[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[The Grand Nudger]

For all your shitposting about dumb atheists, you fit the mold of precisely the sort of cartoon believer you’re arguing against, Acro.

It’s worth looking into, if that sort of thing bothers you.

[Deesse23]

cartoon perception of ourselves.

Want me to show someone with a cartoon perception?:

the brokenness of the human condition

[Acrobat]

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.

Dishonest much?

You're making a variety of claims. Just because you're not confident about the veracity of the claims you make, doesn't mean you don't have a burden of proof as well. Just because you weakly believe 9/11 was inside job, doesn't mean you can skirt your responsibility to support it. You accuse the basis of my conclusions as being insufficient, while not offering anything even remotely compelling to strengthen those half hearted claims you've made, or negate the ones I have.


Here's another claim of yours:

Back then, it was far easier for people to believe this stuff than to naturally doubt.

Where's the support for this claim? When did we acquire this "natural doubt"? Doesn't it seem a little weird to refer to it as "natural doubt" , when you accuse people back then of not possessing it? If it's a more recent phenomena wouldn't it be an artificial doubt, a product of particular cultural phenomena of our age?

I indicated a variety of such doubts that I would have if I was reading the story literally, what causes me to have such doubts, but some ancient version of me not to possess them?

The Bible is a dialogue between subsequent generations of writers and their community, it posses all sorts of doubts, questioning the silence and absence of God, the nature of suffering, Jobs rejection of prevalent views of theodicies, Doubting Thomas, the followers of Jesus disillusionment following his crucifixion, Christ in his last words on the cross, asking why he has been forsaken?

So excuse me if I'm not inclined to accept your claim that people back then would lack the sort of doubts I would.

Let me guess, this is one of these claims, you're weakly making, and not with any confidence on your part, therefore you don't have to support it, or meet the burden of proof?

[The Grand Nudger]

We know, for a fact, that people have had varying levels of compulsion to superstition over time, Acro.

The record is under your feet. That the superstitions in question were once more central to life, and more strenuously believed in, and believed in literally, is also not a point of legitimate debate.

Abrahamic traditions would not receive their delegitimizing metaphorical treatment until well after the classical period- and then, literally, on the backs of “pagan” philosophy.

It didn’t take, at all- until within living memory. Still hasn’t taken in your case.

[GrandizerII]

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.

Dishonest much?

You're making a variety of claims. Just because you're not confident about the veracity of the claims you make, doesn't mean you don't have a burden of proof as well. Just because you weakly believe 9/11 was inside job, doesn't mean you can skirt your responsibility to support it.  You accuse the basis of my conclusions as being insufficient, while not offering anything even remotely compelling to strengthen those half hearted claims you've made, or negate the ones I have.

If there's anyone who's being dishonest here, it's more likely to be you. I didn't have to provide support for anything because I clearly said at the start that it's not clear TO ME that this is so and so. You're the one who then responded to me and tried to use these disingenuous tactics on me whereby I was forced to defend my agnosticism, and I yielded and gave you some speculative counterarguments, even though I shouldn't have to do so.

Here's another claim of yours:


[quote]
Back then, it was far easier for people to believe this stuff than to naturally doubt.

Where's the support for this claim? When did we acquire this "natural doubt"? Doesn't it seem a little weird to refer to it  as "natural doubt" , when you accuse people back then of not possessing it? If it's a more recent phenomena wouldn't it be an artificial doubt, a product of particular cultural phenomena of our age?

I indicated a variety of such doubts that I would have if I was reading the story literally, what causes me to have such doubts, but some ancient version of me not to possess them?

The Bible is a dialogue between subsequent generations of writers and their community, it posses all sorts of doubts, questioning the silence and absence of God, the nature of suffering, Jobs rejection of prevalent views of theodicies, Doubting Thomas, the followers of Jesus disillusionment  following his crucifixion, Christ in his last words on the cross, asking why he has been forsaken?

So excuse me if I'm not inclined to accept your claim that people back then would lack the sort of doubts I would.

Let me guess, this is one of these claims, you're weakly making, and not with any confidence on your part, therefore you don't have to support it, or meet the burden of proof?

No, I'm confident about this part. Why is this up for debate exactly? Because <insert Acrobat's Christian-related belief about so and so>?

And what about the other stuff I said? No comment on those?

[Acrobat]

We know, for a fact, that people have had varying levels of compulsion to superstition over time, Acro.

It doesn't seem to me that we are any less superstitious today than in the past, we might have different superstitious but nothin leads me to assume we're less. If you have any data to support this please, supply it?

