Not everything in the bible is to be taken literally

Evening, I've met a few people over the past year who believe that every thing they read in the bible actually occurred. They could be deemed 'fundamentalists'.

They believe that Adam and Eve were the first people on earth, and the earth is about 6000 years old, and Jonah was a real person who spent some time in a big fish, and there was a flood that covered the earth and all animals ( except for the dinosaurs of course ) were placed in an ark and the rainbow appeared as a sign that the flood would not occur again.

The common point here is that fundamentalists literally believe that everything in the bible is a record of actual events.

Many of the content of the bible is simply man's way of describing man's understanding of how God went about some of the wonderful things such as creation.

Sure God inspired people to write, but its not been some sort of dictation exercise, whereby a secretary is writing down what God is saying, and given that man is imperfect, its hard to understand why some people believe the bible is 100% perfect.

Some of the stories are lessons for us, for which we can learn much from, but we shouldn't assume the characters in the story actually existed.

There are books of the bible which have been composed of events that have been orally handed down from generation to generation until someone decided to put them into writing. An example would be the story of Abraham, which is thought to have been orally handed down for a period of about 900 years until it was written. Imagine playing a game of Chinese Whispers for 900 years. What you end up with is something which is similar to the original message, but not quite 100% percent.

The point I am making is that not everything in the bible should be taken literally, and defininetely its not worth arguing about the finer points of some of the content of the bible. Some churches have even split because of disagreements about content which can't be verified as being 100% accurate.

I find that the average person at church doesn't care much to study the bible in terms of how it was written, or why, or when, or how. And I've not heard many preachers talk about it either. In my experiences I would even say that some of the ministers I have come across discourage discussion on topics as I have mentioned. They see it as a threat, rather than an opportunity to understand God and the bible.

I can see difficult times for the church ahead if fundamentalists continue to dominate church, as they are simply excluding people from the church who are 'thinkers'. And as time passes, more and more advancements in the scientific field are proving that not everything in the bible should be taken literally.

This is no way saying there is not God, or that Jesus didn't die on the cross for our sins, its just a wake up call for the non 'thinkers', who do their best to keep the IQ down in the pews.

Finally, a little story about Galileo, a 'thinker', who realised that the earth wasn't the centre of the universe and also realised that the verses in the bible that mentioned the opposite, are not to be taken literally. They were merely mans understanding of the universe at the time that particular content was written ...... ( with help from the wikipedia )

Heliocentrism is the theory that the sun is at the center of the Solar System.

Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the sun does rise and set. In fact, it is the earth's rotation which gives the impression of the sun in motion across the sky.

By 1616 the attacks on Galileo had reached a head, and he went to Rome to try to persuade the Church authorities not to ban his ideas.

Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633.

The formal condemnation of Galileo was that "The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures", and the converse as to the Sun's not revolving around the Earth."

He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.

His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.