[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[EgoDeath]

Yeah, I don't care about the definition, as long as we know what we're talking about. 

Since atheists don't believe in God, we'd have to say either that nothing is holy, or that holiness is decided by people, right? 

However, these people believing this book is divine is certainly different than them just believing it's a good book, no?

Yeah, I think that poetry works in some places and not in others. On a forum like this, accuracy is best. It may be that in the interests of accuracy -- for example, to head off misunderstanding -- I type more than some people would. 

If you don't like the way I write you could ignore my posts and it wouldn't offend me.

It's not that; I simply have to wonder, when you beat around the bush and make these lengthy diatribes, how interested are you in actually answering the question.

Good, we agree on something.

Well, I never said it did either. I have to wonder if it provoked any commentary worth listening to. Is someone in today's world better off for understanding the Bible and the context it was written in and the conversation around it? It seems to me that you could go your entire life without ever hearing about this book and, if anything, you'd be better off not having to worry yourself with the silly ideas that the Christian religion proposes.

No, this is untrue. 

The only thing that atheists have in common is that they don't believe a certain thing. Some atheists have a deep understanding of the tropes used in literary expression, and some don't. 

Some Christians understand that stuff, and some don't. As I have said a few times now, I think that many modern Christians don't understand those tropes very well, and it would be better if they did

You say, "this is untrue," and yet you come off like a Christian trying to make a good case for why should all take the Bible quite seriously. Nah.

Once again, you try to paint these early Christians as people who had this literary, fluid understanding of the Bible as a piece of literature. That they were just oh so comfortable with literary tropes and allegory that we, in today's age, just don't get it... but there's no real evidence to back that up. Evidence tells us that early Christians had a dynamic understanding of the scripture; however, dynamic understanding included taking many parts quite literally and even treating some parts of the Bible as historical record and direct commands from god.

A metaphor, would be like when Jesus said, "Think not I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword." Of course, Jesus did not literally send a sword to earth. I think even the most hardcore Biblical literalist would tell you they understand that this isn't literal.