There seems a tacit assumption here that all people who read the bible believe it is to be taken literally. Now I’m not stating my own religious views or lack thereof here, but it seems to me that this “talking snake” approach fails on entirely other grounds… namely, that it assumes that the “talking snake” story is not an allegory or metaphor. These are very old stories, told in a very poetic voice, and to take them literally is certainly absurd… It seems to me that Maher joins the absurdity by assuming the premise that “all things in the bible are to be taken literally.” This is NOT a premise believed by all or even most Christians. Many interpret the bible and it’s stories in an attempt to glean the meanings of those stories. Naturally there are ignorami who DO believe that the bible is to be taken literally. To extrapolate their beliefs to all Christians is to perpetrate the most basic of logical mistakes: if A is B, and A is C, then all B’s are C. (e.g., If Bob is a Christian, and Bob believes in talking snakes, then all Christians believe in talking snakes.)
I think this just underscores the original post’s point.
The lesson here isn’t that Christians are probably right or that Christians are probably wrong. The lesson here is that you can go very wrong by relying on the absurdity heuristic. And that that’s true even when the claim seems really absurd.
Let’s take a hypothetical atheist who really does think that all Christians believe in the literal word of the Bible. This atheist might reject the whole of Christianity because of the absurdity of talking snakes. Having rejected the entire school of thought that all of Christianity represents, he never has the opportunity to find out that he was wrong (about all Christians taking the Bible literally). Therefore be never realises that he had flawed reasons for rejecting religion.
The woman in the story has a similarly inaccurate understanding of what (many) evolutionists believe. The flawed understanding is part of the issue.
This bias applies to people who reject an idea on the grounds that it seems absurd, but their assessment of ‘absurdity’ is based on their limited, probably inaccurate, understanding of the topic.
It could have been meant literally at some point, and the claim “it is there only as a metaphor” could have been inserted afterwards. If it traces back to a pre-Christian creation myth that got to be part of the Bible as an accident of history, it probably was meant literally at some point, and not just in a “this weird sect takes it literally” way, but in how it was generally understood.
Furthermore, there are other passages in the Bible that are not taken literally now, but were taken literally recently enough for that to have happened within recorded history. People only began to say they shouldn’t be taken literally when taking them literally became embarrassing.
Yes, but every version of the Torah we have contains parts from different, incompatible versions of the story. The Redactor who put them together had a clear preference (I think) for the Priestly text, but was willing to include stories that contradicted it (at least as a political compromise).
There seems a tacit assumption here that all people who read the bible believe it is to be taken literally. [...] This is NOT a premise believed by all or even most Christians.
One of the cutting-edge advances in fallacy-ology has been the weak man, a terribly-named cousin of the straw man. The straw man is a terrible argument nobody really holds, which was only invented so your side had something easy to defeat. The weak man is a terrible argument that only a few unrepresentative people hold, which was only brought to prominence so your side had something easy to defeat.
Note that this was also written by Yvain, and is the #2 hit on Google for “weak man fallacy”. I think it’s fair to say he popularized the concept of the Weak Man as a fallacy around here. Furthermore, he’s the only person I can think of offhand who frequently gets accused of being too charitable to his opponents. So, as far as the author’s original intent (although not necessarily everyone else’s reading of the essay, death of the author and all that), I feel like he gets the benefit of the doubt here. I, for one, will happily disclaim that a large fraction of Christians do not accept the Bible as literal.
Meanwhile, although certainly there are many Christians who would say the story of Adam and Eve and the snake and the tree is not literally true, I don’t think it’s unfair to claim that some significant fraction do believe it’s literally true—after all, almost half the country rejects evolution as the origin of human life, which is a referendum on the literal truth of another part of the same story. The fall of Adam and Eve is important to the Christian ideas of salvation and original sin, which makes some Christians understandably reluctant to reject it. From a certain perspective, denying the literal truth of the story is equivalent to rejecting a central tenet of Christian thought.
