Protestantism is a modern phenomenon. It was unknown much before the eighteenth century, and it didn’t really get into its stride until the nineteenth. If you look in any detail at, e.g, the Galileo controversy, you very quickly see that the issues at stake were not perceived by either side to be anything like the validity or otherwise of simplistic biblical literalism.
Somewhat surprisingly, the phenomenon is at least partly a product of the enlightenment. It represents a religious tradition attempting to read scripture through enlightenment eyes, and with enlightenments presuppositions about what truth is and how it should be discerned and communicated. That’s why it’s so strong in the US, a country profoundly shaped by the enlightenment, and that’s why it seems such a natural approach both to some American protestants and to some new atheists.
well with all due respect. the question was directed toward someone with your belief system…you did fail completely completely to answer the question though(which in my opinion makes this site great)…or i misunderstood you
This - i guess - i what i was looking for,I don’t know if the author is a Christian or not. but granted it makes sense…since this kind of answer begs the question,of course i will have to ask it.
The creator of the universe told this story 1st person 2nd person or maybe 3rd person,but that was the geist. He is telling us parables, and Adam and Eve sounds like the best thing ever, given it was told by the creator of the universe, an amazing story no less. Bottom line is: how can you NOT believe this?
In other words, you think the parts you believe are supernatural and the parts that have been proven utterly wrong are human error. There is nothing in the bible that could not have been written by non-supernaturally guided bronze age men. Nothing. Yet you seem to be insistent that some part of the text is magic.
Since you have explained that you agree it was divinely inspired, then yes, I’d say you’re in the mainstream. You’re still wrong, though.
I’m saying that a divinely inspired book would be expected to get things right when the ignorant men writing it didn’t know the answer. But as it happens, every single thing it guesses about the natural world is wrong. The logical thing to take from this is that no one with superior knowledge dictated the work.
Think about this, there are any number of things that God could have gotten factually right. But the bible has nothing factually correct that the primitive men who wrote it didn’t know anyway.
It can have meaning, significance or value. But the primitive men who wrote the bible weren’t particularly insightful.
Sending your wife to a menstrual hut isn’t what I would call something profound to live by. Nothing in the bible is in any way original or better than what a modern secular first world society enjoys.
Machinery makes things easier. That said, we live longer, in more comfort and in less ignorance than men at any point in history. The biggest health problem in our country is that we have too much food. Think about that.
We have nukes, and we’ve used them twice. If the ancient men who wrote the bible had nukes, the Levant would still glow at night. We are a marvel of restraint. Our women vote, our children read and you can safely expect to die old in your bed.
All of this has been done in spite of the barely-literate, brutish nonsense advocated by the bible.
Of course we are. I would have been flayed alive for what I wrote a few hundred years ago. You wouldn’t have been able to read, much less think critically. Your wife would die in childbirth, have no rights and depending where you live, you might own another human being and sell off his children for extra money.
If it’s not supernatural it is of no value as a guide to living. Because they were so ignorant they had nothing that could possibly improve your life.
Nonsense. Modern first world countries are the best places in history to live.
Again, the story is worthless. They were a shitty group of people living in a shitty situation in a shitty land. If I wanted to oppress women or own slaves I might take a hint from the bible, otherwise, it is the shucking of biblical nonsense that has made the world a better place.
I get the sentiment of these answers and I agree. Im tired of these “holier than thou” kind of reasoning - kudos to the author for answering amazing claims with sound and rational aswers
Staying very, very carefully away from the other debate, and simply answering this part in the OP.
First, being a literalist doesn’t make much sense if you are at all familiar with the difficulties of translation. In English, “In the beginning was the Word”; in Spanish, “In the beginning was the Verb” (John 1:1) - the Spanish meaning includes the English meaning, but it’s wider, so which one is perfectly right? None, and also none is the original, nor does either one use a word which is completely equivalent to the meaning of the original Logos.
Second, and making the response very, very short (this kind of thing can be glossed for books’ worth), the point of the Adam and Eve story would be “we know what’s good for us, but we keep disregarding long-term gain for short-term one; the Original Sin is Pride, the mistake of un-reasoning that ‘getting what I want now is better than doing what I know is good for me and mine, but which isn’t so immediately pleasant.’”
