Kaje wrote:
Or, for that matter, The International Square Earth Society. Revelation 7:1 clearly shows that the Earth is square!
The green grass was, quite obviously, growing in the meadow. That is the purpose of the meadow; in short, that’s what you have a metaphor.
Jab, I have no problem with identifying errors in Scripture, as you know. But even the most defiant of literalists would read Revelation, like part of Daniel, II Esdras (if they look at it), and various Pseudopigrapha as apocalyptic writing. And you do not take such stuff literally; nobody believes in the existence, past, present, or future, of a beast with seven heads and ten horns. It may metaphorically be the Roman Empire, Napoleon’s empire, the Common Market, the Moral Majority, or the ACLU, depending on your taste in interpretation.
Hence the contradiction does not exist – it’s simply a case of not keeping track of the details of the various destructions that get thrown against the ungodly during the Great Tribulation.
**Jab1 wrote:
Why does the Word of God need an editor? Did God allow the grass to grow back? Then why did He have it destroyed in the first place? And if God allowed the grass to grow back, why doesn’t the text mention it? It would have taken only a few words.
And I’m curious as to why anyone would continue to believe the Bible is the Word of an infallible Almighty when faced with contradictions like these.**
And I wonder why you keep on throwing up such arguements to “disprove” the Christian Bible? Only the literalists or Fundamentalists believe the Bible is the absolute, inerrant “Word of God” while the majority of Christians believe it to be stories, history, mythology, poety and yes, Divinely-inspired text.
If you’ve a beef with the Fundamentalists, then direct your question to them directly, otherwise, you’re painting all Christians to be Fundamentalists.
I’m curious… what IS the percentage of Christians who regard the Bible as the complete inerrant word of God? And you can’t just go by registered denomination, cause there are plenty of people in all sorts of camps that go to any particular church.
I suppose this is kinda like the “so how many muslims really support bin laden?” question… but it still seems relevant, and in this country more easily obtainable than others.
Gallup has some figures for the United States:
In February 2000, 27% of those polled chose the statement “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word” as the best description of their beliefs. This is down from a high (for the roughly quarter-century in which Gallup has a record of having asked that question) of 40%, attained in both August 1980 and November 1984. In February 2000, 49% of respondants agreed with the statement “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally” and 20% with the statement “The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man”; 4% had no opinion.
However, a year later, 45%, a considerably higher percantage than the “taken literally” respondants, agreed with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so” as opposed to “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process” (37%) or “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process” (12%). Since the first statement seems to go with what I normally think of as “Biblical inerrancy” or “Biblical literalism”, I wonder if there isn’t a flaw in Gallup’s questions somewhere. For one thing, a thoughtful Biblical inerrantist might well pick “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally” over “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word” since as Polycarp points out even the most ardent inerrantists do not regard stuff like the weird critters of Revelation as literal Godzilla-style monsters.
So, based on that data, I’d say possibly as high as 45% of Americans have what I would consider to be a literalist, inerrantist, or “fundamentalist” view of the Bible.
Though I agree completely with most of what both of you have written, I can personally verify that there are biblical literalists who believe each and every word is inerrant. More than a few of my relatives fall into this category. Some passages may be interpreted as dreams or visions, e.g. as in parts of Revelations, but if the good book says it will or did happen, they believe it. This includes prophecy about the events during the Tribulation, which foretells many such strange beasts.
Well, even the most literalist of believers do see this stuff as allegorical though. They may go into great detail about how the different heads of Critter A stand for the different members of the European Union; they may even specify which head or which horn on which head or whatever stands for Belgium (or alternatively stands for this or that Pope, or this or that 20th Century dictator, or this or that member of N’Sync). But, since they don’t literally believe that giant seven-headed monsters will rampage across the land, they would be justified in saying they believe “not everything in [the Bible] should be taken literally”–some of it is allegorical or visionary and must be interpreted.
<< I doubt anyone is going to come up with any new refutations of the arguments for the existence of God or the truth of the Bible, either. Still, you never know when some old argument will be new to the person who is hearing it. >>
Agreed, Bruck. I was just reacting to the post that expressed surprise that a biblical literalist, faced with these “contradictions” didn’t shrivel up and immediately drop his foolish position. My point is that such people are well fortified with hundreds of years of point/counterpoint.
MEBuckner wrote:
Are you kidding? The real Godzilla would sweep the floor with the namby-pamby 10-headed Beast of Revelation. Does the 10-headed Beast have radioactive fire breath? Can he shrug off armor-piercing missiles? Huh? And what about that way-cool Godzilla roar – I’ll bet the Beast never had anything like that!
Yeah, but the dragon/beast of Revelation has seven heads. Godzilla only has one head. And it’s just common sense; seven heads are better than one.
Well, there are these “horses” that breathe fire, smoke, and sulfur. Not to mention they have tails which are actually poisonous snakes. Clearly, we ain’t talkin’ Black Beauty here.
These “locusts” sound pretty bad-ass too.
And let’s not forget about the “star” which will fall upon the Earth and poison a third of the world’s water supply.
It’s like a cross-between Godzilla, Deep Impact, and Aliens.
Paging Mr. Spielberg! Mr. Steven Spielberg! You have a call on the white muse phone!
Yeah but with wormwood… it’ll just turn everybody into expressionist painters, proving once and for all that God CAN do evil.
Kaje, I am a biblical literalist, meaning I believe that the Red Sea parted just to let the Israelis go through safely.
I’ll bet you don’t believe the End Times will look like a Japanese monster movie, though.
Just out of curiousity, which of Gallup’s statements about the Bible would you prefer; “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word” or “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally”? (I’m guessing “the Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man” is out.)
Much of revelation is figurative; I don’t believe theres a beast with 7 heads, that is.
But when its written as “The sea parted” then I take it literally.
Okay then, vanilla, how about this passage from Genesis:
“Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.”
– Genesis 10:25 [emphasis mine]
Does that mean that the Earth was literally split into two or more pieces, floating separately in space?
Sorry to butt my way in here, but in all fairness Tracer…the verse doesn’t say “in his time the earth was split into two or more pieces floating seperately in space.” It simply says ‘divided’, and there are plenty of ways to read such literally other than what you’ve given us. And quite honestly very little goes into deciding what exactly that verse means since the earths ‘division’ in Gen 10 does not play a vital role in the story of the bible. Vanilla’s parting of the red sea is a little more important to biblical accounts wouldn’t you say?
So tell me, how do you decide which verses you take literally and which ones you don’t?
Huh? Just because someone believes that one story should be takn literally, that doesn’t that he thinks that all of them should be.
How is that a problem?
Are you saying that you consider “literalist”, “inerrantist” and “fundamentalist” to be synonyms?