Why much of the bible cannot be taken literally

@moonbus said
You confuse reasons and causes. There's no point in continuing this discussion until you get your categories straightened out.

Aren’t you the one who was complaining about explanations that don’t explain?

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That is rather a tall order, you know. “Exclusive”: hardly. At least a few bits written by humans, not God, must have crept in there somewhere. “Complete”: depends. Yes, in the sense that it contains everything a human needs to know for his salvation. No in the sense that it is not a compendium of all truths pertaining to the universe and therefore does not answer every possible question a human might pose about life, the universe, and everything. “Inerrant”: depends. If one tries to take every word in it in a material-factual it-really-happened-like-this way, no, it isn’t inerrant. At least some of it has to be taken metaphorically, allegorically, as moral injunction, or some other way to avoid some obvious clashes with reality. There was no literal factual historical flood which covered the whole planet to above level of the highest peaks in Nepal, for example; not while mammals were alive anyway. That bit is either an allegory, or it refers to a local flood.

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Show me where I have said these things before, you speak about my beliefs as if
you know them. You cannot produce those quotes, yet you speak as if you know
which is what you do when speaking about the Bible, taking text and making it
what you want.

@kellyjay said
Show me where I have said these things before, you speak about my beliefs as if
you know them. You cannot produce those quotes.

Gosh! Is the new stance you're taking that you DON'T "believe that the Bible is the complete, exclusive and inerrant word of God"?

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Ah. Yes. It would be a tall order to provide evidence of exclusivity alone, quite apart from providing evidence of completeness and inerrancy as well. I think I’d walk away from attempting to provide evidence of all that, even if I believed it.

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I will defend that which I say in the context I say it, defending your views of what you think I say and mean falls on you.

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There is a severe cognitive disconnect in people who, on the one hand, use computers, fly in jet airplanes, get themselves MRI scanned at the drop of a hat, and yet, on the other, think the universe is only about 6,000 years old and that humans and dinosaurs walked the Earth together. This is possible only with mental contortions and extreme compartmentalization.

I know of top-notch scientists who are Christians, but I don't think there are any serious scientists who get their work peer reviewed in serious scientific journals and who are biblical literalists.

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You speak for self on every topic, when you start telling others what another thinks no matter who it is, or what another feels only shows how arrogant you are!

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Focus on commonalities. Guinness or Murphy's? I can go either way, but given both, I prefer Murphy's.

Oh yes, and love yourself, love your neighbour, love God, and forgive everyone.

@moonbus said
There is a severe cognitive disconnect in people who, on the one hand, use computers, fly in jet airplanes, get themselves MRI scanned at the drop of a hat, and yet, on the other, think the universe is only about 6,000 years old and that humans and dinosaurs walked the Earth together. This is possible only with mental contortions and extreme compartmentalization.

I know of ...[text shortened]... get their work peer reviewed in serious scientific journals and who are biblical literalists.

Depending upon what is true or not you may be the one disconnected from reality.