Why are literalists literalists?

Essentially the dogma of their churches insists that the Bible is the literal word of God and must be accepted as literally true wherever possible. Never mind that this is at best based on a very questionable verse of one book of dubious authorship, and that the Bible is certainly not written as if God were the author of every single book.They often support their dogma with the assertion that the Bible claims to be the word of God (an argument that is not true, nor even one that they themselves beleive to be any good when they actually have to think about it). SOmetimes they take other verses out of context to try to support their assertion.In short the reaoon is because their religious authorities say so and they are beleived to be a higher authority than even the Bible itself. y

I don't beleive your claim that you reasoned your way to the conclusion that the Bible is God's word. The mere fact that you use fallacious stock arguments to support the claim indicates that you simply beleived the claism of men over the Bible itself.

I'd like to say that Message 23 is a perfect example of what I meant.Faith has her beliefs and to her they define and dominate reality. Neither the Bible nor the truth can stand against them. Her true God is herself.And that is why literalists are literalists.

On the contrary, I think it is very important to point out the fact that neither the Bible nor Christianity are to blame for Faith's religion.The idea that God is literally responsible for every word of the Bible is completely unreasonable even on the baiss of the Bible itself. The Bible never makes this claim. THe Bible is written as if the authors were humans - some parts odf some books of the Bible are said to be messages from God, butr even those are second hand.It is a fact that these people do NOT care about the Bible itself - only their ideas about it. They are quite happy to pput their words into God's mouth and then claim that they should be believed beacuse "God said it". But whenever the Bible actually does say somethign that they don't like then they see no problem in twisting it into something they find more palatable.This is not insult. This is the reality of their religion.

Why is it "obvious" to you that geocentrism is a moral error ?

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I was saying that Ringo considered it obvious.

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No, you didn't. You rhetorically asked what sort of error geocentrism would be and answered that it was "obviously" a moral error. In short it seems to me that you were arguing that Ringo had to see it as a moral eror BECAUSE it was "obvious" - to you. I certainly see nothing in Ringo's posts to suggest that he sees geocentrism as a moral error.

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I'm saying he called it an error. What other sort of error could it be than a moral error?

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An error of fact, of course. I really don't see how it could be anything else. But by asking that question you've confirmed that it IS your idea that it's a moral error.

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He links it with slavery

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Because both are cases where majority opinion has changed. Thus showing that majority opinion is not a reliable guide to truth of any sort.

Faith certainly took it as referring to astronomy - and Ringo didn't correct her interpretation of his words. And what sense of geocentrism represens a moral error sufficient that it should be of special significance, compared with the well-known example of Galileo ?