Many educated theists laugh at theists that take parts of the Bible literally that supposedly ought to be taken figuratively. Determining when the Bible should be taken literally or figuratively can be very confusing, even though the Bible teaches us that God is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians, 14:33.) Though the passage teaches us that God is the author of peace, numerous wars have been fought over varying interpretations of the Bible.
Taking the Bible literally can be downright deadly – literally. For example, Mark 16:18 teaches that baptized believers will be saved and that they will take up serpents and drink any deadly thing without harm. Moreover, they will heal the sick by laying hands on them.
While most theists have enough sense not to take this stuff seriously, there are a few snake handling churches in Appalachia, and some people have been killed by deadly snakes. In Guyana, in the late 1970s, many believers drank poison handed to them by the Reverend Jim Jones, and died. Who could seriously question the faith of people like this? Some people do insist that people who die in this way do not have enough faith. However, not much faith is needed. After all, Jesus said that if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move a mountain (Matthew 17:20.) Should we take this passage literally?
The problem here is that the all-knowing God knew that certain people would take this stuff literally, and that some of them would die. It was disgracefully irresponsible to place these messages in the Bible.
The Bible tells us that God hardened pharaoh’s heart against the Chosen people. Should we take this literally? If so, pharaoh was not a true villain. He was only doing what God forced him to do. That would make God the true villain in this myth.
The Bible teaches that it is a sin for a man to lust after a woman. Matthew 5:29 says that a man should pluck out his eye if it causes him to sin. It is better to be blind than to be cast into hell. If this were to be taken literally, there would be millions of blind Christians. Yet, it seems that it should be taken literally because nothing could be more important than avoiding eternal torment.
Some Christians believe that the story of Jonah in the belly of the big fish should not be taken literally. After all, most people believe that the big fish was a whale (actually, a mammal.) If this is the case, the digestive tract in a whale is too small to swallow a man. Literalists maintain that it could have been another sea animal that swallowed Jonah.
Some Christians maintain that the Adam and Eve myth cannot be taken literally. Indeed, modern population genetics has completely falsified the Adam and Eve “hypothesis.” As it turns out, species do not evolve from individuals, but from populations. Geneticists have determined that there must have been at least 12,000 individuals giving rise to humans, not two or even the eight that supposedly survived the Flood. (The biggest problem here is that there goes Original Sin and the need for salvation by Jesus.)
That is a great segue into the Noah’s ark myth. There is no evidence that a worldwide flood ever occurred. More importantly, it would have been physically impossible for all of the animals to have been able to fit on that tiny boat. Most importantly, if we are to take the story literally, it would make God out to be the cruelest being of all time. He would have brutally drowned innocent puppies, kittens, bunnies and other adorable and not-so-adorable animals for the alleged sins of human beings.
The Bible teaches that God creates rainbows, stars and planets. However, we know that rainbows are the result of the reflection and refraction of light off water. Moreover, we know that stars come about naturally as a result of nebulae, or cosmic clouds of dust and gas. Intense heat is generated, gravity enters the picture and other natural processes are at work. We now have photographic evidence from the Hubble telescope and other high-powered telescopes showing us how stars are formed. (Planets come later.) How, then, could we take Genesis literally?
Some Christians believe that we cannot even take the Resurrection literally. They say that it is a metaphor for the changing of the seasons. Some say that hell and Satan are simply metaphors. If this is so, why aren’t God and heaven simply metaphors?
Whether one takes the Bible literally or figuratively, there will be intellectual problems and challenges. Perhaps it would be better to recognize it as the obviously man-made book that it is, and stop asserting that it is the most important book of all time.