Why read the Bible literally?

That's not what I said. I said it was impossible to learn it HERE, in THIS environment.

Did I say I didn't? I don't know if you have faith or not. I addressed only your definition which makes faith appear to be a blind leap without any rational support. Evolution contradicts the word of God. I don't have the knowledge to critique it either, but if you read through science reports, fossil discoveries for instance, genetic observations, natural selection (this occurs apart from evolution) you find that they are COUCHED in evolutionistic terms, discussed in evolutionistic terms, but that the terms are excess baggage and without those terms the phenomena under discussion emerge more clearly as what they are rather than what the evo story says they are. McGrath has a very good reputation. I just looked him up to see what he says about evolution, and it appears he accepts it while refusing to accept that it can define religion. I'm sure one can go in that direction and continue to hold on to the basics of the faith but I nevertheless find it sad, however understandable. Evolution has the intellectual edge at the moment, but I believe eventually it will be shown to be an illusion, and although it subjects a person to endless ridicule it's better to side with God than science in any contradiction, and evolution contradicts the word of God, in more ways than one. Many do. But it destroys the integrity of the Bible, and my position is if it's God's word, there's no choice -- it's God's word over WHATEVER science says. Eventually evolution will be shown to be wrong. I believe there's enough reason now to seriously doubt it but entrenched intellectual habits die hard. You used language that suggested a blind-leap-in-the-dark sort of faith and your attitude toward my beliefs was not exactly diplomatic either. Patronizing? Condescending? A couple of terms that come to mind. I hope I misread you on both counts. Perhaps I'm just extra touchy after many unpleasant encounters at EvC. You said you read C.S. Lewis as I recall. That's a good way to get to God. He's brought many to faith. Those things ARE part of the "literalist" position. But you attack other elements of Biblical belief as "literalist" just because science contradicts them, so the question is fair how you hold to *these* which science also contradicts. How DO you hold to them considering that you believe that science trumps other literal beliefs no more or less than these? It's a fair question. So why then do you doubt that God could preserve Jonah in the belly of a great "fish?" Or, since you believe He's powerful enough to bring about all those miracles, and that the Biblical report of them is faithful enough for you to believe they occurred, how is it that He suddenly appears to be unable to preserve the truth of His word against other challenges to it, such as against science's claims about the Flood? How is it that fallible man-made science gets the last word over God's word there? If it's inspired by God, that implies He oversees it, its writing and its preservation. If it's His word it's His word. Parts of it can't be true and other parts false if that's the case.

The first Christian book that I read as an adult was Lewis's "Mere Christianity". It started me on the road to the Bible and prayer and God.Here is something that Lewis wrote. Here is a review of CS Lewis's views by Duncan Sprague Another quote Here is the link to the whole report.http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr02/lewis1.html#text35This message has been edited by GDR, 06-17-2005 11:06 PM

Well, while Lewis is great for breaking down certain kinds of worldly prejudices, including a great deal of liberal modernist Bible debunkery, he did capitulate to a few himself. Either I didn't read those sections of Lewis or I was still a new Christian when I did, which is probably the case as I read him fairly early in my odyssey.Anyway, let me answer you with some evidence that the literal reading has solid support in the history of the Church. I posted some links on the subject at EvC a while back: Evidences of Biblical literalism in Church historyAnd here's a long list of mostly literal readings of the six days of Creation through Church history, from the website Religious Tolerance, which I found tonight, including:Comments by early Church leaders:
Irenaeus, (circa 115-202 CE):
Theophilus of Antioch (circa 120 - 190 CE):
Clement of Alexandria (circa 150-220 CE):
Hippolytus (circa 170-236 CE):
Origen (185 - circa 254 CE):
Cyril of Jerusalem (circa 315 - 386 CE)
St. Basil (circa 329 - 379 CE):
Ambrose of Milan (339 - 397 CE):
St. Augustine (354 - 430 CE)Post-reformation writings:
Martin Luther (1483 - 1546 CE):
Calvin (1509 - 1564 CE):
Synod of Dort (1618 - 1619 CE)
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 CE):
Statements by leading contributors to the Westminster Confession:
John White:
John Ley:
John Lightfoot: "
Baptist confession of faith (1689 CE):
James Ussher (1581 - 1656 CE): :Past church beliefs about the origin of the earthThis message has been edited by Faith, 06-18-2005 03:00 AM

