Current Events > What's wrong with taking the Bible literally?

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A lot of people, even many Christians, say not to take the Bible literally.

Why not?


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Because there's fucked up shit in it.

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Because reality contradicts it.

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Because its fucking silly
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Because it's made up

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Because it contradicts itself.

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Ah yes, I remember the time Jonah got eaten by a whale and escaped from its stomach three days later.

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Because it says God sent bears to kill children for making fun of a holy man's baldness.

Miracles I can accept. If God says you run faster than a horse, you run faster than a horse. If God says you can survive inside a fish for three days, you can survive inside a fish. If God kills children.... that doesn't sound like the God I know. How'd that line get in there?

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because much of the stuff in the bible has been disproven by modern science as well as many events that the bible says are historical proven to not have happened. like there is no evidence that entire Book of Exodus ever happened. no evidence in history of a mass slave revolt in egypt or even of the having a bunch of Jewish slaves

also because a lot of the "morals" of the bible are now considered to be evil in the 21st century. anyone who takes the bible literally is upholding outdated, evil morality

Zikten posted...

because much of the stuff in the bible has been disproven by modern science as well as many events that the bible says are historical proven to not have happened. like there is no evidence that entire Book of Exodus ever happened. no evidence in history of a mass slave revolt in egypt or even of the having a bunch of Jewish slaves

also because a lot of the "morals" of the bible are now considered to be evil in the 21st century. anyone who takes the bible literally is upholding outdated, evil morality

Lol this post is so rong

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Lol this post is so rong

No, the Bible is.

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God: Do everything in love.
Also God: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Lol this post is so rong

considering I have you tagged as "thinks catholics are not christians" I think it's safe to ignore your opinion

btw, historians have proven that the Exodus is just a myth that got blown up in the Hebrew culture. it's no different than Romans thinking their founder was raised by wolves. Most archeologists now think that the ancient Hebrews started out pagan with many gods. and then there was some cultural shift inside Israel that gradually turned them into the Jewish religion. they never came from abroad to found a new land. they were already there and just went from Pagan to Jewish and then made up an origin myth about how they were always Jewish and came from a foreign land to settle in Israel.

PokemonExpert44 posted...

Lol this post is so rong

No it's not. The morals stuff is arguable cause it's all subjective, but we know for a fact that stories like exodus didn't happen in reality

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https://youtu.be/qsqTO6lq99c

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Shotgunnova posted...

God: Do everything in love.
Also God: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

You see, what he meant was...

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hockeybub89 posted...

You see, what he meant was...

https://youtu.be/5mLOUWl-L-s

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ThyCorndog posted...

No it's not. The morals stuff is arguable cause it's all subjective, but we know for a fact that stories like exodus didn't happen in reality

Ehh, I agree with your first part, but I advise caution on that second claim. We do not know for a fact that stories like exodus didn't happen in reality. We simply do not have evidence that it did happen. Until we have definitive evidence, then I would agree that theres no reason to think it did. But that is not the same as saying we know it as a fact.

The difference might be subtle, but its there.

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Because it's easy to misinterpret the Bible. You have to pray for wisdom while reading the Bible and use your best judgement.

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Foppe posted...

https://youtu.be/qsqTO6lq99c

that was good but I don't expect any christians to watch more than a couple minutes before they get offended and turn it off. they will totally miss the moral of the video

Because it's full of myths/legends. It shouldn't be taken literally, but it is a very deep insight into the human psyche.

Zikten, Catholics aren't any type of Christian.

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What we do know is that the Egyptians were pretty good at documenting events, even things that were embarassing about.
There are history that they try to erase, but they were pretty bad at erasing it.
And they mention nothing like the exodus.
And the place where they were supposed to flee to was a part of northern Egypt. So it is like an African American slave would flee from southern Mississippi to northern Mississippi.

As for the plagues, they can be explained by a volcano eruption. Not every firstborn died, but many did, and as the story was retold thousands of times, small changes were made here and there.

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Zikten, Catholics aren't any type of Christian.

They most certainly are. Like there's no possible definition of Christianity that would exclude them.

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Zikten, Catholics aren't any type of Christian.

