So do we take this shit literally or not?

so you're a jew

Taking the Bible literaly is just harmfull to the religion itself. There are events (specialy in the OT) that are already disproven by science, like the Flood.
If you want to use the Bible, you have some options:
1) You make yourself believe that everything in the Bible must be taken literaly. This wouden't help you if you are in general skeptic or the "I wanna proofs first" guy
2) Some of the passages arent literal, they are just allegorys. This is more helpfull, and, if you ask me, better for people who still want to believe but dont fall for every bullshit the Bible says.
3) Its all a bunchy of allegory. Many people like this way because not only is more logical, but also helps their faith, because they won't be locked into dramatic readings of the Scripture.

4) It's a complex compilation of different writings that should be understood according to context and genre.

There is also the apocrypha books, with are and were many. Some are lost to us today (like the Gospel of Eve), but others are pretty acessible (like the Gospel of Peter).

yes

why do you believe in god?

>that are already disproven by science, like the Flood.

It depends on how you read it. The bible's human authors were not writing scientific textbooks. They described and dealt with things in a more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time. Just like ancient people who spoke of "the sun goeth forth in his might," we describe what we observe with expressions that are useful. After all, we too speak of the sun "rising" and "setting" even though the sun does not move in an orbit that "rises" over the earth. We call this the "language of appearances" because it describes the world as it appears to our senses. These descriptions are true, but they are not literal in nature. When skeptics mock scriptural passages that describe human beings "thinking in their hearts" they demonstrate an unwillingness to allow the text to be as flexible as modern expressions.

Scripture is free from error in what the ancient authors asserted, not what they wrote. The author of Genesis did not understand some of the scientific truths we know today (just as we don't understand scientific truths humans will come to learn in the future). But any lack of knowledge on the part of the ancient author would not constitute an error in his text because the author is not asserting a scientific description of the world, but a popular one.

Now as for the flood itself, we shouldn't assume the author of Genesis was asserting that a worldwide flood took place. Modern readers may interpret passages in Genesis that describe water covering "the earth" as meaning the entire planet was inundated. But a resident of ancient Mesopotamia may have only understood "the earth" to mean "the land" or the region he knew. In fact, the Hebrew word for "earth" in this passage, eretz, can also mean "land," as in Genesis 41:57, where it says that "all the eretz came to Egypt to buy grain" when a famine struck the region. Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone on the planet went to Egypt to buy grain, just those people who inhabited the region the author was referring to went there.

Additionally, geologists have discovered that melting glaciers near the black sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about seven thousand years ago. Such an event would have triggered sudden, massive flooding across a wide area, which would have served as the basis for the flood narrative. This evidence supports a "limited flood" interpretation.

No. None of it is literal. It is a book of stories and parables to give you guidance on how to live your life in accordance to Jesus' teachings.

Revelations is fanfiction.

Any metaphysical amd moral system that approaches coherence demands it

Eh, *a* flood happening thousands of years before the Noah story is set isn't much in the way of evidence. I think it's more likely a cultural story, based on the real danger ancient people faced from floods. There is a Chinese flood myth as well, even though there was never a flood in the region on par with the Black Sea one.

If you mean God in the broadest sense, as in, an ultimate principle, sure. But the Abrahamic God isn't required, in fact many other cultures had a more abstract absolute principle or God, e.g. Brahma in vedic religions, the Dao, Plato's ultimate God from which the demiurge emanates and the Greek gods from that. Or a deist God, a rationalist view of God who initiated existence but doesn't intervene in it.

*Brahman

sorry

how can you take anything said or written absolute literally? there is always a meaning behind words and this may vary, taking words literally dissolves all meaning

Don't take it literally, take it seriously

Literal interpretation is American fundamentalist bullshit.

Just be yourself.

virtually every passage has a literal and metaphorical (frequently more than one) meaning.

I read it like The Iliad/Odyssey, cause lets face it christ shills that's basically what it is, except way, way, way funnier.

Still got some pretty good literature in there regardless.

>asserting blatant lies withot any evidence is fun!

As someone who literally spent most of there life in a private catholic college prepatory school, I can say that is abasolute horse shit.

Plus what you're saying isn't even a good reason to believe in god, you believe in him because it makes your morals and metaphysics more coherent? What if those things aren't as coherent as you want them to be?

Thats pretty shit reasoning t b h

No, the people who wrote this didn't give a shit about why they physically exist and to be honest neither does anyone in the present. People who take it as if its a scientific thesis are pathetic.

Since Reverend Doctors now declare
That clerks and people must prepare
To doubt if Adam ever were;
To hold the flood a local scare;
To argue, though with stolid stare,
That everything had happened ere,
The prophets to its happening sware;
That David was no giant-slayer,
Nor one to call a God-obeyer
In certain details we would spare,
But rather was a debonair
Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player:
That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair,
And gave the Church no thought whate'er,
That Esther with her royal wear,
And Mordecai, the son of Jair,
And Joshua's triumphs, Job's despair,
And Balaam's ass's bitter blare;
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace-flare,
And Daniel and the den affair,
And other stories rich and rare,
Were writ to make old doctrine wear
Something of a romantic air:
That the Nain widow's only heir,
And Lazarus with cadaverous glare
(As done in oils by Piombo's care)
Did not return from Sheol's lair:
That Jael set a findish snare,
That Pontius Pilate acted square,
That never a sword cut Malchus' ear;
And (but for shame I must forbear)
That -- -- did not reappear!...
Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair,
All churchgoing will I forswear,
And sit on Sundays in my chair,
And read that moderate man Voltaire.

...

This sucks idc who wrote it.

An angel from the lost, white headband, marked dead man
Innermost thoughts locked, dangling from a cross
The hotter the heart, the harder - wrapped up
Crucified with my chest up, felt forsaken by the Father
Wounded rebel in Jerusalem
Gettin picked on, and whipped by the goons of the Devil
Black man, 5 foot 9, see the dawn when he stares out
With wool hair and feet of bronze
Birdstick, a black staff with brown handle
Backtrack; my first kicks, brown sandals
In the breeze of the surgeon, surrounded by merchants
I'mmaculate birth, conceived by a virgin
Do a lot in the lyric, due to the true and not living
Pure as the white driven human inside of a spirit
Or the Cathedral, that's only a quarter illegal
Slaughter the people, all for the forces of evil
Exterior armor, transparent, non-vivid
The last grand wizard slash serial bomber
Here it is; I'm Heaven sent, livin in Hell
All-seeing eye, in hand of the pyramids and keep watchin
Out for the death while the beats knockin
Plot by the Devil in a blue dress and chief stockings
Spiritual last, equipped with physical mass
Able to think quick and bring miracles to pass
The lost wonder of dark days to breathe light in
Christ titan, cough thunder and sneeze lightning
Control the thoughts, procore, feed the gators
Sole mediator of code in the Holy War
In front of the mobs, and a storm comin in March
Locked in the physical form of the son of the God