How Literal Do You Take The Bible?

[Oldtaku]

I'm curious to know how literal you take the Bible? I once took it very literally and if you do, that's cool with me. But speaking from personal experience, the older I get the more I see many of the stories as parables. Of course, I believe in the resurrection of Christ. If I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't be called a Christian. But there are other stories such as the story of creation that I personally don't embrace as literal. How do you determine what should and should not be taken literal or do you take it all literally? Let's have a civil discussion on the topic.  

[Voxbury]

Sci-Vax

If I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't be called a Christian.

You'd just be in the same boat as the earliest Christians. Jesus wasn't even divine as a point of doctrine immediately, and the Gospels have a number of contradictions regarding the crucifixion/resurrection I could get into that lead me to believe the story is exaggerated at best, and at worst never occurred at all. "The Walking Dead - Jerusalem Edition" is probably the most severe of these where zombies walk the streets, but no one besides the author of Matthew (27:51-53) thought to write that down?

Sci-Vax

How do you determine what should and should not be taken literal or do you take it all literally?

We know how old the earth is now and it's a settled issue. If the Bible is wrong in at least one place while claiming to be the perfect word of God, it's impossible to assert confidence that any part of the Bible is true without independent corroboration.  

[Garland-Green]

Voxbury

Sci-Vax

If I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't be called a Christian.

You'd just be in the same boat as the earliest Christians. Jesus wasn't even divine as a point of doctrine immediately, and the Gospels have a number of contradictions regarding the crucifixion/resurrection I could get into that lead me to believe the story is exaggerated at best, and at worst never occurred at all. "The Walking Dead - Jerusalem Edition" is probably the most severe of these where zombies walk the streets, but no one besides the author of Matthew (27:51-53) thought to write that down?

Sci-Vax

How do you determine what should and should not be taken literal or do you take it all literally?

We know how old the earth is now and it's a settled issue. If the Bible is wrong in at least one place while claiming to be the perfect word of God, it's impossible to assert confidence that any part of the Bible is true without independent corroboration.

If it did not have perceived contradiction it would be a collaborated hoax wouldn't it? If everything lined up perfectly wouldn't you cry out that they authors worked together to fabricate the story? The fact that some eyewitness accounts vary comes from the way we people focus on different things while experiencing the same event. It doesn't mean that the stories can't be aligned or that they are untruthful. We don't all have the same focus when something happens. People report things differently when they are in a hostage situation and are asked to tell what they experienced.

As for the earth being millions of years old. That is a consensus in the scientific community based just as much on worldview as when a Christian say it is thousands of years old. Worldview determines how you interpret the evidence you are given. It is the lens you view the world through.  

[Voxbury]

Garland-Green

Voxbury

Sci-Vax

If I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't be called a Christian.

You'd just be in the same boat as the earliest Christians. Jesus wasn't even divine as a point of doctrine immediately, and the Gospels have a number of contradictions regarding the crucifixion/resurrection I could get into that lead me to believe the story is exaggerated at best, and at worst never occurred at all. "The Walking Dead - Jerusalem Edition" is probably the most severe of these where zombies walk the streets, but no one besides the author of Matthew (27:51-53) thought to write that down?

Sci-Vax

How do you determine what should and should not be taken literal or do you take it all literally?

We know how old the earth is now and it's a settled issue. If the Bible is wrong in at least one place while claiming to be the perfect word of God, it's impossible to assert confidence that any part of the Bible is true without independent corroboration.

If it did not have perceived contradiction it would be a collaborated hoax wouldn't it? If everything lined up perfectly wouldn't you cry out that they authors worked together to fabricate the story? The fact that some eyewitness accounts vary comes from the way we people focus on different things while experiencing the same event. It doesn't mean that the stories can't be aligned or that they are untruthful. We don't all have the same focus when something happens. People report things differently when they are in a hostage situation and are asked to tell what they experienced.

As for the earth being millions of years old. That is a consensus in the scientific community based just as much on worldview as when a Christian say it is thousands of years old. Worldview determines how you interpret the evidence you are given. It is the lens you view the world through.

False equivalency - I didn't say there was a worldwide conspiracy. Sometimes people are confused. Sometimes people are deluded. Sometimes they're simply mistaken, or repeating a story that's been repeated over and over with changing details like Grandad's war stories.

What we're talking about in this particular example is a mass resurrection in the middle of a highly populated urban area, right around the time of Passover. A fitting analogy would be if there were zero news coverage of the Pentagon crash of 9/11, and only record is one anonymous person's writings about it between 15-45 years from today. That would be literally unbelievable - especially considering that we have newspapers describing the events of that day with no mention of it. To use your analogy, if one person reported dead hostages got up and left the building, we would assume that person was deluded or mistaken, and ignore their entire account based on those details.