Catholics are definitely Christians. Anyone who worships Christ is a Christian.

Zikten posted...

considering I have you tagged as "thinks catholics are not christians" I think it's safe to ignore your opinion

Wait, seriously? How the hell can anyone actually think Catholics aren't Christians? They are the original Christians. If anything all the dime a dozen Protestant variations aren't Christians.

Lorenzo_2003 posted...

Ehh, I agree with your first part, but I advise caution on that second claim. We do not know for a fact that stories like exodus didn't happen in reality. We simply do not have evidence that it did happen. Until we have definitive evidence, then I would agree that theres no reason to think it did. But that is not the same as saying we know it as a fact.

The difference might be subtle, but its there.

Except we do know for fact it didn't happen. Hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of people allegedly roamed the desert for 40 years and yet we can't find any evidence this actually happened. Something would be left behind, but there's nothing. Any archeologist will tell you this isn't physically possible. That many people can't be wondering around for that long a period of time and leave nothing at all behind to show they were there.

Not to mention the fact that there is no evidence that large groups of Hebrews were ever in Eygpt in the first place. As well as the fact that it HAS been proven, decades ago, that the pyramids weren't built by slaves. So the slaves to pharaoh part didn't happen, they weren't even in Egypt in the first place, so then obviously the exodus can't happen.

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uwnim posted...

They most certainly are. Like there's no possible definition of Christianity that would exclude them.

Except Catholics don't worship Christ.

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Zikten, Catholics aren't any type of Christian.

That is false.

For fucks sake, man, Roman Catholicism is the largest branch of Christianity. That takes like a few seconds to look up.

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thrashmetal14 posted...

Catholics are definitely Christians. Anyone who worships Christ is a Christian.

Catholics don't worship Christ, though.

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Lorenzo_2003 posted...

That is false.

For fucks sake, man, Roman Catholicism is the largest branch of Christianity. That takes like a few seconds to look up.

Lol Roman Catholics aren't the largest branch of Christianity. Catholics aren't Christian in any sense of the word.

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Except Catholics don't worship Christ.

They do though.

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uwnim posted...

They do though.

No they don't. They worship Mary.

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Foppe posted...

What we do know is that the Egyptians were pretty good at documenting events, even things that were embarassing about.

We actually know the opposite, Egyptians were notoriously propagandist

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Lorenzo_2003 posted...

Ehh, I agree with your first part, but I advise caution on that second claim. We do not know for a fact that stories like exodus didn't happen in reality. We simply do not have evidence that it did happen. Until we have definitive evidence, then I would agree that theres no reason to think it did. But that is not the same as saying we know it as a fact.

The difference might be subtle, but its there.

jews didn't exist during the time the story would have taken place. about 1500 BC is the birth of judaism and the exodus story would push that back at least a couple of thousand years

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

Lol Roman Catholics aren't the largest branch of Christianity. Catholics aren't Christian in any sense of the word.

Are you an alien that came from another planet?

Catholics pray to their Christ. They literally invoke his name when they perform their sign of the cross before their prayers, and they typically have statues of Christ overlooking their church altars, which they consider sacred.

Catholics are Christians. But I get it if you personally dont like the way they worship.

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Because the Bible isn't a series of instructions it's a series of stories

many of which are impossible, many are contradictory and many present morals that are abhorrent

I don't even comprehend how it can be taken literally, most "fundamentalists " only focus on a handful of parts

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Dathrowed1 posted...

We actually know the opposite, Egyptians were notoriously propagandist

I mean, that goes for almost everyone.

ElatedVenusaur posted...

I mean, that goes for almost everyone.

Yeah, but dude said it like the Egyptians and their God kings were honest or something and they weren't.

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PokemonExpert44 posted...

No they don't. They worship Mary.

Um no. Mary is important because she is the mother of Jesus. She is also a saint and catholics will ask saints to pray on their behalf. But they do not worship her. They are a trinitarian variety of Christianity and worship God/Jesus.

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It contradicts itself way too much

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A big problem with a literal interpretation is that we don't know what the best translation is. There are loads of variants of the bible that change words and meanings of entire passages around.
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My pastor takes it all literally. He even said we know the Earth is thousands of years old thanks to the Bible.

