The Bible: literal or metaphorical?

[Norfolk And Chance]

If you take the bible literally then because it is so ridiculous in parts you have no real basis for faith. If you view it metaphorically, and pick and choose, you are just making god up in your own image and you have no real basis for faith.

Has this never occurred to you Bruce?

Theists can't win either way because whichever way you look - be it one way, the other or mix n match - the castle is built on sand. Atheism wins.

I wasn't aware that the game was over. Why are so many players still on the field?

My basis for faith is primarily my personal, subjective experience - this is what happened to me, so this is what I believe. My interpretation of the Bible is secondary to my experience, as far as my faith goes.  So whether I view parts of the Bible as literal or metaphorical, my personal experience is primary.  The castle is built on personal experience. 

But your personal experience may have been a mental delusion. Have you ruled that probability, whoops I mean possibility out?

Of course, personal religious experiences needn't be cases where you've been spoken to in your head, so apologies if that's not you. There are other cases when the god believer adds 2 and 2 and comes up with 5.

One theist I talked to said he had strong faith because his mother was seriously ill and in a position where she might not last the night and die. Anyway he and his family prayed and she didn't die. 2+2=5. I asked him that if his mother had died would that have shaken his faith - of course not, he would have justified the faith with "god decided it was her time" To be honest, this belief any which way, is laughable.

Simple fact is, she could have died, but didn't. Happens all the time.

Oh yeah, he also believed in god because he had done really well at his exams. This is another thing that annoys me about theists - their need to credit their achievements to some ridiculous made up being. Whatever!

[Ecurb Noselrub]

I wasn't aware that the game was over. Why are so many players still on the field?

Hi Bruce,
Since you asked: (not in any particular order): thirst for power/privilege/control, fear, irrationality, ignorance, prejudice, hatred...
There are theists who are not "players on the field" for whom faith is a strictly personal thing and not to be discussed unless explicitly asked; certainly never to be talked about publicly. I have known such people for years never realising they held such beliefs. I have no problem with such people.

Is posting on a forum, whether atheist or theist, tantamount to getting involved in the game?  Just askin'.  I like to discuss the topic, but don't have any desire to get into a fight about anything.  But as soon as you talk about it, someone on one side or the other gets offended, and then pretty soon you have a bar room brawl.  Maybe I should just be like the theists you mention in your posts.

To get back to your question about disagreeing with God, while I have come to interpret the passages about judgment in a different manner, if in fact I am wrong and if in fact God does intend to subject some human beings to eternal torment, I would disagree with him about that.  Whether from a Christian or a secular point of view, I can't see anything that would justify that.  If we need discipline or behavior modification, that's a different matter.  But I can't reconcile a loving God torturing his own creatures for eternity, no matter how I approach the problem.  And furthermore, that does not fit the experience that I have of him.  I suppose this would be my biggest disagreement with the typical interpretation of scripture.  Not all Christian groups hold to the idea of eternal torment - the Seventh Day Adventists, for example.

[Gawen]

But isn't faith an appeal to authority? Back to disagreements: on what points (if any) do you disagree with god?

Faith as I understand it is a subjective response to spiritual experience/revelation. Authority doesn't really have much to do with it from my perspective. But that's just me. 

So people do not have faith if they do not have a religious experience? You're saying that people who believe through faith by listening to their ministers and others around them are not believing or have true faith by authority?
The Bible gives you the definition of faith.
Hebrews 11: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Having a religious experience is "seeing" something. That it comes from a God or one is told it comes from a god are two separate authorities.

I've noticed in many of your posts that you seem to have a really really big cake. And you also seem to want to eat all of it as well. If I were to eat a really really big cake, I would know it is an upset stomach I have and eventually throw it all up. You, on the other hand, see it as a religious experience, take some Alka Seltzer Faith pills believing that God will either make you sick up or hold it down because either way, it's God's will.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

But your personal experience may have been a mental delusion. Have you ruled that probability, whoops I mean possibility out?

It is a possibility, and the only way I know to rule it out is to look at my life generally.  Nothing in it indicates that I operate under a mental delusion in other areas of my life - I do just fine.  I simply have these experiences in which it seems to me that I am in communion with God.  Lots of people have them - it's pretty normal. 

