Very well. You take it as metaphor. If I had to do the same, I don’t know that I would agree with your interpretation. The “hand” part would imply that you abstain from objectionable action. The “eye” part seems to me to imply to abstain from knowledge. And I would object to that on principle.
When we’re talking about the meaning of the text, of course we’re not talking about “exact copies” - it’s nonsensical to say one believes something “as an exact copy”. It’s about “without figurative intent”. Which DOES imply “no metaphors”.
I’ve already acknowledged that by far the majority of believers take the bible less than 100% literally.
In my experience, atheists tend to have a better grasp of philosophy and religion than those actually practice that religion. A lot of atheists arrived there after a lot of personal study and questioning, instead of just listening to a priest or nun and accepting whatever he says. Many times I’ve heard that actually reading the bible cover to cover is one of the biggest reasons given for rejecting it. And I’ve found many examples of people who loudly espouse their religion, or at least loudly deride atheism, and yet have little understanding of it. Although it does seem to be true that atheists tend to have a better grounding in science.
I’m guessing it’s not because atheists do not realize that the bible is a collection of various books. Atheists bring the critical faculties they use on science to bear on the bible because the bible is used in the same way scientific knowledge is used: as a basis to judge & act on reality. Why not regard the bible, and it’s advice, critically?
For example, a lot of Christians use Leviticus 18:22 (or Leviticus 20:13) to justify their rejection of homosexuals. So they are taking something written in the bible pretty literally, and making real life choices based on it. And yet, if you look around in Leviticus, you can find an awful lot of passages, like say Leviticus 19:27 that they don’t follow. But yet I see an awful lot of Christians hatin’ on homos and not a lot of Christians looking like ZZ Top. So what’s the difference between the two? Both are given as commandments from the Lord. Both are actionable. And yet, people do one and not the other. Critical examination of both of them indicates that they were guidelines for nomadic goat headers 2000 years ago. The only reason to follow them seems to be ‘cuz god says so’. But if god did in fact say so, why one and not the other?
Or you could have just answered the question. Who wrote it? Or are you going to slice some fine point about how God dictated it but Moses (or whomever) held the quill?
Maybe you don’t believe this but plenty of Christians I know do. Once again, Christians conveniently claim to speak for all Christians when it suits them. As soon someone disagrees, those other Christians aren’t true Christians. Yet the OP has no qualms about lumping all non-believers into one slandering mass.
Obviously relatively few clergymen take the official position nowadays that the laity are forbidden to read the Bible (although historically laymen were discouraged from or forbidden to read the Bible longer than they were allowed to). So the official modern position is that you should read the Bible. But generally it’s more a matter of allowing laymen to read the Bible rather than encouraging it (much less requiring it).
The majority of churchgoers who read the Bible will do so in the context of Bible Study groups - a bunch of people reading the Bible under the guidance of somebody who will steer the interpretation.
I was raised a Catholic and like most Catholics my contact with the Bible was generally a reading at the Mass, where the priest selected a couple of passages, read them to us, and then gave a sermon on what they meant. None of us were ever told we shouldn’t read the Bible on our own but it certainly was never encouraged.
Seems pretty clear from the cite that some religious Christians believe that God “inspired” the writing, but no-one (or hardly anyone) actually believes God wrote it.
I think this goes to the main point that the OP brings up. If we could just pin down a single Christian concept of what role God had in the writing of the bible then maybe most atheists would stop their hyper-literally interpretations, and maybe most Christians would too.
I’m getting the impressing that you do not think the Bible was written by God (however you want to interpret that), or even inspired by God. In that case I understand why you might dislike atheists interpreting it so literally since you seem to believe it is a book written by man. How do you feel when Christians do that?
Speaking only for myself, I am not overly concerned about word-picking, so long as I am allowed to call out egregious examples of making stuff up and pretending the verse supports it. If the text seems (in context) to support the interpretation, and the style of interpretation doesn’t change dramatacally and conveniently all across the board, then I can roll with it. (And example of the latter being you can’t say that the mosaic covenant is invalidated by Jesus and then try and use it to justify a ban of homosexuality or whatever.)
Why am I willing to be so lenient with other people’s interpretations of the bible? Mainly because it’s so bad that nobody can use a consistent and rational interpretation and still use it as a holy book. And if people aren’t using it as a holy book (that is, if it doesn’t have factual or moral authority), then I don’t give a crap what people do with it.
But that’s not really the question - tho I’m sure some Christians DO believe the bible was really “written” by God - the quote [from the NT] does say quite definitely that the bible is “the word of God”. The “Word of God” is quite a powerful idea in Christian theology and arguably not something that can be toyed with or ignored as one likes.
So once again you attack someone for being ignorant of what your position is rather than asserting it directly.
And what do you mean by the “Christian” position? That’s overbroad. This thread is about atheists vs. those who do believe that the Bible was inerrantly authored by God.
Yeah, not much of a consensus. There are places like this: http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-literal.html
that contend that the bible is to be taken literally. I don’t know about hyper-literally.
And then there are all the “biblecode” books and sites that contend God actually put in numerical codes with secret messages for us. Hardly mainstream I know but those folks believe that the bible is actually to be taken as a God’s word letter-for-letter.
Indeed. When I think “adult”, I often imagine talking snakes, people living inside whales, Omnipotent beings playing games with peoples’ lives, hatred of sex, 1000 year-old men, events that defy physical laws, zombies, and implausible end-of-the-world scenarios.
Uh? You cite one atheist on youtube you don’t like, a larger (but vaguely numbered) groupd of atheists on this board you have no problem with, and decide the world at large embraces the kind of atheism you don’t like?
Let’s not hedge, here. It’s akin to saying you dislike Group X even though some of your best friends are members.
I personally have no belief in the literal existence of any God or Gods. My interest in the Bible is purely literal, historical, and anthropological.
My point is this: that attacking it for having flaws or contradictions misses the mark, since the vast majority of actual believers today and throughout history were not of the opinion it was, literally, written down by God, but rather that its human authors were inspired (no two agree exactly how or to what extent) by the divine.
Thus, the presence of errors and contradictions in the text is easily explicable by believers. They will hardly break a metaphorical sweat, in responding that “errors in the text” are the natural result of having human authors, and that it is only where the authors all agree that one detects the presence of the divine inspiration.
They would, in short, not be swayed by this argument:
Again, the issue I was arguing with was that it is a valuable critique of the Bible, and of Judeo-Christianity generally, that the text contains errors and contradictions.
It doesn’t take a very sophisticated believer to easily dispose of that argument. The Bible may, in Christianity, contain the “Word of God”, but it was not written by infallible God - it was written by humans, under (many believe) divine inspiration.
A New Testament example: the Gospels contain different versions of the crucifiction of Jesus, which differ in significant detail. They were written by different individuals. Christians have known about this since forever; it is, obviously, not taken by them as proof that the Gospel-writers were not divinely inspired because they do not all agree.