“Many (most? all?) Christians believe the snake was really Satan,”
Without meaning to nitpick, what percentage of people who call themselves Christians do you think actually believe this? I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true. They probably also don’t believe that a man can survive for 3 days in the belly of a whale, or that donkeys talk (Numbers 22: 26-30). I’m not really sure how this is relevant here, except that maybe I’m trying to say that a talking snake is just so damned absurd that even people who say they believe it don’t actually believe it.
“I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true”
Have you asked them? Probably not, it’s considered rude to ask christians questions like that, isn’t it? (which is no doubt one reason why religious beliefs are able persist)
But if you did ask them you might be surprised by the answer.
Actually I suspect you are probably somewhat right: they don’t beleive genesis literally. However I suspect they don’t disbelieve it, either.
I actually don’t think religious belief has much to to with doctrine, and I don’t thmink many western christians ever actually sit down to assess exactly ‘what’ they believe, and what they don’t. Religion isn’t about believing silly things, it’s primarily about belonging. Belinging to a group that at a social everyday level is mostly harmless, and normally well intentioned.
About the Christians around me: it is not explicitly considered rude, but it is a signal that you want to challenge their worldview, and if you are going to predictably ask that kind of question often, you won’t be welcome in open discussions. (You could do it once or twice for anecdotal evidence, but if you actually want to know whether many Christians believe in a literal snake, you’ll have to do a survey.)
I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true.
About a third of Americans believe “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally,” explicitly contrasted with “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.” Your friends are probably not a representative sample of Americans, and even then, a third is a minority, but it is a rather large minority. I know people in this category.
The next question is whether they really believe it or just believe in belief. If you press those people, will they bite the bullet and accept talking serpents and donkeys, surviving in whales, and trumpet blasts knocking down city walls? Yes, some of them really will, and there are certainly communities where this remains a majority belief.
Even if they don’t believe in all that, they all still believe in a giant, invisible person that watches them when they do naughty things and talks to them telepathically in their head...
who lives on a cloud, and loves them so much that he will set fire to them for all time if the things are too naughty, and whose chosen people (a) are someone else, and (b) haven’t had the best couple of millennia.
“Many (most? all?) Christians believe the snake was really Satan,”
Without meaning to nitpick, what percentage of people who call themselves Christians do you think actually believe this? I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true. They probably also don’t believe that a man can survive for 3 days in the belly of a whale, or that donkeys talk (Numbers 22: 26-30). I’m not really sure how this is relevant here, except that maybe I’m trying to say that a talking snake is just so damned absurd that even people who say they believe it don’t actually believe it.
“I’m pretty sure most of my Christian friends don’t believe that any of Genesis is literally true”
Have you asked them? Probably not, it’s considered rude to ask christians questions like that, isn’t it? (which is no doubt one reason why religious beliefs are able persist)
But if you did ask them you might be surprised by the answer.
Actually I suspect you are probably somewhat right: they don’t beleive genesis literally. However I suspect they don’t disbelieve it, either.
I actually don’t think religious belief has much to to with doctrine, and I don’t thmink many western christians ever actually sit down to assess exactly ‘what’ they believe, and what they don’t. Religion isn’t about believing silly things, it’s primarily about belonging. Belinging to a group that at a social everyday level is mostly harmless, and normally well intentioned.
About the Christians around me: it is not explicitly considered rude, but it is a signal that you want to challenge their worldview, and if you are going to predictably ask that kind of question often, you won’t be welcome in open discussions.
(You could do it once or twice for anecdotal evidence, but if you actually want to know whether many Christians believe in a literal snake, you’ll have to do a survey.)
About a third of Americans believe “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally,” explicitly contrasted with “the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally.” Your friends are probably not a representative sample of Americans, and even then, a third is a minority, but it is a rather large minority. I know people in this category.
The next question is whether they really believe it or just believe in belief. If you press those people, will they bite the bullet and accept talking serpents and donkeys, surviving in whales, and trumpet blasts knocking down city walls? Yes, some of them really will, and there are certainly communities where this remains a majority belief.
Even if they don’t believe in all that, they all still believe in a giant, invisible person that watches them when they do naughty things and talks to them telepathically in their head...
who lives on a cloud, and loves them so much that he will set fire to them for all time if the things are too naughty, and whose chosen people (a) are someone else, and (b) haven’t had the best couple of millennia.
,’:-\