[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Fake Messiah]

As I indicated, I read the Bible on the nature of the style in which it was written, decipher it's meaning as I do language in general, or any other book, religious or otherwise. It's a result of this that I'm not a literalist, not because of my theism, or otherwise. I would read the Bible the same way even if I wasn't a theist, the way I'd expect an atheist to read it. Yet as the forum shows, this doesn't seem to be the case, that many atheists don't read the Bible with any more competency than the worst fundie.

There you go, you scoff on literalists and yet claim that you don't know what true Christian is.

The Bible fails because it doesn’t communicate a clear message or intent and that's why state of Christian unity is shattered. Bible is too dense, too convoluted, and too confusing. There is no way millions and then billions of Christians could remain united for long with the Bible as their ultimate source for what God wants of them. One could hardly come up with a more perfect blueprint for fracturing a religion.

I remember the public debate leading up to the Iraq War in 2003. Some Christians on both sides of the issue confidently stated what Jesus would want and then backed it up with the Bible. How can a divinely inspired message demand peace and war simultaneously? How can it justify extravagant wealth while also demanding poverty? How can it unite and divide those who believe it? Skeptics, observing all this from the sidelines, can only think that when a book says everything to everyone, perhaps it’s not really saying much at all.

[Acrobat]

Not the same. That's a fairy tale, not a myth. Cosmogony myths were used to explain how the world came to be. There's no reason to suggest it wasn't taken literally by at least some of the ancients.

How do you know it wasn't intended to be taken literally at the start? Can we see an actual argument instead of confident appeals to personal intuition?

You're making a big assumption here. You claim that such mythology was meant to be taken literally from the start. But you haven't supported this. At least I can point to a comparison of styles to infer what should read literally and non-literally. What's you basis?


Your assumption requires even bigger leaps. Such as the person writing the Genesis story, was someone who believed he had special access to how the world came to be, via vision or something, and sharing with everyone else, that he was oblivious to the fact that he couldn't possibly know or guess the mechanics of how the world came to be. If that were the case, they would probably have prefaced the narrative, recounting this miraculous acquisition of past knowledge. Perhaps address the falsity of the other prevailing origin myths at the time. Rather than setting two competing genesis accounts side by side, or an interpretative tradition at the time, that took even greater liberates reimagine these same stories.

What reason do I to have to read it literally at the start? I have for more reasons to read it non-literally from the start, than literally, as I indicated here.

The Genesis story primarily revolves around the knowledge of good and evil, and that it's through this knowledge that we sin, do things that are wrong. A point that nots hard to realize, that nothing is right and wrong without knowledge of right and wrong. Without knowledge of right and wrong, they're just things.

The text is overflowing with symbolism, snakes, and a tree of life, a tree of good and evil, a fruit, a tempting snake, etc...
........

As I've said before if we took all the facts of science and history and laid them out, all we'd have is all that is, and all that was. There's no guide to life among these facts, how we ought to live, or be in the world among us. No fact is superior to any other fact, it's all just flat. Evolution is no more important, than a rock rolling down a hill, life no more valuable than death.

If the Bible served as the writing of highest values, so important that these communities saw that it needed to passed down from generation to generation, seen as sacred and holy, what purpose could they see it as serving other than as some guide to navigate the confines of the life in front of them? Other than as a purveyor of some meaning to the world in which their communities children ought to follow? A conveying something that is not scientific or historical?

If you believe that life possessed some intrinsic purpose or meaning? Wouldn't that be the most important question worth pursuing? And not the flat facts of science and history? Perhaps for those who reject such meaning, the facts of science and history is all there is to say about anything. But for those of us that do, this question, this pursuit is the fundamental one.

The commonality between us, is that they are chasing Truth, but truth they see as the same as Meaning, the two are intwined in such a view. In finding meaning, one finds truth.

This isn't true for those who see truth, as nothing but scientific and historical facts. There's no meaning here to be found, all thats here is all there is, and all there ever was. It's a pursuit of a dead end.

