If Genesis is Metaphorical, what's the metaphor?

The metaphor is the relationship of God to man, the nature of God, and how that nature is to be reconciled with the presence of evil in the world.It's basically about the place of the Hebrew people in the world, and their relationship with their God. That's what religions do, basically - give us narrative frameworks that explain our place in the world.

That's a great interpretation.

What the hell what?

No offense, but you're totally wrong. Most atheists come to the conclusion that the lack of an all-powerful moral authority means that we have a duty to be more moral, not less. If we're the pinnacle of moral authority, if we're the only "gods", if you will, then our duty to each other is magnified, because there's simply no one else to fulfill that duty. Exactly what you started with - the morals that a society needs to serve itself. You've just eliminated the fairy tales you've used to manipulate people into following them, and convinced them to follow them on their own merits. Nobody wants to live in a crumbling society; thus, people will be moral because they understand the benefits of doing so.You act like civilization must be Christian, or fail - yet, Western civilization is not the only civilization. It's neither the oldest, nor the most successful. You might stop by Japan if you wanted to see how a society could be non-Christian and yet preserve the way of life that you're familiar with.

Yet, millions of atheists are "putting it into practice" every day, and the funny thing is, we're doing it better than most of you Christians. If the content of the jails is any indication. Who is claiming we need to overturn civilization? When people actually think about it, the vast majority come to the same conclusion - it's better to be civilized than not.Your mistake is that you conflate belief in a fairy tale with understanding of what it takes to run a society. Yes, I have. Did you miss the fact that it's a story about how the elite use stories about the supernatural to manipulate others to do their bidding? Apparently so. I'm sorry? Every culture as "do not steal" and "do not kill"; they predate the Bible by thousands of years. Oh, right, because there were absolutely no civilizations whatsoever before they wrote the Bible. Funny, I must have missed that little factoid in World History. I disagree. The best stuff predates the Bible. And a fair bit of your "Biblical morals" have actually the opposite effect; they are used to enslave and oppress elements of humanity. What's uplifting about telling two gay men that they're abominations that God hates? What's uplifting about telling black people they've been marked by God for slavery? I'll bite away. There's nothing in the Bible that benefits us only in the context of Christian belief; and eliminating that basis of Christian belief removes much in the Bible that is harmful to our society. It's pretty good, but that 2000 years hasn't been all good times. The history of modern democracy, in practice, is maybe 200-300 years. A lot of your 2000 of Western Civilization has been the oppression of peoples and the tyranny of the elite. It's awesome that that gave birth to participatory government, but remember that that only happened when we pulled religion out of politics. Oh? That's news to me. Last I checked, Western civilizations put prisoners to work, drafted men into military service against their will, and instituted other acts of unfree labor. We don't always call it "slavery", of course, but the principle of coercing labor against the laborer's will still persists.I'm glad we've made progress. But we weren't the first society to eliminate unfree labor; no society has, yet. Compare, if you would, the length of time considered "the Dark Ages", when the Christian church held sway, with the length of time elapsed since the Enlightenment. On the balance, the Christian church has been a force of oppression, not of freedom. Then they weren't atheists, now were they? If you believe that the State is God, God is the State, then you're not an atheist. How can you be?If you want to see how an atheist society can function, look around you. (Er, I see you live in Portugal, so what I mean is, look around me.) America is full of atheists, and somehow, we do just fine. Better than the theists, in fact.

Why did you offer your opinion if you didn't expect it to be discussed? What do you think we do here, exactly?

A consciencious person would wonder why their audience percieved them as arrogant when they had no intention of being read that way.In your case, you need to beware: the assertion that Christians know what's best for people better than anybody else comes off as arrogant no matter how you slice it.

Can you name one that hasn't been predicated on the worship of something? And that something being invested with absolute moral authority?Be it God, or the Communist Party, or Our Great Leader, societies that have handed down arbitrary "absolute" morals have led to oppression of peoples. You're the one that singled out Christianity, not me. Don't retreat behind a feigned victimhood. Christianity isn't any worse than any of the others; it's merely my point that it isn't any better, either.

I don't understand how that's supposed to mitigate the arrogance of your statement. Did you, or did you not, advance the claim that Christianity, and soley Christianity, was able to provide the best morals for Western Civilization?