charley63

I think it really depends on what you view as "true" Christianity. The Genesis account reveal two different texts. Chapter One has the famous 7-day sequence. Chapter 2 has an entirely different sequence with no timespan specified. Then a number of chapters later genealogies are traced from Adam to Abraham, which were the source of Ussher's chronology placing creation at 4004 BC. The orthodox rabbis have an accounting which states that this is year 5767 since creation, whereas Ussher's dating would make this year 6011.

Non-literalist interpretations have been around since at least the 2nd century, long before modern science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegor...ons_of_Genesis

peace! Charley

Rich Oliver

I thought you'd found some wriggle room there for a moment, but sadly no:

The timeline seems pretty clear to me.

Well apart from such muddles as whether God created animals before or after Man. But God was getting on a bit when he inspired the Pentateuch to be written. Maybe he was in the early stage of Alzheimer's. Maybe thats why we haven't heard from him recently.

Rich Oliver

And what exactly is the non-literalist interpretation of this:
Maybe I'm just dim, but it looks like straightforward chronology to me. Straightforward and untrue.

NZSkep

It's certainly a part of some christian teaching i.e. Kent Hovind, answers in Genisis etc.

IIRc there was survey done that showed a significant proportion of the US population believed the world was less than 10k years old.

here are some links for how widespread this belief actually is

http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=27847

43% of Americans choose the alternative closest to the creationist perspective, that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

whilst not a majority, that is certainly a significant minority.

Doug Shaver

When someone tells me that X is a Christian teaching, how can I know whether it really is or not?

Aside from just asking you, I mean.

Clouseau

A muddle? Even small children recognise a talking snake as a representation of Satan; and that evil comes into the world through a fruit is laughable. This whole debate is preposterous. Only in America....

Clouseau

I would be very glad to discuss that in a civil way.

Vicious Love

Not the contradiction to which Rich Oliver referred.

"Every aspect of this creation myth is fucking moronic! None of it makes any sense! Clearly this book is the One True Allegory, and anyone who doesn't believe in my interpretation of it will burn in a literal Hell for disregarding the metaphorical truth of a literal god who created the world through means expressed only through metaphor!"

Tell me, Clouseau, has any creation myth ever been intended literally? How can you tell?

I've noticed that. Apropos of nothing, do you do a lot of fishing?

Disgraceful, isn't it? I mean, all those Jews and Christians over the millennia all easily recognized it as metaphor. No one in the bronze age thought there had been a literal exodus, or a solid firmament over a disc-shaped Earth, or any of that nonsense. How could they? It's all false!

Clouseau

I think the typical atheist understands the idea of sin separating mankind from the creator as well as anything.

Again, a reversal of the actual situation, in this case also a very uninformed misrepresentation, unless it is a deliberate one. Those who take an allegorical position are not those who generally make any noise whatever about the correct interpretation to be made of early Genesis, and are the very reverse of dogmatic about this issue. Christians as Christians do not care how people interpret early Genesis (1-11), although they may have a professional interest in it as scientists. Christians are ultimately only interested in how people behave; whether they love justice and mercy, and walk humbly with God.

Of course not- not by their originators. Those people must have known that they invented because they were not present at creation; but it is to completely misunderstand myth if one even asks that question. The purpose of myth was that of religion as a whole in early civilisations- to act as social 'glue'.

Six-year-olds do so.

Vicious Love

The typical atheist also understands the idea of a literal six-day creation. Both concepts are perfectly coherent, neither makes any sense, neither is evidenced in the slightest.

No, your face!

You've been very, very noisy about correctly interpreting Genesis as allegorical. In the course of this noise, you've dismissed the majority of Christians as "no true Christians", and condemned more than a few to a Hell that you insist is literal. How is this inconsistent with my description?

Right, so long as everyone agrees with you on which bits of the Bible are literal and which are allegorical, you're the very model of flexibility.

By which you refer to a select minority of those people who call themselves as Christians and believe in the divinity of Jesus.

You've lost me.

No, Christians are interested in Latin mass and literal transubstantiation. Now demonstrate that my arbitrary definition of "True Christians" is any less accurate than yours.

Of course! It's all so simple! No one has ever mistaken a dream or hallucination for a divine vision, or a daydream for epiphany, or a speculation for undeniable truth! And no one has ever lied to anyone about supernatural experiences for wealth or influence! Muhammad was never really visited by an archangel, therefore the Koran was a metaphor all along!

Well, that does explain a thing or two. I just wish all of those prophets had done something to keep people from getting the wrong impression. There's not a single disclaimer anywhere in the Enûma Eliš.

To say nothing about all those ancient cosmologies and geographies! I'd be hard-pressed to find the metaphorical significance of a solid firmament with windows in it, but it seems like a perfectly sensible answer to "Why does water fall from the sky?". I mean, modern science disagrees, but it's not like anyone back then had any indication that the firmament was anything less than literal truth. Funny how that sort of misleading passage creeps into the testament of an omnipotent, infallible god.

It'd also be nice if all those metaphor-slingers gave some indication of which god was the One True God, and on what literal basis he would decide to literally cast sinners and unbelievers into a literal Hell to literally burn for a literal eternity and contemplate the folly of eating metaphorical fruit or shellfish and wearing metaphorical mixed fabrics.

You don't say? Why, it never occurred to me that religion has a sociopolitical function! Come to think of it, the purpose of slander and character assassination is to discredit the victim, therefore slander is never intended to be literally believed! And most lies are told for a reason, as well, so those aren't meant to be taken literally, either!


Six-year-olds also catch on to the problem of evil and realize an omnipotent, all-loving god is an absurdity. That does little to deter billions of adults from believing in such a manifestly contradictory god.