[Serious] A Literal Bible. Answering questions

[Secular Elf]

Why would the authors of the Bible be interested in manipulating anyone?

Because religion is all about control!

And also about power.

[Jehanne]

Because religion is all about control!

And also about power.

When you live in a World where 250 out of 1,000 live births perish in the first year of life and another 250 perish before puberty, is not religious faith understandable?

[onlinebiker]

And also about power.

When you live in a World where 250 out of 1,000 live births perish in the first year of life and another 250 perish before puberty, is not religious faith understandable?

1/2 dead by puberty is a shit qualification on the resume of any supposed supreme being....

[Ahriman]

When you live in a World where 250 out of 1,000 live births perish in the first year of life and another 250 perish before puberty, is not religious faith understandable?

1/2 dead by puberty is a shit qualification on the resume of any supposed supreme being....

Or maybe those people would've grown up to be useless assholes and the world is better off without them? We already have enough useless assholes as it is.

[arewethereyet]

1/2 dead by puberty is a shit qualification on the resume of any supposed supreme being....

Or maybe those people would've grown up to be useless assholes and the world is better off without them? We already have enough useless assholes as it is.

Indeed.

[onlinebiker]

1/2 dead by puberty is a shit qualification on the resume of any supposed supreme being....

Or maybe those people would've grown up to be useless assholes and the world is better off without them? We already have enough useless assholes as it is.

You sound like an authority on the subject.....

[Belacqua]

What we can learn from other disciplines shows that at least one city with surrounding towns, was wiped out by a comet airburst around 1500bc, at a site now called Tall El-Hamman, just north of the Dead Sea. The flash from the airburst is calculated to have been around 8000c, burning pottery. If you also understand the perspective of the people doing the writing, then it looks much more likely that the 'pillar of salt' is a visceral personal description of seeing another human getting evaporated by a brief moment of very intense light, as the result of a comet strike in the next valley. 

There might be some connection between the Bible story and the airburst. The author might be setting this event during a known natural disaster, or he just might be taking advantage of the fact that people know such things happen. Either seems plausible to me. (Or there might be no connection -- we really don't know the author's thinking.) 

As for the salt, there are famous salt formations around there, some of which look a bit human-like. 

https://www.geologyin.com/2019/07/myster...ls-in.html

So a combination of an impressive event, with a just-so story concerning strange salt formations -- it's as good a guess as any, I suppose. 

Probably you know that in Greek mythology, explanations like this are called "euhemerist." It's named for a Greek guy named Euhemerus, who lived in the late 4th century BC, and tried to explain the origins of Greek myths as exaggerated natural events. So maybe Hercules really was a tough guy, whose exploits got exaggerated over time.

Maybe the most famous example is in Plato's Phaedrus. Socrates and the title character are walking along, and Phaedrus asks isn't this the place where the wind god abducted that girl? Socrates says no, it was more over there. Then Phaedrus asks if Socrates believes stories like that. Socrates says it might be true as told, or it might be that a gust of wind knocked a girl off a rock and she died, and then the story got exaggerated. (The euhumerist position.) The important thing, though, is that he doesn't really care what's true about it. He knows that myths are not recorded for historical accuracy, but for other purposes. 

To me, the Bible stories are the same way. Parts of them are rooted in real events, but the real events are seldom the reason they are selected, narrated from a certain viewpoint, and preserved as scripture. There must have been lots and lots of terrible fires and plagues and deaths in those days which weren't recorded in the Bible. When people chose which ones to include, they no doubt had a motive. 

And I think the stories in the Bible are nearly always motivated by mythical, spiritual, moral, or other non-accurate-history goals. (Whether we like these messages is a separate question.) So I think the attempt to pin down the destruction of Sodom, or Noah's flood, or the parting of the Red Sea, as inspired by some specific historical event is interesting but mostly missing the point. 

Remember that when Augustine used the word "literal," he didn't use it as we do. He used it to mean "the original message intended by the original authors." So oddly enough, if the original authors meant a story to be metaphorical, then the literal meaning is metaphorical.

