I was raised Catholic, if that’s what you’re asking. Nowadays I’m more of a Unitarian type. (I do have some traces of Catholicism in me – you know, you can take the girl out of the Catholic church kind of thing. 
The Bible isn’t really one particular book – it’s more of a collection of books that came down through the years. As literature, it’s pretty cool, I’d say. (Do you ever watch The Naked Archaelogist? Apparently there really WAS a giant named Og!)
You are confusing “not very good” with “not complete”. The argument under discussion is a good argument against one piece of the puzzle.
You say that religious views are based on wide ranging evidence of which any given part is corroboration. What you do you suggest: that no part of it be attacked because doing so would only attack that part, thus leaving everything else intact? This makes no sense. It’s like saying: when clearing a forest, don’t chop down any elms because the firs will still be standing. It’s just silly. You have to start somewhere.
Further, as others have pointed out, religious scholars and the learned are a tiny minority of religious people. Saying an argument is no good because it is only useful against most of the people you are arguing with is even sillier than your first point.
So you reject the Trinity then? That’s heresy for most denominations, you know.
Religious scholars may be a tiny number, but they set the tone for what the religion, as a whole, believes to be true.
To my mind biblical literalists are an even tinier minority. I’ve never actually met one in the flesh; in terms of religious beliefs, they are the outliers.
Raising an argument that is only good against a minority (biblical literalists) and no good against what the religions in question officially believe to be true (and have for centuries), strikes me as not a good argument on purely tactical grounds - never mind that it is easily disprovable by the educated. Why resort to it, when there are much better, and irrefutable, arguments available? The sort likely to be “biblical literalists” are also likely to believe in all sorts of stuff that is easily disproved by science.
[Of course they will probably not listen to those argumennts - but then, they are unlikely to listen to your argument-by-literalism either, so that’s a wash).
Now THAT’s nonsense. there are many whole congregations of Christians who believe, or profess to believe, that the bible is the literal Truth.
Where do you live? Seriously, these idiots are everywhere.
So what? Science is a liberal conspiracy as far as these people are concerned.
The bible is their sole authoritative text. Any other source of knowledge will be totally discounted if it conflicts with their biblical understanding. THAT is the problem with reaching them. The only way they might change their minds is if someone can convince them to accept some other interpretation of biblical text. Hence the detailed parsing.
I do agree that it’s useless to do this parsing to demonstrate the uselessness of the Bible as an infallible source of knowledge, but it might be worthwhile in a few cases to convince people that they are misinterpreting what the bible says.
I live in Toronto, and while there are probably such types around, I’ve never actually encountered them.
I can only assume we get a better class of Christian here.
Well, good luck with it, I suppose. To my mind, if you encounter any Christian who isn’t a literaist, and I’m still convinced most are not, you are more likely to get an eye-rolling than implanting the seeds of doubt.
According to a 2006 Rasmussen poll, Connecticut has the lowest percentage of biblical literalists – 22% of the population. In Arkansas and Alabama, that number is 75%!! Overall, 54% of Americans claim to believe that the bible is literally true.
That’s way worse than even I thought it was.
The poll does not have a link to the actual questions used. Still, that’s a very disturbing figure, but I strongly suspect it is America-specific - here in the rest of the first world, I’d be astounded if over 50% of people believed that the bible was literally true (however worded).
Biblical ultra-literalism is a pretty uniquely American phenomenon, but I assure you, it’s widespread here and seems to have gotten more viral in recent decades. Young Earth Creationism in the rest of the world is (correctly) viewed as crackpot, but in the US it’s mainstream. Where I’m originally from in the deep south, Adam and Eve are taken for granted as historical figures and God put dinosaur bones on the earth to test people’s faith.
Unfortunately you have to pay to get direct access to the polls and raw numbers.
You’re assuming most people know what “literally” means.
