SwoleMan

Among atheists, a fairly common attitude to followers of one of the three big monotheistic religions seems to be this:

"The fundamentual believer betray reason and the moderate believer betray reason and belief equally"

Would you say that this is true when speaking of Christians and Jews? As an atheist, I think that both fundamentalists and moderates betray reason, but I'm not certain of which ones betray faith. For example, is the first chapter of Genesis supposed to be taken literally or not? Or is it, as Jaques Berlinerblau suggests in his book The Secular Bible, probably not even meaningful to speak of a proper interpretation? What do the earliest Church Fathers/Rabbis say?

Gamera

The earliest church fathers don't take Genesis literally. At least if we can believe Origen. In one of his discussions of exegesis, he seemed a bit chagrined by the obvious nonfactual nature of much of the Hebrew scriptures.

"The reason why the divine power has give us the Scriptures is not solely to present facts according to the literal interpretation of the narrative. If one looks to the letter of the text, some of the facts have not actually happened and would be irrational and illogical.
Granted , the facts that have happened in the literal sense are much more numerous than the facts that have been added and have only a spiritual meaning.
All the same, in the face of certain pages the reader feels embarrassed. Without accurate research it is not possible to discover if a fact that seems historical actually happened according to the literal sense of the words or if it did not happen at all.
By keeping the commandment of the Lord to "search the Scriptures" (John 5:39), one ought to examine with care and attention where the literal meaning is historical and where it is not.

In Scripture not everything is objectively historical in the literal sense. Sometimes it is obvious that the result of taking it literally is impossible. But the divine Scripture, taken as a whole, has a spiritual meaning."

(Translation by Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary (or via: amazon.co.uk), Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI - Spencer, MASS, 1994)

Malachi151

I would definitely say that "liberal" Christians and Jews are more irrational about their religion than conservatives. These are conservative religions, and conservatives tend to view them the way that they were intended to be viewed, which is, of course completely insane, but they are consistent in their insanity.

Gamera

So you don't mean irrational; you mean consistent?

Liberals are more rational, but less consistent. Conservatives more consistent but less rational. Is that what you mean?

SwoleMan

Interesting. Keep it commin'!

Malachi151

Yeah, something like that. "Liberals" (and I use this term loosely) tend to be more rational about reality and less consistent with their religion.

Conservatives tend to be more irrational about reality, in keeping with the irrationality of their religion, thus being more religiously consistent.

SwoleMan

Are there any books about the beliefs of early Judaism that I could read?

Gamera

Why is consistency between scientific knowledge and religious belief (i.e., philosophy) a good thing or even a possible thing?

Are your philosophical values in any sense consistent with the empirical method? I can guaranty they are categorically unrelated.

CJD

This might seem to hold weight at first glance, but consider, if you have in mind Western, largely-ignorant-on-how-to-read-a-text, conflaters of Christianity and the Republican party when you write "conservatives," then I suggest that these so-called "conservatives" are being hardly consistent with their own religion.

So-called "liberals" and "fundamentalists" are, ironically, two sides of the same coin.

Best,

CJD