The earth is billions of years old, not millions. We know this with the same level of certainty that we are aware of cell division and gravity, and there exists no evidence to the contrary. Scientific facts and consensus on scientific questions are objectively better than the Bible. The Bible offers an assertion with no evidence, wheras all known evidence across scientific disciplines confirms a VERY old planet. If you have contradicting peer-reviewed evidence that confirms the opposite, you are worthy of a Nobel prize, and we have to start ALL science from scratch - from medicine to geology.  

[Lady Vizsla]

When I was younger, I took things as they were taught in mainstream media such as the age of the Earth, age of dinosaurs etc. as being true without putting much thought into it. As I got older, I found inconsistencies in these 'consensus' ideas. I no longer believe beasts like dinosaurs are ancient, with the discovery of tissue and radiocarbon in their skeletal remains for eg. and radiocarbon in deep geological layers of Earth.

I understand everyone has a different opinion on how the Bible is interpreted. For me personally, it's really either a choice between creation-Christianity or evolution-atheism. I don't see any in between positions as being logically consistent.  

[Garland-Green]

Voxbury

Garland-Green

Voxbury

Sci-Vax

If I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't be called a Christian.

You'd just be in the same boat as the earliest Christians. Jesus wasn't even divine as a point of doctrine immediately, and the Gospels have a number of contradictions regarding the crucifixion/resurrection I could get into that lead me to believe the story is exaggerated at best, and at worst never occurred at all. "The Walking Dead - Jerusalem Edition" is probably the most severe of these where zombies walk the streets, but no one besides the author of Matthew (27:51-53) thought to write that down?

Sci-Vax

How do you determine what should and should not be taken literal or do you take it all literally?

We know how old the earth is now and it's a settled issue. If the Bible is wrong in at least one place while claiming to be the perfect word of God, it's impossible to assert confidence that any part of the Bible is true without independent corroboration.

If it did not have perceived contradiction it would be a collaborated hoax wouldn't it? If everything lined up perfectly wouldn't you cry out that they authors worked together to fabricate the story? The fact that some eyewitness accounts vary comes from the way we people focus on different things while experiencing the same event. It doesn't mean that the stories can't be aligned or that they are untruthful. We don't all have the same focus when something happens. People report things differently when they are in a hostage situation and are asked to tell what they experienced.

As for the earth being millions of years old. That is a consensus in the scientific community based just as much on worldview as when a Christian say it is thousands of years old. Worldview determines how you interpret the evidence you are given. It is the lens you view the world through.

False equivalency - I didn't say there was a worldwide conspiracy. Sometimes people are confused. Sometimes people are deluded. Sometimes they're simply mistaken, or repeating a story that's been repeated over and over with changing details like Grandad's war stories.

What we're talking about in this particular example is a mass resurrection in the middle of a highly populated urban area, right around the time of Passover. A fitting analogy would be if there were zero news coverage of the Pentagon crash of 9/11, and only record is one anonymous person's writings about it between 15-45 years from today. That would be literally unbelievable - especially considering that we have newspapers describing the events of that day with no mention of it. To use your analogy, if one person reported dead hostages got up and left the building, we would assume that person was deluded or mistaken, and ignore their entire account based on those details.

The earth is billions of years old, not millions. We know this with the same level of certainty that we are aware of cell division and gravity, and there exists no evidence to the contrary. Scientific facts and consensus on scientific questions are objectively better than the Bible. The Bible offers an assertion with no evidence, wheras all known evidence across scientific disciplines confirms a VERY old planet. If you have contradicting peer-reviewed evidence that confirms the opposite, you are worthy of a Nobel prize, and we have to start ALL science from scratch - from medicine to geology.

Rarely though are a great number of people confused about the same thing they are experiencing. A large number of people believed they had seen Jesus rise from the dead. They believed it so strongly that they were willing to die for it. You also hear about Jesus outside of the Bible. There is a great deal more corroborating evidence to the Biblical account than grandpa's old war stories. Tacitus a Roman historian wrote;

Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome...

He calls Jesus the Christ (Christus). He tells the time of the event in accord with what is written in the Bible down to who the Bible say was responsible. He calls it a superstition but unknowingly he is affirming the historicity of the Bible. He said that Christ suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) at the hands of Pontius Pilatus.

Pilate stone.

Let us use that same logic to why no one would write to deny that these things happened who were contemporary with the writers of the Gospels. Christians were numerous enough to be considered troublesome by the authorities and some of the population. People were still alive from the time that these supposed things had happened when the Gospels were written to dispute what was said. No records exist of such disputes. No one took the time to sit down and counter this what would be considered rising cult and heresy. Peculiar isn't it. Pilate didn't raise is voice in objection to what was said about him? 15-45 years is still not very fare removed from an event. We have records written far longer removed from the event that we trust to the accurate today. It is trusted as true simply because it doesn't talk about anything supernatural. The gospels are also historically reliable. You can use them as a road-map during archaeological excavations. How would an unintended work of fiction be this, if it was not eyewitnesses from the time retelling the story?