There is always the possibility of allowing something to get out of balance and becoming a hermit or a raving lunatic, but the older I've gotten, the less that impulse attracts me.  When I was younger, I was more enthusiastic about my faith, but since I didn't understand what I now understand about life in general, I probably filled the world with words that I would now disagree with.  But after 40 years of having these experiences, I have a better grasp on their significance to me, and realize that they are personal events that I could never fully describe to anyone else, so I talk about them generally, but with no evangelistic fervor.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

So people do not have faith if they do not have a religious experience? You're saying that people who believe through faith by listening to their ministers and others around them are not believing or have true faith by authority?
The Bible gives you the definition of faith.
Hebrews 11: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Having a religious experience is "seeing" something. That it comes from a God or one is told it comes from a god are two separate authorities.

I would distinguish faith that comes from just listening to others from personal, subjective faith, and I would say that the latter is more genuine and real than the former.  I have no disagreement with the quote from Hebrews, as I cannot "see" God.  The way you described "seeing", I could say the same thing about people listening to a minister: they have "heard" something or "seen" something in that they have understood what the minister said, so under your interpretation, they don't have faith, either.  

My response to my experience qualifies as faith because I cannot go back, repeat it in a laboratory for everyone else to see, and then prove that I experienced God.  I can't even do this for myself, much less for anyone else.  If I could, it would be knowledge, not faith.  As someone else has pointed out, there is the possibility that I am mentally deluded.  I can't exclude that possibility 100%, but based on my own analysis of my experiences, I believe that I have experienced God.  I could be wrong, but I have faith that I am not.

Regarding cake, I try to stay away from a high carb diet.  I'm more likely to eat a really big piece of fish.

[Too Few Lions]

My response to my experience qualifies as faith because I cannot go back, repeat it in a laboratory for everyone else to see, and then prove that I experienced God.  I can't even do this for myself, much less for anyone else.  If I could, it would be knowledge, not faith.  As someone else has pointed out, there is the possibility that I am mentally deluded.  I can't exclude that possibility 100%, but based on my own analysis of my experiences, I believe that I have experienced God.  I could be wrong, but I have faith that I am not.

You might also just have an oversized ego  Personally, I find it incredibly arrogant for anyone to think that the creator of the universe would have any interest in them, it's like me taking an interest in every single ant in the world. Either that or your god must be incredibly dull and unimaginative, he has a vast universe to entertain him. These ideas made more sense 2000 years ago when people believed that the universe was a not so big dome or globe that surrounded the Earth (which itself wasn't believed to be all that big), and one could easily ascend up to see the gods at the summit of this little cosmos. But we now know how big the universe really is.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

You might also just have an oversized ego  Personally, I find it incredibly arrogant for anyone to think that the creator of the universe would have any interest in them, it's like me taking an interest in every single ant in the world. Either that or your god must be incredibly dull and unimaginative, he has a vast universe to entertain him. These ideas made more sense 2000 years ago when people believed that the universe was a not so big dome or globe that surrounded the Earth (which itself wasn't believed to be all that big), and one could easily ascend up to see the gods at the summit of this little cosmos. But we now know how big the universe really is.

I suppose I could have an over-sized ego, but generally mine appears about the same size as everyone else's (wish I could say that about everything).  But I think that God takes a personal interest in everyone, and will eventually reveal himself to all.  To everything, there is a season.....

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Ultimately you will have to fall back on some authority of some sort, who in turn can't demonstrate to anybody outside their group that they are an authority, such as the Pope and the Vatican, or on what you personally (and subjectively) feel is right.

I respectfully disagree.  Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, and Christians are not required to commit logical fallacies in their relationship with God.  There does not have to be a black and white answer to every issue, and different people may come to different conclusions. That does not mean that the whole thing is invalid.  As I indicated in the OP, the various books of the Bible cover a wide range of literary styles, and we have a great number of tools in our modern tool chest to assist us in interpreting the author's intent.  Appeal to authority is not one of them, anymore for the Bible than for Shakespeare or Milton.

[Norfolk And Chance]

You might also just have an oversized ego  Personally, I find it incredibly arrogant for anyone to think that the creator of the universe would have any interest in them, it's like me taking an interest in every single ant in the world. Either that or your god must be incredibly dull and unimaginative, he has a vast universe to entertain him. These ideas made more sense 2000 years ago when people believed that the universe was a not so big dome or globe that surrounded the Earth (which itself wasn't believed to be all that big), and one could easily ascend up to see the gods at the summit of this little cosmos. But we now know how big the universe really is.