Okay, here’s a more recent Gallup poll, with somewhat less frightening numbers, and more detail about the questions. It found that in 2007, 33% of American adults regarded the Bible as the literal word of god, even when they had options to choose “inspired by god” or “ancient fables recorded by man”.
Even if they are a minority there are tens of millions of them, at the least.
I’m laughing and would like to receive a copy of your holy book. In particular, I’d like the version with all of the muffin recipes but NO illustrations.
Here in Toronto, believing in that would be considered eccentric, to say the least - even among the deeply religious.
I know. But if you say Adam and Eve weren’t real in Shreveport, La. you are a communist devil worshipper.
Mustn’t jump in…can’t help myself.
Something that Athiests have not taken into account is that Christians can have a wide variety of beliefs and still be and identify with other Christians. The basic belief that there is a God and that Jesus is our saviour is something we really need to all share but everything else is fairly negotiable.
Even if you just look at the wide range of beliefs between different Christian sects you get all kinds of things. Some think abortian is murder, some do not. Some think homosexuality is a sin, others have homosexual ministers.
The reality is that some of what we are taught as part of our religion doesn’t sit well with us individually, either. For example, I don’t believe in Hell. Can’t convince me, there is no changing my mind, it just doesn’t exist. I also believe in reincarnation. These things are not part of Christianity typically.
But I am still a Christian as I believe in God and our saviour Jesus Christ.
It is very easy for Athiests (for whom there is only one religious statement: there is no God) to not understand that beliefs are an individual affair. Although we are Christians, we are still individuals who will, at our root, believe what is true for us.
So, yeah, we pick and choose what we believe. Just because we don’t agree 100% doesn’t mean that we aren’t Christian or that we are stupid for identifying as Christian.
(However, anyone who takes the bible literally obviously hasn’t read it or doesn’t know what literally meant. )
Jeez, another Canadian piping up. Really, I don’t mean this in an offensive way, but you folks have no clue how wide and deep the streak of conservative – and literal – biblical interpretation is in America.
And it doesn’t really matter if the don’t know what literally means. They think they do, and they vote for people who share those beliefs and against people who don’t, and their leadership is constantly agitating to change public policy based on bible-based philosophy. And they’re not at all shy about claiming the bible as their inspiration and authority to make such demands.
The really ironic thing is that most of them claim to be patriotic and supporters of the constitution as well. But that stuff about “separation of church and state”? That doesn’t mean what the rest of us think, because liberals have perverted its meaning somehow.
Ah, but what is your basis for picking and choosing? Why reject Hell but not Christ?
Atheists know perfectly well that there are wide stripes of theism (including non-christians:eek:) that believe every possible variant of every possible crazy thing. (For example, there are Christians that don’t believe you’re a Christian.) Which means that we also know that not every argument will work against every theist. But we also know that there are some arguments that do work on large swaths of the theists, because some beliefs (like Hell) are held by large numbers of the people in question.
If you hear an argument that you feel doesn’t address your specific beliefs, we apologize; we can’t target everyone at once. Have no fear though, we’ll get around to you sooner or later, just as soon as we finish eradicating mainstream Christianity. And maybe Islam, Scientology, and belief in Quezacotl. There’s an order these things go in, after all. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll get to you soon. Any day now.
As has already been said, we know this very well. As you’ve seen in this thread, you criticize Biblical literalism and you hear that very few Christians believe this. You show that one part of the Bible is evil, or historically inaccurate, or self-contradictory, and you hear that that part was either a story or an uninspired part that got in.
What I keep asking, and never get an answer to, is how do you decide which parts are inspired and which parts are nonsense? If there were some sort of an algorithm or decision procedure (the way there is in science) you’d expect to see religious beliefs converging to the true god. Instead we see divergence. If it is just a matter of faith, then I submit you are basically equivalent to a baseball fan. You have faith that Jesus is the son of God, and will return, and a Cubs fan thinks the Cubs will win the pennant this year or this decade. Faith is nice, but nothing to build public policy on.