The only thing more absurd is the mindlessly black and white claim that just because a fanciful story is told about someone that the person didn’t exist and all things said about them have no basis in reality.
Huh? There was no mention of the origin of anatomically modern homo sapiens in what I said. Ok… I can play that sort of stupid game too.
Your belief in prince charming and fairies that make glass slippers with magic is very amusing.
Once you dispense with fairies making glass slippers with magic then, you should also dispense with your obsession with Cinderella’s missing glass slipper.
Or… we could both stick to things actually said instead of inserting things convenient for a such an overblown personal soapbox, leaving these ludicrous anti-Ussher and anti-Rodger&Hammerstein weaponry out of it to engage in a more rational discussion.
As long as you are willing to bow to the dictates of rationality, you can add intellectual adjustments and justifications for just about any belief system, and thus the labeling of some as more primitive than others is not reasonably justified. All subjective beliefs whether concerning fairies, animism, UFOs, psychics, shamanism, ghosts, or healing with crystals are on par with the equally subjective monotheistic theological claims. There is no objective evidence for any of it and thus no reasonable basis for expecting other people to agree with such beliefs. …but to think that you can live your life purely according to the dictates of objective observation alone is the runaway massive delusion of modern times.
Nothing is more nonsensical that this claim.
That might be true of people with just enough education to inflate their delusions of knowing everything. But higher education tends expand ones awareness of just how much is not known or understood and thus decreasing the likelihood of dismissing the beliefs of others as just nonsense.
Incorrect. Just because you cannot get any sense out of a statement in the language of Ongota doesn’t mean the statement doesn’t make any sense to anybody. Your ability to get meaning out things is not the limit of sensibility.
No it is not. Even if it not meaningful to me, that doesn’t make it meaningless to anyone else. You go too far. And it is not this black and white choice between literal and nothing but a vague metaphor. There are all manners of gradation between these extremes.
To be sure, I think that an understanding of Genesis which is more connected and true to reality as we experience it, is generally going to be more meaningful to more people. And I certainly have a tendency to seek the greatest meaning in these texts. But that doesn’t mean a different understanding of the text is simply nonsense. An understanding of the text contrary to the findings of science will certainly detract from its meaning for me, but so does a dismissal of the stories as purely fictional, unless there are good reasons for doing so (like in the case of Job and 50% in the case of Jonah).
No it certainly does not. Modern science is not the source, limit, or definition of meaningfulness. The most you can say is that modern science, with its written procedures giving the same result no matter what you want or believe, gives the basis for a reasonable expectation that others should agree with its findings. And thus going against those findings is not reasonable. But to say that it is not even meaningful is just as blind and willfully ignorant.