but if you interpret it any other way you're a literalist.

Or we'll burn you alive. Metaphysically of course, they aren't allowed to actually do that anymore.

Google: genesis as metaphor for the big bang

and read as much as you wish.

If one didn't know any better, one might think you are trying to pass off your opinion as fact.

Absent specific citations, my assumption is that I am reading opinions.

So you do have that.

But don't miss a chance to pretend to be a victim....again.

Meanwhile I asked you why you didn't qualify your assertion as an opinion, and your reply was in the absence of providing proof what you assert as factual is actually your opinion.

Unlike you, I actually support my assertions of fact, with actual facts. For further reading, see...

Definition of duplicity
1 : contradictory doubleness of thought, speech, or action

And for being the definer of what constitutes an acceptable interpretation of metaphor in the Bible.

I suppose that's a step up from your dehumanizing 11th commandment argle-bargle, but not by much. Still progress is a good sign.

So what does that response make you, if not the self-appointed definer?

My response makes me someone who calls bullshit on obvious bullshit. No hidden meanings there, guy, regardless of how much time you waste looking for them.

You know, like saying one thing while believing another for which you are gaining notoriety.

or ad hominem attacks.
Speaking of notoriety that is.

Definer, fundamentalist, and biblical literalist all intended as pejorative. So let’s not pretend that didn’t happen when we both know it did. Seems more honest that way, no?

For the last Two Thousand Effing Years christianity has defined everything. Who can marry who, when you can fuck, whom you can and cannot fuck, who you can be and whom you cannot be, what clothes you can and cannot wear, who you pray to and how often, and woe to those who fell / fall outside of the christian definitions. Remember that Barrel-O-Fun, Torquemada? Or everyone that was slaughtered on the Iberian peninsula after 1492 for not being a christian? Christianity has even gone so far as to define themselves as the only "true" church.

And you have the nerve to try and use define as a perjorative? Of course, you only do that in regards to OTHERS.

Turn the other cheek.

Easy to say, hard to practice if you're a hypocrite.

An interesting display of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

Or do you mean to say they made said metaphor completely unaware?

Were the authors of Genesis privy to the big bang thousands of years before anyone else thought it up, or were they in the habit of deploying literary devices entirely on accident?

Come on. Speak up. Inquiring minds want to know.

not "in the begining"
The rest of Genisis gets the orer of everything wrong as well.
It's as if writers were looking around and just making up how they came to be.

What's next? Qouting from answersingenisis?

However, Nahmanides’ comment on Genesis 1:1 implies exactly that:
“At the briefest instant following creation, all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard….

From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so.” In Schroeder’s view, this kind of in-depth reading of the Torah will always tend to reveal the consonance between two sources of truth–revelation and science.

Nahmanides was born in 1194.

initial post, my dear guillaumeb.. I was drawing a parallel with the idea that the flood story was a metaphor for some sort of "cleansing," rather than a story about a vengeful murderous deity.

You provided three posts in reply, for which I thank you, but they did not address my satire.

It is child's play to offer a ludicrous metaphorical explanation for something that is a simple cautionary tale designed to keep people from straying from a straight and narrow path. Global extermination gets the message across quite effectively.

I would encourage you to stretch your perceptions a little. The satire was clear in my post. Sorry you wasted your time.

It is too simple by far to dismiss a story that has multiple levels of meaning. Pleas stretch your perception to encompass these levels, and do not dismiss what you seem to have missed.

You shared some apologetics and eisegesis about the Genesis creation myth. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about the Big Bang theory could write those. The idea of the universe beginning as a tiny particle is also not a unique one. It is a part of several such myths.

You are, perhaps, confused about what I know and do not know. Since you know virtually nothing about me, that is not surprising. That you assume superior knowledge, however is somewhat surprising.

You make the same mistake with others in this group.

And you apparently rejected them.

And given that one was written by a person in the 12th Century, your comment about "Anyone with a bit of knowledge..." are bizarre.

You also apparently did not bother to read my entire reply. I noted the common nature of the origin from a minute particle, or even nothing, in other creation myths. Your 12th century opinion does not convince.

My source refutes that claim. There is a surface understanding of the Bible, and there is a deeper understanding, based on research. And that points out the weakness of a self-directed approach. It depends on the ability of an individual to know what is worth reading, and to know that it is even there to be read.

I have been reading the Bible and commentary for many years, but I would never claim any expertise in the field. I am simply a learner.

But I know enough to realize that there might be far more to the Bible than a surface reading would reveal.

You have exceeded my limit of attention. Sorry.

Covered in entry level literature classes.

Meanwhile nobody is claiming you aren't free to derive whatever meanings YOU think make sense, just as anyone else is free to call bullshit.

Meanwhile the list of charlatans who claim to have inside knowledge of the bible's hidden meanings go all the way back to its origin and they just aren't that hard to find then or now. Everyone from David Koresh to David Meade to streetcorner preachers to Sunday school indoctrinators to anonymous people on the internet claim to know these hidden meanings. Most are so convinced of it they try to pass off their hidden meanings as facts. Regardless of how strongly they are convinced or how many people they manage to dupe, remarkably the world was still turning on April 24th.

as in reality an insistence that your opinion is the deciding one.


I understand your need to insist on a literal interpretation. I do. But your insistence on literalism reminds me of the theists who also insist on a literal interpretation.

A commonality of sorts.

Also kinda funny how suggesting literacy is an "opinion". It's a fact the authors said what they said. I don't need an "opinion" to read what they wrote.

that you are "THE DECIDER" when it comes to Biblical interpretation.

Change is possible.

To save time you might want to consider numbering your canned responses. That way instead of wasting time and bandwidth you can just say something like #34 and we'll all know.

I got points off my essays if I misinterpreted a metaphor.

Just because they both involve water.

#2) Water as cleansing agent is mentioned many times in the OT and the NT.


#3) Water is symbolic of cleansing the body of sin. As in Baptism or the ritual cleansing in the OT.


#4) The Flood was written to show sin being cleansed from the entire world.

So, based on those 3 factors, the flood can be treated as a metaphor for cleansing and renewal.

From a Christian perspective:

The more you try to banish your bullshit, the more pure it becomes.

It relies on Christian sources rather than Jewish, and it's considered offensive to Jews to call it a Jewish perspective. Hebrew Christians are also called Messianic Jews.

Just thought you should be aware of that.

We call them, "christians".

There were two boys but they promulgated the human race. Even if there was a girl we're talking Appalachia.

Unless there were monkeys. Persian monkeys.

Silliness.

Silliness was the point, though. Perhaps you needed to be there or something.

When I finally decided to give it a try, when I was about 28 or so, I was completely gobsmacked.

Quite frankly, much of Genesis reads like science fiction, especially if you are as thoroughly ignorant of it as I was.

I managed to grow up blissfully unaware of certain standard Bible stories, and the first time I heard about God telling Abraham to murder his son, Isaac, I was so horrified that had I not already abandoned any semblance of religious belief, that alone would have made me do so.

Telling a father to kill his son? THAT'S what a god does? There is something seriously wrong with that.

And people think non-believers can't possibly be moral.

Rape, murder, child molestation, and slavery is all in there. Yet we must believe the bible is our one and only moral compass. Kinda funny how that works.

A number of Baptists, lol!