No I don;t think you are stupid at all and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. But I think you are failing to accept that multiple interpretations can be ascribed to a passage in a Biblical Text.
“and other people say “I don't take everything in the Bible literally” and they mean that it's a book of fairy stories, or a book of fact and fairy stories mixed together that they (unlike rubes such as myself and say, Thomas Aquinas) are gifted enough to sort out.”
Thomas Aquinas never heard of DNA, mutations or the geological record. But if he had, I think he would be in my corner. As a matter of fact, the Catholic Church accepts the possibility of evolution and has no problem with it as a potential threat to Biblical authenticity or Orthodoxy. And I hardly believe the Bible is a collection of “Fairy Tales”. That is a false construct of my position - and that of very many other Christians who accept evolution and have no problem reconciling them with Biblical revelation.
“If you were going to tell a bunch of readers that God created the world, you would spend around 1,400 words doing so, and put it in a fifty chapter book that includes at least 39 chapters of history? “
You would explain it in a way that had some degree of relevance to them and their sense of existence. Who am I to determine what God's definition of a “day” is???
“And if Genesis is so obviously allegory and not history, what was Jesus doing telling people to guide their relationship choices by its account?”
I didn't say all of Genesis was allegorical. I just said that the description of creation in Genesis was “simplified” for the benefit of the audience involved and it was not intended to be a detailed scientific explanation of creation and evolution.
It would take far more than 1,400 words to explain to a group of neolithic shepherds what evolution meant. They didn't even have words in their vocabulary for most of the terminology involved.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in it,” the writer of Genesis decided to spend around 1,400 words (over 2,500 if you include the chapters on the Fall of Man and Cain and Abel) on a fairy story?”
I never said Cain and Abel were fairy stories. It seems to me to be a reasonable account of an actual event. (Did you actually COUNT them?? REMEMBER - it was written in Hebrew and the number of words involved in conveying an idea varies from language to language especially considering the fact that English and Hebrew are in two entirely different linguistic families. But I applaud you for your zeal and am willing to concede the 1400 words.)
“Does that make any sense at all? And, if you're a Christian, you have to ask why Jesus, God in the flesh, was walking around and He didn't say, “There wasn't a six day creation, that's just poetry, but I did create everything in a few billion years,” instead of perpetuating it.”
TWO REASONS:
1) The average Israelite of the time had no more understanding of science than the people God was speaking to when the Bible was written.
2) He had more important things to do at the time, like teach people about what is really important and moral in life, His sacrifice, salvation and the Second Coming. I think those little items are far more significant than how God made snakes.
“How do you know God created the world? “
VERY GOOD QUESTION.
Well, actually because I believe in the Bible and the Bible tells me He did. Also. I think it is sort of a programmed thought in Human Beings. The overwhelming number of people in the past who were not Christians or Jews believed SOMEBODY created the world. It might not have been the real God, but they believed SOMEBODY did it. Something cannot come from nothing, and all the complex scientific rules and facts that govern existence, evolution and cosmology cannot have just “happened” all by themselves. In my mind, that defies logic.
“Are you a Christan? “
I believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God Who died to save me from my sins. I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as His Father and I believe in the Holy Spirit - the whole Nicene Creed and the Bible as the Foundation Rock on which it is based. I note there is nothing in the Nicene Creed about evolution pro or con.
“If so, how do you reconcile your faith, which posits that death entered the word when man sinned (1 Corinthians 15:21),”
I believe the Bible there refers to the Death of Adam and Eve, not to the deaths of the rest of the creatures of Creation.
“with the doctrine of natural selection, which can't work if there's no death?”
I believe that man's BODY evolved, not his immortal soul. When God put the immortal soul of man into Adam's body, he in effect “created” the first “real” Human Being. The rest - the australopithicines, etc, were just “prototypes” if you will. in the development of the ultimate product. When Genesis refers to the Dust of the earth as what Adam was created from, I believe it is referring to his body arising from a lower animal.
“If Genesis is allegory, the New Testament is a fairy story, too.”
I never said all of Genesis was allegory. But the accounts in the New Testament, aside from parables which were made to convey a moral message - not relate an actual event - appear to be almost or entirely factual.
I don't mean to insult you or demean your intelligence or faith in any way. You sound like a sincere, intelligent, devoted Christian. But when you attack my beliefs because they don't seem to jell with your interpretation of the Bible, I feel that is unfair.
I think Science Classes in school should teach evolution because that is what the consensus of most scientists reflects. But I do NOT believe that teachers should in way extrapolate from the scientific theories of evolution to mean that the Bible is false or that God did not create the world. When they do that, they are straying from science into Theology and Philosophy.
NONE of us can REALLY know the mind of God. We can read the scriptures, observe the real world around us and reconcile the two to make sure our beliefs reflect reality.
There is no way a finite mind can comprehend an Infinite Intelligence in the long run.
Well said!