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Biblical Literalism and Organized Religion - Bats are Bugs

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
Church Attendance is dropping, that fact cannot be argued. The ones that grow are often only because other churches around them close and they all congregate to one church. But there hasn't been a similar drop in those who believe in God or claim to be religious, even though more people will claim to be religious to "make them look better". There can be a few reasons for this drop, but I'd like to take a look at biblical literalism, the thought that everything in the bible did happen and is 100% true.

A 2011 Gallup report says that 3 in 10 Americans believe that to be true, that every word in the bible is true and should be taken as fact. On the same side only half of religious people in America even seriously read their bible more than once a year. Many of the things presented in the bible are a mix of archaic values that don't apply anymore, outright scientifically disproven, like bats being birds, or weird English errors where people sometimes talk to each other.

So my question is this, are churches taking the bible super literally adding to the decline of organized religion? Can churches recover more by invoking the spirit of community and throwing away the specific words of the bible, or is the decline the natural result of knowing so much more as a species?

Also as a fair warning, if you're going to use the bible as proof, please support it with some other kind of historical text. This isn't an argument about if the bible is real or not, because it's been warped and retranslated so many times that using it as one source against this just won't work.
 
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I think that I would argue the opposite, actually. I can't find any of the original articles or videos that grounded me in this opinion, so I can only give the general rationale. Essentially, more liberal interpretations of religion allow the believer to have leeway to pick and choose which doctrines they like; they can use their own reason as opposed to simply being dictated with something they can't question. The argument is that if an individual has the freedom to apply their own good sense to follow or not follow certain parts, then they are more susceptible to being convinced to toss out the whole thing. Someone that's laboring under the delusion the bible cannot be wrong is a tough cookie to crack. You have to work through all sorts of fears that they have, like say, burning in hellfire. The liberal disciple is a stone's throw away from being an atheist, they're just a few nudges short of being moved in that direction. In fact, I think many liberal followers are atheists, they simply claim Christianity, Islam, etc as cultural identifiers. If you ask them whether there's actually a God who cares about what you eat and on what day, they'll say no. What they will say often though is that "I'm Lutheran because my dad was Lutheran, and his dad before him was Lutheran", or something to that effect. They aren't even aware that they're actually atheists, or at the very least diests, because they've never thought about it that hard.

If I remember correctly, I think it's also true that the countries with the highest rates of non religious citizens (Sweden, Norway, France, etc) all experienced a sharp decline in fundamentalism and a rise in religious liberalism before eventually becoming mostly irreligious.
 
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Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
The best way to describe what the Bible says is this's quote from Drawn Together: "Blah blah blah! The Bible says a lot of things! Often not very clearly...."
 

U.N. Owen

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night ...
Literal interpretations of the Bible are toxic and this is coming from a catholic. You wouldn't read Tale of Two Cities and take that completely literally because you'd be confused. Considering the love for allegories by christians and Jesus alike, it would be foolish to read every word literally.
 

chess-z

campy vampire
Biblical literalness rarely take the entire bible literal anyway, or else we wouldn't be seeing the rise of prosperity gospels. The simple fact is that they're literal only with a specific set of verses.
 

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
I think that I would argue the opposite, actually. I can't find any of the original articles or videos that grounded me in this opinion, so I can only give the general rationale. Essentially, more liberal interpretations of religion allow the believer to have leeway to pick and choose which doctrines they like; they can use their own reason as opposed to simply being dictated with something they can't question. The argument is that if an individual has the freedom to apply their own good sense to follow or not follow certain parts, then they are more susceptible to being convinced to toss out the whole thing. Someone that's laboring under the delusion the bible cannot be wrong is a tough cookie to crack. You have to work through all sorts of fears that they have, like say, burning in hellfire. The liberal disciple is a stone's throw away from being an atheist, they're just a few nudges short of being moved in that direction. In fact, I think many liberal followers are atheists, they simply claim Christianity, Islam, etc as cultural identifiers. If you ask them whether there's actually a God who cares about what you eat and on what day, they'll say no. What they will say often though is that "I'm Lutheran because my dad was Lutheran, and his dad before him was Lutheran", or something to that effect. They aren't even aware that they're actually atheists, or at the very least diests, because they've never thought about it that hard.

