(May 8, 2022 at 6:53 am)Green Diogenes Wrote: First thing I'll say is that the official Christian narrative of the Bible which is presented as 'Literal' is not actually described in the book.
I'll jump right in with Lot's Wife. A woman, who the Christians tell us, was turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God.
This is what "Biblical" Christians insist is described, and what Atheists tend to agree on, and then attack the idea of a woman being transformed into salt for simply looking back.
24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;
25 And he overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
26p But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
First thing to notice; no mention of her being killed as punishment for disobedience. It also makes no attempt to explain why she became a 'pillar of salt' only that she did, and it was because she was looking back at the destruction instead of actively fleeing. The author, who himself was fleeing, presumably witnessed this transformation himself, suggesting it wasn't simply looking back. The Christian narrative thereby is not contained in the words.
What we can learn from other disciplines shows that at least one city with surrounding towns, was wiped out by a comet airburst around 1500bc, at a site now called Tall El-Hamman, just north of the Dead Sea. The flash from the airburst is calculated to have been around 8000c, burning pottery. If you also understand the perspective of the people doing the writing, then it looks much more likely that the 'pillar of salt' is a visceral personal description of seeing another human getting evaporated by a brief moment of very intense light, as the result of a comet strike in the next valley.
As far as I can tell this is the reading with Empathy, that unlocks the authors, and who they are, and what they can individually understand and can communicate.
When I see atheists fighting with young earth creationists I usually see them fighting over little snipets and quotes which neither side can put a reasonable interpretation.
Throw all of those here and I'll see what I have to say about them. I need to keep my brain occupied in the evenings :V
Nope, sorry, this is moving the goal posts after the fact. Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt was literally what the writers wanted the reader to believe. Just like a psychic is a fraud but convinces suckers they are not. There was a time in American/western history that far more people literally believed that the woman really was being sawed in half, and now more people know it is an illusion.
