Literally...

According to our resident Catholic mouthpiece:

'Who, except for some fundmantalists and most uttterly uninformed 'new' atheists interprets scripture literally?'

Who indeed?

Well, every Christian i have met takes scripture literally. Whether that includes the Genesis account is a really matter of preference for doctrine. But when it comes to the Gospels i have yet to meet anyone who calls themselves a Christian who doesn't take the events described therein quite literally. It could be argued that this is the defining mark of a Christian. To take the legends and anecdotes that have accreted around the figure of Jesus as if they were gospel truth.

I view the Bible as an ancient collection of poetry, propoganda, morality tales and an expression of what the writers believed to be true at the time. They were superstitious and did not have access to the levels of knowledge that we enjoy today. They didn't have a method to separate hearsay from fact nor a sure way of describing the reality of the world around them. As such the way they described the world they inhabited is inaccurate and heavily coloured by their beliefs. You will find no mention of the Antipodes or Americas since (to them) these simply did not exist.

I don't regard it as true, god breathed or ghost-written, but simply what people believed during the periods it was written. When it comes to the Gospels and i can take the story of Jesus as a metaphor, a symbol for the human condition whereby we are reduced through suffering and can metaphorically resurrect ourselves to move beyond these tribulations. I don't regard it as being truth or an accurate reflection of our shared reality for various reasons mostly to do with the saturation of magic that is portrayed within and the history of interpolation. So i take the
good parts, the useful parts and discard those that are no longer relevent or simply repugnant.

To be honest if i want ancient morality tales i will re-read Aesop's Fables. Since they remain just as relevent today and this has the additional plus of not having bunch glassy-eyed zealots roaming the neighbourhood and knocking on doors with the message that the animals *really* did talk amongst themselves.

So i don't take it literally but do take the expressions of belief at face value. The reason i do so is because there is no way that a person some 2000 years after the writer has departed this Earth has any way of accessing the inner thoughts of that writer. There are no notes to clarify what was meant, which parts are simply symbolic or allegorical, and in the absence of such commentary we can only set the narratives in the context of the ancient world
and how it was viewed; primitively and with plenty of hearsay, rumour and superstition being accepted as fact.

What i find is that often a particularly elaborate exegesis which is used to explain away a problematic passage will rely more on the person doing the reading rather than what is actually written on the page. Hence why we get so many differing conceptions of what Jesus meant, what the stories are mean and what the so-called meaning of some rather weird expression of belief is.

Genesis illustrates this problem very well, with liberal Christians desperately attempting to portray the narrative as being a description of evolutionary theory (which utterly fails imo) and conservative Christians dismissing the wealth of scientific data in order to hold to the supposed truth of the story.

As an atheist i regard Genesis as irrelevent to our understanding of reality. I regard it as only one example of many such creation myths that are of historic interest in the study of religions in general.

I don't take these literally. That would be silly.

I suspect that the ABofC thinks along these lines, too, AJM. Which may be a factor in his imminent retirement. He can't cope with the demands on his credulity, and maybe, even, he feels his integrity is tested to the extreme by the demands of the job.

The ABofC's comment on the Three Wise Men: "It works quite well as legend," the Archbishop said.

And...

He said the virgin birth was "part of what I have inherited".

So what do we read into that?

How is it that the guy has a real job, with real pay, and a real big house to live in, if he doesn't believe that deity is real?

can't say i'm drawn to the works of religious writers but after he (ABofC) retires should he write a book on his thoughts i would be interested to read it. i see in him a mixture of sincerity and intelligence which no doubt cause problems in his current position.

No-one could make that mistake here, could they.

AJ

"Well, every Christian i have met takes scripture literally." This might be literally true (pun intended), but plenty of Christians here have made the point that not every piece of scripture is meant to be taken 'literally'. Psalms for example, or Proverbs.

Not taking it literally, does not make it untrue.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

Now where's that explanatory post you promised me. :-)

Was Jesus literally raised from the dead, or not?

Philip,

Rowan Williams always struck me a nice guy that was in the position of working for a company that had a bad reputation. His comments probably hint at his own liberal interpretation of Christianity, in that he takes a lot as simply myth and legend, but takes a wider message of forgiveness and other admirable qualities. These can of course stand alone apart from Christianity. Perhaps in future he may join the ranks of the nonbelievers?

Wayne,

-"This might be literally true (pun intended), but plenty of Christians here have made the point that not every piece of scripture is meant to be taken 'literally'. Psalms for example, or Proverbs."

I did not say that Christians take everything literally, if i had you may have had a point, since i didn't you haven't.

-"Not taking it literally, does not make it untrue."

Actually it does. If you read Jesus' life story in the manner of Great Expectations for example the question of whether it is true or not is answered. It is untrue, but that doesn't make the moral points made less relevent.

Hi Aj
trouble is
- it is presented as historical truth
- it is a compilation (not a single author)
- some is dated long after jesus' alleged life (and death)
there has, at some stage, been deliberate subterfuge (perhaps with good intentions) - did those responsible truly believe in it, literally or symbolically ?

All this carp, for the sake of a bit of gardening.

Long since gone - it wouldn't fit on one page of a document and no matter how much I tried it couldn't be shortened without leaving too many questions unanswered and since the detail I had covered by that time didn't even cover homosexuality, I abandoned it entirely. Really the only approach comes from having the same frame of reference (i.e. God) and I can see no way around that.

i.e. if you believe in a God everything that followed made sense, but if you didn't it didn't and that brings us back to the core argument of atheism vs theism - proof/belief in a God.

