(August 13, 2013 at 8:43 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: @AnaMejiaP, have a question for you. But I'll answer yours first, to be fair. I'm an atheist, and I don't spend much time (if any time at all) considering the god hypothesis. But I was a Christian once, and one of the reasons I deconverted was because the bible is pettier than I am. And that is just silly to me because at that time I was doing basic courses in bio, and anyone who can create so much complexity in nature (which the bible claims) wouldn't care about what you eat or who you sleep with or who you marry. Not to mention all the other laws in the OT. I mean, that's just, if god was a person, he wouldn't be my friend because he gets mad at all the little things. Anyway, after that, I found more reasons to stop believing, which I won't bore you with.
So my question for you is: how do you know when the bible is literal and when it is metaphorical? Because no olne seems to be able to agree on this.
Context and cultural analysis. At times yes, it' hard to distinguish what is figuratively or literal. In most cases though when there's a lament, a vision, if there is a replacement of the usages of a person for an animal. (like a serpent, dragon, beast etc etc) it just depends when/where. Another example, in Ephesians where Paul speaks about women should be silent, he did not.mean all.women are to be silent, what he actually meant was that the Ephesians women should be silent because they were spreading a false gospel. Most people either misinterprets that verse literal and forget to look at the background of the text and its culture. I don't know if that helps or not.