Except for everything being in the wrong order.
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@Mister44 - here is the article…
Why does an allegory need to be literal and tied to what we know scientifically about the origins of the planet and how people evolved? That’s the point of an allegory, to help us understand some greater concept or idea, in this case ethical and/or moral. Should we not read fiction, especially sci-fi or fantasy, because it might not reflect “real science” or the world as it actually exists? Are the works of PKD moot now, because we don’t live in a world exactly like he described? or Orwell, because 1984 wasn’t just like the book? Or that authoritarian states don’t look exactly like what he described? 
We’re narrative-driven animals. Stories are part of how we understand the world. Even science can be told in narrative form, because it gives us a sense of how the world out there is in a way that makes sense to us…
Again, plenty of people believe in science and understand biblical stories as an allegory about humans moral development…
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Tangentially, back when I used to argue online with young-Earth creationists, I noticed they tended to get far more angry at Christians like myself who accepted evolution as an obvious fact, than at even the most aggressive and rude atheists.
(I stopped, because it became obvious that any YECs who weren’t drive-by posters were immensely dishonest, completely impervious to facts, or both. Seriously, I have never seen people as utterly and impenetrably stupid as they were.)
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No, and maybe there are some valid points. I guess I should be fair to the Atlantic, that their headline isn’t asserting that dinosaurs were a nail in religion’s coffin like the BB headline. So the Atlantic article may not be even making that hyperbolic claim.
I think the development of the scientific process in general (of which the study of dinosaurs was part of) is what shifted naturalists from looking for evidence of events of the Bible (like explaining why shell fossils were on mountains, assuming the earth was relatively young, and that geological formations like the cutting of deep valleys by rivers were caused by catastrophic events. i.e. the flood), to cataloging evidence and then drawing conclusions of what events occurred. It was a contributor, but I wouldn’t pin it as pivotal or the one that broke religion (which, as I said, feels fine. It might even go for a walk.)
Well, not everything. But Genesis was supposedly inspired by prophetic visions. It wasn’t laid out in a text book or at a lecture. It would have been clips of visions. If the visions were disjointed and then assembled into a narrative, it would explain how they are inconsistent with later evidence.
You can still believe there were prophetic visions, and also accept they weren’t meant to be taken literally as days or necessarily in that order. You know, everything brought up in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
I see many devout people who defer what they believe to what their preacher has told them. They lack hubris personally, and sort of default to authority. Those people if presented with a different perspective by another preacher can change how they view what it means to be devout. Even with less controversial subjects as creation, there are a LOT of parts of the Bible that have disagreements on what lessons people are supposed to glean.
A zealot will never change their ways, and anyone - even someone with authority within the church - who tries to change or reinterpret something differently is a heretic.
(Subgroup of zealots in cults who will change their ways only if the cult leader insists on it.)
My personal go to in trying to impress upon people that one doesn’t need to adhere to their understanding of Genesis is to quote the passages that the Catholics use to justify the concept of Transubstantiation. They are some hard verses to grasp. And you can reject the idea of Transubstantiation, but if you do so, you have to admit you’re not taking Christ’s words literally. And if you aren’t taking his words literally, why are do you insist on taking Genesis literally (passed down originally from oral traditions of prophetic visions, not the literal words of God).
Anyway, in my experience, most of the Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, and other main stream Protestants don’t have a problem with an old Earth, dinosaurs, or evolution. The Evangelicals and some Baptists definitely do. So clearly dinosaurs aren’t deal breakers for a large number of Christians.
Ah thanks, I will check it out at home. Work filter doesn’t like it.
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I have to say, ever since first appearing as an author on Boing Boing in April of this year (and with literally no prior presence on the internet) I’ve been somewhat suspicious about whether Yoy Luadha is a real person writing under a pseudonym, or an AI that is good at posting articles that are meant to drive engagement. A fair number of the articles appearing under this name seem designed to do that.
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No. Lightning conductors on cathedrals.
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Hutton of course was wrong, and our globe and very likely universe did have a beginning. When the big bang theory was proposed, some uniformitarian-inspired scientists considered it superstitious nonsense, while various religious groups (like Catholics) considered it as basically agreeing with what they said all along – in the beginning, God created heaven and earth.
Also for the record one of the biggest surprise about things like dinosaurs, often forgotten now, was simply that they were extinct. A lot of people were reluctant to believe God would have created things only to let them vanish. Extinction was of course accepted by scientists like Darwin as part of the basis for his theory, but for instance the Lewis and Clark expedition was asked to keep an eye out for mastodons, on the premise there must still be some somewhere.
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And that’s where a more thoughtful theology comes from… honestly, both Judaism and Islam is much better at that then Christians have been (historically speaking). Both thrive with the debate about what this or that means in their holy books. The Talmud is literally the discourse around the Jewish texts, and Islam has multiple schools of jurisprudence (both Sunni and Shia - that doesn’t even take Sufism into account, which is far more mystical in orientation). Of course, although the Reformation was in some sense more about the origins of the modern state (princes seeking to break away from the power of the Roman Catholic church), was about discourse over what the bible means and who should get to interpret it… But even within discreet traditions, there are discussions of clashing interpretations of scripture… just look at Social doctrine within the Catholic church, for example…
Generally, but sometimes, people can change, if they’re faced with something beyond their understanding based on their views. If you have a heretic, sometimes, you end up with someone being burned at the stake, and sometimes you end up with a new interpretation that grows legs and finds adherents.
I mean… I think there are certainly people in the church who do understand it as not literal, but as… figurative? I know the official position is that it’s real, but it seems to me that the laity and even some priests view it that way… Hasn’t the church shifted away from literalism since Vatican II at least? I know not entirely, but the changes made during that period was pretty extensive, yeah?