Wayne

Was Jesus literally raised from the dead, or not?

I would have accepted it in serialised form.

What you're really saying is that if I agreed with you then I would have agreed with you, but as I don't agree with you then I don't. Uh huh...
As you claimed to have a reasoned argument, then I should have been able to follow it regardless, and if it was a well reasoned argument it should have been persuasive enough to make me change my mind.

But I only really asked because it was vaguely funny after so long a time...

They all live in a yellow submarine...

I have never forgotten the request, but serialised wouldn't work. I tried that with something else and the inane statements and questions that came as a response suggests that many people just don't have the patience to just read and wait for more (either that or they prefer to pick holes in the bare bones of an argument, than deal with the end result).

I think I was trying to say that if you understood why we believe in a God (even if you don't believe yourself) then you wouldn't have much difficulty following the rest, but trying to convey the 'why' always seems to be a stumbling block that believers have no problem overcoming....

Wayne

AJ,

I read your post and I know that you did not say that Christians take everything literally, only the ones that you meet. Unfortunately that says more about your circle of aquaintances than reality.

I know a few Christians that try and take things literally. Most do not read their Bibles regularly, else they would have trouble with the concept (else they read it in an archaic language and don't actually understand it).

If you take the synoptic gospels as... well, gospel truth, you will start to run into problems where they contradict each other. It is only by reading these as stories that relate to an overall truth that they make sense. E.g. Each of the synoptics presents Jesus' words before the Sanhedrin slightly differently. Only one of them can be literally true (at maximum), yet they all convey exactly the same meaning (Jesus' blaspheming by admitting he is the son of God - using 'I am' as a double whammy). In other words the story and the intent are all true, while not necessarily literally true.

In other incidences, it is possible to be metaphorically true (i.e. a true meaning), which is one way to read Genesis 1-3 for example. It is not necessary for the accounts of the creation of the universe and mankind's early sin to be ACTUALLY true, only that truth is conveyed (God created the universe and mankind has failed to live up to the requirements that he provided).

If you watch a historical movie, Schindler's List for example, it is almost certain that you are not watching the literal truth, but an interpretation of it. Generally if it is a good work it will try at least to present the general truths (that an Entrepreneur tried to save as many Jewish lives as he could), while making sacrifices for the medium in which the story is presented (Thomas Keneally's book suggests that Schindler helped Jews from the beginning, while the film suggests a gradual change in his outlook). One can learn something of the truth without it having to be literal (many liberties were taken with The King's Speech for example).

Wayne

Was Jesus literally raised from the dead, or not?

Was Jesus literally raised from the dead, or not?

Ok Jim I'll bite.

Yes.

That wasn't hard. So why does Wayne find it such a difficult question?

OK Jim, I'll bite

No.

Wayne,

-"I read your post and I know that you did not say that Christians take everything literally, only the ones that you meet. Unfortunately that says more about your circle of aquaintances than reality."

*sigh*, again you appear to be being deliberately obtuse and turning this into an all or nothing statement. The fact is that Christians at some point simply must take the Biblical narratives literally. Which parts is merely a matter of personal preference and/or doctrinal association.

If we were to examine the beliefs of Christians worldwide i think that you would find more often than not that they take the Bible literally. I would remind you that in this country alone one-third of Christians are of the YEC variety, that is they believe Genesis to be an accurate account of history. I seem to recall that you used the biblical narratives to date the age of the creation of the Earth, i wonder if you can explain the point of that if these are not taken to be literal accounts? Is this metaphorical dating?

We can use fiction to illustrate aspects of morality but just because the points made in a fictional story are relevent and resonate with ourselves doesn't make the story itself true. Great Expectations contains an accurate description of the lifestyle and morality of the period, likewise To Kill a Mockingbird. Soap operas deal with moral issues all the time and portray the modern world accurately. Their popularity points to us being interested in seeing these moral issues being raised and dealt with in realistic settings, but i don't regard Eastenders, Emmerdale or Dicken's and Harper Lee's classics as being literally true.

In the end the charge of gnu-atheists taking scripture literally is quite false. The fact is that these fundamentalists which are oft derided will always be far closer to your position than they could ever be to mine. I doubt even the most zealous fundamentalist regards Proverbs or the Song of Solomon as being literally true, but nevertheless they ascribe the entirety as being so -as you demonstrate yourself- and will even go so far as to claim that the Bible is inerrant. You may disregard some of the more literal interpretations of some parts of scripture, but in the end you are forced, by your very belief system, to regard a lot of scripture as being literally true.

Now your examples of Schindler's List and The King's Speech only serve to highlight the differences between them and the Gospels. These films are dramatisations of actual events that refer to facts that stand apart from the stories. We know of Oscar Schindler and Lionel Logue and the events surrounding their lives without having to refer to the films themselves. You may consider the Gospels to be a dramatisation of events (many do not), yet there is no account apart from these narratives. That is why i maintain that Christians as a matter of course are required to take these stories literally. The resurrection, the claims for divinity, the miracles, the edicts and laws that are followed are justified by reference to the sayings and actions that are attributed to Jesus from these stories.

For example; when the narrative describes Jesus as rising from the dead, you don't take that as merely an author's embellishment or plot device now do you?

I think this is also the basis for Jim's question.

AJ,

I like "gnu-atheists". :-)