I find it ironic that atheists are strongly arguing that the Bible must be interpreted literally, even though it's been interpreted allegorically ever since church father Origen, probably before him even.
Atheists WANT the Bible to be interpreted literally so they can have something to attack.
If it's a symbolic parable or allegory, atheists have nothing left to attack.
Wrong.
Augustine says: "three general opinions prevail about paradise. Some understand a place merely corporeal; others a place entirely spiritual; while others, who's opinion, I confess, pleases me, hold that paradise was both corporeal and spiritual."
I answer that, as Augustine says: "Nothing prevents us from holding, within proper limits, a spiritual paradise; so long as we believe in the truth of the events narrated as having their occurred." For whatever scripture tells us about paradise is set down as a matter of history; and wherever scripture makes use of this method, we must hold to the historical truth of the narrative as a foundation of whatever spiritual explanation we may offer.
- Aquinus, in Summa Theologica
This is Saint Thomas Aquinas, writing that something set down as a matter of history in the bible should be viewed as historical truth, not allegorical.
When, however, there is a question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism [our descent from ancestors beyond Adam and Eve], the children of the church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
- Pope Pius XII
Everyone knows popes are infallible right? Someone must have forgotten to tell the pope his views were wrong and get him to read about Origen so that he knew the church doesn't believe in a literal Adam.
You've got it backwards FT. It's not that atheists want the bible to be literal so they can attack it - it's that theists want it to be allegorical so it can't be. The idea that it hasn't been seen as literal for nearly two thousand years, and that its literalization is just a smear campaign is insulting and shows a lack of real knowledge.
