(July 14, 2015 at 2:38 am)whateverist Wrote:(July 13, 2015 at 10:50 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: But what then, is the garden of eden? What does the garden of eden represent? What of original sin? How can the allegory make any sense at all if evolution is true? And how could evolution be compatible with a good, omnipotent, omniscient god? Evolution is brutal and nasty, and any being that chose that method to make something either is incapable of something better (so not omnipotent) or just does not mind a lot of suffering (so not good at all).
It seems to me that the only way one could suppose that evolution is compatible with the Bible, even just taking the Bible as metaphorically true, is to not pay attention to any of the details or think it through.
What I have noticed is people saying "metaphor" and "allegory" and then simply ignoring what the stories say altogether. You can see that in this thread:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-34389.html
When a story is an allegory, the story still says whatever it says, and one must make sense of it somehow, or it fails as an allegory.
But any theist adept enough to read the bible allegorically is not going to subscribe to any bullshit about the bible being inerrant. Neither would you need to think the whole thing is golden. It may just be good for a few good parables and symbols. The point of such a reading would not be to understand the natural world as including supernatural bits. It would simply be to get some insight into the human condition and the possibilities and perils that entails.
Long before we had the mastery of discursive expression we have today we would have been understanding things allegorically. I'm not talking about a primitive, silly science. Thor isn't a failed hypothesis for lightening and thunder. It is entirely about people attempting to understand themselves in the world, not the world itself. Leastwise, that is the only part worth caring about.
The thing is, once one gives up on it being all correct, why regard it as at all special? There are plenty of stories that have meaning, like Aesop's fables, and they make a whole lot more sense than the stories in the Bible. Why not be an Aesopist instead of a Christian? Why call oneself a "Christian" if the basis of Christianity is nothing special at all?
My own take on this is that many modern Christians have basically rejected the foundation of their religion, but keep their religion anyway. And that is very irrational.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
