Breitbart.com is up in arms today at the NYT editorial page for including this advertisement. According to Breitbart contributor John Nolte, the ad is "
Christian Mocking" and disrespectful. I cannot resist, however, pointing out that literalism (reading each word of the Bible as literally true) is not a Christian doctrine--at best it is evangelical. More importantly, it is incredibly stupid and intellectually lazy--and a recent invention. The Church Fathers (for example Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa) did not believe that the creation story in Genesis was meant to be taken literally (as the former's
Hexaemeron and the latter's
De opificio hominis witness). One can be a devout, orthodox Christian without believing that god created the world in six days (or that the brothers of Yahweh (the Elohim) copulated with human women creating a race of giants (the Nephilim) (Gen. 6:4)).
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