Hi FaithI googled around a bit as I was interested in Martin Luther's views. Here is one thing that was said. Here is a link to the whole articleHolytrinitynewrochelle.orgEnjoy the weekend

What conclusion do you draw from the quote about Luther? He apparently retained some regard for the medieval Catholic allegorizing approach to the Bible, but he also apparently insisted on a more literal approach where possible. But this is the sort of thing I'd have to see applied in particular passages to know what his view was.I was unable to find anything by Luther on Creation or the Flood when I looked a couple months ago, so perhaps that is a place he resorted to allegory. The article you link also doesn't mention either the Creation or the Flood.I guess since evolution holds sway it helps to have an interpretive method that allows it, but it seems to me that there are too MANY ways that evolution contradicts scripture on Creation. How do you explain original sin and the Fall? How do you explain Paul's affirmation that sin and death entered the world through Adam? How do you explain the fact that Eve is called the mother of all living? How do you explain the fact that the only human beings in the geneaologies are the progeny of Adam and Eve? How do you explain the very specific timing of the life spans of very specific descendants of Adam and Eve? Doesn't seem that allegory has a use for such specifics and in fact is contradicted by them.{Edit: With the Flood there's the same situation: very specific genealogies from Noah and his sons on.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-18-2005 01:32 PM

Luther's approach seemed to be that the whole Bible is about Christ. My own thoughts are that he would see the creation story as pointing to Christ. I think he would see the creation story as telling us that the entire universe is God's creation and then goes on to tell us that we have been given free will. (The knowledge of good and evil.) This in turn points to Christ who can then redeem the evil that resolves from the gift of free will. I think that is how he would say that it is true in a literal sense, but not in a factual sense. The vast majority of scientists seem to believe that ToE is consistent with all the knowledge that we currently possess. It is a changing thing though. As I understand it was believed that Neanderthals were our ancestors. DNA testing has now shown that is not the case so whatever the final truth is science has moved a step closer to it. Science has now shown that our DNA can be adjusted and I suspect that science is probably not that far off being able to take the DNA from some animal and bringing about a new species.It would seem to me that if we humans are able to figure out how to bring about a new species by adjusting DNA then it isn't much of a stretch to consider that the creator of the Universe could do it as well. This makes evolution consistent with orthodox Christianity. Once again it would be a case of science discovering the wonder of our created world. As I said earlier original sin and the fall stem from the fact that God has given us free will. The tree of the "knowledge of good and evil" was put there by God. It metaphorically represents free will as instituted by God. We all take a bite out of that apple the first time we make the wrong choice in our lives. The Jewish people were use to metaphor. They would understand exactly what he was talking about, in the same way that they understood Jesus when he referred to Noah. I would surmise that the creation stories grew from a number of myths over thousands of years. Moses or whoever it was that was inspired to put this all to words then incorporated his own genealogy back as far as he was able to complete the story.I'm not saying that my ideas of how these OT stories came about are correct but does it really matter whether I'm right or not.Back to my original point. The truth of the creation story is that we are creatures put here by God who is the creator of all things. God has given us free will to choose to live as he intends or to pick the path of self.He has then given us the means through Christ to be made right with him again.Aren't these the truths that matter?

It matters to me. The story you come up with is extremely unconvincing and unattractive to me at least. But if it doesn't threaten your salvation I suppose it doesn't have to matter to you personally. Thanks for the discussion.

