Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Belacqua]

When you get a chance, could you let us know how you'd like to proceed?

I'm pretty sure that everybody posting here knows full well that a literalist reading is dumb. Some people like to repeat that every so often. 

But I suspect you know that Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas also thought that a literalist reading was untenable. Not to mention all the non-literalist Christians there are today. 

Sometimes when I bring up those people I'm told that since the rank-and-file Christians at the church on the corner are literalists, then that's what we should focus on. Do you have a theme in mind?

Up to you. There's no particular theme in mind. I'm just assuming a literal reading of the text, but you go about it however you want.

I'm a big fan of using stories like this. Here's the advice I like, even though it's kind of old:

Socrates and Phaedrus are walking along outside the walls of Athens. Phaedrus asks if this is the location where Boreas the wind god abducted a girl. Socrates answers: 

____________

Socrates: No, this isn’t the place. It’s about  two or three stades*  downstream, where one crosses to go towards  Agra.* There’s an altar of Boreas somewhere there. 

Phaedrus: I’ve not really noticed it. But tell me, Socrates,  by Zeus:*  do you think this story is true? 

Socrates: It wouldn’t be odd for me to doubt it as the experts do. I might give a clever explanation of it, and say that a gust of wind from the north pushed her from the nearby rocks while she was playing with Pharmaceia, and although this caused her death she was said to have been abducted by Boreas––either from here or from  the Areopagus,*  since there’s another version of the story, that she was abducted from there, not here. Basically, Phaedrus, although I  find these kinds of interpretations fascinating, they are the work of someone who is too clever for his own good. He has to work hard and is rather unfortunate, if only because he next has to correct the way Centaurs look, and then the Chimaera, and then there pours down on him a horde of similar creatures, like the Gorgon and Pegasus and countless other extraordinary beasts with all kinds of  monstrous natures.*†  If anyone has doubts about these creatures and wants to use a rough-and-ready kind of ingenuity to force each of them to conform with probability, he’ll need a lot of spare time. As for me, I never have time to spend on these things, and there’s a good reason for this, my friend: I am still incapable of obeying the Delphic inscription and  knowing myself.*  It strikes me as absurd to look into matters that have nothing to do with me as long as I’m still ignorant in this respect, so I ignore all these matters and go along with the traditional views about them. As I said just now, I investigate myself rather than these things, to see whether I am in fact a creature of more complexity and savagery than Typhon, or something tamer and more simple, with a naturally divine and non-Typhonic nature. But anyway, my friend, if I may interrupt our conversation, isn’t this the tree you were taking us to? 

Phaedrus: Yes, this is the one.