Edit: Of course, some also believe that the Fall is in some sense literally true, while the snake/tree or other fantastical elements are allegorical; there are more than just two schools of thought here.
There seems a tacit assumption here that all people who read the bible believe it is to be taken literally. Now I’m not stating my own religious views or lack thereof here, but it seems to me that this “talking snake” approach fails on entirely other grounds… namely, that it assumes that the “talking snake” story is not an allegory or metaphor. These are very old stories, told in a very poetic voice, and to take them literally is certainly absurd… It seems to me that Maher joins the absurdity by assuming the premise that “all things in the bible are to be taken literally.” This is NOT a premise believed by all or even most Christians. Many interpret the bible and it’s stories in an attempt to glean the meanings of those stories. Naturally there are ignorami who DO believe that the bible is to be taken literally. To extrapolate their beliefs to all Christians is to perpetrate the most basic of logical mistakes: if A is B, and A is C, then all B’s are C. (e.g., If Bob is a Christian, and Bob believes in talking snakes, then all Christians believe in talking snakes.)
I think this just underscores the original post’s point.
The lesson here isn’t that Christians are probably right or that Christians are probably wrong. The lesson here is that you can go very wrong by relying on the absurdity heuristic. And that that’s true even when the claim seems really absurd.
Let’s take a hypothetical atheist who really does think that all Christians believe in the literal word of the Bible. This atheist might reject the whole of Christianity because of the absurdity of talking snakes. Having rejected the entire school of thought that all of Christianity represents, he never has the opportunity to find out that he was wrong (about all Christians taking the Bible literally). Therefore be never realises that he had flawed reasons for rejecting religion.
The woman in the story has a similarly inaccurate understanding of what (many) evolutionists believe. The flawed understanding is part of the issue.
This bias applies to people who reject an idea on the grounds that it seems absurd, but their assessment of ‘absurdity’ is based on their limited, probably inaccurate, understanding of the topic.
You have more certainty than I do.
It could have been meant literally at some point, and the claim “it is there only as a metaphor” could have been inserted afterwards. If it traces back to a pre-Christian creation myth that got to be part of the Bible as an accident of history, it probably was meant literally at some point, and not just in a “this weird sect takes it literally” way, but in how it was generally understood.
Furthermore, there are other passages in the Bible that are not taken literally now, but were taken literally recently enough for that to have happened within recorded history. People only began to say they shouldn’t be taken literally when taking them literally became embarrassing.
Reply to an old comment about literalism:
Yes, but every version of the Torah we have contains parts from different, incompatible versions of the story. The Redactor who put them together had a clear preference (I think) for the Priestly text, but was willing to include stories that contradicted it (at least as a political compromise).
This is, roughly, an accusation of a Weak Man fallacy:
Note that this was also written by Yvain, and is the #2 hit on Google for “weak man fallacy”. I think it’s fair to say he popularized the concept of the Weak Man as a fallacy around here. Furthermore, he’s the only person I can think of offhand who frequently gets accused of being too charitable to his opponents. So, as far as the author’s original intent (although not necessarily everyone else’s reading of the essay, death of the author and all that), I feel like he gets the benefit of the doubt here. I, for one, will happily disclaim that a large fraction of Christians do not accept the Bible as literal.
Meanwhile, although certainly there are many Christians who would say the story of Adam and Eve and the snake and the tree is not literally true, I don’t think it’s unfair to claim that some significant fraction do believe it’s literally true—after all, almost half the country rejects evolution as the origin of human life, which is a referendum on the literal truth of another part of the same story. The fall of Adam and Eve is important to the Christian ideas of salvation and original sin, which makes some Christians understandably reluctant to reject it. From a certain perspective, denying the literal truth of the story is equivalent to rejecting a central tenet of Christian thought.
Edit: Of course, some also believe that the Fall is in some sense literally true, while the snake/tree or other fantastical elements are allegorical; there are more than just two schools of thought here.