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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Orange Wizard]

Well, an apologist is literally just someone who argues in favour of a given topic - the exact details of how and what they argue will vary from person to person.

Yes, the average Christian won't believe the Bible is 100% literally true. They'll accept evolution etc., and if confronted with an apparent contradiction will probably shrug it off with "someone must have written it down wrong", or similar. But I have only occasionally seen people saying something to the effect of "we should believe the Bible whether it's true or not". The people who argue the loudest in favour of the Bible are almost invariably arguing that it is literally true, frequently accompanied with depressing amounts of idiocy and extremism.

[Bohandas]

I would go far as to say "otherwise it would exist," but I have a feeling such a move wouldn't be popular with some...

No that's about right, at least for the sense of the term in question.

[origamiscienceguy]

I am probably the only bible literalist on this thread anyways. I know that evolution is an actual thing, and it doesn't contradict the bible. It certainly contradicts certain viewpoints on the bible, but not anything it says. I don't see what's wrong with reinterpreting the bible to fit new evidences because that is what science does all the time. But for some reason people think that reinterpreting the bible is a cop-out or something.

[TD1]

Is the world flat?
Is Jesus' blood wine?

Also:

Reinterpreting the bible

A reinterpretation of the Bible implies that the previous interpretation was wrong. Depending on the subject, that can have profound consequences that potentially, especially in the case of Christianity, condemn millions to Hell. The interpretative difference between Judaism and Christianity rests to a large degree on the Jewish interpretation of Jesus as a normal son of God - one of the seven odd billion God has. Also, a change in interpretation to fit the cultural/scientific standard is a trait that you'd expect to see in a subjective mythology striving to make itself viable. Not to say a "true" religion wouldn't do that as well, but with ten thousand interpretations, who's to say the right one didn't die out centuries ago anyway? Just look at Arianism, and to a large extent the gnostics.

[Rolepgeek]

People usually think that because it looks like a cop-out; to outsiders, it looks like: I say 'this coin will turn out to be heads all the time', and when someone flips that coin and it turns out tails, I respond by saying 'well I was being figurative; not literally all the time'. When they keep flipping it, and it turns out tails half the time, and heads half, and I respond when it turns out tails by saying that 'I didn't mean that the result facing up would necessarily be heads; you have to turn it over onto the back of your hand, after all', but when it turns out heads I say 'I WAS RIGHT SEE', it reeks of dishonesty.

Which, really, is just people trying to clump all of Christianity into one group and saying that they all think the same way and should have their arguments be consistent with each other, and there were a few small conflicts concerning exactly that inconsistency sometime in the past...I think it was called the Thirty Years War or something?

Anyway. Usually my bigger question is what makes X right and not-X wrong. Rather than try to disprove the bible, as I have no vested interest in whether or not someone else is religious until they use that religion as an excuse/believe it tells them to do things that will hurt other people, I ask people to prove it to me. Why should I believe a book that's been translated and misinterpreted and copied over and over and over again? How many errors were made in that process? How many of them were never caught? I don't even know Hebrew, or Latin, so I can't even try and posit interesting misspellings of words that might have ended up commonplace.

[origamiscienceguy]

Is the world flat?
Is Jesus' blood wine?

Also:

Reinterpreting the bible

A reinterpretation of the Bible implies that the previous interpretation was wrong. Depending on the subject, that can have profound consequences that potentially, especially in the case of Christianity, condemn millions to Hell. The interpretative difference between Judaism and Christianity rests to a large degree on the Jewish interpretation of Jesus as a normal son of God - one of the seven odd billion God has. Also, a change in interpretation to fit the cultural/scientific standard is a trait that you'd expect to see in a subjective mythology striving to make itself viable. Not to say a "true" religion wouldn't do that as well, but with ten thousand interpretations, who's to say the right one didn't die out centuries ago anyway? Just look at Arianism, and to a large extent the gnostics.

No (I've flown around it)
No (Jesus probably would've turned into a fireball on the cross)
why did you ask those questions?

You rarely throw out an entire interpretation just to fit a new piece of evidence. Just like in science. If it is found that Spinosaurus had short back legs, you don't throw out the big bang theory. It is absurd to think of it like that.

[Orange Wizard]

Yeah, basically. Study of the Bible is in effect like science, except we're interpreting a book instead of, y'know, sciency stuff.

[Frumple]

So... basically nothing like science. You'd probably be better drawing a parallel to math or somethin'. It's a bit closer to that sort of "interpreting from axiomatic base" kind of thing. Just the base is considerably fuzzier and the axioms in (more) regular contention.

