 Originally Posted by Gnostic
I agree that none should read any holy book as literal.
Though that -- and the rest of your post was quite thoughtful and I agree with pretty much all of it, it had nothing to do at has nothing to do with my post, which was this:
 Originally Posted by Sageous
The OP is one of those of those arguments wherein I wish God, if He exists, would log on Himself and explain the logic in His Own Words; or at least tell us He didn't write the damn Bibles, so stop taking it all so literally and seriously, fer Crissakes.
What I said really had nothing to do with literally interpreting the Bible, or any "holy" book, though I can see that my wording might have headed you in that direction -- sorry!.
What I was saying was, quite simply, that, given that pretty much every record of God's deeds was written by men, working through filters of individuals' opinions, agendas, misconceptions fears and hopes that likely would make the Word have little to do with what God may have meant, even if it did come directly from Him. And, worse, if it was not His Word (and deeds) but just inventions by well-meaning authors, the actual case for God is even more in the hands of humans, and not God Himself. With all that, it would be nice if God would just stop by and correct the record in Person, with Words we can take literally.
In other words, I was saying, rhetorically, that it would be nice if God actually showed up and explained Himself, rather than having fallible humans do the explaining for Him. Yes, literally believing the Bible is (obviously) not a good choice, but that wasn't my point. I guess my point was that there are no holy books, only things we call holy books, and it would be nice if God presented us with a definitive volume Himself, and in it explain the things He's done (or the things He never did at all, but that humans attributed to Him), in words that we both understand and will know without question were written by Him. You'd think an omniscient, omnipotent creator could do such a thing with ease, and I was just saying it would have been nice if He did.
So, though all those links and references were thoughtful, you were very much preaching to the choir in my case: I get the whole literal interpretation problem, and am familiar with much of its history; I only wish God would care about what's been done to His reputation down here.
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