RE: Literal and Not Literal
August 29, 2019 at 7:06 am
(This post was last modified: August 29, 2019 at 7:08 am by Fake Messiah.)
(August 29, 2019 at 4:05 am)Belaqua Wrote: Truth and metaphor are not mutually exclusive
Metaphor is when an entire story is not meant to be taken literally, but symbolizes an underlying message. Not exactly history. And now we're going in circles. As branches of science--evolutionary biology, geology, history, and archaeology--have disproved scriptural claims one by one, those claims have morphed from literal truths into allegories.
People used to believe in deluge and six day creation but today it's more like a metaphor. People believed Bible that Earth is immovable and Christians persecuted those who discovered otherwise and now it's a metaphor.
Perhaps some Christians see the Bible largely as allegory, but there are some nonnegotiable beliefs that are virtually diagnostic of each religion. William Dembski, a Southern Baptist and prominent advocate of intelligent design creationism, has specified the "non-negotiables of Christianity" as these: divine creation, reflection of God’s glory in the world, the exceptionalism of humans made in the image of God, and the Resurrection of Jesus.
(August 29, 2019 at 4:05 am)Belaqua Wrote: Some of them will be happy to call the events of the Gospels allegorical, although you may declare them not to be Real Christians.
Then you don't know me. I never claimed some group of Christians are real and some not. Indeed Christianity today is splintered beyond belief. There are, at the moment, an estimated 41,000 different denominations. This is one of the key reasons why many people are skeptical of Christianity. But you seem to know who true Christians are since you scoff on literalists. And in the same time you're not bothered that the world's Christians can't even agree on precisely who Jesus is, what he wants us to do, how we are supposed to worship him, and how we get to heaven?
(August 29, 2019 at 4:05 am)Belaqua Wrote:(August 29, 2019 at 3:30 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: And evidence for Jesus as the son of God is unconvincing
To you it is. Not to a lot of other people.
Well it is unconvincing to majority of people because 70% of people who live today find Jesus as son of God unconvincing.
(August 29, 2019 at 4:05 am)Belaqua Wrote: writers of the time were more interested in the spiritual than the journalistic meaning.
Or they lied, made stuff up, like with all other holy books that are not your religion.
(August 29, 2019 at 4:05 am)Belaqua Wrote: I AM NOT SAYING I KNOW WHAT IS TRUE. I am saying that you don't either.
It usually goes like this
![[Image: Context-bible.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/jqkbvccv/Context-bible.jpg)
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"