Re; Genesis as Metaphor

[Mr Greene]

There was a thread a while ago regarding someone having problems dealing with christians who don't take Genesis literally, going over the concept of Theistic Evolution. Some of the Americans seemed to think that christianity had to be based on the belief that Genesis was true and the central concept of Original Sin was at the heart of it.

As a Brit the idea of literalism is alien and took me a while to go over stuff to remember what the basis is for non-literalists.
So; The basis for non-literal christianity so far as I know is based on the concept of the Chosen People. For this to be held it is Exodus and the subsequent books that have to be historically accurate whilst Genesis can be discarded as metaphor.
If you can show that Jews were dishonest regarding the claims made in the OT post Genesis (and yes that means going through the archaeology through Omri and finally to Ezra) you should be able to deal more effectively with non-literal christians.

[Captain Colostomy]

You, I believe, are over-estimating what some christians need to 'believe'. I personally know christians who can't quote a single verse of scripture; yet they will doggedly defend poor, abused Jesus. All the evidence you compile amounts to wasted work with these yokels.

[Chad32]

Not only is it hard to take a literalist view of genesis, but genesis itsself doesn't really mesh well with the other stories of the old testament. They don't really make any indication that Yahweh is an all knowing, all present deity.

[FreeTony]

Christians I've met over here (UK) don't really take much of the bible literally.
"You're not meant to take it literally" they will laugh, when say you ask about Hell.
"How you decide which parts are literal?" you may ask.
"It's obvious" will be the reply.

The advice seems to be "Read the Gospels first, they're the good bits". They don't seem to want you to start at Genesis, even though this is the normal way to read a book.

[Chad32]

It's so obvious, there are tens of thousands of different denominations of christians due to how hard it is for people to understand the book. I'm certain there were stories that were once taken literally, but can't be taken seriously now. Also a debate on whether hell is some eternal torture, merely absence from Yahweh, or a place where your soul gets sent to be incinerated.

[Mr Greene]

You, I believe, are over-estimating what some christians need to 'believe'. I personally know christians who can't quote a single verse of scripture; yet they will doggedly defend poor, abused Jesus. All the evidence you compile amounts to wasted work with these yokels.

It seems to vary between denominations and whilst the majority couldn't quote the bible if their lives depended on it, we do get a fair number who will make these references.
In any case the post in question referred to an atheist, (probably ex-baptist) who;

had a real problem with 'Theistic Evolutionists'

This seems to be primarily an American viewpoint, and those who don't believe in Genesis as literal fact are viewed as "not true christians" and coming off that was the notion that Original Sin was the entire basis of christianity.
They thought that if you didn't accept that concept you would automatically become a deist, which obviously isn't the case.
The next catch is in Exodus as described, once that is dealt with the thing starts to crumble.

[Logisch]

You, I believe, are over-estimating what some christians need to 'believe'. I personally know christians who can't quote a single verse of scripture; yet they will doggedly defend poor, abused Jesus. All the evidence you compile amounts to wasted work with these yokels.

It seems to vary between denominations and whilst the majority couldn't quote the bible if their lives depended on it, we do get a fair number who will make these references.
In any case the post in question referred to an atheist, (probably ex-baptist) who;

had a real problem with 'Theistic Evolutionists'

This seems to be primarily an American viewpoint, and those who don't believe in Genesis as literal fact are viewed as "not true christians" and coming off that was the notion that Original Sin was the entire basis of christianity.
They thought that if you didn't accept that concept you would automatically become a deist, which obviously isn't the case.
The next catch is in Exodus as described, once that is dealt with the thing starts to crumble.

Actually, more often than not... it really comes down to, "Other Christians that don't agree with belief xyz which I believe in are not true Christians" which is what I find the most. It's primarily no true scottsman fallacy all over the place. But where I grew up, we had YEC, JH, Mormons and various other views. Some were into it literally, others "metaphorically" (AKA "Whatever sounds good that I want to believe to agree with things that sound good to my confirmation bias").

Hell... there's even evolutionary creationists now (that was a new one for me till a few years ago).

When you get on the subject of hell, some have changed to, "Well it's a spiritual hell... you don't really suffer.. you just aren't near god and that's bad enough." others are still literal, others are, "Well, hell is just something that is punishment for each person on what they fear the most." and things like that.

Probably the best part is that they can't all really agree on everyone's interpretation. Highly entertaining.

[Chad32]

This is a big reason why I don't believe the "personal relationship with Jesus". They had to come up with that to try to dispel the belief that it's just another religion. However, if Jesus really did have a personal relationship with followers, there would only be one kind of christian. So either he doesn't talk to people, or he sucks at it. You will find people in every group that genuinely wants to be with Jesus, so you can't say they're refusing to listen.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I've met Christians of lots of different franchises in several parts of the world (UK, Ireland, US, NZ, Egypt, a few others) and it seems to be that the non-literalists outnumber the literalists by a fair margin. As a rule, the non-literalists seem to have an argumentative edge, but not a substantive one.

By this I mean that it is more difficult to dismiss the arguments (AS arguments) of Christians who tend to view the uncomfortable or obviously inaccurate bits of the Bible as true, but true only in a metaphorical sense.

Take Genesis as an example, particularly the Fall. A non-literalist might argue that the story is untrue in the sense that there was no Adam, Even, Eden, magical tree or talking serpent, but that it IS true in the sense that rebelling against God is going to get you into trouble. But in the end, a non-literalist interpretation doesn't do much to rescue the position that a loving, all-knowing God would ever punish anyone for anything. Thus, this view isn't any more substantive when it comes to resolving Bible issues than is the literalist view.

As for the pick-and-choose 'cafeteria' Christians, they strike me as the easiest to get on with. They tend to focus on the beatitudes and some of the 'nicer' instructions, and don't even attempt to justify the horrible bits.

Boru

[NoraBrimstone]

I've never met anyone irl who took Genesis literally. Even in RE class at my (Roman Catholic) school we were taught that it was written to be metaphorical.

The last head teacher we had before I left was a Science teacher and an RE teacher. He was a Polish Catholic (they're very religious) and if anyone tried to confront him with "How can you be a scientist and religious?" he would explain that to him, science explains how God did things. Like, God created all things, and science is the explanation of the methods it uses. If a person insists on clinging to their religion, I think this is a great way to follow a religion and accept most of reality at the same time. It's as close to logic as religion can get, imo.