That's immaterial.
The question is whether or not the majority of Christians take the bible to be the literal and immutable word of god, or whether they see it as a series of allegories, parables and guidelines.

I'd say the majority of Christians - that is to say "cultural" christians, of which there are probably a majority in the C of E and Church of Scotland, probably rarely, if ever, think about the bible or its content, let alone read it. They go to church on a Sunday morning and forget about it for the rest of the week.

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I'm a nasty, violent lefty. You cunt.

How can they not see it as literal if they believe jesus existed and was the son of god?

I suspect their thinking is more nuanced than yours.

I've been quite careful to make a distinction which I think is very important, between the 'average' Christian - pretty much what Young Winston calls a 'cultural Christian' and which would certainly include most of the C of E congregation, and the literalists, an assortment of evangelicals and fundamentalists. The former would not believe that every word of the bible is true and immutable, the latter seem to.

This is actually one of the great schisms in the Christian church today. It is important, if for no other reason than the church is embedded in our national life, in charities, politics and education. How that church conducts itself is significant. It is the basis of the furore over homosexuality (though that is often an obsession based in other cultural values).

I am, as I have said, prepared to take a back seat to no man in my philosophical objection to the concept and practice of religion. But that dosn't man that I can dismiss the wole thing out of hand, and I have to recognise that from a bad idea a great deal of good has flowed. As you might see from my signature line, a statement made by a religious figure, or from the picture of Maohandas Gandhi that is hanging over the desk where I am typing this, or the figure of the Buddha on the shelf...

Jesus was the first socialist. The clue's in the beard you know.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Gandhi

Discuss...

This is somewhat incompatible with your idea that a good Christian is a bad person and a good person is a bad Christian. Are we to assume the ones who follow Christ's example are not true Christians, and those who do not, are?

Of course in reality, "they" (people who would term themselves "Christians") are many things.

Oh dear.
I quoted Mohandas Gandhi, a quote which seems apposite to the discussion in hand. I then invited people to discuss it.
Is it so terribly difficult to understand?

If they believe jesus was the son of god who died and rose again, they're already believing some of the crazier shit in the bible. If they don't, how can they be christians?



The first? Really? Everyone knows the greeks had far superior beards...

Of course it is. Why else would anyone challenge any of your ideas? Clearly they don't understand something and need to be patronized. Fortunately, being condescendingly smug is your whole schtick.

We've been here before, but... The Bible contradicts itself, so it is impossible to follow all of it. If you must follow all of it to be a Christian, there is no such thing as a Christian. It's inconsistent then to draw a line between real Christians who believe the "crazier shit", and not real Christians who seem relatively sane and nice. None of them are Christians in the sense of following everything The Bible says.

It's too wide a spectrum to pin anything to. From
The 'young earth' fundamentalists who would happily stone anyone homosexual to death to the people who only go to church for weddings but still call themselves Christian.

On this scale there are people who would get offended if you called any part of the bible 'bullshit' because to them it really is the unarguable word of god.

To others, they will probably agree that the bits about it being better to have your daughter raped than a man raped are a bit iffy.

Oh do bugger off and learn to read.

That good enough for you?

I've only ever met one Christian who beleived that the entire Bible was the literal, unfallible word of God (I was at school with him - his dad was a fire-and-brimstone preacher from the US Bible Belt) but, at least in my experience, every other Christian I know sees it as a guidance on spiritual stuff considers the history and myths to be either metaphors or irrelevant to the book's intended purpose. I think pouncing on inconsistencies in a millenia-old text as proof that the entire thing is "a load of bullshit" or whatever is pretty much the same thing the EDL do with Muslims and the Koran.



Totally. I reckon a lot of Christians nowadays would do well to pay a bit more attention to some of Christ's more sensible teachings - particularly the bits about spending more time working on your own flaws than judging others, not making a huge show of praying in public, etc.