[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Acrobat]

this is very clear within the text.

No, it is not. It is why you and your ilk are fond of cherry picking what is and is not to be taken literally.

I’m no more cherry picking what’s literal and non-literal, than I cherry pick what I recognize as sarcasm, satire, hyperbole, from more literal expressions in everyday language.

[GrandizerII]

That just means you didn't appreciate what those people appreciated. You can't speak for hypothetical people in a hypothetical scenario that I made up myself. Lol ...

I’ve given you all the freedom to develop your hypothetical myth, In which all that took place was a story of how God made an impressive rock. The rock served no other function, according to your myth other than as showcase of God impressiveness.

Maybe you need to develop you myth more with this divinely formed rocked served some necessary purpose for the community, other than an awe of its impressiveness. I mean your rock myth, doesn’t even showcase a god with any concern for these people, or their lives.

They already believed before the rock incident in gods that gave them hope and purpose. The rock just fosters that faith. You accept the rock serves that function.

I don't get what's difficult about this.

Some people would argue these stories are meant to be taken allegorically. What exactly would your argument to that be?

That it was to be taken as both, as real and symbolic.

Christ death was tragic defeat for the messiah, an irreconcilable fate, unexpected even by his own followers. If the resurrection wasn’t real, than their hope was more a product of desperation, than real, a desperate attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. It’s becomes more or less the reality of nihilism, a clinging to hope that doesn’t exist.

The cross becomes the human symbol of despair, not of any victory or defeat of it, but the triumph of misery.

That's what you would argue with people who question the literal interpretation of the accounts of the resurrection? They could just simply say you're wrong. The Resurrection happening literally would he absurd. It makes sense only if taken symbolically.

Anyway, your argument is similar to how fundies would argue regarding Genesis. If Genesis did not truly happen, then man is not in sin and therefore needs no salvation, and this would also mean God created a cruel world from the start.

[Acrobat]

They already believed before the rock incident in gods that gave them hope and purpose. The rock just fosters that faith. You accept the rock serves that function.

Faith, hope, trust in God are similar concepts. You seem to acknowledge that the purpose of myths are to foster hope and meaning in their communities. It's not terribly hard to recognize the importance of hope in such communities, absent of hope such communities would be unlikely to survive.

So a myth about a divine rock wouldnt be about its impressiveness, but one composed in a way to convey hope, like the rock giving water in time of famine. A god providing for his people, when all hope is lost.

That it was to be taken as both, as real and symbolic.

Christ death was tragic defeat for the messiah, an irreconcilable fate, unexpected even by his own followers. If the resurrection wasn’t real, than their hope was more a product of desperation, than real, a desperate attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. It’s becomes more or less the reality of nihilism,  a clinging to hope that doesn’t exist.

The cross becomes the human symbol of despair, not of any victory or defeat of it, but the triumph of misery.

That's what you would argue with people who question the literal interpretation of the accounts of the resurrection? They could just simply say you're wrong. The Resurrection happening literally would he absurd. It makes sense only if taken symbolically.

Absurdity isn't a reason to take an account symbolically. Sandy hook conspiracy theories are absurd, but they're not symbolic, they're just false beliefs.

It makes more sense to take the resurrection if it wasn't literal, as the desperation of his early followers, trying to cope with an irreconcilable tragedy, rather than purely symbolic. It would make more sense they had hallucinations of a risen Christ, or just made it up, than to read it as meant purely symbolically.

[EgoDeath]

@Acrobat

Don't you find it peculiar that no Christian ever admits to cherry-picking from the Bible? Since we cannot pin down which is the correct interpretation, according to you and @Belaqua, isn't it safe to assume that most Christians are getting it wrong, since there can be as many interpretations as there are Christians?

How do you figure that you're not cherry-picking when certainly plenty of Christians are? What makes you so sure you're not guilty?

[GrandizerII]

They already believed before the rock incident in gods that gave them hope and purpose. The rock just fosters that faith. You accept the rock serves that function.

Faith, hope, trust in God are similar concepts. You seem to acknowledge that the purpose of myths are to foster hope and meaning in their communities. It's not terribly hard to recognize the importance of hope in such communities, absent of hope such communities would be unlikely to survive.

So a myth about a divine rock wouldnt be about its impressiveness, but one composed in a way to convey hope, like the rock giving water in time of famine. A god providing for his people, when all hope is lost.

And the rock story is accepted as literally true as a result of that faith.

That's what you would argue with people who question the literal interpretation of the accounts of the resurrection? They could just simply say you're wrong. The Resurrection happening literally would he absurd. It makes sense only if taken symbolically.