I'm not much of a believer, but I respect his stance tbh. If you already believe in stuff like Christ's resurrection, as well as the idea that the Bible is God's word, I really don't think the other stories are a huge leap. If the Bible is the truth, the word of an all powerful and all knowing God, why would its explanation of creation be wrong when it carefully lists the lineage of those who came from Adam and Eve? Why wouldn't our understanding of geologic time and science be what's in the wrong, even if we have what appears to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary to our limited human perspective?

And if Jesus could bring back the dead, walk on water, and give sight to the blind, i don't see why an all powerful God couldn't sustain a man in a whale/ big fish for a few days.

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Jabodie posted...

If the Bible is the truth, the word of an all powerful and all knowing God

God isn't considered the author of the Bible, though. Whatever purports to be His word is mediated through writers who set down their words, in many cases, long after the events they supposedly describe -- and some can't possibly have been alive at the time. It's surely the old process of oral traditions finally being put down in writing after having been told and re-told, with all the licence of the storyteller, for who knows how long.

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Firewerx posted...

God isn't considered the author of the Bible, though.

Jesus wrote a lot of the Bible.

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Reposting from a different topic.

I saw an interesting piece of etymology trivia the other day.

The Latin word "Christianus", which is derived from the Greek word "Khristos", has evolved over many centuries across different languages. For English in particular, it was derived from the French word "crtin" and eventually became a doublet of two words: "Christian" and "cretin".

A "Christian" is someone that believes in Christianity. A "cretin" is a word that was originally used as a medical term to describe a physical or mental abnormality with a person due to hypothyroidism, but is now generally used to describe someone as stupid, obtuse, etc.

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Because it literally says a Jewish carpenter was killed and came back to life.

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TreyFlowers posted...

Because it literally says a Jewish carpenter was killed and came back to life.

I mean...I've seen Italian plumbers do it.

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Firewerx posted...

God isn't considered the author of the Bible, though. Whatever purports to be His word is mediated through writers who set down their words, in many cases, long after the events they supposedly describe -- and some can't possibly have been alive at the time. It's surely the old process of oral traditions finally being put down in writing after having been told and re-told, with all the literary licence of the raconteur, for who knows how long.

If God is all powerful though, why wouldn't his people following Christ discern which apocryphal writings from true holy script? Particularly when he can and has done this through miracles? Why would his message be transformed into something inaccurate through the ages? And there are a lot of specific arguments from religious scholars as to why apocryphal books are not in the biblical canon. It is the firm belief of my pastor that God is the author through his prophets and disciples.

Once you introduce human error into the equation, the validity of the entire book is called into question, including the gospel. The exercise between studying literal from figurative seems largely arbitrary if divine influence doesn't play a part. Does Christianity work if the resurrection is a figurative story? I could see that. But I just don't see the point in drawing lines in what happened and what didn't (aside from obvious teaching stories told by Jesus) when the fundamental basis is a God that can do anything.

I get why certain health and wealth pastors can be there to lead people astray. But the holy book itself? It seems odd to me to question the validity of certain passages but believe in its salvation message. Idk, going halfway in religion just seems weird to me.

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Jabodie posted...

If God is all powerful though, why wouldn't his people following Christ discern which apocryphal writings from true holy script? Particularly when he can and has done this through miracles? Why would his message be transformed into something inaccurate through the ages? And there are a lot of specific arguments from religious scholars as to why apocryphal books are not in the biblical canon. It is the firm belief of my pastor that God is the author through his prophets and disciples.

Once you introduce human error into the equation, the validity of the entire book is called into question, including the gospel. The exercise between studying literal from figurative seems largely arbitrary if divine influence doesn't play a part. Does Christianity work if the resurrection is a figurative story? I could see that. But I just don't see the point in drawing lines in what happened and what didn't (aside from obvious teaching stories told by Jesus) when the fundamental basis is a God that can do anything.

I suppose that when it comes down to it, faith is about believing the Bible because you believe in God -- not believing in God because you believe the Bible.

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