Now I know that people are less religious than in the past. Older generations are more religious, than younger generations. But in regards to superstitions this appears to be the other way around. Young people are more likely to be superstitious than old folks. Perhaps your fooled into thinking the decline in organized religions, equates to a decline is superstition, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifestyl...erstitious

The record is under your feet.  That the superstitions in question were once more central to life, and more strenuously believed in, and believed in literally, is also not a point of legitimate debate.

The stories were central to their life, as central to mine as well. In fact it's the story that's central not the literalism. Why do you think the Doctrines of Inerrancy, Fundamentalism etc.. arose around the 19th Century.

Why do you think such revered church Fathers like Origen could express sentiments like this:

"who is so silly as to believe that God ... planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life ... [and] anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?"

Without courting any real controversy, without being rendered a heretic, and cast out of orthodoxy? Can you imagine a fundie evangelical pastor saying this? He'd be kicked out the church quicker than if he slept with gay prostitutes and snorted coke.

---

No, I'm confident about this part. Why is this up for debate exactly? Because <insert Acrobat's Christian-related belief about so and so>?

So you care to support it?

I mean you made a claim about the sort of doubt which I would have possessed regarding these stories as literal, didn't exists in the past, that it comes natural in our age but not their's.

This is pretty interesting claim of yours, but entirely unsupported. I would like to know the history of the development of such doubts, like my own, since in your view they're a modern phenomena? I want to learn what sort of events gave rise to these doubts?

Now you seem to suggest this is some self-evident truth, so you don't need to support it or something?

Where's your proof?

You continuously repeated how the support I used for my view was insufficient, while here you are not even supplying anything remotely compelling for a claim you say you're confident about.

You know why it comes natural to me, because I don't have the same reverence to scientific and historical facts as you do. You view such things as the only thing true, while i view such truths as superficial, Truths about meanings and values are far superior. Is this appreciation of meaning a modern phenomena to?

Since you seem to suggest otherwise, I want to hear your support, the history you're trying to paint here.

[The Grand Nudger]

I’m not going to waste my time arguing mere reality into being before we can even start a conversation.

Tighten your shit up, man.

As to the rest, it doesn’t -matter- what any of you decide to plant in the metaphoric and literal categorizations. All of you are required by faith to place some things in the literal categorization, and all of you are required by faith to place confidence in defining literalism.

Is Christ a metaphor? Is god having created us a metaphor? Is god a metaphor? Is gods intervention a metaphor?

No, ofc not, and even Our boy Ori ( who wouldn’t get kicked out of any church for saying that, don’t be absurd, they need asses in seats) believed in the literalism of both creation and salvation through Christ. That he was a cafeteria believer is likewise unsurprising, all of you are and all Christians have always been so.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I’m not going to waste my time arguing mere reality into being before we can even start a conversation.

Tighten your shit up, man.

As to the rest, it doesn’t -matter- what any of you decide to plant in the metaphoric and literal categorizations.  All of you are required by faith to place some things in the literal categorization, and all of you are required by faith to place confidence in defining literalism.

Is Christ a metaphor?  Is god having created us a metaphor?  Is god a metaphor?  Is gods intervention a metaphor?

No, ofc not, and even Our boy Ori ( who wouldn’t get kicked out of any church for saying that, don’t be absurd, they need asses in seats) believed in the literalism of both creation and salvation through Christ.  That he was a cafeteria believer is likewise unsurprising, all of you are and all Christians have always been so.

This is precisely the trouble as I see it.  Believers accept some bits as literal, other bits as not.  And it always seems that the bits which are literal are the troublesome ones.  And, as science progresses, more and more bits seems to fall into the non-literal side of things.

Smacks of desperation, that does.

Boru

[Acrobat]

No, ofc not, and even Our boy Ori ( who wouldn’t get kicked out of any church for saying that, don’t be absurd, they need asses in seats) believed in the literalism of both creation and salvation through Christ.  That he was a cafeteria believer is likewise unsurprising, all of you are and all Christians have always been so.

Okay, so if you say the christian community/church even today wouldn't reject views of Garden of Eden story as non-literal, but rather such view to exists unchecked, then clearly literalism can't be that important or central to them?

[The Grand Nudger]

Our resident IDiots would disagree, Boru.

Christianity is malleable like that. A benefit of having surrounded itself with sacrificial truths and throwaway principles.

---

Still fucking that chicken, Acro?

Is Christ metaphor. Is creation metaphor? Is salvation metaphor? Is god metaphor? Did Origen actually think that there was no literal and important truth in genesis? No foundational theological issue?

Tighten your shit up. Literalism in genesis (and elsewhere) is more important to Christians than it was to the authors. Always has been. Jews have been telling Christians they got magic book wrong since they first cribbed it. This is a known historical fact.