If I remember correctly, I think it's also true that the countries with the highest rates of non religious citizens (Sweden, Norway, France, etc) all experienced a sharp decline in fundamentalism and a rise in religious liberalism before eventually becoming mostly irreligious.

That last line makes sense, as groups become smaller they also become more inclusive. Young people, in this case under 30, are less and less religious to the point where Atheist/Agnostic/non religious people outnumber Christians by a rate of at least 5:1, and teaching that the bible is literally true won't bring a whole lot of them on board.

Biblical literalness rarely take the entire bible literal anyway, or else we wouldn't be seeing the rise of prosperity gospels. The simple fact is that they're literal only with a specific set of verses.

Yeah, the term is more meaning that the person believes it's literal despite not actually knowing a lot that's in it, just the parts they hear. That's where so many Christians not actually reading the bible comes from. For all the faith based stuff there is even basic medical stuff in there that's been disproven for millennium. The title of this thread even comes from the bible saying bats are birds. It's more that they just don't question anything about the bible and when religious leaders say something in the bible is true they just take it at face value.
 

Krokketto Prime Danjal

Done with worldly lies
In the Bible, the birds part of the phrase 'bats are birds' can also be translated as 'things that fly' so in that sense the Bible is not wrong there. The translation from the original Hebrew/ Greek into all the various languages does give rise to potential error into the intended meaning of much of the Scriptures unfortunately. I don't think I'll get around to being able to read Hebrew but it sure would be handy.

Here's one example of an issue with translations: in English we have one word for 'love' which can have so many different meanings/ uses, yet in Greek (to the best of my knowledge) there are at least 3, if not more, separate words meaning different types of love. Agape - God's unconditional love for us (the highest form of love), phileo - brotherly love (non-romantic) and eros - romantic/ sexual love. In the Greek in the New Testament, the first two crop up very often and would be fairly clearly understood but in our English having just the one word with its many meanings, it is not as clear and can be very easily taken out of the intended context.

Another example is how in some versions the word for 'slave' is translated as 'servant' which, if you really study it deeply means 2 completely different things and can have 2 completely different consequences depending on how you follow and live out the teachings of these Scriptures.

There are large parts of the Bible that should definitely be taken literally and also large parts that shouldn't. It takes wisdom, good guidance and most importantly (and I can't emphasise or stress this enough)The Holy Spirit! to be able to know which parts are which (and to understand the Bible in general). The Holy Spirit is so overlooked even in so-called Christian churches it's astounding. I'm not a person who can quote a chapter and verse but it is definitely written within the Bible (possibly Psalms) that unless you have the Holy Spirit you cannot possibly understand the true meanings written in it. Most of the Bible will seem like any other story book written by mankind instead of being of Divine inspiration if you are without the Holy Spirit (this, however, does not mean that the Bible is inaccessible to non-believers, far from it). I can certainly testify that point.

Also Bobjr about that last point in your last post, Christians in particular should always question what their religious leaders are teaching them (not necessarily the Bible as this is the Word of God and the Standard to which their leaders should be aiming). As the Bible says there are many false teachers and prophets and in this day and age that could not be truer and it's one of the biggest problems Christianity faces and partly due to another point I think you made: Christians aren't reading their Bibles! Whether out of laziness or our busy modern lifestyles, it's a bad state of affairs. It only takes a small word of deception to lead people astray and before they know it, they're a long way away from the truth. Again, this is where the Holy Spirit is needed.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
Biblical literalism is something I consider obsolete.

Modern science has disproved Creationism and Noah's Ark.

Also, I think it promotes elitism with the "only Christians go to heaven" clause.

I think society should stray from absolutism in general. I don't think Christianity is a bad thing, and when people promote good with it, it can be pretty admirable.

When too much faith is put into the bible, arrogance and politics are soon to follow.
 

