Now I know there are a vanishingly small number of people who believe in the literal truth of the words in the bible, but for those few remaining, this won’t be enough to convince them. I’m not clear how it overlaps with the West Wing argument, either.
It would be interesting to see what equivalent diagrams could be made from tax codes and legal frameworks. And therewith the difference between getting things to work in the real world and theoretical frameworks. The problem comes when people try to quote theoretical items as factual guides (back to the West Wing; soldiers can murder in certain circumstances).
NB I’m not convinced by the Project Reason’s project to spread secular values in society. I like a lot of religious values; religion not so much.
🙂 The thing with literalists is that they have enough angels to dance on the heads of pins to reconcile or explain away the contradictions; although there are also realistic, scholarly ways to address those contradictions, which include “yes, there are contradictions”.
The problem with their approach is that the contradictions are only “news” to people who don’t know the material well; it’s a clever undergraduate exercise in “gotcha!” which the pros have been dealing with for decades.
Poor things: so much work, such cool graphics.
Well exactly, such hard work for no real benefit. The equivalent for tax codes, on the other hand, might actually be useful…