---

As I indicated, I read the Bible on the nature of the style in which it was written, decipher it's meaning as I do language in general, or any other book, religious or otherwise. It's a result of this that I'm not a literalist, not because of my theism, or otherwise. I would read the Bible the same way even if I wasn't a theist, the way I'd expect an atheist to read it. Yet as the forum shows, this doesn't seem to be the case, that many atheists don't read the Bible with any more competency than the worst fundie.

There you go, you scoff on literalists and yet claim that you don't know what true Christian is.

The Bible fails because it doesn’t communicate a clear message or intent and that's why state of Christian unity is shattered. Bible is too dense, too convoluted, and too confusing. There is no way millions and then billions of Christians could remain united for long with the Bible as their ultimate source for what God wants of them. One could hardly come up with a more perfect blueprint for fracturing a religion.

I remember the public debate leading up to the Iraq War in 2003. Some Christians on both sides of the issue confidently stated what Jesus would want and then backed it up with the Bible. How can a divinely inspired message demand peace and war simultaneously? How can it justify extravagant wealth while also demanding poverty? How can it unite and divide those who believe it? Skeptics, observing all this from the sidelines, can only think that when a book says everything to everyone, perhaps it’s not really saying much at all.

You seem to have too much faith in the clarity of language, to bridge the divisiveness of humanity.

Christ died as brutalized innocent man hung up on the cross. Something clear to all christians. 

Yet somehow white christiandom, collectively gathered to string brutalized black bodies on trees, often in their Sunday best, without even a hint of irony. The allusions to Christ, their Lord and Savior, entirely lost on them. But not on black Christians, who saw this clearly, vividly, their children hung to die, beaten and tortured, like Jesus. No loss of irony there. 

No clarity in language can bridge this divide. 

 “A Festival in Christendom” (1920) by Walter Everette Hawkins:

The bound him fast and strung him high,
They cut him down lest he should die
Before their energy was spent
In torturing to their heart’s content.
They tore his flesh and broke his bones,
And laughed in triumph at his groans;
They chopped his fingers, clipped his ears,
And passed them round as souvenirs.

James Andrews incorporates the idea of animal sacrifice in “Burnt Offering” (1939):

A lonely tree, a surging crowd
With clubs and stones and voices loud;
A black man as a calf they bring.
Upon a newer Cross he dies,
And smoke ascends toward the skies:
Burnt offering.

[The Grand Nudger]

Your Christian beliefs powerfully depend on a literal reading.

Your Christian beliefs may not be the totality of your beliefs or even the largest component of your beliefs....but they would by necessity provide a “reason” to read genesis ( or any other useful part of magic book - old and new) literally. They’re the reason that you provide the ”god inspired” caveat in the first place.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the authors didn’t take it literally, because they weren’t Christians, and so they lacked the commitments of your religious position.

Then, there’s the tertiary question of whether or not the contents actually do speak to -some- truth, what type of truth, and what that truth is.

Perhaps “god” is, itself, metaphor.

[Acrobat]

Your Christian beliefs powerfully depend on a literal reading.

Your Christian beliefs may not be the totality of your beliefs or even the largest component of your beliefs....but they would by necessity provide a “reason” to read genesis literally.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the authors didn’t take it literally, because they weren’t Christians, and so they lacked the commitments of your religious position.

What Christian beliefs are those? 

It's always fun to hear an atheist tell me what my Christian beliefs are? 

I'm guessing given the context, you're appealing to some particular atonement theology. If so, I hate to break it to you, even among the large body of believers considered orthodox, there's no unified view of atonement among them. That you can in any meaning way say represents Christian beliefs.

[GrandizerII]

Not the same. That's a fairy tale, not a myth. Cosmogony myths were used to explain how the world came to be. There's no reason to suggest it wasn't taken literally by at least some of the ancients.

How do you know it wasn't intended to be taken literally at the start? Can we see an actual argument instead of confident appeals to personal intuition?

You're making a big assumption here. You claim that such mythology was meant to be taken literally from the start. But you haven't supported this.

Sigh ... shifting the burden of proof, I see.

At least I can point to a comparison of styles to infer what should read literally and non-literally. What's you basis?

I was born and raised in a village away from Western civilization. The people in that village take the stories of Genesis literally.

Oh and lest you think they're Americans or Protestants, they're not.