GDR, are you aware that young-earth creationists have no problem with speciation? Many of us fully agree with the horse series for example.We just don't think that's how the eye arose!This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-18-2005 09:33 PM

I'm not a biologist. I'm no expert on evolution. When I want to learn about evolution I go to the people who have studied it. The majority of them seem to believe that the evolutionary model is the best theory going based on the knowledge of the natural world that we have.Where I would differ with many of the scientists is that I believe that the evolutionary process has been guided by the hand of God. I don't know at what stage it has happened, whether he has interevened at each stage, whether he set the whole in motion and made a world that would design itself, as someone said, I just don't know. My opinion is that he has been involved each time we encountered macroevolution, as it looks to me as if the process plateaus and then there are major steps forward, but I could be convinced I'm wrong in that.Science itself evolves as when it recently concluded we didn't descend from Neanderthals as I've already mentioned.As for the eyeball I tend to think that God could have had it evolve over time as described by Dawkins. I think that given time science will sort out the truth of that. With all of the advances in genetic research I would imagine that we will gain a great deal of new information in just the next few years.Science cannot tell us anything about spiritual truths though, and the Bible is one way we can search out the spiritual truth of Christ and his message for us.Here is a very interesting article that I've pirated from another thread. http://www.brown.edu/...gazine/00/11-99/features/darwin.html

