[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Fake Messiah]

I suspect that @Belaqua wants this concept to be impossible to pin down. He would rather that no one can define what a Christian is; that way any criticism of specific behaviors, ideas or thoughts is only a criticism of one of MANY interpretations of the Bible and Christianity, and therefore not an actual criticism of Christianity or Christians as a whole. It's a sly variation of the No True Scotsman fallacy... he can (attempt to) discredit any criticism you may have by simply saying, "Well that's just one school of thought and doesn't define Christianity, so what does your criticism matter?"

It's disingenuous at best.

If we take the Bible literally, all the way, through and through, it's a grotesque, violent book portraying an archaic time and people who were using fairytales and myths to understand the world around them.

If we take a more dynamic interpretation of the Bible, it's still pretty much the same thing.

But Bel wants to paint Christians as people who just understand metaphor and nuance and allegory and other literary tropes so much more than us silly atheists!

Exactly. He claims that literalists are wrong in interpreting the Bible and then claims how he himself doesn't know how to interpret the Bible along with everyone else. Then he's obsessed with early Christians who thought that Jesus didn't exist.

So what? There were many christianities 2000 years ago, including gnostics, but then after years of fighting, the Roman Christianity prevailed. Richard Carrier made a career how Jesus was considered a hallucination.

And now everyone else, according to him, who doesn't take Jesus as non existing entity is wrong except when you confront him with that because then he says how he didn't mean that and this goes back and forth.

So good luck going to the bottom of this discussion where even the OP doesn't know what the topic is.