ClaytonB
Member

The American tradition of abolishing central banks 07/23/2024 • Mises Wire • Thomas J. DiLorenzo Article was so good I had to meme it...

Or, "What is hermeneutics?" Yes, the title is clickbait. I'm pretty shameless with the clickbait titles on topics like this... The following video is by a Roman Catholic (I'm not Roman Catholic), but it's pretty good. It gets the viewer started on debunking the popular usage of the term "literal". Atheists, skeptics and other critics of the faith like to use the shame-question, "You don't take the Bible literally, do you?" as a way to sow the seeds of doubt in people's minds. And while there is some definite criticism behind this question, the vast majority of people never pierce through to that actual criticism. Rather, they have a pure strawman conception of what it means to take the Bible "literally": Another way to say it is this: the Bible is true. All of it. Every single word. Other terms like "inerrant", "infallible", "literal", and so on, can lead to all kinds of confusing rabbit-trails. While those are important discussions, especially if you're thinking of going into seminary, etc. the fact is that almost all the words that people utter on these topics are a waste of breath. When I say, "I believe the Bible, it is God's Word", that simply means the Bible is true. There is no need to make it "extra" true by saying it's "literally" true. It's just true, in the ordinary sense that any true thing is true. It is true that the sky is blue. It is true that rocks are hard. It is true that water is wet. Perhaps you can even think of weird exceptions to these truths, or raise abstruse philosophical questions. But those aren't the kinds of things that we have in mind when we make simple, basic claims like "the sky is blue". And neither are these abstruse philosophical quandaries in view when we claim "the Bible is true (all of it, every word)". Rather, we just mean it in the simple, straightforward sense that the things it says are true, as such. And while there are passages in the Bible where subtle questions of philosophy are relevant, the vast bulk of the Bible just means what it says and even an 8th-grader can probably understand what it's saying, that is, the meaning of the vast bulk of the Bible is apparent on its face. It means what it says, and what it says is true. We don't need to strengthen that into saying it's "literally" true... it's just true, full-stop.