The Bible was not meant to be literally interpreted.

Touche. - I will break down my opponents points, and respond to them, then post further arguement to support my claims. "However he fails to delineate where the literal ends and the metaphor, allegory, simile and irony begins and then flows back into the literal. Leaving interpretation of the proposed metaphor and allegory completely up to each individual. The results of which are a dilution of organized Christianity, which we can clearly see occurring today." =Some people feel that a literal translation is the most accurate. But this is often not the case. A literal translation frequently does not accurately transfer the meaning of the original to the target language. Some feel that if a translation is not literal, it is not faithful to the original. But this is also not true. Some people feel that any translation less than literal means inserting the translator's own opinions about the meaning of the original. But this is not true either. A translator does not make up the meaning of the original. He discovers it through commonsense study of the language patterns of the original text. The translator understands, as does anyone who has learned more than one language, that every language expresses its ideas in different ways. The translator understands that much of what we say in any language is figurative, that is, non-literal. If we translate figurative language literally, we have not preserved the true meaning of the original. Some people feel that we should translate literally, then use footnotes or a commentary or a trained person alongside the translation, to explain what the real meaning is behind the literalisms of the translation. But this is not true translation, since true translation allows the user of the translation to understand the original meaning, just as the users of the original text did. We are not talking here about understanding everything possible in the original or translation, such as concepts which are difficult to understand, regardless of how they are expressed. We are only talking about commonsense, standard meaning understood in our normal spoken and written communication. - "However the existence of over 20,000 Christian denominations, filled with Christians, honestly seeking the will of God, and completely disagreeing about that will is damning to the existence of a discerning spirit, perhaps it was just allegory?" =I believe so. - "Unfortunately it also creates a completely subjective interpretation of scripture that results in widely varying doctrines. This is a terrible problem for Christianity, because of its claims of a single God with perfect will." =May I remind you of some of the characteristics of God, outlined within The Bible. God is a spirit. God is changeless. God is all powerful. God is all knowing. God is everywhere. Got is eternal. God is holy. God is righteous. God is love. God is truth. God is wisdom. Not that it has anything to do with this, but I would like to remind you that love, truth, and wisdom are completely subjective hypothetical constructs. - "Is God's will purely subjective? If so, Where is God's omniscience? Is God only a human expression of the unknown?" =I believe so. - "If not, how does an allegorical view of scripture support that belief?" =It doesn't. - "You and I both agree that incorrect evaluation and interpretation of the scripture is not beneficial for humanity, however I argue that the utility of a non literal approach to scripture leads to increased subjectivity thus a dramatic increase in bad theology and incorrect doctrine as seen by the dramatic increase in denominations and more recently the non-denominational approach which is leading to secularism, and ultimately Atheism." =True, a non-literal approach has led to hundreds of versions of scripture, across many different languages. Let me throw out an example of how ideas can be lost in translation. In Spanish, if I tell someone that I'm going for a walk I say "Voy a dar un paseo." Correct translation in English of this Spanish is "I'm going for a walk." The literal translation is "I'm going to give a pass." The literal translation is simply a matching of the Spanish words to the English words. Such matching is not true translation. It is a form of transliteration, at the word level. If an English speaker hears this literal translation he can justifiably assume that the Spanish speaker is going to hand out a pass to some event, or he might assume that the Spanish speaker is a quarterback who is telling his teammates in the huddle that he is about to throw a pass (we do try to make sense of utterances like this, thinking that maybe the speaker didn't use quite the right words but that this is what he meant). "I'm going to give a pass" is not, of course, the true meaning of the Spanish utterance. The literal translation is not accurate translation. It is only accurate translation of the individual words, not of what the words mean as they relate to each other. Ultimately, the common misunderstanding that literal translation is the best seems to come from a focus upon individual words, rather than how the individual words relate to each other. - Just because someone writes words, it doesn't mean they should be literally interpreted. Intuitively, we all actually understand that meaning is more than just the meaning of individual words. For instance, we can understand all the words of the following utterance. John forgot office at his home key We can even make some sense out of this utterance. But we don't accurately understand what this utterance means until we hear the words in their original order: John forgot his office key at home. Meaning is composed of the meanings of words, including any non-literal meanings of those words, as they relate to each other, within a social context. Meaning is not simply the meaning of individual words, strung together one after the other. We need to apply this truthful, commonsense understanding about meaning, words, and how words relate to each other to our thinking about Bible translation. There are a number of similar examples in the Bible, where a literal translation does not tell the users of the translation what the original meant, so the literal translation is not accurate, however sincere its translators were. Sincerity, even in the cause of devotion to God and His Word, does not guarantee that we will be as accurate, that is, as close to the truth as we should be. And our goal in dealing with God's Word should always be truth-telling, accuracy to God's truth. - A priority question each person must ask of anything in any text is "What does it mean?" A priority question each person must ask of anything in any translation is "Does this mean the same as what the original means?" If the answer is no, then we need to revise the translation until its meaning is faithful, true, accurate to the meaning of the original. This revision is needed even if the translation is literal. If it is literal but doesn't preserve the meaning of the original, then that literal translation must be revised until it does. Being literal must never be the highest priority of normal translation. Having faithful preservation of meaning is the highest goal. - Thus, I do not believe The Bible was meant to be literally interpreted, and I do not believe that a literal interpretation is possible if we wish to uphold the message that "God" meant to share.