I think there is a fault to peer-reviewing in that most scientific groups are homogeneous when it comes to worldview. That alone could be an obstacle to getting things published in scientific journals conflicting with the reviewers worldview, the consensus or even personal economic interests. Peer-reviewing is certainly not perfect or I feel to be used alone as measure of trustworthiness.

Just a few examples borrowed from an article;

For example, economist George A. Akerlof’s seminal paper, “The Market for Lemons,” which introduced the concept of “asymmetric information” (how decisions are influenced by one party having more information), was rejected several times before it could be published. Akerlov was later awarded the Nobel Prize for this and other later work.

There has been little empirical investigation on the institution that approves and rejects all scientific claims.  

[Voxbury]

Garland-Green

Rarely though are a great number of people confused about the same thing they are experiencing. A large number of people believed they had seen Jesus rise from the dead. They believed it so strongly that they were willing to die for it. You also hear about Jesus outside of the Bible. There is a great deal more corroborating evidence to the Biblical account than grandpa's old war stories. Tacitus a Roman historian wrote;

Nero fastened the guilt ... on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of ... Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome...

He calls Jesus the Christ (Christus). He tells the time of the event in accord with what is written in the Bible down to who the Bible say was responsible. He calls it a superstition but unknowingly he is affirming the historicity of the Bible. He said that Christ suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) at the hands of Pontius Pilatus.

Pilate stone.

Let us use that same logic to why no one would write to deny that these things happened who were contemporary with the writers of the Gospels. Christians were numerous enough to be considered troublesome by the authorities and some of the population. People were still alive from the time that these supposed things had happened when the Gospels were written to dispute what was said. No records exist of such disputes. No one took the time to sit down and counter this what would be considered rising cult and heresy. Peculiar isn't it. Pilate didn't raise is voice in objection to what was said about him? 15-45 years is still not very fare removed from an event. We have records written far longer removed from the event that we trust to the accurate today. It is trusted as true simply because it doesn't talk about anything supernatural. The gospels are also historically reliable. You can use them as a road-map during archaeological excavations. How would an unintended work of fiction be this, if it was not eyewitnesses from the time retelling the story?

I think there is a fault to peer-reviewing in that most scientific groups are homogeneous when it comes to worldview. That alone could be an obstacle to getting things published in scientific journals conflicting with the reviewers worldview, the consensus or even personal economic interests. Peer-reviewing is certainly not perfect or I feel to be used alone as measure of trustworthiness.

Just a few examples borrowed from an article;

For example, economist George A. Akerlof’s seminal paper, “The Market for Lemons,” which introduced the concept of “asymmetric information” (how decisions are influenced by one party having more information), was rejected several times before it could be published. Akerlov was later awarded the Nobel Prize for this and other later work.

There has been little empirical investigation on the institution that approves and rejects all scientific claims.

Rarely are they mistaken, but it does happen. The "Miracle of the Sun" depicts such a story from 1917 where people swore they saw the sun "dance" in front of up to 100,000 people. The sun doesn't do this. Regardless, it's beside the point. Also, just because people believe something strongly doesn't in any way make it true. People die for Islam every day, and I doubt you would accept their beliefs are true.

When Nero names Jesus as a superstition, that would be the opposite of affirmation of the resurrection, but that would also be irrelevant. I've never brought into question whether Jesus was a person that lived and died at the hands of the Romans by crucifixion.

We don't have the accounts of hundreds of people saying they saw the mass uprising of dead bodies in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion. We have one account, from one person who wasn't present, decades after the event supposedly occurred, saying that people saw it. That's as close as it gets. Not even the other Gospel authors record such an unbelievable event, which makes it harder to accept even than a single Messiah resurrection. At least those accounts, while containing a number of contradicting details, were reported by more than one writer with a semi-cohesive story.

Peer-review is absolutely necessary in stopping bad ideas, and is very good at doing so. Peer-review, for example, immediately outed Andrew Wakefield's autism/vaccine "study" as a fraud so bad he lost his license to practice. In the case of discussing the age of the earth, you would have to quite literally have to propose a worldwide scientific conspiracy. As I said, this is so widely agreed upon because it agrees with everything we know across scientific disciplines. The scientists researching not only geology, but physics, medicine, biology, chemistry, and others all agree upon the age of the earth, and using the same methods used to determine that have developed the technologies we use every day. What gain does anyone have in scientific fields have from burying the truth and stopping the advancement of knowledge?