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
In the Bible, the birds part of the phrase 'bats are birds' can also be translated as 'things that fly' so in that sense the Bible is not wrong there. The translation from the original Hebrew/ Greek into all the various languages does give rise to potential error into the intended meaning of much of the Scriptures unfortunately. I don't think I'll get around to being able to read Hebrew but it sure would be handy.

Here's one example of an issue with translations: in English we have one word for 'love' which can have so many different meanings/ uses, yet in Greek (to the best of my knowledge) there are at least 3, if not more, separate words meaning different types of love. Agape - God's unconditional love for us (the highest form of love), phileo - brotherly love (non-romantic) and eros - romantic/ sexual love. In the Greek in the New Testament, the first two crop up very often and would be fairly clearly understood but in our English having just the one word with its many meanings, it is not as clear and can be very easily taken out of the intended context.

Another example is how in some versions the word for 'slave' is translated as 'servant' which, if you really study it deeply means 2 completely different things and can have 2 completely different consequences depending on how you follow and live out the teachings of these Scriptures.

There are large parts of the Bible that should definitely be taken literally and also large parts that shouldn't. It takes wisdom, good guidance and most importantly (and I can't emphasise or stress this enough)The Holy Spirit! to be able to know which parts are which (and to understand the Bible in general). The Holy Spirit is so overlooked even in so-called Christian churches it's astounding. I'm not a person who can quote a chapter and verse but it is definitely written within the Bible (possibly Psalms) that unless you have the Holy Spirit you cannot possibly understand the true meanings written in it. Most of the Bible will seem like any other story book written by mankind instead of being of Divine inspiration if you are without the Holy Spirit (this, however, does not mean that the Bible is inaccessible to non-believers, far from it). I can certainly testify that point.

Also Bobjr about that last point in your last post, Christians in particular should always question what their religious leaders are teaching them (not necessarily the Bible as this is the Word of God and the Standard to which their leaders should be aiming). As the Bible says there are many false teachers and prophets and in this day and age that could not be truer and it's one of the biggest problems Christianity faces and partly due to another point I think you made: Christians aren't reading their Bibles! Whether out of laziness or our busy modern lifestyles, it's a bad state of affairs. It only takes a small word of deception to lead people astray and before they know it, they're a long way away from the truth. Again, this is where the Holy Spirit is needed.

This is a good post on what a modern religion should be, but it's moving more and more towards the opposite, at least in leadership roles. There has been a big pushback against social and scientific change, and especially in middle America things are pushing backwards faster and faster.

http://www.thetowner.com/the-middle/

So the question is how do those who want to be both religious and progressive push back against that stuff?
 

U.N. Owen

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night ...
Just to throw this out there, "world" and "nation" or "region" also share a word. It's like how in Spanish "papa" can translate into "father", "priest", "pope", or "potato." It's like no one looks at the context of the words they're translating anymore.
 

Avenger Angel

Warrior of Heaven
As a Christian, I only stopped going to church recently as a result of an exercise class I like to take being offered on Sunday mornings. Unfortunately, praying in church doesn't burn calories and build muscles and it's one of the few times this class is offered. But on the flip side, you don't need a church to pray to God. Until the day they come up with a "fitness church" where I can pray and exercise at the same time, I end up having to choose. Since I'm already familiar with the readings, the prayers, and the rituals, I go with what will keep my body healthy and going on strong for years to come.

Christianity should be a relationship with God. NOT bred to become a culture of asceticism or constant denial. Thanks to the extremists, you're only going to hear about the most radical cases, but there are plenty of us out there that are tired of people that ban everything under the sun because they're that insecure about their own religion. It also bothers me when people use religion to leverage personal gain and power out of it.

When I see this kind of thing happen, I totally get why there's a spike in atheists now. This kind of behavior is deplorable and discouraging and I can understand why a great number of people have decided to step away from it because of the reasons that they don't want to be associated with any of this. When it comes to the extremists and radicals, you have your freedoms and let others have theirs or you're backstabbing the very foundation of freedom that gave you the right to speak up in the first place. Stop the imposing orders. Stop the judging. If you want to bring people back to your religion, do it with teaching, knowledge, and compassion, not with threats, slander, and humiliation.
 

Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
I think the Bible should be all be taken literally unless it's explicitly stated otherwise. We shouldn't cherrypick which parts are metaphors because they don't make sense.
 

Mordent99

Banned

SBaby

Dungeon Master
I don't normally talk about religion on message boards very much because it's a touchy subject. But I have to say one thing.

Really?

http://list25.com/25-normal-things-the-bible-forbids-but-we-still-do/

With your statement in mind, read that link, then just try to name even one person you know who is not damned and/or deserving of death.

Reference the number of Christians and Catholics that pray to Mary (ie Hail Mary), even though the Bible explicitly says not to pray to anyone except God. Going strictly by what the Bible says, most Christians and Catholics in organized religion routinely break the first commandment.
 
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Mordent99

Banned
I don't normally talk about religion on message boards very much because it's a touchy subject. But I have to say one thing.



Reference the number of Christians and Catholics that pray to Mary (ie Hail Mary), even though the Bible explicitly says not to pray to anyone except God. Going strictly by what the Bible says, most Christians and Catholics in organized religion routinely break the first commandment.

Tell that to fundamentalists like the guy I replied to. I personally think anti-gay bigots use that one passage in Leviticus as an excuse.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
I think the Bible should be all be taken literally unless it's explicitly stated otherwise. We shouldn't cherrypick which parts are metaphors because they don't make sense.
What about the things that don't make any scientific sense?

How did species diversify during Noah's Ar,k and how did genes become different yet oddly share a branching pattern?

Reference the number of Christians and Catholics that pray to Mary (ie Hail Mary), even though the Bible explicitly says not to pray to anyone except God. Going strictly by what the Bible says, most Christians and Catholics in organized religion routinely break the first commandment.
Talked to a Catholic.

Mary isn't worshipped as a God. She is more revered like Muhammud is to Islam.

Also, I assume you mean the second commandment. The first one basically says that the Abrahamic god is God.

I'm not the biggest Christian, but I don't think Catholicism is the big bane of Christain society. There are problems with Catholic docrines, but many Catholics are pretty open.
 

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
I mean if you take the story as Noah being a drunk telling a drunk person story that one all makes sense. That's also a story where one, because there are more than one for some reason, of the flat earth theories come from.
 

Mordent99

Banned
What about the things that don't make any scientific sense?

How did species diversify during Noah's Ar,k and how did genes become different yet oddly share a branching pattern?

That's far from the only thing about the story that makes no sense.

In Genesis, God spells out to Noah the dimensions of the vessel: 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in width and 30 cubits in height, which is about 450*×*75*×*45*ft or 137*×*22.9*×*13.7*m. Also, the story states had three internal divisions (which are not actually called "decks", although presumably this is what is intended), a door in the side, and a sohar, which may be either a roof or a skylight. In short, it would be pretty hard for one man (or even seven, the total number of humans on board) to build such a craft with pre-bronze age technology. And as big as it was, it would still be far to small to house two of every living thing, even if you only include the ones discovered by whoever first wrote it.

Even if it could, it would be an impossible task for seven men to somehow gather that many animals, to say nothing about how the Ark had enough space to feed them for over a month. (Lots of bad jokes are made about the more unpleasant aspects of animal care that are omitted.)

Note that nothing Noah did in the story suggests it was a miracle, other than the rainbow at the end.

And that is just one story that makes no sense at all.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
I mean if you take the story as Noah being a drunk telling a drunk person story that one all makes sense. That's also a story where one, because there are more than one for some reason, of the flat earth theories come from.
I just wonder if he took the biological species concept or the ecological species concept.

Did he bring a pair of any animals that have sex with each other, or did he separate the ones that wouldn't have sex with each other?

Also, did he gather all the heterozygotes that he could?
 

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
Noah actually brought more than 2 of each animal, it's just most of the extra ones were killed right after as a sacrifice.
 
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