Hi, You’ll notice how that particular question has not been answered yet, despite the fact that the poster already knows that this is logically sound. It shouldn’t do. Genesis does contain a lot of *plausible* history, but it also contains a lot of mythical language. I don’t see the problem with accepting that the Israelites used ‘picture’ language to describe the unknown, they had to use language that the majority of people would understand. Is it rational to believe that eating a fruit can suddenly fill your head with a lot of new knowledge? Of course it isn’t, the eating of the fruit has to be describing something else. Perhaps the fruit represents the limited freedom that God had given humans. Humans were free to do anything they wanted except disobey God, the fruit was the boundary of human freedom, they broke down that boundary when they ate the fruit. There are many other interpretations of ‘eating the fruit, for example, some people think it represents intercourse. After years of discussions with literalists or inerrantists, or whatever you want to call them, I have came to the following conclusion.Literalists have an extremely weak faith. They do not have enough faith in Jesus to save them, so they NEED the image of a perfect and inerrant Bible to support their lack of trust in Jesus’ words.Think about it, if the path to salvation is through belief in Jesus and His victory over death, His sacrifice so that all sins can be forgiven, if this information is included in a book that has a less than perfect track record then why should we trust anything that it says?This is basically their mentality, ‘if people could not live to a literal age of 969, if the world wasn’t completely flooded and all life on earth (apart from that on the Ark), if the sun couldn’t stand still, if the universe is more than 6000 years old, then Jesus may not have conquered death at all. If the Bible contains one single solitary piece of information that can be shown to be incorrect, then it allows the possibility that there are other claims that are equally incorrect. This, of course, would open up the possibility that certain (or all) claims about Jesus could also be incorrect. Which, to be fair, it actually does, but they forget that Christianity is a faith, it requires that you BELIEVE without having 100% supporting evidence.Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29)Christianity demands faith, if Jesus resurrection was a fact that was supported from all sources then we would all be Christians, but this would mean that Christianity isn’t a faith and this is where the literalists weak faith in Jesus comes into play. They do not trust His words on their own, that isn’t enough for them they NEED confirmation and this confirmation for them comes in the shape of a book that has no errors in it. Now, if you start at the beginning of the Bible and work your way through it from Genesis to Revelation, while you are doing this you ‘discover’ that everything in the Book of Genesis is true, then everything in the Book of Exodus is true, then everything in Leviticus is true, and so on, then everything in Matthew is true, then when it come to the resurrection then that HAS to be true because everything so far in the book is true. It makes perfect sense, it is a logical and reasonable argument. However, the problems arise when other people start saying things like wait a minute, people cannot live to 969 years of age, in fact in ancient times people lived a relatively short time, or wait a minute, extant Egyptian texts and artefacts produce an uninterrupted history that continues through he Flood period of 4400 years ago, why weren’t the Egyptians all killed in the Flood?The truth of the matter is, the Bible has been shown to contain a great deal of incorrect information, granted, a lot of this information is only incorrect if it is taken in a literal sense. Many apparent contradictions disappear when allegory is considered, or when ancient mythical motifs are acknowledged. For example, the fact that there was no world wide Flood that wiped out everything is only a problem when your faith is too weak to accept that the Flood myth isn’t trying to describe a real historical event. The Flood myth presents many ‘Truths’, it illustrates God’s power over nature, it illustrates God’s disappointment at mankind, it represents God’s willingness to give humans (and individuals) a second chance. It represents too may things to list here, but the important thing is, it only becomes a problem when people try to take it literally when there is no actual need to do this. The Flood myth exists because ancient peoples liked stories; they liked stories because they can get across to everyone an idea that represents an ultimate truth in a form that all can appreciate.But, what happens when a literalist happens upon a website or happens to try and convert someone on a university campus, or on the high street who informs them that it has been proven that the Bible has mistakes in it? Well they employ all sorts of childish, banal, inane, and embarrassing arguments. This is all to do with keeping their own weak faith intact and has nothing to do with whether or not the potential convert will believe them or not, it is pure and simply self-delusion.You can see some of the apologetics we have had here at EvC over the last few years.Try claiming that there was no Red Sea crossing, you will be told that there are ‘chariot wheels in the Red Sea’ so there was a Red Sea crossing. Now, try being rational and explain to the literalist that a chariot wheel (if indeed it is a chariot wheel) in the Red Sea only proves that at some time in the past a chariot wheel ended up at the bottom of the Red Sea, and see how far you get. Although, from an archaeological perspective, it is indeed true that this only proves that at some time in the past the wheel found its way into the Red Sea, to a literalist all sorts of little bells ring and wheels spin in their heads and they make completely unfound conclusions from this single piece of information. From this ‘wheel’ they can conclude that Moses was real, there was 2-3 million Israelites in Egypt, all of pharaoh’s armies died at the Red Sea, the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years etc. In other words, if one single artefact is found that they think supports any biblical event, then that automatically ‘proves’ that everything else about that event is true! In the real world, of course, this is not how archaeology and history actually work. In the real world of archaeology all artefacts are mute and are only given a context and meaning by the mind of the archaeologist/historian. Take the Red Sea chariot wheel as an example, an archaeologist/historian would never claim that a chariot wheel in the Red Sea proves anything in the Bible, how do we know that the wheel even comes fro the same period as the ‘exodus’ when we don’t even know when the exodus was meant to have taken place because the Bible gives conflicting information regarding its date? An archaeologist would realise that there are many different reasons why that wheel is down there, and an archaeologist who is familiar with the Bible would realise that the Bible doesn’t say that the crossing was at the Red Sea so anything found in the Red Sea has nothing to do with the exodus anyway.But, literalists make these huge leaps in logic all the time, any single solitary piece of information that appears to support a said event will be latched on to and held up as proof. Remember the so-called ‘Ossuary of James’ the brother of Jesus? The literalists were on cloud nine, declaring the truth of the Bible again, where are they now that it has been shown that the ossuary is a fake?How many literalists still point to Wyatt’s rock formation as being Noah’s Ark?There is one over riding feature of a literalist stance, it is a psychological condition that allows them to keep this inerrant view of the Bible when all rational people, Christians and atheists alike, know for certain that the Bible does contain errors, but these errors should not have undermine the Christian faith.This psychological phenomenon is called ‘cognitive dissonance’.From here Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become "open" to them. Here are two very relevant observations about cognitive dissonance:1. if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge they are likely to resist the new learning. 2. andcounter-intuitively, perhapsif learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been "had", or "conned". How amazingly applicable is this psychological phenomenon to the literalist position?Look at point 1.It is very easy to apply this to the literalist when we consider how they normally conduct their lives as a believer in an inerrant Bible. If we consider someone who converts to this stance, it may be after some deep and meaningful religious experience, they invariably either surround themselves with people of a similar stance, be it at a church, or a friend’s house, or it may now be at an internet site or newsgroup discussion. Now, these new converts are constantly bombarded with ‘evidence’ supporting every single event in the Bible, they trust these people and they soak up all the information provided. Now, to them, all of this information is completely plausible, they aren’t critically analysing what they are being told, they are open to any possible explanation that supports the biblical account. Does the chronology of the ancient near east allow for an exodus and conquest, of course it doesn’t, however, it only takes one literalist to latch on to David Rohl’s ‘Test of Time’ book and his ‘New Chronology’ which accommodates and exodus and conquest is al they need to support the Bible, thus, David Rohl’s book is 100% accurate. