[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[GrandizerII]

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.

No, it seems you don't know how this works. I'm not making a claim as confident as yours. In fact, I'm agnostic about this matter we're debating. You're the one making the confident claim. Hence, you alone bear the burden of proof.

Even so, I gave you a basis for the opposing position, which you chose to ignore.

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.

You gave your opinions on Genesis and speculations on what may have happened in history past, based on your intuition, not on historical records and such. There's no need to waste time arguing about how your conclusions are faulty when they're not derived from facts.

Yes, I know, I don't have the records either. But again, I'm not the one making positive claims.

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.

Yes, this begins at the level of the compiler/editor, but the stories weren't necessarily first made up by them. And it needn't have been just one editor/compiler, nor was Genesis put together in one go ... which means it's possible no one editor/compiler/scribe felt responsible for the assurance of legitimacy of the whole Genesis collection.

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?

Facepalm. Back then, it was far easier for people to believe this stuff than to naturally doubt. And it's not like there was just this one Sam who came up with the whole story in one go. Rather, these stories are narrated gradually and progressively by different storytellers, adding new elements to the story with each successive narration, and from a very simple story to a more complex one over time.