@VictoriaNotes
Yes, if she would marry me knowing how I view it. I have many family members and friends who take their religion literally, and we get along just fine. Growing up in Alabama, I had to learn metaphoricalism at an early age in order to find common ground with the great majority of humans that I lived among and depended upon. I am well practiced. When they say thank God, I say amen brother! Then we go have a beer. (a metaphorical beer of course)

@skado if your partner was unable to see it metaphorically you would be in for the perpetual argument regardless of how you saw it or how they see you seeing it whatever. the true Evangelical don't budge, it's very much an All or Nothing situation. And having that kind of relationship with family and friends is great but I don't think it can really extend into a marriage. marriage really ups the ante on expectations from within and without.

@VictoriaNotes
I'm getting desperate!!

@VictoriaNotes
There's a new guy I recently found who has influenced my thinking a bit. Up until now I tended to think of literalism and fundamentalism as more or less interchangeable terms. But John Crossan makes a distinction that I think is useful, and probably about right. I don't know a lot about him yet, but he speaks as if he understands the value of metaphor. A Crossan quote:
“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”

A five minute video on the distinction between literalism and fundamentalism:

So do I want to marry a literalist or a fundamentalist? Not particularly. But I can say it this way: It would not be the thing that kept me from being interested if everything else was just fine. Is that likely to happen? Probably not, but I was a literalist myself at one time, so if she demonstrated that she was capable of sound reasoning (when pressed on a specific issue) and if otherwise a kind, and interesting person... I could entertain the idea.

Using Crossan's definitions, would I feel the same way about a fundamentalist? Technically, yes, but I'd guess the chances of general compatibility would be even less. But I try not to decide the future before it gets here. I have found that, when it comes to "partnership," what works, works, and what doesn't, doesn't... regardless of preconceived laundry lists. It seems I'm becoming more religion-friendly by the day, so who knows, I'll probably find myself the one being rejected for being too religious!!

@hankster
The evangelical type is yet another degree of fanaticism, and I'd not likely have enough in common with her to begin with. But I find that political differences can be just as problematic.
I know plenty of literalists who never bring up the subject of religion, but no evangelicals. They are compelled to proselytize. And that's just intolerable.

@VictoriaNotes
I'm pretty sure Crossan would agree with you on that point, as do I. He is one of those distinguished biblical scholars himself. The Bible is such a hodgepodge of inputs, no single statement is likely to characterize the whole thing.

I haven't read the book that quote was taken from (I just now discovered Crossan). I'm guessing what he's talking about in that quote, and what I talk about often, is more related to the symbology that certain parts of the Bible share with virtually every other major organized religion that ever existed. I don't see any mechanism by which conscious human intention could have coordinated itself across millennia and across continents in ancient times. That leaves only unconscious intention, or the "collective unconscious" as Jung might say.

And of course, people in all time periods, then and now, immediately go to work on plastering their superstitions, fears, hopes, and misinformed rationalizations on the material at every turn. It amazes me that any of the original material even survived, and yet, there it is, in every culture on earth, stories of the hero's journey, the holy grail, the sacrifice, the redemption, and so on, repeated endlessly, as if from the same mouth.

I think it's a proper scientific question to ask about the nature of that single source, and how it came to be expressed in every place and time in human existence. I don't think it could be the conscious intention of the scribes or priests. The only answer that makes any sense to me is that these perennial stories are archetypes that are encoded in human DNA, and are expressed symbolically in every culture, while being given the unique coloration of that culture and its local interpretation.

The bottom line, I think, is that none of us really know deeply why we do what we do, when we are doing it, but we do it nonetheless, and then we apply our preferred rationales after the fact. Bad interpretations will always come and go, but human nature shines through consistently.

@VictoriaNotes
Well that was an interesting read. Thanks for bringing me up to date on the latest attitudes about archetypes. Although he acknowledges "for now, there are more questions than conclusions" even at this late date, it's interesting to get a glimpse of how transmission might occur other than with a primarily biological system.

What he still seems to assume though, is that however it is transmitted, it is still an unconscious, or subliminal, process. My current worldview is not so much wedded to the idea that it absolutely must be written in the genes, so much as that it (the transmission of universal mythological themes) is a largely unconscious process, rather than a product of any deliberate, conscious intention. And that such functioning (whether gestalt, emergent, dynamic systems, whatev) is ultimately based on systems that were in turn produced by natural selection, and therefore, A. conferred survivability/reproducibility to our species at one time (whether still, or not, is a separate question) and, B. will not be (whether desirable or not) easily maneuvered out of the complex of systems they currently inhabit.

All this considered, it still seems to me that Crossan and others are right when they suggest these universal stories manifest (through whatever mechanisms) as symbolic phenomena from collective, unconscious sources, rather than independently from conscious intention or purposeful invention.

yeah, that's my usual modus operandi. but we want to get down to the baby making boogie as soon as possible, and she us of the no boogie till marriage Christian sect.

@fuse no sex until marriage?

Sounds foriegn to me.

Looks like prescription for failure but with children involved.

It is your life. Try to consider the children. How will they fare in a 1 parent religious household? Will you be allowed to see them as a "heathen". Would you want to subject yourself to that type of pain.

@fuse
Hmmm. It’s starting to sound like a bad idea. If you don’t have time to build a genuine relationship before you bring children into the world... you are genuinely putting those children in harm’s way before they are even born. Do them a favor and make a stable home first. Coercion is not a suitable condition under which to raise a happy, healthy family.