Is the bible supposed to be taken literally or not?

Also, the creation accounts of various other religions can be interpreted in such a way as to make them correct.

lurker wrote

Gen 1 says god made beasts (v25) and later it says he made man (v27). I wouldn’t say v24 and v26 are the creation statements because it doesn’t use phrases like “god made” or “god created”. I can see where a person will read Gen 2:18-19 and say it contradicts, but my question to you is “Why would you want to think that?” To say it’s an absolute contradiction is to say there’s no other way to read it. Are you saying there’s no reasonable way to read this section so everything fits together and makes perfect sense?

The plain meaning of the passages show up the contradiction. You'd have to start twisting the words and meaning to remove the contradiction. But that's biased. You're starting out with a preconception (it can't be contradictory) and making things fit, no matter how much you have to twist things.

Is there any contradiction that you couldn't remove that way?

It's not a question of absolutes (again, religionists tend to absolutes, black & white, etc.; science and logic realizes its limitations and that the world is often a matter of grays). The *best* interpretation is the least intrusive: take the words for what they mean. If you heavily interpret a passage, you can make anything fit any preconception.

If I have two possible interpretations before me, what should I do? A) Pick the one that maintains the consistency of the message, makes use of ancient culture/traditions/knowledge, is consistent with the language/grammar/style of the writer/culture, fits in with known scientific facts; or B) Pick the one that ignores one or more of these?

According to you I'd be twisting the phrase "tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week" if I said it was talking about procrastination and not tomorrow actually being the busiest day of the week.

I'm not particularly impressed by the supposed parallels between the bible and science. Where in the bible does it say that matter is composed of atoms? Where in the bible does it say that life is composed of cells? Where in the bible does it say that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun? These facts were discovered by scientists doing experiments; not by monks studying the bible.

You remind of the people who think that the prophecies of Nostradamus or the bible code are real. The meaning of the prophecies is always obscure until after the event happens. After it happens, they can "interpret" the loosely worded prophecies to mean whatever they want.

According to Wikipedia, christianity is grouped into 3 main branches, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, each claims to be the true religion due to their own interpretations of the same book, the bible. Protestanism alone is composed of thousands of different denominations, each one antagonistic to the other.

So are we all agreed that the bible is open to different interpretations? Here are a few possibilities why the bible is written that way:

1. God didn't know about the existence of the bible.

2. God knew of the bible's existence but didn't know of the bible's confusing nature.

3. God knew of the bible's confusing nature, but he didn't care what it's effects would be, so he didn't correct it.

4. God knew of the bible's confusing nature, but he didn't know how it would affect his followers, so he didn't correct it.

5. God knew of the bible's confusing nature and knew exactly what it's effects would be to his followers, and yet he didn't bother to correct it.

6. God knew of the bible's confusing nature and knew exactly what it's effects would be to his followers, because he put it there on purpose.

7. It was satan all along who influenced the contents of the bible.

8. There is no god, and the bible is just a collection of ancient stories.

Any other possibilities that I missed?

lurker wrote

If I have two possible interpretations before me, what should I do? A) Pick the one that maintains the consistency of the message, makes use of ancient culture/traditions/knowledge, is consistent with the language/grammar/style of the writer/culture, fits in with known scientific facts; or B) Pick the one that ignores one or more of these?

According to you I'd be twisting the phrase "tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week" if I said it was talking about procrastination and not tomorrow actually being the busiest day of the week.

As I said in post #120, you are reading the Bible in such a way that MAKES it correct. You're not using the most likely interpretation, but rather the interpretations that make the Bible compatible with the findings of science etc.

People have been studying and interpreting the Bible for centuries, yet no one came to the conclusion that the universe is billions of years old and that species evolved over millions of years from reading the text alone. Your interpretation came about only after relatively recent findings. Surely people from thousands of years ago must have been more knowledgeable about the authors' writing styles, customs, idioms etc. Yet there is no evidence that anyone came to your interpretation until only quite recently.

Also you have failed to answer whoneedscience's point:

"It's not quite as simple as you might be implying. Cosmology and Biology's current timescale puts the origin of the universe at about 10 billion years ago, the development of the earliest life at about 4.5 billion and homonids within about a million years ago. That means no matter how you interpret "day" it has to be a significantly variable length, not a constant. This isn't a huge problem, but you do have such a loose definition that it destroys any real legitimacy."

The only way anyone can come to your intepretation is by assuming that the Bible is correct beforehand. But that way, one can easily twist the meaning of almost any religious text to make it correct. This is not only the case with Christians but also with Hindus, Moslems, Zorastrians etc. There are people from all these faiths who claim that their religious texts had explained various scientific findings centuries before scientists did.

lurker wrote

If I have two possible interpretations before me, what should I do?

Evaluate them and pick the best one, the one that requires the least interpretation, because with interpretation comes bias. Some might say that complete, 100% lack of interpretation *may* be impossible, but it's still a good goal. In some cases, you can get 99.99%.

lurker wrote

According to you I'd be twisting the phrase "tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week" if I said it was talking about procrastination and not tomorrow actually being the busiest day of the week.

Yes, yes, yes! If you want to talk about procrastination, I'd recommend using the word "procrastination."

If I understand that sentence correctly (and that is my *exact* point: why should I have to dig the meaning out of the sentence? Just say what you mean!), tomorrow is very busy because you've been procrastinating. So, it is literally true that tommorow will be busy, but for a particular reason. You're wrong when you say "not tomorrow actually being the busiest day of the week," because it will be busy if you're procrastinated. It's *why* tomorrow is busy that isn't included in your original sentence, so the procrastination part *is* a twisting, a reading-in, os something that actually isn't in the written word.

We're still waiting on your answers......

If a supernatural being wrote the bible I wouldn’t want to be a supernatural being.