Your assumption requires even bigger leaps. Such as the person writing the Genesis story, was someone who believed he had special access to how the world came to be, via vision or something, and sharing with everyone else, that he was oblivious to the fact that he couldn't possibly know or guess the mechanics of how the world came to be. If that were the case, they would probably have prefaced the narrative, recounting this miraculous acquisition of past knowledge. Perhaps address the falsity of the other prevailing origin myths at the time. Rather than setting two competing genesis accounts side by side, or an interpretative tradition at the time, that took even greater liberates reimagine these same stories.

You're assuming that the compiler/editor was the one who came up with the stories in the first place!

What reason do I to have to read it literally at the start? I have for more reasons to read it non-literally from the start, than literally, as I indicated here.

You're a modern educated guy who thinks the passages would be absurd to take literally, and you like appealing to your intuition a lot as if it's supposed to reflect the intuitions of those who were around long before you and me and before the resources you and I have access to.

Furthermore, the compiler(s)/editor(s) may have not taken them literally, but that doesn't rule out others at the time taking them literally.

The Genesis story primarily revolves around the knowledge of good and evil, and that it's through this knowledge that we sin, do things that are wrong. A point that nots hard to realize, that nothing is right and wrong without knowledge of right and wrong. Without knowledge of right and wrong, they're just things.

The text is overflowing with symbolism, snakes, and a tree of life, a tree of good and evil, a fruit, a tempting snake, etc...
........

As I've said before if we took all the facts of science and history and laid them out, all we'd have is all that is, and all that was. There's no guide to life among these facts, how we ought to live, or be in the world among us. No fact is superior to any other fact, it's all just flat. Evolution is no more important, than a rock rolling down a hill, life no more valuable than death.

If the Bible served as the writing of highest values, so important that these communities saw that it needed to passed down from generation to generation, seen as sacred and holy, what purpose could they see it as serving other than as some guide to navigate the confines of the life in front of them? Other than as a purveyor of some meaning to the world in which their communities children ought to follow? A conveying something that is not scientific or historical?

If you believe that life possessed some intrinsic purpose or meaning? Wouldn't that be the most important question worth pursuing? And not the flat facts of science and history? Perhaps for those who reject such meaning, the facts of science and history is all there is to say about anything. But for those of us that do, this question, this pursuit is the fundamental one.

The commonality between us, is that they are chasing Truth, but truth they see as the same as Meaning, the two are intwined in such a view. In finding meaning, one finds truth.

This isn't true for those who see truth, as nothing but scientific and historical facts. There's no meaning here to be found, all thats here is all there is, and all there ever was. It's a pursuit of a dead end.

Man, all these words and nothing to substantiate what you've been arguing with me. Are analogies and appeal to intuition all you can do?

Why not just simply agree with me and say maybe it is so but that it doesn't matter, some of the more intelligent and educated Christians did not take Genesis literally and some such argument ...

But no, you want to insult my intelligence instead.

[Deesse23]

Absolutely not, unless the source is making the claim to be historic (something along the lines of "I will destroy Tyre and it will never be rebuilt"). But in absence of conclusive data regarding one or the other metaphoric (or whatever) interpretation, i would tend to withold belief either way. I have no dog in this "book inspired by god" being literal or not race. I am just wondering, why others seem not to suspend belief in absence of evidence...either way.

I wouldn't even know what suspending belief here would look like, unless i avoided reading it all together. If I'm reading genesis, how do I suspend belief on whether it's symbolic/metaphorical, or intended as literal history? What does a suspended reading look like?

Its easy: "i.dont.know if its meant to be literal or allegoric".

Yes, they better to. Lots of miscommunication in my everyday life is caused exactly by this.

Yes, in the meantime let’s suspend all attempts to understand each other, until we preface all our communication with a disclaimer as to whether we’re speaking literally, non-literally, sarcastically, using similes, metaphors, etc....

Sorry I forgot the disclaimer: sarcasm

You are trying to derail because you have run out of arguments, thats all.
You are also free to suggest that god the great teacher in his unfathomable wisdom chose to intentionally be ambiguous because......his mysterious and ambiguous ways. But like Belaqua this wont make you look a jota less disingenuous.

