Well the bible is the basis of the creation theory isn't it?
Ok, I'll try to be brief, eventhough I do feel that it fits in here.
First off, some more arguments against a literal interpretation. Let's start with how you explain certain contradictions in the bible, when the text supposedly has a literal meaning? Just to name some which i've came across:
-Who's the father?
MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.
-Contradiction:
ISA 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.
DEU 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
-Snakes do not eat dust, but the bible claims otherwise:
GEN 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
-Order of creation oddness:
Here is the order in the first (Genesis 1), the Priestly tradition:
Day 1: Sky, Earth, light
Day 2: Water, both in ocean basins and above the sky(!)
Day 3: Plants
Day 4: Sun, Moon, stars (as calendrical and navigational aids)
Day 5: Sea monsters (whales), fish, birds, land animals, creepy-crawlies (reptiles, insects, etc.)
Day 6: Humans (apparently both sexes at the same time)
Day 7: Nothing (the Gods took the first day off anyone ever did)
Note that there are "days," "evenings," and "mornings" before the Sun was created. Here, the Deity is referred to as "Elohim," which is a plural, thus the literal translation, "the Gods." In this tale, the Gods seem satisfied with what they have done, saying after each step that "it was good."
The second one (Genesis 2), the Yahwist tradition, goes:
Earth and heavens (misty)
Adam, the first man (on a desolate Earth)
Plants
Animals
Eve, the first woman (from Adam's rib)
Infact, this even indicates the existance of more than 1 God, when one would interpret it literally.
-Jesus' genealogy, eventhough he supposedly had no father except God:
In two places in the New Testament the genealogy of Jesus son of Mary is mentioned. Matthew 1:6-16 and Luke 3:23-31. Each gives the ancestors of Joseph the CLAIMED husband of Mary and Step father of Jesus. The first one starts from Abraham(verse 2) all the way down to Jesus. The second one from Jesus all the way back to Adam. The only common name to these two lists between David and Jesus is JOSEPH, How can this be true? and also How can Jesus have a genealogy when all Muslims and most Christians believe that Jesus had/has no father.
-Can God be seen?
Exod. 24:9,10; Amos 9:1; Gen. 26:2; and John 14:9
God CAN be seen:
"And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my backparts." (Ex. 33:23)
"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." (Ex. 33:11)
"For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." (Gen. 32:30)
God CANNOT be seen:
"No man hath seen God at any time." (John 1:18)
"And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live." (Ex. 33:20)
"Whom no man hath seen nor can see." (1 Tim. 6:16)
It's just the tip of an iceberg really, there are tons of more errors like these. Reasons enough for me to believe that the bible is infact folklore, it has all ingredients for it.
As for text being multi-interpretational, the existance of a belief in literal and non-literal interpretation says enough. Not only that, but the way some texts get quoted proves it too. It would not make much sense to go bother you with my own interpretations of texts. The fact that different people interpret the texts differently says enough. This proves, unless their claims are totally ridiculous, that the texts are or can be multi-interpretational. With text like the part about snakes who supposedly eat dust according to a literal interpretation, well how can you even defend that?
Quote:
The Bible, Christian exegetes claim, speaks to a basic human desire for limits, for certainty and closure. However, in its efforts to maintain its image of textual coherency, the Bible has been as much a site of interpretative struggle as ideological; it demonstrates, indeed, that the political is imbricated in every reading and every writing. The historical shifting of the locus of truth in the Bible from the word, to an authorized interpretation, to the subjective response of the believer, belies the impossibility of ever fixing truth to the polysemic nature of the sign; the history of Bible is nothing but the history of its many interpretations, of its demonstration of the irreducible polyphony of the sign and of language itself. It is the history of the effort to forestall the inevitable slippage of meaning into the free play, the multiple and mutable truths of the writerly text.
Indeed, with its many interlocking parts (the Synoptic Gospels, for example, tell many of the same stories from different points of view), its tentative sequentiality (unlike a novel, very few readers actually read the scriptures from beginning to end. Many find it just as useful to open the text to any page and read what ever chance/divine guidance shows them), and its history of multiple interpretations and re-writings (William Blake, for example, believed Satan was the hero of Genesis), it is just as possible to see the Bible as the model of hypertext as it is of The Book. In every Book, one might say, is a hypertext struggling to get out and vice versa.
Well if even Christians themselves argue about it's content, then who am I?
Cheers
