(December 22, 2019 at 8:13 am)Belacqua Wrote:(December 22, 2019 at 6:22 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: The bible does not have any where in it when it says. "this next bit is a metaphor and not to be taken literally" So people did and do take it literally and many many have been killed because it being taken literally by believers.
There are atheists who think like fundamentalists. For them, every line of the Bible is only and always one thing.
The idea that it has many authors, many goals, an evolving history of hermeneutics, etc., is too much to think about.
Way to avoid the answer. Writers of Bible were also fundamentalists then because they never acknowledge that Bible is only a metaphor. Take genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:23-38 "Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli [...] the son of Adam, the son of God."
Yes the son of Adam. Imagine having ancestors who are only a metaphor, like Adam, Noah, Moses, David... doesn't make sense.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
