Harvard Study: Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger In The US.

[Rushing Jaws]

The number of people who literally take all of the Bible... um... literally... is vanishingly small.

Critical scholarship “takes all the Bible literally” - that is why it is not a Fundamentalist movement. Fundamentalism “takes...the Bible literally” only when doing so does not conflict with its much more valued stress on the total inerrancy of the Bible. It would be going too far to say that Fundamentalism is a device for avoiding the consequences of “taking all the Bible literally”, but neither is a such a statement wholly false. When taking the Bible literally collides with the total inerrancy of the Bible, taking the Bible literally gives way to total inerrancy, and the text is interpreted in a way that seeks to protect both the totally inerrant meaning, and the meaning of the words on the page.

Literally, Genesis 5-6 provide 1,656 years from the creation to the Flood. This is problematic for obvious reasons, so Fundamentalism has strategies for maintaining the inerrancy of the text, while denying that the interval of time was only as long as as 1,656 years. A usual strategy is to postulate as many unnamed pre-Flood generations as are needed to protect both the inerrancy of Genesis 5-6, and the credibility, in modern circumstances, of the text. Literality is sacrificed to inerrancy.

[JimL]

John, Peter, Mary, et al - your incredulity is not impeachment.

Oh, you mean the fictionally based characters in the gospel stories?

Then why are you bothering to argue? Just admit you do not understand how to read history, myth or literature sufficiently well enough to distinguish them without the help of a librarian.

Don't be silly Tea, implied history could just as well be fiction, which of the two is actually true has nothing to do with the reader.

It is simple incredulity - you have no genuine basis for discrediting any of the witnesses - 'I don't believe it' is not a genuine basis. Or legitimate. Or rational.

If someone comes up to you today and says he just walked across the lake, then it is very rational to discredit them. I'm sure you'd do the same, but for some reason because it's in an acient book you believe it.

An assertion with zero evidence is just an assertion - you can't impeach the witnesses appropriately; you can't distinguish myth from history; and that gives me perfect grounds for discrediting you as an expert witness - which makes this all baseless assertion.

I'll remind you now that you began this argument with your assertions - the burden is still on you.

There is no burden on me, I'm just pointing out the irrational nature of your belief, but you are free to believe whatever you want.

Nonsense - the Gospels not only hold up, but time and again they have been proven correct when historians thought they were in error.

Incredulity and a poor interpretation of literary forms do not help you case.

Malarky. Walking on water, resurrecting of saints, ascending gods, demons and their exorcisms, feeding 5000 with 2 fish, etc etc., none of that nonsense holds up and has never been proven correct.

[Tassman]

It is simple incredulity - you have no genuine basis for discrediting any of the witnesses - 'I don't believe it' is not a genuine basis. Or legitimate. Or rational.

What we have is no reason for thinking them true. There are no first-hand eyewitnesses in the NT and, according to Bart Ehrman in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ not only are the gospels dated late, we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later-much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another and many thousands of places . . ."