[origamiscienceguy]

I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm.

ugh. It is impossible to create any kind of analogy in this thread.

[Rolepgeek]

Eh.

It's like logical science, rather than experimental science, usually. When something turns out not to work, you don't scrap the whole lot as bunk. Freud was wrong on a lot of stuff, but he also had some excellent points and advanced psychology quite a bit in other ways.

[TD1]

Should use chairs.

Chairs usually work.

Is the world flat?
Is Jesus' blood wine?

Also:

Reinterpreting the bible

A reinterpretation of the Bible implies that the previous interpretation was wrong. Depending on the subject, that can have profound consequences that potentially, especially in the case of Christianity, condemn millions to Hell. The interpretative difference between Judaism and Christianity rests to a large degree on the Jewish interpretation of Jesus as a normal son of God - one of the seven odd billion God has. Also, a change in interpretation to fit the cultural/scientific standard is a trait that you'd expect to see in a subjective mythology striving to make itself viable. Not to say a "true" religion wouldn't do that as well, but with ten thousand interpretations, who's to say the right one didn't die out centuries ago anyway? Just look at Arianism, and to a large extent the gnostics.

No (I've flown around it)
No (Jesus probably would've turned into a fireball on the cross)
why did you ask those questions?

You rarely throw out an entire interpretation just to fit a new piece of evidence. Just like in science. If it is found that Spinosaurus had short back legs, you don't throw out the big bang theory. It is absurd to think of it like that.

Because the Bible speaks of the earth's edges, its corners, and its foundations.
In it, Jesus says "for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many" when speaking of wine.

So - if you are a literalist, then surely you ought to think that at least some wine is Jesus' blood, or that the world is flat. I don't think there are any claims in the Bible that the earth is a sphere, but quite a few allusions to a flat earth - literally  speaking, you should believe what the Bible says.

[origamiscienceguy]

You are thinking too literally about a literalist. 

I don't self proclaim to be a literalist, that is what you guys called me a long time ago.

Nevermind. I am terrible at explaining things.

[Orange Wizard]

Eh.

It's like logical science, rather than experimental science, usually. When something turns out not to work, you don't scrap the whole lot as bunk. Freud was wrong on a lot of stuff, but he also had some excellent points and advanced psychology quite a bit in other ways.

This is the point I was trying to make, yeah.

Theology is a lot less rigorous than other studies, that's for sure.

...

So - if you are a literalist, then surely you ought to think that at least some wine is Jesus' blood, or that the world is flat. I don't think there are any claims in the Bible that the earth is a sphere, but quite a few allusions to a flat earth - literally  speaking, you should believe what the Bible says.

Oh, heh. No, Biblical literalism basically means "assume it's literal until we have a reasonable argument otherwise". We have very reasonable arguments against flat-earth-ism (we can fly around it). Admittedly the arguments against transubstantiation are less reasonable, but that's a comparatively minor point anyway.
Arguments on the young earth front are slightly more awkward, but it's also not like we can go back in time to check.

[Frumple]

It's like logical science, rather than experimental science, usually. When something turns out not to work, you don't scrap the whole lot as bunk. Freud was wrong on a lot of stuff, but he also had some excellent points and advanced psychology quite a bit in other ways.

I'm... pretty sure "logical science" doesn't exist as a thing. It's, just. Neither of those two things work like that. There's experimental sciences and then there's... stuff that's not science,* even if there can be a lot of non-experimental work involved in the former. I guess hegel tried to science-y logic or somethin' like that, but it's just... not something that really works...

It's not like literary analysis and whatnot isn't a thing, or that logic needs science or vice-versa to be meaningful (well, the latter might need the former to be even remotely coherent, but still). Just... p... please don't do that to science. Or logic. They don't deserve that sort of manhandling.

*Note, that stuff can still be great and useful and potentially truth-seeking and everything, it's just not science. That's okay! Just... don't draw parallels. They're not there.

fakeE: Also modern theology in any academic setting is rigorous as fuck at anything beyond the very lowest levels. Seriously, a bunch of that chump-ass seminary crap may be runnier than diuretic weasel shit, but most higher level stuff with two dead possums worth of credibility to rub together runs a pretty tight ship, from what I've seen.

[TD1]

The Bible implies a certain age for the universe/world.
The Bible implies that the earth is flat.

Surely the two should be treated the same way?

Besides, doesn't the Bible say the earth and Universe were both created at the same time? http://www.space.com/24625-oldest-star-universe-discovery.html


Either way, good to know Biblical literalism is more relative than I had originally thought. It would be kinda hard to see the Bible as absolutely right