Exactly…
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Plus maybe they were eager to get in early on this new theory to help everyone forget their earlier stance on Galileo’s heliocentric solar-system theory…
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I don’t claim to be an expert, though I took RCIA classes. It’s mainstream view is that there is a supernatural event happening during communion where the bread and wine is also flesh and blood at the same time - though not like literally - physically flesh and blood. Sort of how like Christ can be both God and man at the same time.It’s now a minority of Catholics who believe there is an Transubstative act, vs just being symbols.
AFAIK all protestants view it as purely symbolic. And at the same time, they just sort of skip over that part of the Bible. I am sure someone one somewhere has covered it in church, and official doctrine covers it, but when I used to get involved in more Evolution debates, many people weren’t even familiar with John 6:56-, where Christ had performed some miracles, and he said to eat this bread, which was my flesh. And when they scoffed and said, “How can we eat your flesh?” and people started to leave, he didn’t clarify he was speaking symbolically, but repeated himself. His disciples literally said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” and people left.
So I would point this out to people that while I can’t claim to know for certain what is going on - it is clear he meant something was happening beyond simple symbolism. And if you choose to interpret his words as symbolism - that’s fine. But you can’t at the same time discredit the idea Genesis isn’t literal.
I would say there was rigorous debate in early Christianity, it got very homogenized when the Roman Catholic Church rose to prominence. Then debate picked back up during the protestant reformation, and even more during early American history when it seemed like there was a new sect under every overturned rock.
While there are definitely still Christian academics and theologians, for the average person I think they have more or less settled into their “slots” of doctrine. And if you ask me, for ~75% of people, doctrine specifics are less important than the community within a specific church. People like my sister left the Lutheran Church for the nearby Methodists due to various reasons: a much younger congregation that offered Sunday school programs and peers for her kids, hosted the Boy Scouts, and TBF, the Lutheran pastor rubbed some people the wrong way. All of those things were more important than any doctrinal differences.
I will also note, people who are life long participants in a church often know less about doctrine than people who had to take classes to convert or join the church.
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I think though, that that has always been up for debate… it’s sort of a core of theology, right?
But yeah… thanks for laying that out!
Oh sure, because the RCC acted as an empire for much of medieval European history. There there was the first major split,… after… Nicea? Between the eastern and western church? And if you decenter Europe, other Orthodox traditions exist (Ethiopia and Armenia). But even when the RCC was the predominant source of power during the medieval period, debate existed.
Stop turning over rocks! We have enough sects, people! 
But if you go back to the source, the meaning is always going to rest in mind of the adherent. So, ultimately, however the churches seek to impose their interpretation, everyone really has their own, even if they are part of a highly organized top-down organization. Like with Catholics, church teaching often diverges from people’s lives and views… they got to square that with their faith, and most often, they’re able to do so.
Sure, but as I said, I don’t think anyone is just accepting whatever their preacher/priest/whatever tells them uncritically. We like to talk a lot around here about some people just aren’t critical thinkers, but I think that’s just how people are. We think and we justify, and we have our own ways of seeing the world - shaped by the culture we’re embedded in, but certainly still our own.
Yeah, I think that’s true too. Not always, but often.
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Could I perhaps introduce you to the Flat Earther movement? Though it does take a signicant amount of cognitive dissonance to be a young earth creationist, it ultimately comes down to the fact that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven (they just take their choice to believe in an extreme direction). Flat earthers though… as far as I can tell that’s just straight up believing that objective reality is a false conspiracy.
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How about picking up shoes instead?
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One thing I think is missing from the headline here is the lack of understanding of how culture (including something like religion) can and does evolve based on our needs? Religion is not some entirely rigid thing that emerges fully formed into the world. I think we can all see from the back and forth between me and @Mister44, that Christianity today has evolved over time. Likely the founders of the RCC centuries ago would not recognize the modern RCC, and that’s true of almost any religion. It’s why fundamentalism functions pretty well for some. Because it assumes some sort of ideal at the founding that has been lost along the way (which… is of course, entirely based on people’s modern day understandings and projections, not not some objective reality of that past that we really can’t entirely pin down). And that’s a nice story that people can grok in times that seem confusing and chaotic. It’s hard to live with ambiguity and confusion, but that can be part of religion too.
Also, when we say “religion” that’s a big amorphous thing that encompasses so many things, that it almost feels like a cop out to say “religion” as if it’s a singular phenomenon… But even a superficial examination of religion as a historical phenomenon proves that to be untrue…
So, it’s entirely possible that religion will one day not exist and the dinosaurs will be in part to “blame”… but it’s likely that the space religion occupies will be taken up by something else… I mean, look at people who spend their time proclaiming that we live in a simulation or promoting ideologies like “longtermerism” or transhumanism… what are these ideas, but religious ideals that claim to be based in science. Much like a belief in god, they just can’t be proven, but must be taken on faith.
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He said he had seen no evidence of a beginning - NOT that there was no beginning.
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Yeah, in that one quote. But it’s not exactly unusual for scientists to take no evidence as meaning not there, and there is good indication at least some uniformitarians disagreed with the possibility of putting any limited age, followed by the steady state theorists definitely insisting on the same for the universe.
I know geologists like to paint Hutton as a visionary who helped discover the truth about the earth, in contrast to the foolish physicists that could not appreciate the evidence. But hagiography makes bad history, and thermodynamics was a great discovery that has led to better understanding our planet too. The real answer is a world that has a very old but finite age, and it would not come until later when people put together both considerations.
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The real story is that those bones are entirely artificial and put there by the Magratheans when they built Earth. It’s all part of the computing process you see.
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