Absurdity isn't a reason to take an account symbolically. Sandy hook conspiracy theories are absurd, but they're not symbolic, they're just false beliefs.

It makes more sense to take the resurrection if it wasn't literal, as the desperation of his early followers, trying to cope with an irreconcilable tragedy, rather than purely symbolic. It would make more sense they had hallucinations of a risen Christ, or just made it up, than to read it as meant purely symbolically.

Refer back to my ETA about how fundies argue for literal Genesis in much the same way you're arguing for literal Resurrection.

And no the early Christians didn't have to make up anything or hallucinate or literally view the resurrection. They could have written the stories mainly as allegories instead of to be taken literally and would have seen the notion of resurrection differently from how you see it. Jesus may not have even been real.

Why is this a big no no in this case but not in the case of Genesis? Fierce is right; you're cherry picking.

[Belacqua]

What do you know, non-intuitionally, concerning the thinking of these people? 

I lived with them. I was born in a village with church at center and where everyone knew everyone else. I like, you know, talked to them and they, you know, told me things.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the authors of Genesis and ancient people like that.

If you want to include moderns among the "people, living in remote villages away from the influence of modernism and naturalistic way of thinking" that still doesn't mean that your neighbors thought in a way remotely similar to ancients. 

Unless you were raised in some uncontacted tribe in Brazil, your generation has grown up with the influence of TV (its news and constant propaganda), capitalism, many of the benefits of modern science, a vague knowledge of how the world is that is far different from ancient people, and a thousand other things that ancients didn't have. 

I see no reason to assume that just because you know modern American hicks you have any idea of what it was like to live and think in ancient Greece or Jerusalem.

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Our secular humanity is what connects us, while religion merely divides.

Unless your secularism is dividing you from religious people.

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I'm talking about the kind of God theologians believe in. I don't see the evidence for such a god. I expect the evidence to be there. I do not have it. 

What would that evidence look like? 

Empirical scientific type evidence?

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By placing myself in the mind of the writer by reading his works, I can absolutely understand what he meant when he wrote what he did. 

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Furthermore these stories were not written out of whole cloths in the sense that there were no prior myths from which these were based. This I can say with certainty.

Well, sure. Nothing is 100% new. 

I should be clearer and say that according to these scholars the writers of the myths weren't recording well-established beliefs that their people already had. They were inventing just-so stories (of course made with elements they had heard) for their own purposes.

[GrandizerII]

I lived with them. I was born in a village with church at center and where everyone knew everyone else. I like, you know, talked to them and they, you know, told me things.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the authors of Genesis and ancient people like that.

If you want to include moderns among the "people, living in remote villages away from the influence of modernism and naturalistic way of thinking" that still doesn't mean that your neighbors thought in a way remotely similar to ancients.

Unless you were raised in some uncontacted tribe in Brazil, your generation has grown up with the influence of TV (its news and constant propaganda), capitalism, many of the benefits of modern science, a vague knowledge of how the world is that is far different from ancient people, and a thousand other things that ancients didn't have. 

I see no reason to assume that just because you know modern American hicks you have any idea of what it was like to live and think in ancient Greece or Jerusalem.

What American hicks?

The village I'm talking about happens to be in a country that borders Israel. So close enough to Jerusalem.

And if we can't take cues from what Middle Eastern villagers believe, then who do we take cues from? We don't know either way how the stories were originally intended so we have to speculate based on what we can see.

I'm talking about the kind of God theologians believe in. I don't see the evidence for such a god. I expect the evidence to be there. I do not have it. 

What would that evidence look like? 

Empirical scientific type evidence?

Is there such a thing as non-empirical evidence? I don't know, but it can certainly be empirically demonstrated to me that God does exist. There are infinite ways this could've happened. But alas, nothing. Makes you wonder.

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I lived with them. I was born in a village with church at center and where everyone knew everyone else. I like, you know, talked to them and they, you know, told me things.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the authors of Genesis and ancient people like that.

If you want to include moderns among the "people, living in remote villages away from the influence of modernism and naturalistic way of thinking" that still doesn't mean that your neighbors thought in a way remotely similar to ancients. 

Unless you were raised in some uncontacted tribe in Brazil, your generation has grown up with the influence of TV (its news and constant propaganda), capitalism, many of the benefits of modern science, a vague knowledge of how the world is that is far different from ancient people, and a thousand other things that ancients didn't have. 

I see no reason to assume that just because you know modern American hicks you have any idea of what it was like to live and think in ancient Greece or Jerusalem.

---

Our secular humanity is what connects us, while religion merely divides.

Unless your secularism is dividing you from religious people.

