[QUOTE=Harri]
So how many of the “flock” believed that then or believe that now? Do religious leaders operate under the belief that the Bible isn’t literally true? I haven’t heard any. Do they and their followers base their beliefs that the Bible is just a fairy tale to make them feel good? Or what “God” really did was create apes so he could evolve into man? That’s what some here seem to want to believe. I’m not religious but I know the Bible said God created man in his own image. So
you can believe in evolution and still possibly have spirtual beliefs but it’s silly and wistful
thinking to say you can still believe in the Bible. That’s trying to cover too many bases and
take yourself off the hook. If the people who believe in evolution are right, the odds are the Bible is completely wrong. But if the creationists are right, you should get ready to apologize. I know I will. But don’t try to pretend you’re on both sides. That the Bible is all lies and yet still has a basic truth that fits in very well and easily with evolution.
[/QUOTE]
If I were to ask, “Are you trolling here or are you really that stupid?” (which I am not doing!), the moderators would be fully justified in admonishing me for personal insults in GD. But that ultrasnarky remark would be founded on the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle, which your post above reiterates after repeated efforts by several people, some of whom are not Christians or even theists, to explain the distinction between accepting the Bible as a flawed treasury of human understanding of God and the alternatives you seem to insist are the only possibilities.
What exactly do you mean by “believe in the Bible”? I certainly do believe that it is a real, extant physical object, a collection of writings – I have a half dozen translations within easy reach as I type this. Believe that it has some supernatural efficacy to grant salvation or forgiveness of sin? Absolutely not – no Christian does; that’s confusing Book with Inspirer. Believe that it is somehow “the word of God”? Maybe – what do you mean by that phrase? In my usage, it’s “His word” only in a very restricted sense – it’s writings by human beings, fallible as you and me, who felt an impulse from Him (rightly or wrongly) to write of Him as they individually understood Him. It contains some things unquestionably (IMHO) His exact words – and other things that are specifically stated not to be from Him.
Ask any devout Jew, and you will find that the rabbis taught by means of story – among other means. That tradition of understanding Scripture predates Christianity. The idea that it is a verbatim historical narrative, true in all aspects, was either a naive perspective on the part of less-than-fascinated laymen in history, or a theological principle among a minority of churches that has been doctrine for less time than some of the older Dopers have been alive.
Some years back, I was friends with Roger and Elsa VanBuskirk, who attended the same church as my wife and I. Elsa’s sister was married to Francis Schaeffer, and I got second-hand snippets of the unholy alliance of the fundamentalists and the evangelicals as it was being formed – though, sadly, I didn’t connect the dots until years later.
Bottom line, my friend, is that you’re drawing dichotomies that don’t exist except in the minds of a minority of Christians, demanding subscription to your definitions, and attempting to refute the comments and arguments of others on the basis of the definitions you’re arbitrarily placing on the discussion, to which others emphatically do not subscribe.