I grew up the same, mostly because allowing so much as not literal means and easier time for a pastor that also does car upholstery part time to sell any concept. Literalism is pretty demanding a a position.

The literalist interpretation was seen as extreme until maybe 20 years ago. I was shocked to learn about how many denominations are going in for it now. But maybe that's just the internet showing me parts of the world I hadn't seen before.

Yea, Catholics and Mainline Protestants like Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians etc are like this. Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, was one of the figures responsible for the big bang theory

Methodists are pretty chill from what I've seen.

No no no, fossils come from the great flood, from the Bible. At least, that's what creationists use as an argument in debates....

As for star light: yes, that's right.

That claim always pissed me off. Like, what kind of god would actively attempt to trick people and be worth worshipping.

Genesis 1 also presumes the earth is flat. I’m a Christian and I really like Genesis 1 but it’s not a good guide for an objective scientific understanding of the world

I grew up catholic and was sent to catholic school and this is what we were taught. That the creation story is metaphor, the catholic church believes God used the big bang and evolution to create the world and people, ect.

Wanna know a secret... God didn't even write that part. God's version has him at a kmart in Toledo, Iowa buying the entire universe on a Saturday in 1997, at which point he installed it, but it did take several days because it was football season, but it was less than a week no matter what anyone else says.

There is “old earth creationism” which works along those lines. But creationists are “literalists,” which actually means they believe a specific interpretation of the text taught to them by their pastor.

Really, you’d think that most anyone reading the texts would realize that Genesis 1 and 2 were mutually contradicting…

"No, that wasn't a metaphor! The Bible is literal truth!"

"What about 'The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me,' or 'But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,' or 'Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.'?"

"Those parts were metaphorical!"

So I grew up around creationists. When I presented this idea, the only attempt at a justification I heard was something like "in the original Hebrew the word for a literal day was used, that's how we know creation happened in literal 6 days"

Which baffled me enough to shut me up, so that guy probably thinks he convinced me.

This is why I'm agnostic - it's basically impossible to either confirm or deny the existence of a higher power, but I don't believe in any particular gods or anything

I collect that kind of stuff for fun + have some exposure to Christian education communities.

Were you doing ACE? Those workbooks should be illegal.

I feel like all of the quantum stuff would be a good way to save storage space. Superposition is essentially lazy evaluation.