Literalism and Autism

[EgoDeath]

But where did he go wrong, he was never this way in the early days.

As far as I can remember, he's always been oddly sympathetic to Christians, attempting to defend them at every turn, for no apparent reason. The thing is, the version of Christianity he's defending isn't as popular as he believes. At least not from what I can gather. I'm going to use the US as an example.

If we assume there are about 247 million adults in the US, that means there are about 185 million Christians in the United States (obviously not including children, who clearly are not making their own decisions about what religion they belong to).

If we take Gallup's word for it that about a quarter of American Christians (24%) believe the Bible is the literal word of god, that puts us at what?

Around 44 million Americans believe the Bible is the literal word of god. That's no majority, but it's certainly no small number of people.

There are also a number of other alarming statistics from Pew about specific beliefs that American Christians hold. Like 76% of Christians actually believing that literal angels and demons are actively influencing the world around them. Like 45% of Christians believing homosexuality should be discouraged. 48% of Christians believe abortion should be illegal, in most cases. 19% of Christians claim to speak in tongues. We can go on and on.

And granted, the whole of Christianity is far greater than just what Americans think. But, outside of America, the picture can actually get a lot worse. Let's not even talk about Christianity in Africa or certain parts of Asia.

The point is, most Christians don't really have this intellectual, "educated" view of Christianity that Belaqua claims to hold. Plenty of people couldn't even recite you a single Bible verse, they just call themselves Christians or Catholics and go to church when their parents are in town. But even that's not the researched, nuanced view that Bel claims to hold. He seems to be very out of touch with what it is that actual Christians believe, and I think this comes from bending over backwards to try his hardest to defend the Bible. In this weird endeavor he's become totally out of touch with reality.

Does Bel's view represent what the average theologian believes about Christ and the Bible? Maybe. Or even early Christians? Maybe. But certainly not the Christians of today, and he fails to recognize that at every turn.