If i was god, and if i had to share wisdom with all of humanity, i would try to be as clear as possible as i possibly could in my divine wisdom, but alas i am a mere human, and probably being ambiguous is better than being clear, and probably the world is flat instead of a speroid. In any case its not me who is coming across like an evasive jerk by now.

[Acrobat]

Sigh ... shifting the burden of proof, I see.

You clearly don't know how that works do you?

When there's two competing claims both sides have a burden of proof.

Regardless, I've provided a variety of support for how I reached mine. You haven't negated any of it, or even attempted to point out why the basis on which I reached my conclusions is faulty.

Furthermore, the compiler(s)/editor(s) may have not taken them literally, but that doesn't rule out others at the time taking them literally.

The question you asked how was it taken "from the start", that begins at the level of the compiler/editor. I don't care about how you or others read the genesis story, I care what I see the author or writer/compiler of the story is trying to communicate. If they're not trying to communicate literal history, I don't read it as literal history.

Some of the weird assumptions that would have to be made about the writers trying to write a history, would also apply to their earlier readers. Such as "how did Sam get all that information about the beginning of time? How come he didn't tell us about that? How about all the other competing origin stories, how come no ones trying to falsifying those', the way creationist argue against the validity of evolution? It would assume not just that the writer doesn't understand his own limitations, his inability to know the beginnings of the universe, but all his readers were just as ignorant of their ignorance. these are the questions of the most basic introspection, that for some reason I'm suppose to imagine ancient men lacked, yet I possess?

If anything you seem oblivious to some fundamental changes, brought about by the scientific and modern age. This sort of thing were atheists, view truth, as all thats scientific and historical, and everything outside of that is untruth, meaning and purpose are subjective, and not truths at all. It's a product of modernity, the negation of a teleological views of reality. In teleological views of reality, the telos, truth has a a purpose, a goal, meaning, etc... to tell of how things ought to be. Religious writings weren't for the sake of telling people of how the world was once, how life was once lived, but rather how the world ought to be, and how we ought to live in for the future. The past is only as important in how it illuminates the future, and how we live this life in the here and now.

This sort of mentality isn't lost on us completely, for non-religious folks, it just shifted to other places, to the arts, novels, etc... those of us with kids, who have a community we care about, engage the same sort of thing. What we want to pass on to our children, are things which help guide there life now and into the future. The past only as important as it serves this purpose.

If people were not so keen to hold a picture of humanity outside themselves as a cartoon, nothing I said above would be controversial, or rocket science.

---

I wouldn't even know what suspending belief here would look like, unless i avoided reading it all together. If I'm reading genesis, how do I suspend belief on whether it's symbolic/metaphorical, or intended as literal history? What does a suspended reading look like?

Its easy: "i.dont.know if its meant to be literal or allegoric".

Yes, in the meantime let’s suspend all attempts to understand each other, until we preface all our communication with a disclaimer as to whether we’re speaking literally, non-literally, sarcastically, using similes, metaphors, etc....

Sorry I forgot the disclaimer: sarcasm

You are trying to derail because you have run out of arguments, thats all.
You are also free to suggest that god the great teacher in his unfathomable wisdom chose to intentionally be ambiguous because......his mysterious and ambiguous ways. But like Belaqua this wont make you look a jota less disingenuous.

If i was god, and if i had to share wisdom with all of humanity, i would try to be as clear as possible as i possibly could in my divine wisdom, but alas i am a mere human, and probably being ambiguous is better than being clear, and probably the world is flat instead of a speroid. In any case its not me who is coming across like an evasive jerk by now.

Let's try it:

I don't know if you mean anything you said above is to be taken literally or allegorically. 

I can't understand anything you said above as a result. 

In order for us to understand language, sentences, words, from shifhiudhjsifhjsifhjiodshjfiohjdsifhjisd, we need referents, what the words represent, whether those are literal historical referents, or something else.  

Without being able to assume or make such distinctions, as you say ought to be suspended, Even intuitively, nothing could be read.

[The Grand Nudger]

Your Christian beliefs powerfully depend on a literal reading.

Your Christian beliefs may not be the totality of your beliefs or even the largest component of your beliefs....but they would by necessity provide a “reason” to read genesis literally.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the authors didn’t take it literally, because they weren’t Christians, and so they lacked the commitments of your religious position.

