As a Gnostic Christian I see literal reading of the Bible as a gross distortion of what the Bible was written to do. That being to inspire people to seek God and his best laws and rules. Literal readers just become idol worshipers and do not seek God the way Jesus instructed.
Literal reading has created and idol worshiping closed minded people who have settled for an immoral God whom we name as a demiurge as his morals, if literally true, are more satanic than God like.
Literal reading has also created a climate where scholars and experts, historians and archeologist, and all the academically well accepted information they uncover, --- is being ignored or called lies by those who are not academics of the various disciplines.
What is the point of producing good academics if literalists are going to ignore facts because of blind faith?
Remember please that if not a book of myths, then real talking serpents are somehow supposed to still exist and believers have to believe in a lot of supernatural phenomenon without any evidence whatsoever. Literalist Christians, it seems to me, have suspended rational judgement that has created in Christians a new Dark Age of thought and an Inquisitional attitude towards all other thinking. They no longer seek God and are true idol worshipers instead of the God seekers that Jesus wanted to see.
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
The bible is a collection of popular writings of the past. Most of the bible is fictional stories based on mythology and popular culture of the time it was written.
When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.
I don't see how you're arriving at your conclusions.
I believe dolphins once swam along the Yangtze River, a body of fresh water in China, though nearly all species of dolphin we know of today live in salt water.
If some 80 year old Chinese man told me:
"I used to swim these waters as a boy. I once played with a dolphin here"
I wouldn't say "Old Man, you are lying. How could a dolphin live in freshwater? Can you show me such a thing? No? Then get out of my face. I don't see such a thing today. Nobody sees such a thing today. Therefore, you are lying. If ever there were dolphins swimming in this here Yangtze River, there would STILL be dolphins swimming here in this Yangtze River. Go and take your medicine."
Many unproven claim quite another and to claim we have to do what this unproven claim says we should is quite foolish. Right?
Especially when the same book making the claim says that the claim is unfathomable and unknowable as it tells you all it knows of the unknowable claim.
Do you see the utter stupidity in believing what itself says cannot be known?