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t a single archaeologist or Egyptologist (apart from Rohl) who accepts his chronology. It doesn’t matter that his chronology has been utterly destroyed by the experts, the fact that he proposes one is enough for the literalist, it simple has to be true because it supports the Bible! Normal people, when presented with something that appears to support their particular stance, would investigate the source before accepting it. For example, if someone e-mailed me with new information that ‘disproves’ the conquest of Canaan as portrayed in Joshua 1-11, I would examine the information and see how it fits in with what I already know, then maybe I would accept parts of it, or all of it, or I may even dismiss it all. But the literalist doesn’t do this, they accept everything in the source as being true because it supports their views. They more than likely haven’t even heard of the Babylonian and Assyrian King’s Lists, but these lists are wrong because they (amongst other things) disprove Rohl’s chronology, forget the fact that the literalist hasn’t heard of them, if it contradicts the source that supports the Bible then they are wrong!Now, there is another factor that comes into this. The literalists who don’t surround themselves with people of a similar stance will surround themselves with material written by people of a similar stance. If they don’t really mix with others then they will submerge themselves in books written by literalists, or videos, audio cassette tapes, dvd’s, cd’s, everything that they can get their hands on. They will absorb all this information which is not information that is accurate, the people who peddle this stuff have not carried out any objective research into it, they simply just state things and the new convert sucks it all up like a sponge. Now, if all that the literalist does for year after year is to pollute their minds with this drivel then there are obviously going to believe that they have the truth, this information is perfect because no one has disproven any of it, forget the fact that they aren’t studying anything that has been critically analysed, They are studying information that has been debunked countless times, but the producers of the material aren’t going to admit that are they. They simply do not address that problems, or they are too stupid to be able to research an issue properly, or they are like David Rohl and they knowingly leave out the information that destroys their arguments.No, armed with all of this new information, and because all of the information is completely biased towards a literal view of the Bible, the new literalist ‘knows’ that they have the truth, the Bible is 100% inerrant, it has to be look at all the hundred even thousands of book, tapes, videos that I have that confirm this. Thus they are committed to that information, they haven’t been exposed to the arguments that decimate their view of the Bible, I mean, why would they look at anything that is contrary to what they believe? Haven’t that people who produced the hundreds and thousands of books, tape, videos, already done that anyway? Of course they haven’t, they only pick a few examples of data that supports the biblical stories, and they ignore all of the arguments that terminate a literal view of the text.Thus, the new literalist is committed to the information that they already have, they know the text is inerrant so why bother looking at contrary information? But, when they do decide to look at contrary information for themselves out of curiosity or when someone points out a problem to them, they are so brainwashed by the inferior materials that they have been polluting themselves with for years that they are unable to accept that the Bible may have an error in it. So, what do they do when archaeology proves that Jericho was uninhabited when the Bible says Joshua’s armies were supposed to be destroying it (this is true regardless of which of the two popular dates you subscribe to)? They say that archaeology is at fault, they haven’t found evidence yet, the evidence is there but archaeologists have just misinterpreted it, the evidence has been washed away, Bryant Wood says there is evidence so there is evidence. They are incapable of accepting any information that is contrary to their stance. They are literally ‘brainwashed’.The second factor related to cognitive dissonance is equally clear. andcounter-intuitively, perhapsif learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been "had", or "conned". Think about life here at EvC for any literalist who appears. Their experience here easily fulfils the criteria of ‘difficult, uncomfortable, and humiliating’, and this is just at an internet forum. How many times will a literalist be humiliated in real time, how any people will laugh at them in the streets when they preach?It is difficult for anyone to admit that they are wrong; I actually think it is a sign of a strong character if you can admit that you were wrong about something. But the literalist stance is not like admitting that your football team is basically shit and that you were only fooling yourself when you thought they had a chance of winning the cup, the literalist stance is far more important than that. Their whole life, since they proclaimed an inerrant Bible, has focussed on keeping this belief intact, and it would take immense strength and character to admit that they were actually wrong all along, although some people can and have done this.Thus, the cognitive dissonance of the literalist makes their brain unable to accept any contrary information. Their ego will not allow them to admit that all the hundreds or thousands of sources that cost thousands of dollars or pounds are all absolute drivel, but the brain’s self-protection mechanism (cognitive dissonance) kicks in to prevent them having to accept that the Bible does contain a great deal of error. On the point of hunting thought the Bible this actually brings up an issue that demonstrates how ignorant and embarrassing a literalist view of the Bible actually is.When Catholic and Protestant scholars were arguing over whose view of the Bible is most historically sound. The French priest, Richard Simon, highlighted a fundamental error in the literalist stance when in 1693 he wrote: The great changes that have taken place in the manuscripts of the Bible -as we have shown in the first book of this work — since the first originals were lost, completely destroy the principle of the Protestants and the Socinians, who only consult these same manuscripts in the form that they are today. If the truth of religion had not lived on in the church, it would not be safe to look for it now in books that have been subjected to so many changes and that in so many matters were dependant on the will of the copyists. It is certain hat the Jews who copied these books took liberty of adding certain letters here, and cutting out certain letters there, according as they judged it suitable, and yet the meaning of the text is often dependant on these letters So, the basic problem for the literalist is that they are not following the original texts! No one knows what the original texts looked like, and the extant texts that we do have show that the text has been tampered with. Look at the case of the long ending of Mark, or the story of the adulteress, these are only two examples.So literalists say that they follow the King James version, and that it is the one error free copy of the Bible, but how do they know? Do they accept that there used to be such a think as a unicorn? Don’t they know that the KJV has went through many editing processes as well?The whole stance is embarrassing to adults and especially so to Christians, you must cringe every time you see one of these clowns making a mockery of your faith, because that’s what they are doing. When others see these people either posting messages at a forum, preaching in the street or on TV, they just laugh at them and think to themselves what a ridiculous faith Christianity is.When I see a literalist walking away from a discussion it just supports what I believe about them, they do not have an open mind and they are not intellectually competent enough to defend their faith. Their faith, by the way, is not in Jesus Christ at all, their faith is in a book that they think is perfect, Jesus Christ comes second to the book that speaks of Him. If the book that speaks of Jesus contains one error then they wouldn’t have faith in Jesus, all their energy goes into making up crazy excuses to keep the book one hundred percent accurate. This accuracy is only in their own mind of curse as anyone who has studied the Bible, or history or archaeology knows that the Bible isn’t perfect, there is no doubt that it contains errors, but is that really that important to someone’s faith? It is if all your faith is in a book and not in Jesus. Why else would they defend the Bible so vehemently?So, it is quite an obvious conclusion, a literalist is a literalist because their faith is weak, their primary object of worship is the Bible and not Jesus Christ.Brian.This message has been edited by Brian, 06-19-2005 01:14 PM

