Kasz216 on 30 July 2009
| The_vagabond7 said: In my opinion, I feel conflicted on biblical literalism. On one hand, it's obviously absurd and loony to take the bible as the unadulterated literal account of history of the world. There was not a flood 4000 years ago that left seven people and a small group of animals to create every civilization, culture, language, and biological diversity that we have today. You'd have to be incredibly ignorant of so many fields of study to believe that. And while it's grossly ignorant and absurd, at least it's relatively consistent intellectually within it's own bizarre world. It is an unflinching world view. On the other hand, I think biblical allegory is really an intellectually dishonest position. Because it essentially is just a constant state of cutting up the bible into that which is socially and scientifically acceptable for modern times. It has nothing to do with what the bible says, it only has to do with what you can make the bible say. What liberal Christians believe now is nothing like what Christians believed a hundred years ago, or two hundred years ago, or further back. And is influenced almost entirely by the moral and scientific zeitgeist of the day. It is the act of making the bible into a hand puppet. But on the other hand, while taking a non-literalist position I think is intellectually dishonest, it is greatly preferable morally and socially. Because it's the ones that take it literally that kill abortion doctors, think homosexuals are abominations and atheists are all immoral murderers, and want to dissect our education system and take out all of the stuff they feel contradicts their world view. It's the ones that believe it's not to be taken so literally that you can go have a beer with, and they just want to be a good person. Personally, for me at least, beer wins out of intellectual honesty, so I'd much rather hope that American christians move towards a more liberal view of the bible than the revert to believing what they believe hell or high water. Who wants a beer? I want a beer. |
Biblical literalism has never actually been believed though. So how could it be intellectually dishonest?
If so that would make every work that's an allegory intellectually dishonest.
I mean is the girl who cried wolf intellectually dishonest?