[Belacqua]

I never made that claim, I did however make the claim that the Flat Earth movement, in the modern incarnation, originated in the 19th century in the USA, and emerged out of a culture which had known the Earth was a sphere for about 2200 years.

I did make the claim that Young Earth Creationism emerged in the 19th century USA, but I should say I mean the mainstream Christian branch of Young Earth Creationism which is predominant in the  western world today. I don't mean the Islamic YEC which is more globally relevant, and much older. I don't mean previous forms of YEC invented throughout history. The mainstream scientific view before that I also exclude, as while it predicted a younger earth than current models, it did not adhere to the 7000 year old Earth of the Young Earth Creationism movement.

One of the founding myths of the New Atheist movement is that all Christians always believed in the literal reading of the Bible -- talking snakes, flat earth, etc. -- until the 19th century or so, when science showed that such things couldn't be true. Then, according to the myth, Christians had to invent metaphorical readings or "sophisticated" theology to jury-rig explanations not contradicted by science. 

This myth is false, but strongly held by some atheist members of this forum. 

As you know, challenging people's fondly-held myths gets a strong reaction.

[Jehanne]

I never made that claim, I did however make the claim that the Flat Earth movement, in the modern incarnation, originated in the 19th century in the USA, and emerged out of a culture which had known the Earth was a sphere for about 2200 years.

I did make the claim that Young Earth Creationism emerged in the 19th century USA, but I should say I mean the mainstream Christian branch of Young Earth Creationism which is predominant in the  western world today. I don't mean the Islamic YEC which is more globally relevant, and much older. I don't mean previous forms of YEC invented throughout history. The mainstream scientific view before that I also exclude, as while it predicted a younger earth than current models, it did not adhere to the 7000 year old Earth of the Young Earth Creationism movement.

One of the founding myths of the New Atheist movement is that all Christians always believed in the literal reading of the Bible -- talking snakes, flat earth, etc. -- until the 19th century or so, when science showed that such things couldn't be true. Then, according to the myth, Christians had to invent metaphorical readings or "sophisticated" theology to jury-rig explanations not contradicted by science. 

This myth is false, but strongly held by some atheist members of this forum. 

As you know, challenging people's fondly-held myths gets a strong reaction.

Your commentary is historical rubbish; consider the following:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology

This was printed in English Bibles for over 200 years.

[Paleophyte]

What we can learn from other disciplines shows that at least one city with surrounding towns, was wiped out by a comet airburst around 1500bc, at a site now called Tall El-Hamman, just north of the Dead Sea.

No, it wasn't. Bunch et al.'s Tall el-Hammam paper has been widely panned as being religiously-motivated cult archeology. It contains serious flaws in the methodology, gross misinterpretations, and outright photoshopping of several images. We can discuss this further in another thread but this paper likely does a very thorough job of it: No mineralogic or geochemical evidence of impact at Tall el-Hammam, a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea

The flash from the airburst is calculated to have been around 8000c, burning pottery. If you also understand the perspective of the people doing the writing, then it looks much more likely that the 'pillar of salt' is a visceral personal description of seeing another human getting evaporated by a brief moment of very intense light, as the result of a comet strike in the next valley. 

While I'm sure this feels right to you, it has no basis in either scripture or science. Scripturally, the Hebrews new the words for "vanished in a flash of blinding light", so your interpretation makes no sense. Scientifically, anybody close enough to witness another human as they're vaporized has the proverbial snowflake's chance in hell of surviving. The notion of climbing into the mountains that you mention a few posts further in is simply a brilliant way to use natural terrain to amplify the shockwave.

As far as I can tell this is the reading with Empathy, that unlocks the authors, and who they are, and what they can individually understand and can communicate.

The problem with this approach is that you have no cultural basis that would allow you to empathize with these bronze age tribesmen. The way in which they crafted their narratives is utterly foreign to you. The closest that our culture contains would be the likes of Paul Bunyan and his ilk, which are not intended to convey a historically accurate account but rather to narrate an underlying principle or warning.

You have spotted a false dichotomy, just not the one you think you have. "Atheists and creationists are wrong but I'm right" fails to take into account the exceptionally good chance that you're dead wrong too.