It seems to make perfect sense, of course, to "go to the people who have studied it," but there is a problem with that for a Christian, isn't there? Those are not the people we are to go to first to deal with a theory that contradicts scripture. In your case if you've already decided there is no contradiction then maybe there is no conflict, but as a general rule, consulting secular scholars is not the action of choice for a Christian. The experts these days are usually just "the world" that scripture says to transcend. They have assumptions at odds with Christian assumptions.Sorry if I'm being undiplomatic again, but we aren't to study evolution and then tack on God; we aren't to study geology and let it define Genesis for us, we are to study Genesis and let it define geology; we aren't to study current history's debunkery of everything about Christianity and then let whatever's left define God's allowable sphere: God is the author of all nature and all history and He inspired the Bible to explain it all to us, so how backwards is it to start cold with nature and history and fit Him in only if possible?Study biology, study geology, study history, but study it FROM Christian assumptions -- which is in fact how the West started its climb to educational excellence, by building on Christian assumptions. That isn't possible here or in most educational fora any more. We are called to keep separate from the world (not isolated, but above it), and it's sad to see Christians getting caught in its snares.

The Christians of weak faith are the ones who deny God in favor of science because they don't have the conviction it takes to defend the scripture from your kind of reasoning.

I thought you were supposed to be ignoring me?

Actually, you're right, I should ignore you and not kid around.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-19-2005 01:51 PM