If you're going to suggest that there exists such a massive conspiracy that's somehow never been outed and without motive (an impossibility), then I cannot discuss the topic with you rationally because, bluntly, we don't live in the same reality. Data doesn't change based on who looks at it. If the methods are sound, then so are the results. These results have been demonstrated over and over again, where evidence for a 6,000 year old earth does not exist, and tells me you aren't interested in the truth enough to look at the mountains of evidence that prove it to be as old as it is.

I'll re-iterate, if you have evidence to suggest that the earth is 71,000 times younger than all scientists agree that it is, and you can give a repeatable experiment that would demonstrate that, you would absolutely win a Nobel Prize.

For the record, there is no "institution that approves and rejects all scientific claims." There is just science that works for anyone able to repeat the experiment. There's no "Big Science" hiding in the shadows just to keep the secrets from coming to light - that's the opposite of what science is.  

[Voxbury]

Lady Kariel

When I was younger, I took things as they were taught in mainstream media such as the age of the Earth, age of dinosaurs etc. as being true without putting much thought into it. As I got older, I found inconsistencies in these 'consensus' ideas. I no longer believe beasts like dinosaurs are ancient, with the discovery of tissue and radiocarbon in their skeletal remains for eg. and radiocarbon in deep geological layers of Earth.

I understand everyone has a different opinion on how the Bible is interpreted. For me personally, it's really either a choice between creation-Christianity or evolution-atheism. I don't see any in between positions as being logically consistent.

Let's sort a couple of things. First is a semantic argument - mainstream media is not the equivalent of peer-reviewed science. If anything, the mainstream media tends to dumb things down so far they lose their original meaning. I think I know what you meant, but just wanted to clarify.

We don't date dinosaur fossils with radiocarbon dating. The half-life of carbon isotopes is far too short to give a reliable result even on the same sample. Geology does sometimes come into play because we date rocks surrounding a given specimen, again not using carbon.

Evolution doesn't equal atheism any more than creation equals Christianity. The Catholic Church states as doctrine that an evolutionary model works perfectly well for them, even in the context of the Bible. Muslims believe the world was created as well as Native Americans, Hindus, and a number of other groups with whom you wouldn't agree. It's not exactly an apples to apples comparison to say that a belief in an evolutionary model would make you an atheist. It just means you see evidence for that, and have to make it work into your understanding of the Bible.  

[Lady Vizsla]

Voxbury

Lady Kariel

When I was younger, I took things as they were taught in mainstream media such as the age of the Earth, age of dinosaurs etc. as being true without putting much thought into it. As I got older, I found inconsistencies in these 'consensus' ideas. I no longer believe beasts like dinosaurs are ancient, with the discovery of tissue and radiocarbon in their skeletal remains for eg. and radiocarbon in deep geological layers of Earth.

I understand everyone has a different opinion on how the Bible is interpreted. For me personally, it's really either a choice between creation-Christianity or evolution-atheism. I don't see any in between positions as being logically consistent.

Let's sort a couple of things. First is a semantic argument - mainstream media is not the equivalent of peer-reviewed science. If anything, the mainstream media tends to dumb things down so far they lose their original meaning. I think I know what you meant, but just wanted to clarify.

We don't date dinosaur fossils with radiocarbon dating. The half-life of carbon isotopes is far too short to give a reliable result even on the same sample. Geology does sometimes come into play because we date rocks surrounding a given specimen, again not using carbon.

Evolution doesn't equal atheism any more than creation equals Christianity. The Catholic Church states as doctrine that an evolutionary model works perfectly well for them, even in the context of the Bible. Muslims believe the world was created as well as Native Americans, Hindus, and a number of other groups with whom you wouldn't agree. It's not exactly an apples to apples comparison to say that a belief in an evolutionary model would make you an atheist. It just means you see evidence for that, and have to make it work into your understanding of the Bible.

I referenced mainstream media because they tend to herald scientific news from peer-reviewed articles anyway. And yes, I'm aware they 'dumb' it down for the layperson but the technical details tend to agree.

I am also well aware of the difference between radiometric dating versus radiocarbon dating. But you need to explain to me why dinosaur bones and older sediment repeatedly contain measurable amounts of radiocarbon when the half-life is indeed that short. As you know I'm sure, radiocarbon is supposed to be completely absent after an upper limit of one million years.

Radiometric dating is used based on the assumption that geological layers are in the millions of years. But they are not without their flaws.

Your third paragraph is your opinion, which I disagree with. The OP asked us our opinions and in mine, I do believe creation = Christianity. Hence why I disagree with the Catholic church and other churches or faiths who posit some kind of compromise. They can choose to interpret things as they wish, but I will politely agree to disagree.  

[Servant Reborn]

Knowing Scripture

I watched this series over time and it made a lot of sense of things especially hyperbole.  

[Oldtaku]

I've been away for awhile but I really am enjoying reading everyone's different point of view.