In article , Mike Coslo writes:

N2EY wrote:
In article , Mike Coslo
writes:


No evolution in
science class. The fundies had wiped the slate clean - no dinosaurs, no
ancient earth at all. Even sanitized geology! Nothing to pollute the
minds of the impressionable youngsters. After getting out of high
school, I read the forbidden stuff on evolution and geology and age of
the earth. Such innocent stuff to be so dangerous.


Mike:

Try this:

Get out a Bible and read the first book of Genesis. Not a book of Bible
stories
- get a Bible. Note that there are *two* creation stories - and they cannot
both be literally true, because they contradict each other on several
points.
Most books of Bible stories blend the two storiesand edit out the obvious
contradictions.

I think Genesis is written that way as a signal from the Author to the
reader
that the Book is not meant to be taken literally, but to be looked at as
explanations of Why and By Whom, not How and When. But that distinction is
too
often lost on people.

The amazing thing is that for a long long time, the Bible was thought
of as allegorical.

By some. Others have taken it literally for centuries.

It worked and still works well as such. The hyper
literal interpretation is a fairly recent phenomenon of the early 20th
century. We had to wait almost 2K years for the "right" interpretation
to come along! 8^)

Tell it to Galileo. And Copernicus. Literal interpretation goes back a lot
longer than the 20th century.

73 de Jim, N2EY