Toto

In this context, yes.

Liberal Biblical scholars in America have to contend with a culture that worships the Bible. They have to claim that the Bible is metaphorically or allegorically "true" in some philosophical sense of a higher truth, which is not required to be the mundane truth of unimaginative people who are stuck with reality as their only refuge. It takes a lot of tap dancing.

sotto voce

:applause:

Bob Hope's successor, at last.

And thankee, Mr Astaire.

(See my post for the original, non-spoof version.)

Toto

I should add that a significant segment of Americans worship the Bible in spite if not reading it and not knowing what it's all about. This includes some state legislators who set the budgets for the public universities that hire a lot of these liberal scholars.

Stephen Colbert interview with Christianist who doesn't know the ten commandments

sotto voce

They know alright. Nobody gets anywhere in the USA unless they know the nature of Christianity, and oppose Christians and their book. Not that there are many Christians to count. It's perfectly possible that there are none in the USA. It's more weird than medieval Europe, and that was mind-boggling enough.

The unofficial religion of America is Mammon. (As if you didn't know.) Mammon dresses himself as an angel of light, yet in various guises. The chief ones are quite easy to memorise: Calvinism, Catholicism, Charismatism and Creationism. KJVOery was also prominent, but is now receding quite rapidly; though the others are receding in a secular way, if you get my meaning. Then there are the cults, Mormonism, JWism, etc. But they are all apparent crackpots, to some degree, as the rest of the world is not slow to note. They put on their respective acts because America would rather have phoney than genuine Christians.

So the minority who claim to be atheist/agnostic are in a tricky position, at least, their spokespersons are, because they too would rather have phoney than genuine Christians. They cannot tell the crackpots that they are phoneys, yet they have to oppose them, somehow. And many of their own arguments turn out to be crackpot, too. Like, "The supernatural cannot happen." As dogmatic, as absolutist, as anti-intellectual as any from a right-wing Calvinist or Catholic.

DCHindley

hjalti,

When we say that here in the US, it means something like "what the text literally says" as opposed to some sort of figurative sense, even when it is obvious that a figurative sense was intended.

It is usually used here when a commonly known saying, one that is normally taken figuratively resembles some real event. For example, someone says "Break a leg" to a friend about to embark on a trip or compete in a contest, something that here is taken as a humorous way to say "best wishes," then the fellow actually breaks his leg. We would then say "I didn't think he would take it literally!" Of course, nobody breaks a leg just because someone joked about it to him. In fact, the accident or event that resembles the saying is almost always random. It is just a humorous way to look at the fact that "shit happens."

When Christian fundamentalists talk about taking the bible literally, they mean they want to believe that every word describes exactly what happened. Like 7 literal days of creation. This view does not recognize the difference between social systems then and now. If "God says" women should keep silent in the church and not teach men, by golly they will not allow women to be preachers.

On the other hand bad things that the bible says happened (genocide against the Canaanites, the father who offered his own preteen daughter to God as a sacrifice because of a rash oath, etc) they are willing to use grammar to reinterpret as happening differently than the text appears to say. E.g., the young girl was not actually "sacrificed" by having her throat cut and her body burned, but was somehow "dedicated to God" and lived out her life as a virgin; or the Canaanites deserved the vengeance of God because "they practiced disgusting sexual acts (temple prostitutes, male and female, and having sex in fields to bring fertility) that would have spread venereal disease" (I heard this on a Christian radio broadcast).

DCH

Sheshbazzar

Ain't that something now?

But a person so familiar with the Ten Commandments that they can recite all three Scriptural versions of these Ten Commandments, in Hebrew, must conform their thinking to the political machinations of such ignorant politicians and the equally ignorant and shallow religionists that elected them.

Sheshbazzar

So yet again we get sotto voce as being the world's one and only remaining true™ christian.

sotto voce

Contradiction in terms, obviously. Quick as a flash, we see this crackpottery.

But they won't change.

Most of them make it six days, since I pointed out their ignorance.

You see the falsehood. There is no alternative, figurative sense here. So absurd fundies are associated with sensible people who just happen to oppose the gender motivated who have not yet learned to mind their own business.

sotto voce

Doubtless there are many 'atheists' who would love Christianity to be merely obedience to the Ten Cs.

sotto voce

Which would you rather have? The 'Christian radio' version, or the real one?

According to the Bible, Jephtha's daughter did actually die. This actual death of an 'innocent', as recorded, presages the death of Jesus, as the price of victory. It's a lesson in the necessity of sacrifice for a greater gain. The 'Christian radio' won't tell you that, will it.

According to the Bible, the Canaanites died because they did not deserve to live. And you know who else doesn't, according to the Bible? You. You don't need to be obviously evil. The 'Christian radio' won't tell you that he who makes can unmake. Life is a gift, not a right, by the Bible; which may come as a nasty surprise in the USA.

So, what's your choice?