What is the wider context of that sentence?
In what manner does that wider context change the meaning we should ascribe to that sentence?
What is its correct meaning?
That’s funny, because it took a few centuries for the Church to drop the geocentric model based on what the bible said. Perhaps they thought the firewood budget for burning heretics could be better used for something else.
Don’t judge others unless you’re ready to be judged by your own standards.
My grandfather, who trained preachers, said, “The Bible is true as it purports to be true.” It’s not all literal: There are metaphors, there is some coded language, there are iffy translations, there can be jokes, there are bits where the transcriber isn’t sure of his sources & facts, we can get inaccuracies & suppositions. But it seems bizarre to me when people claim they believe in the Bible, but “not literally.” Are they just saying they don’t literally believe in the Bible?
If the Bible says Saul exterminated the Amalekites because the prophet Samuel told him too, or Nehemiah physically attacked Jewish men who married outside the tribe, what kind of silly idea is it to claim that it means these things, “not literally”?
(The text doesn’t clearly indicate that Samuel & Nehemiah were right in this behavior; whether they were vile racists & generally full of shit is left to the reader.)
I think you’re probably creating a straw man. If the criticism of the bible were limited to such petty complaints it would be easy to deflect, but using your own example, there seems to be quite a bit more than simply “the sun rose”.
In any case, why focus on minutia? Certainly fundamentalists think Genesis is literal, right? Are critics being too hyper-literal to point out how this conflicts with what we know about the universe?
There are a large amount of people out there who believe the bible is inerrant and literal. There are many flaws to point out that the Bible has in the way it describes our universe. No hyper-literalism necesary. Are you trying to imply that pedantic focus on minutia is the only criticism we can muster?
The whole “not ALL of the Bible is literally true, only some of it” excuse seems really intellectually lazy. How do you decide what’s literal and what isn’t? One of the most popular parts to not be literal is the very beginning, where the world is created in 7 days. Apologists say “oh it’s not really 7 days, it’s actually 13.7 +/- 0.01 billion years just like astronomers have calculated, you just have to read between the lines” and I have to wonder why no one came up with that interpretation hundreds of years ago. It certainly would’ve saved scientists a ton of time.
Printed Jewish Torahs are usually accompanied by interpretations and commentaries, attempting to explain the real meaning of a verse. Usually the Reform and Conservative commentaries will offer a more figurative interpretation. Orthodox commentaries will also be generally figurative, but leaning a bit more towards the literal.
My impression is that atheists actually interpret the Bible hypoliterally.
The reason atheists critique the Bible as if it was all literally true is because if you’re not going to treat it as literally true, the first thing you should throw out is God, the omnipotent, impotent, benevolent, sociopathic ball of ill-logic.
Well, 212 years does count as “centuries” although I doubt that is how you meant it–and no one was burned, or even threatened, for promoting geocentrism.
On the other hand, I have never encountered an atheist who would offer “the sun rose” as a claim for geocentrism when they have the much easier claim of Joshua stopping the sun to prolong a battle–a claim that numerous pro-Bibilical literalists have attempted to work into odd claims that that event has been “discovered” in various searches of the stars.
Curtis, beyond the obvious things like parables, how do you distinguish which parts of the Bible accurately reflect what God said and which are made up, and which rules count and which don’t? What things that God is claimed to do did he actually do?
I’m quite a fan of the Skeptics Annotated Bible, and all it does is comment on what is actually written in the Bible. Should they ignore all absurdities and instances of flaws of logic because it offends people?
Anyhow, as creationists like to tell us, Jesus believed in the Adam & Eve story, and he can’t be wrong.
I haven’t seen the old “NASA computer discovers missing day” story in ages. Perhaps enough people more or less understand computers these days to recognize it as the total load that it is. It doesn’t make sense even under its own assumptions.
I know plenty of atheists who can understand the bible stories as metaphors or parables. Atheists come in a wide variety of types of interpretation. Bart Erhman, the PhD writer on textual issues with the bible has a number of books out. He started out as a fundamentalist, went to seminary, became a non-fundamentalist and is now an atheist who finds the bible to be of very high cultural importance.
Also, if you aren’t going to argue against the literally true version, which are you going to argue against? If you argue against the literally true version, that forces the theist on the other side to either defend that, or admit that he doesn’t believe the literally true version. Then comes the tedious process of actually trying to pin them down on what they believe while they frenziedly move goalposts and shift definitions. Getting theists to actually clearly state their position so you can argue against it is often one of the major difficulties of debating with them.
1/ they don’t universally
2/ to the extent that I do, it is as a reductio. For example, some Christians sometimes suggest that their morality has a degree of authority because it is based on an old book. This proposition can quickly be reduced to absurdity by pointing out what that book actually says.
The atheist has the advantage of looking through history and seeing people use the Bible to justify/fight slavery, justify/fight war, justify/fight homosexuality, justify/fight genocide, etc. The Bible has been re-interpreted to mean whatever the society that is using it wants it to mean at that moment in time, all through history. But in spite of that, there’s no particular evidence that the writers of the Bible didn’t mean exactly what they wrote. The simple-reading is, likely, the true reading. If they say, “Stone an adulteress to death.” Probably they really meant that God requires you to round up some townsfolk and stone that lady to death in the public square. When Jesus said that you should give away everything you own rather than allow someone to be poorer than yourself, the crazy fuck probably really meant it. He wasn’t just making a pithy joke.
Its like this: If you are at all unsure of the veracity of something, you take the most simple, honest and direct meaning.
Did David kill two hundred men and steal their foreskins to impress some hot princesses dad? When he only demanded 100? I have no idea what the allegory for that might be, so I start with the premise that, yes, he really did.
Which means David, Michal’s daddy and Yaweh are f’n crazy ass psychos. Why god? because he apparently approved. It was all part of his plan. He could have put the kibosh on that quick and prevented some mass murder. But David was his golden child.
That part doesnt matter? It doesnt count? Then take it out of the bible. No? Then it must matter. Stop sitting on the fence, morally speaking. Nobody achieves anything by jambing their fingers in their ears and saying “la-la-lalalala! Its all metaphorical!”
Embrace it or ditch it. But you cant, can you? Because you know its hogwash.
There are many interpretations of the bible even among Christians, and as a result there are many different Christian sects. Each person seems to intrepret the bible to suit their own beliefs. Since it is written by humans, for humans, and called the word of God, (or inspired by God) by humans. There can be any intrepretation for each person. Other wise if it were inspired by a God, all would understand it in the same way! The way it is, any one can justify it’s beliefs any way they wish or what suits their own reasoning.
I take the Bible as being completely metaphorical, with an ocasional passage or two which reflect a historical event.
Metaphors allow me to interpret them in a way which fits my life experiences and the way I hope a deity would like its civilized followers to behave.
Sure, but you could take The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, everything Manson ever said about Helter Skelter, or whatever other crazy ass thing and if you say:
- I know a priori that this tells me to do good things.
- Thus, if I read it and it seems to be telling to me to do something bad, obviously this was a misreading on my part. I must figure out what the correct reading is that does tell me to go do good.
Well great. All you’ve achieved is the ability to ask yourself what “good” is, because that has nothing to do with what you’re reading. Of course, the danger is that the person does read it, and does accept it as good, when it’s not.
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is of thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. Thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God.
Can I figure out a way to read that as saying anything other than that if your son marries a Hindu woman and converts, then you have to personally kill him? Sure, if I consider it to be sufficiently metaphorical. But am I being honest by doing that? Almost certainly not.