Biblical literalism is, for the most part, a post-printing development.

Of course, “what is metaphor” and “what is meaning” remain active philosophical questions. Many philosophers have held that religious doctrines are “literally true” but don’t mean the common interpretation. For some religious doctrines, such as trans-substantiation, the position that the miracle is occurring can only possibly be “literally true” according to highly dubious theological definitions of meaning. The assertion that Biblical creation is “literally true” (both versions!) in the same sense that the wine literally becomes blood is an odd assertion, but one that has little resemblence to the position of modern creationists.

Psychologically, I am tempted to suspect Voltaire of naivity here. He said “those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities” as a revelation, but I suspect that the function of the assertion of absurdities is to some extent understood by those who partake in them, and is in fact to convey evidence of one’s willingness to commit atrocities.

Furthermore, I believe you are mistaken when you claim that we today go for easier answers. I suspect otherwise. I find our current knowledge of the Universe both more marvellous and less pretentious/’easy’ than the anthropocentric versions of the ancient era. There is more splendour in modern cosmology and physics than in contrived father complexes.

I think it difficult to contend that the empirical scientific method has proven exceptionally superior compared to all other forms of acquiring knowledge. If you disagree, I’d like hear examples were other forms of gaining knowledge has resulted in actual knowledge actually being gained.

Regarding our mental faculties, reality (as in plane crashes) is the ultimate arbiter. No doubt we have many biases, but how this should somehow be so strong as to affect statistics is not clear to me. Adaptive traits only work if they relate to reality, both of nature and its inhabitants. We have the added ability of “letting our hypotheses die in our stead,” which is what we do: we test our beliefs against reality, all the time.

I agree that the success of technology offers some evidence for beliefs. But the problem is that if our minds are only made for and by adaptive ends then this becomes a defeater for the evidence that technology offers.

“Many advocates of many pseudosciences would claim that their beliefs, which we consider pseudoscientific, are part of this class. Creationists argue that evolution is not part of this class. Some religious individuals claim miraculous effects analogous to those of our technology as arguments for their beliefs, and many leftist academics deny ‘progress’ and, in the extremes of postmodernism, appear to deny that we have achieved technological capacities which in general exceed those of our ancestors (believers in Atlantis and the like would agree).”

Are you saying that there is only one type of system to gain knowledge and the rest is pseudoscience? I agree that when Creationists try to do science that it is pseudoscience but when they are asking the questions that science do not cover than I think it could have some truth contained in it. Progress can only be made if there is a set universal point we are all heading for. If this does not exist then postmodernists are probably right.

“I think that it’s probably fair to say that technological progress is invisible to most people, and that the historical middle ages have approximately the same psychological status as Middle Earth does. It doesn’t help that much to ground an epistemology on debated issues such as supposed facts about the present vs the fairly distant past.”

I think it helps in that it shows that we probably do not know as much as we think we know just like our ancestors. I also think it’s helpful to leave the door open that maybe they knew something we don’t. I don’t know how useful it is beyond this.

I think this view of our ancestors is biased and condescending. The creation stories that different cultures have are not primarily asking the questions of science. This was not their world view. They were more interested in asking and answering the questions of meaning and what man ought to do. I believe that these stories do have wisdom. These elusive questions are very hard to wrestle with but they are very important. More important, in my view, than the mechanics of the universe. We go for the easier answers and avoid the harder more substantive questions because we like to think that we are not ignorant.

“But I think that the scientific method allows us to say that our beliefs on the origin of the universe are more acurate now. Not out of philosophical attachment to it, but because it works. Religious beliefs did not put it us on the moon; scientific ones, of which rationality is a key component, did. Schematically:
1) If our reason is flawed, we couldn’t acheive the scientific results we have.
2) We have acheived them, so our reason is not flawed.”

The philosopher of old looked at the world and tried to figure out how to conform to the truths of reality. I see modern science more in the mold of magic. It tries to manipulate the world, not to conform to reality but to form reality to it’s own wishes.

It is true that religion did not put us on the moon and I would not expect it to and science has nothing to say in regards to meaning and ethics. You can’t get ought from is.

Just because something work according to a theory does not mean that it is true. I think this view is a part of the scientific method. Science does not prove something it is only able to disprove it. Native Indians did rain dances and it seemed to work because sooner or later it rained. Did this mean it was true…nope. (although this could point us in the right direction) Science has little data from the start of the universe. No one was there. There is no data from before the big bang. There is no way to set up an experiment because the big bang was a one time event. The truth is that we don’t really know. Not much better than our ancestors I would guess.

Indeed. And we’ve had beliefs about the origin of the universe for all of recorded history, and most of them are (nowadays) naive, simple-minded, biased and wrong.

But I think that the scientific method allows us to say that our beliefs on the origin of the universe are more acurate now. Not out of philosophical attachment to it, but because it works. Religious beliefs did not put it us on the moon; scientific ones, of which rationality is a key component, did. Schematically:
1) If our reason is flawed, we couldn’t acheive the scientific results we have.
2) We have acheived them, so our reason is not flawed.

However, that is an argument based in reason! I can’t see any flaw in it as an abstract argument, but there may be a huge gaping hole that none of us can see. So either we have a good amount of rationality, or none at all (and we all have the same irrationality, causing us to consider the same wrong arguments rational).

The Bible is not subject to selection pressures, it can say anything it wants. We however cannot enter the cave where three bears go in and two come out.

Determinism is not condemnation, it simply means everything has a cause. And is entirely compatible with free will.

Yes, this may all be an adaptive illusion. But it is simply how we see the world. Fools are only shown they are fools when when they see that they were under illusion. If our illusion is so all-encompassing, it would be an illusion only to non-humans, since we can never be shown to be under illusion. An independent and absolute reality would mean nothing to us.