You keep inventing positions and attributing them to me. I have never insisted - I have never even hinted that some part of the text is “magic”. No part of the text is magic.
Look, in this thread scamartistry is asking for the perspective of mainstream, non-literalist Christians. I am attempting to offer such a perspective. You keep rejecting my position because it doesn’t reflect a literalist perspective. You cannot accept that I am not a literalist, and do not share literalist perspectives. (And, I see, scamartistry can’t either.)
Given that the thread actively seeks non-literalist perspectives, why do you have such trouble engaging with those that are offered? You seem to be operating from a mindset that thinks that non-literalist Christians are, if they’re really honest, simplistic literalists, and you simply reject any position which is inconsistent with that mindset.
When you said earlier you didn’t think you had any rational argument that could appeal to me, you were right. You can frame no argument that can appeal to me because your irrational preconception that I am a secret literalist prevents you from addressing anything I say. You have to reframe it in literalist terms, and then attack the straw man you have created. While this may be reassuring for you, it’s getting boring for me.
UDS, you seem eager to discuss this and I thank you for that. However, I’ve scoured you posts and I see you using a lot of careful words but it seems you avoid stating clearly what your true thoughts are.
I’m left no wiser on how you view the authority of the Bible, So I’ll ask some straightforward questions that typically get sidestepped or hand-waved away. Perhaps you’ll oblige with some straight answers.
Is any of the Bible the actual word of God?
If so, how do you know?
Is anything in Bible meant to be taken literally? The Commandments perhaps?
If so how do you know?
If not, and it is all metaphor and analogy, who’s interpretation is correct and on what basis is that judgement made?
Do you think the Bible has a greater claim to ethical and moral authority than say a work by Terry Pratchett?
If so, why?
For full disclosure let me say that I see the bible as completely man-made and see no supernatural influence. It is merely a book with some interesting sections, some common sense advice and some plain bonkers and bloodthirsty bits. Exactly what one would expect from a primitive, tribal society living in harsh times and environments. It has existed since then as a stick with which the clergy exerts power over the faithful and in these more enlightend times it is now more of an ethical and moral Rorsach test. One in which you, (and most people thankfully) see the man and not the monster.
Contrariwise! The OP explicitly says most christians are literalists.
I gave what you call a “non-answer” because I don’t understand the question yet. (For me it is a “non-question” in that sense.)
You’re right that people don’t gather weekly to discuss the Iliad. No, instead they write books and books and articles and articles about it. They (until recently) force children to read it in high school, and in many other ways take it very very seriously–all without assuming any of it is true.
So there’s an example of fiction taken very seriously by people who know it to be false.
So why is it a non-answer simply to say “non-literalist attitudes to scripture are very much like that”?
Explicate the difference, then. What is it about non-literalist attitudes toward the Bible that, in your view, can’t be assimilated to non-literalist attitudes toward fiction in general?
Interesting how so many atheists on the SDMB argue as though the most extreme fundamentalists and biblical literalists in the United States are somehow representative of Christianity as a whole.
I don’t ever recall anyone attempting to burn Augustine of Hippo at the stake. In fact, prior ot the writings of Thomas Aquinas, nearly all of church theology was based on the works of John Chrysostym, Irenaeus, and Augustine.
Here is what he said about taking the stories of Genesis literally in chapter 19 of his work “De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim”:
As noted on Wikipedia, a complete reading of his treatise shows that he rejected a number of literal readings of the work, recognizing that it was composed of stories intended to convey ideas.
The “It has to be literal” concept actually is pretty much a nineteenth century reaction to challenges to general beliefs brought on by new scientific discoveries. Different people pointed to different passages to support beliefs over the years, but it was not a general tenet of Christianity, (or Judaism), that every passage, or even every “historical” passage was a straightforward rendering of facts. Claiming that it was held to be “literal” for “thousands of years” displays an ignorance of actual history regarding the way that it was viewed.
Is that really true? Bart Ehrman makes the point that the ancient Jews even knew these were to be taken as fables - after all, if your story prominently includes talking animals, that’s a universal signal that this story is a fable and not literally true.