What Christian beliefs are those? 

It's always fun to hear an atheist tell me what my Christian beliefs are? 

I'm guessing given the context, you're appealing to some particular atonement theology. If so, I hate to break it to you, even among the large body of believers considered orthodox, there's no unified view of atonement among them. That you can in any meaning way say represents Christian beliefs.

Did I stutter? Your Christian beliefs. It’s a title, not a name. Anything not unified by a belief in that titles specifics is not a christian belief, just some belief held by Christians. It would be pointless to run off a list of those beliefs their differences, commitments, and mutual exclusivities.

Sure christians disagree on many things, but all Christians agree on Christ. By definition.

In my experience, atheists are particularly competent when it comes to informing Christians of the contents of their alleged beliefs, and this isn’t simply anecdotal. Study after study demonstrates that you guys don’t know your own shit as well as we know your shit.

But go ahead, tell me that there is no Christian belief that firms a reason for a literal reading. Or better, that the term Christian is itself so vacuous as to be meaningless. Tell me that you don’t see a common core of literal truth in genesis, or any other portion of magic book, particularly as it relates to Christ and mans relationship to Christ.

Or, you can just cut the bullshit and acknowledge that your “god inspired” caveat alludes to precisely this content. That neither you nor any other Christian can remove this “god inspired” content and remain, accurately and faithfully....Christian.

[GrandizerII]

Sigh ... shifting the burden of proof, I see.

You clearly don't know how that works do you?

When there's two competing claims both sides have a burden of proof.

No, it seems you don't know how this works. I'm not making a claim as confident as yours. In fact, I'm agnostic about this matter we're debating. You're the one making the confident claim. Hence, you alone bear the burden of proof.

Even so, I gave you a basis for the opposing position, which you chose to ignore.

Regardless, I've provided a variety of support for how I reached mine. You haven't negated any of it, or even attempted to point out why the basis on which I reached my conclusions is faulty.

You gave your opinions on Genesis and speculations on what may have happened in history past, based on your intuition, not on historical records and such. There's no need to waste time arguing about how your conclusions are faulty when they're not derived from facts.

Yes, I know, I don't have the records either. But again, I'm not the one making positive claims.

Furthermore, the compiler(s)/editor(s) may have not taken them literally, but that doesn't rule out others at the time taking them literally.

The question you asked how was it taken "from the start", that begins at the level of the compiler/editor.  I don't care about how you or others read the genesis story, I care what I see the author or writer/compiler of the story is trying to communicate. If they're not trying to communicate literal history, I don't read it as literal history.

Yes, this begins at the level of the compiler/editor, but the stories weren't necessarily first made up by them. And it needn't have been just one editor/compiler, nor was Genesis put together in one go ... which means it's possible no one editor/compiler/scribe felt responsible for the assurance of legitimacy of the whole Genesis collection.

Some of the weird assumptions that would have to be made about the writers trying to write a history, would also apply to their earlier readers. Such as "how did Sam get all that information about the beginning of time? How come he didn't tell us about that?  How about all the other competing origin stories, how come no ones trying to falsifying those', the way creationist argue against the validity of evolution? It would assume not just that the writer doesn't understand his own limitations, his inability to know the beginnings of the universe, but all his readers were just as ignorant of their ignorance. these are the questions of the most basic introspection, that for some reason I'm suppose to imagine ancient men lacked, yet I possess?

Facepalm. Back then, it was far easier for people to believe this stuff than to naturally doubt. And it's not like there was just this one Sam who came up with the whole story in one go. Rather, these stories are narrated gradually and progressively by different storytellers, adding new elements to the story with each successive narration, and from a very simple story to a more complex one over time.

[Acrobat]

It seems to me that one of the major side effects of having a dumb understanding of religion, one of the prevalent phenomena's of humanity, is that it results in a cartoon perception of ourselves. The sort that many atheists more firmly hold to, in relationship to the degree of their anti-religious sentiments.

Much of what I've said here, is nothing controversial, nothing that requires a belief in God. It's not rocket science, or even all that complicated, and just requires a modicum of introspection to acknowledge. What it goes to show me, is that man hangups about religion have done a number on many folks here.