Quote Originally Posted by Taosaur View Post
Your response to my request for "a sincere, thoughtful religious person's outlook" is a good case in point. I would characterize your summary as an unexamined, dogmatic, and literalist outlook, suggesting that you can't even conceive of a "sincere, thoughtful religious person."
I was just telling you what I was taught, what the Bible says, and what I thought most Christians believe, at least most Christians in my region. If most Christians think the Bible is not literal, then there is a whole spectrum of beliefs that could be considered Christianity. Making a book of rules symbolic when it determines a person's eternal destiny is a really bizarre concept. I can tell you what their books says, but it would take me as many characterizations as there are such Christians to tell you what they think. Once you say a book is purely symbolic, there is no limit to what it can be interpreted as saying. There is no book titled The Disciples' Guide to What Jesus Said He Really Meant When He Spoke Symbolically by The Twelve Disciples or "Burning Bush" Means "Hallucination Revealing The Truth About Nirvana I Found While on Mushrooms" and Other Things I Was Really Saying by Moses.

I think a lot of literalists are sincere. I question their intelligence and sanity, but I think a lot of them believe exactly what the Bible says.