[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Acrobat]

Sigh ... shifting the burden of proof, I see.

You clearly don't know how that works do you?

When there's two competing claims both sides have a burden of proof.

Regardless, I've provided a variety of support for how I reached mine. You haven't negated any of it, or even attempted to point out why the basis on which I reached my conclusions is faulty.

Furthermore, the compiler(s)/editor(s) may have not taken them literally, but that doesn't rule out others at the time taking them literally.

The question you asked how was it taken "from the start", that begins at the level of the compiler/editor. I don't care about how you or others read the genesis story, I care what I see the author or writer/compiler of the story is trying to communicate. If they're not trying to communicate literal history, I don't read it as literal history.

Some of the weird assumptions that would have to be made about the writers trying to write a history, would also apply to their earlier readers. Such as "how did Sam get all that information about the beginning of time? How come he didn't tell us about that? How about all the other competing origin stories, how come no ones trying to falsifying those', the way creationist argue against the validity of evolution? It would assume not just that the writer doesn't understand his own limitations, his inability to know the beginnings of the universe, but all his readers were just as ignorant of their ignorance. these are the questions of the most basic introspection, that for some reason I'm suppose to imagine ancient men lacked, yet I possess?

If anything you seem oblivious to some fundamental changes, brought about by the scientific and modern age. This sort of thing were atheists, view truth, as all thats scientific and historical, and everything outside of that is untruth, meaning and purpose are subjective, and not truths at all. It's a product of modernity, the negation of a teleological views of reality. In teleological views of reality, the telos, truth has a a purpose, a goal, meaning, etc... to tell of how things ought to be. Religious writings weren't for the sake of telling people of how the world was once, how life was once lived, but rather how the world ought to be, and how we ought to live in for the future. The past is only as important in how it illuminates the future, and how we live this life in the here and now.

This sort of mentality isn't lost on us completely, for non-religious folks, it just shifted to other places, to the arts, novels, etc... those of us with kids, who have a community we care about, engage the same sort of thing. What we want to pass on to our children, are things which help guide there life now and into the future. The past only as important as it serves this purpose.

If people were not so keen to hold a picture of humanity outside themselves as a cartoon, nothing I said above would be controversial, or rocket science.

---

I wouldn't even know what suspending belief here would look like, unless i avoided reading it all together. If I'm reading genesis, how do I suspend belief on whether it's symbolic/metaphorical, or intended as literal history? What does a suspended reading look like?

Its easy: "i.dont.know if its meant to be literal or allegoric".

Yes, in the meantime let’s suspend all attempts to understand each other, until we preface all our communication with a disclaimer as to whether we’re speaking literally, non-literally, sarcastically, using similes, metaphors, etc....

Sorry I forgot the disclaimer: sarcasm

You are trying to derail because you have run out of arguments, thats all.
You are also free to suggest that god the great teacher in his unfathomable wisdom chose to intentionally be ambiguous because......his mysterious and ambiguous ways. But like Belaqua this wont make you look a jota less disingenuous.

If i was god, and if i had to share wisdom with all of humanity, i would try to be as clear as possible as i possibly could in my divine wisdom, but alas i am a mere human, and probably being ambiguous is better than being clear, and probably the world is flat instead of a speroid. In any case its not me who is coming across like an evasive jerk by now.

Let's try it:

I don't know if you mean anything you said above is to be taken literally or allegorically. 

I can't understand anything you said above as a result. 

In order for us to understand language, sentences, words, from shifhiudhjsifhjsifhjiodshjfiohjdsifhjisd, we need referents, what the words represent, whether those are literal historical referents, or something else.  

Without being able to assume or make such distinctions, as you say ought to be suspended, Even intuitively, nothing could be read.