I suppose I could have an over-sized ego, but generally mine appears about the same size as everyone else's (wish I could say that about everything).  But I think that God takes a personal interest in everyone, and will eventually reveal himself to all.  To everything, there is a season.....

You're not really getting the whole "size of the universe" thing are you?

[Ecurb Noselrub]

You're not really getting the whole "size of the universe" thing are you?

According to this article, "(t)he current comoving distance to the particles which emitted the CMBR, representing the radius of the visible universe, is calculated to be about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light years), while the current comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is calculated to be 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light years), about 2% larger."  So, yeah, I get it.  It's big.  But why would that mean that a creator god couldn't communicate with his sentient creations and have a concern about them?  Maybe he's bigger than the universe, or maybe size is irrelevant. 

[Norfolk And Chance]

Yeah, maybe he is made up enough to make the size of the universe irrelevant. See that is the thing, when people make shit up, they can attribute any qualities they like to something.

Your statement to me is no different to stating "well maybe Santa actually can get down 2 billion chimneys in one night because he is magic and numbers are irrelevant"

Where is the difference?  ???

[Too Few Lions]

You're not really getting the whole "size of the universe" thing are you?

According to this article, "(t)he current comoving distance to the particles which emitted the CMBR, representing the radius of the visible universe, is calculated to be about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light years), while the current comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is calculated to be 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light years), about 2% larger."  So, yeah, I get it.  It's big.  But why would that mean that a creator god couldn't communicate with his sentient creations and have a concern about them?  Maybe he's bigger than the universe, or maybe size is irrelevant. 

It's just that the people who created your religion believed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe (as well as being a lot smaller than we know it to be, and possibly flat) and that the cosmos was a dome or a globe that surrounded the Earth. Their whole universe was at most maybe 100,000 miles in diameter. To me, it just made a little more sense that people could believe that gods might exist and interact with humanity in such a tiny universe, particularly when the Earth (and humanity) were believed to be its central creations.

The real universe is vastly larger and vastly different from that model. If your god can't find anything more interesting than some over evolved apes on an insignificant little planet rotating around an insignificant little star in the real universe with all its infinite possibilities, IMHO either the universe or your god must be very dull.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Yeah, maybe he is made up enough to make the size of the universe irrelevant. See that is the thing, when people make shit up, they can attribute any qualities they like to something.

Your statement to me is no different to stating "well maybe Santa actually can get down 2 billion chimneys in one night because he is magic and numbers are irrelevant"

Where is the difference?  ???

Can't speak for everyone, but the difference for me is that I've never experienced Santa coming down my chimney (although I thought I had at age 4), but I have experienced the love of God.  Now maybe someday I'll learn differently, but 40 years on that paradigm still works for me. 

[Norfolk And Chance]

Can't speak for everyone, but the difference for me is that I've never experienced Santa coming down my chimney (although I thought I had at age 4),

Oooookay...

but I have experienced the love of God.

Or maybe you thought you did?

Explain to me, because I'm stupid, what the difference is between you thinking that Santa came down your chimney, and you thinking that god tapped on your shoulder or ripped out your guts or whatever it was he did?

Apart from the obvious answer that you know Santa isn't real and therefore now know that he didn't really come down your chimney like you thought because, well, he isn't bloody real!

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Explain to me, because I'm stupid, what the difference is between you thinking that Santa came down your chimney, and you thinking that god tapped on your shoulder or ripped out your guts or whatever it was he did?

No, you are not stupid. You know that I will say that it's because of my subjective experience.  The "experience" of Santa Claus that I had was 1) finding presents under the tree, and 2) having my parents tell me that the presents came from SC.  The experience of God that I have had - well, I explained part of it. It was real and convincing to me, even though I don't expect you to understand that.  Plus, it's common knowledge among adults that SC isn't real, while there is at least a very serious historical argument, convincing to many scholars, that Jesus was historical and that at least the basic outline of his life is given in the early Christian writings. So, put those two things (subjective experience and objective historical evidence) together and you have something quite different than Santa Claus.  You understand that and can see that very clearly.