---

I'm talking about the kind of God theologians believe in. I don't see the evidence for such a god. I expect the evidence to be there. I do not have it. 

What would that evidence look like? 

Empirical scientific type evidence?

---

By placing myself in the mind of the writer by reading his works, I can absolutely understand what he meant when he wrote what he did. 

---

Furthermore these stories were not written out of whole cloths in the sense that there were no prior myths from which these were based. This I can say with certainty.

Well, sure. Nothing is 100% new. 

I should be clearer and say that according to these scholars the writers of the myths weren't recording well-established beliefs that their people already had. They were inventing just-so stories (of course made with elements they had heard) for their own purposes.

What source says they invented these stories? Sounds like this bit is more conjecture than based on evidence.

Did they invented Noah as well?

[Belacqua]

What American hicks?

The village I'm talking about happens to be in a country that borders Israel. So close enough to Jerusalem.

And if we can't take cues from what Middle Eastern villagers believe, then who do we take cues from? We don't know either way how the stories were originally intended so we have to speculate based on what we can see.

Sorry, my mistake. Assuming it was America was wrong on my part.

Did the village have TV? Did it participate in a capitalist economy? Did it have some acquaintance with, say, heliocentrism? 

In my opinion it's better to learn about ancient people from what ancient people wrote. Just living in the same area is no guarantee. 

Is there such a thing as non-empirical evidence? I don't know, but it can certainly be empirically demonstrated to me that God does exist. There are infinite ways this could've happened. But alas, nothing. Makes you wonder.

Science works extremely well because it limits itself to certain methods, and relies on empirical evidence that is quantifiable, repeatable, etc. 

Assuming that that's all there is in the world is like going to the beach with a metal detector and declaring that, after your search, everything on the beach was metal. Because that's all you found. 

Surely you've been on this forum long enough to know that since Plato, theories of god say that god is existence itself, or purely noetic, or actualization with no potential. If god was one object among other objects, and therefore the sort of thing that science could deal with, it wouldn't be god, by definition. You're thinking of Zeus or something, but not the Christian god. 

And I know, no one here likes the logical metaphysical arguments for god either. But those explained long long ago, before the rise of modern science, why god is not an empirically-knowable object. 

What source says they invented these stories? Sounds like this bit is more conjecture than based on evidence.

Did they invented Noah as well?

As I say, it's based on historical and linguistic evidence, the political problems at the time when (scholars now claim) Genesis was edited together, and other non-supernaturally held opinions. Sure, there is always conjecture when we don't have a working time machine. But it's not pure fantasy. 

I don't know about Noah -- when flood stories got rewritten into Hebrew and adopted for the current needs of the intended audience.

[GrandizerII]

What American hicks?

The village I'm talking about happens to be in a country that borders Israel. So close enough to Jerusalem.

And if we can't take cues from what Middle Eastern villagers believe, then who do we take cues from? We don't know either way how the stories were originally intended so we have to speculate based on what we can see.

Sorry, my mistake. Assuming it was America was wrong on my part.

Did the village have TV? Did it participate in a capitalist economy? Did it have some acquaintance with, say, heliocentrism? 

In my opinion it's better to learn about ancient people from what ancient people wrote. Just living in the same area is no guarantee. 

Is there such a thing as non-empirical evidence? I don't know, but it can certainly be empirically demonstrated to me that God does exist. There are infinite ways this could've happened. But alas, nothing. Makes you wonder.

Science works extremely well because it limits itself to certain methods, and relies on empirical evidence that is quantifiable, repeatable, etc. 

Assuming that that's all there is in the world is like going to the beach with a metal detector and declaring that, after your search, everything on the beach was metal. Because that's all you found. 

Surely you've been on this forum long enough to know that since Plato, theories of god say that god is existence itself, or purely noetic, or actualization with no potential. If god was one object among other objects, and therefore the sort of thing that science could deal with, it wouldn't be god, by definition. You're thinking of Zeus or something, but not the Christian god. 

And I know, no one here likes the logical metaphysical arguments for god either. But those explained long long ago, before the rise of modern science, why god is not an empirically-knowable object. 

What source says they invented these stories? Sounds like this bit is more conjecture than based on evidence.

Did they invented Noah as well?

As I say, it's based on historical and linguistic evidence, the political problems at the time when (scholars now claim) Genesis was edited together, and other non-supernaturally held opinions. Sure, there is always conjecture when we don't have a working time machine. But it's not pure fantasy. 

I don't know about Noah -- when flood stories got rewritten into Hebrew and adopted for the current needs of the intended audience.

