I’ve never understood some Christian groups’ inability to just accept evolution, dinosaurs, likelihood of interstellar life, etc. as fact by assuming that God could have just as easily made that shit too. For some reason there’s this hangup there. I spoke to a devout Christian hippie once about why the concept of aliens, knowing full well how large the universe is himself, isn’t even a remote possibility in his mind. He basically said that the Bible says to worry about us and Earthly affairs, and not beyond that. Can the Bible not be rationalized then as the human handbook, and that maybe God created other civilizations in other parts of the cosmos, gifting a special handbook to them as well? I didn’t push the envelope because he is a good dude and I’m not the type of person to argue faith with believers, but it just seems silly to limit the scope of a universal creator’s power.
If I were Christian, I’d think that were an incredibly rad idea.
Yeah. If you interpret the Bible in a much more metaphorical way, it has a lot more internal consistency than the literal interpretation. Like demons don’t make sense literally. If a demon/devil compels you to do something bad, it’s not your fault if you do it. Instead, if demons are more like temptations, it makes perfect sense; you can be blamed for your lack of willpower / desire to do evil.
It wraps everything up so nicely, I am surprised that it isn’t more common.
Well first off if it is all a metaphor it would be news to the people who wrote it. When Paul was talking about the Garden of Eden it is pretty clear he saw it as a true and literally described event. You can’t have a physical resurrection atone for a metaphorical fall from grace. The cost is nowhere near the gain. If the Fall was a metaphorical event you could just have a symbolic sacrifice, i.e. no need to physically torture someone to death.
Secondly it makes your god a coy liar. As a whole the BIble is pretty clear when there are metaphors and when it is literal. Go slug through the later OT prophets when god is demanding people do weird stuff and telling them “this symbolizes my relationship with Israel” or “this symbolizes what the future holds” or even in the Pentauch you see it. The authors were not content with just dropping some symbolism and running off, they had to explain what it meant.
Third it just isn’t appealing. Satan to me was a real threat. I can still remember how haunting it was when I first heard “call us legion for we are many”. And what the terrifying implications of that meant. A city against God with forces working together. If all of this is just people creating anthropomorphic figures then well… what’s the point?
I’ve never understood some Christian groups’ inability to just accept evolution, dinosaurs, likelihood of interstellar life, etc. as fact by assuming that God could have just as easily made that shit too. For some reason there’s this hangup there. I spoke to a devout Christian hippie once about why the concept of aliens, knowing full well how large the universe is himself, isn’t even a remote possibility in his mind. He basically said that the Bible says to worry about us and Earthly affairs, and not beyond that. Can the Bible not be rationalized then as the human handbook, and that maybe God created other civilizations in other parts of the cosmos, gifting a special handbook to them as well? I didn’t push the envelope because he is a good dude and I’m not the type of person to argue faith with believers, but it just seems silly to limit the scope of a universal creator’s power.
If I were Christian, I’d think that were an incredibly rad idea.
Yeah. If you interpret the Bible in a much more metaphorical way, it has a lot more internal consistency than the literal interpretation. Like demons don’t make sense literally. If a demon/devil compels you to do something bad, it’s not your fault if you do it. Instead, if demons are more like temptations, it makes perfect sense; you can be blamed for your lack of willpower / desire to do evil.
It wraps everything up so nicely, I am surprised that it isn’t more common.
Well first off if it is all a metaphor it would be news to the people who wrote it. When Paul was talking about the Garden of Eden it is pretty clear he saw it as a true and literally described event. You can’t have a physical resurrection atone for a metaphorical fall from grace. The cost is nowhere near the gain. If the Fall was a metaphorical event you could just have a symbolic sacrifice, i.e. no need to physically torture someone to death.
Secondly it makes your god a coy liar. As a whole the BIble is pretty clear when there are metaphors and when it is literal. Go slug through the later OT prophets when god is demanding people do weird stuff and telling them “this symbolizes my relationship with Israel” or “this symbolizes what the future holds” or even in the Pentauch you see it. The authors were not content with just dropping some symbolism and running off, they had to explain what it meant.
Third it just isn’t appealing. Satan to me was a real threat. I can still remember how haunting it was when I first heard “call us legion for we are many”. And what the terrifying implications of that meant. A city against God with forces working together. If all of this is just people creating anthropomorphic figures then well… what’s the point?