Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[GrandizerII]

Steve complains that we're not reading deeply enough into the background of the text.  When we do, Drich comes along and complains we're ignoring the plain meaning of the text.  And then when we do, along come Neo and Catholic Lady to tell us it's all symbolic and we should ignore the plain meaning of the text.  You just can't win with these fuckheads.

I'm being somewhat facetious here, but only somewhat.  If people needed to read the entire corpus of higher criticism prior to sitting down with the bible, the book would never get read.  There is a place for moderation, as well as allowing that one doesn't have to be an expert in higher criticism to make valid observations about the text.  Indeed, doing the former is something of an error in itself as much of the criticism that fundamentalists and evangelicals want to bring to examination of the bible itself rests upon assumptions and traditions which themselves are not necessarily rational or reasonable.  In particular here we find an example of the intentionalist fallacy in that our reading of a text should be governed by some hypothetical mind reading of the original author, ignoring that many of these texts aren't the result of such authorial intention, and even where they were, they may not reflect the intentions of the actual author, God himself.  So I agree that one should approach these texts with some intelligence if one wants to get the most they can out of the reading, but I disagree that there is anything wrong with a naive and plain meaning reading of the text.  In sum, methinks the lady doth protest too much.

(I'd also add that, in practice, much of higher criticism is applied dogmatically without any real appreciation of the philosophical issues at play.  So it's often the case that when people do attempt to bring higher criticism to the table, they do so in a way which undermines the usefulness of their doing so because they lack the philosophical acumen to place things in their proper context.)

And you know what, I agree 100% with you, even on the intentionalist fallacy part (first time I hear this fallacy, btw). Just to be clear, I'm not trying to mind-read the original author's intent. I'm applying a default mode of interpretation ("plain reading") because that's the most convenient interpretation I can do given the intended nature of this thread (and given because we don't know exactly what the original author's intent was, if any). Otherwise, I won't have time to start anywhere with this thread!