What evidence suggests they invented the stories as opposed to making use of prior stories? This is the specific I'm contesting. Is there a link I can check?

And no, I'm talking about the Christian God. You know the one that underwent incarnation, came in flesh (the Son at least)? That's an example of a potentially empirical evidence right there.

[Belacqua]

What evidence suggests they invented the stories as opposed to making use of prior stories? This is the specific I'm contesting. Is there a link I can check?

from Wikipedia:

Misunderstanding the genre of the Genesis creation narrative, meaning the intention of the author(s) and the culture within which they wrote, can result in a misreading;[7] misreading the story as history rather than theology leads to Creationism and the denial of evolution.[8] As scholar of Jewish studies, Jon D. Levenson, puts it:

How much history lies behind the story of Genesis? Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all."[9]

and

Although tradition attributes Genesis to Moses, biblical scholars hold that it, together with the following four books (making up what Jews call the Torah and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch), is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods."[10] A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist source), and that this was later expanded by the addition of various narratives and laws (the Priestly source) into a work very like the one existing today.[3]

As for the historical background which led to the creation of the narrative itself, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is "Persian imperial authorisation". This proposes that the Persians, after their conquest of Babylon in 538 BCE, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. It further proposes that there were two powerful groups in the community – the priestly families who controlled the Temple, and the landowning families who made up the "elders" – and that these two groups were in conflict over many issues, and that each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.[11]

I am not, of course, pronouncing that Wikipedia is correct in all things. Only that what they write here is consistent with what I've read elsewhere -- theories that modern scholars take seriously. 

While the legends of creation had older roots, the recording and redaction had a specific purpose based on the political needs of the time. Probably I shouldn't have said they were made up out of "whole cloth." That was too much. Let me say instead: edited together out of older tropes, to make something they needed at the time.
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And no, I'm talking about the Christian God. You know the one that underwent incarnation, came in flesh (the Son at least)? That's an example of a potentially empirical evidence right there.

Right, if the incarnation happened today we could measure how tall Jesus is. Is there an empirical scientific way to determine whether he is or is not Logos made flesh? I don't know of any. 

Here is a passage from The Hidden and the Manifest, a book of essays by David Bentley Hart, an East Orthodox Christian theologian. It describes briefly what the Christian god is and is not. 

A God who is a being among beings, who possesses the properties of his nature in a
composite way, as aspects of his nature rather than as names ultimately
convertible with one another in the simplicity of his transcendent essence, is a
myth, a mere supreme being, whose being and nature are in some sense distinct
from one another, who receives his being from being as such and so is less than
being, who (even if he is changeless and eternal) in some sense becomes the
being he is by partaking of that prior unity (existence) that allows his nature to
persist as the composite reality it is. He is a God whose being has nonexistence
as its opposite; he is not, that is to say, the infinite actus of all things, id quo
maius cogitari nequit, but only an “ontic” God. There simply is no such God.
Atheism is not the mirror inversion of this sort of theism, but both its inmost
secret and its most necessary corrective. If God is thought of in such terms—if
his true transcendence as the being of all beings is forgotten, hidden behind the
imposing spectacle of a more conformable “supreme being”—then the longing
to know the truth of God cannot help but lead to the rejection of God as truth;
the inevitable terminus of “theism,” so conceived, is nihilism.

This should be clear that Hart is also denying the existence of the kind of god that people on this forum tend to argue against.

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As an example of how we probably shouldn't imagine that ancient people thought the way we do, here is something from a new review of Dominion, by Tom Holland, in which he looks into the influences Christianity has had on European thought in general.

https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Christia...247&sr=1-1

the bedrock of much modern social activism and
protest – discontent with the status quo and the desire for a
better world – is something we may owe to Christianity. ‘To
dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an
enlightenment, or a revolution’, writes Holland, ‘is nothing
exclusively modern. Rather, it is to dream as medieval
visionaries dreamed: to dream in the manner of a Christian.’
The impact of Christianity on the way we live, think and
speak has been extraordinarily pervasive, and not only in the
West, Holland concludes. Whether we like it or not, we live
in a ‘society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and
assumptions’. We could not even rebel against this heritage
without resort to Christian vocabulary, Christian ethical
tools and Christian notions of rebirth and renewal. It is not
for nothing that Nietzsche came up with the notion of the
Ubermensch: to unlearn Christianity would take nothing
less than a superhuman, quasi-divine effort.

I'm not saying that he's definitely right. Just that at least one serious scholar holds that Christianity changed our assumptions about how the world can work. If he's right, pre-Christian people would have conceived of some things very differently, and it would be wrong of us to project our post-Christian views onto them.