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I meant that nobody takes the bible literally either. Or at least, very few people. My grandfather believed literally every word of the bible, he would argue endlessly about evidence for the dinosaurs co-existing with jesus, finding the wreckage of the Ark, which day God rested after creating the heavens and Earth, etc. But that seems to be a rare breed of christian these days. I've even heard of christians who believe in evolution and the big bang. If the bible can be stretched that far, so can pagan traditions to make them more compatible with modernism.
But that is actually an important distinction, between 'nobody (well basically nobody)' and 'nobody at all (but some people are trying to revive it)'. The meme of biblical literalism is still alive organically.
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The mainstream interpretation of Genesis in the Catholic church (i.e. the majority of Christians) is that the creation story is meant to be mythical, written for an audience of the ancient world in terms that would be familiar to them. In that interpretation the point of the story is to educate people that a single all-powerful god created the world, not a pantheon or other views that would've been prevalent at the time. This isn't exactly a fringe position you're talking about here, nor would most people (except those like your grandfather) consider it to be a stretch. The Church has known for a long time (going back to the first millennium AD) that the purpose of the Bible isn't to be a science textbook, and that trying to find those answers in the Bible would just make Christians fools.
The RCC still condemns polygenic origin of man(but allows deep time, the big bang, evolution of lower animals) and requires the belief in a literal fall of man by eating literal fruit in a literal garden of Eden. Not the same position as the creation museum in Tennessee but, like the Q source(dogmatically condemned) not in total accord with the academy either.
No, this is not required. A single original couple, committing a specific original sin, is what is required. Can you link to where you got the requirement for a literal fruit from? Edit: this article quotes from the authoritative documents to specify the minimum required belief.
I also would like your source on Q being infallibly condemned. Typically speaking the Church doesn't take sides in academic debates like that. Especially since the most obvious explanation of Q is that it is the original Aramaic notes of Matthew, as hinted to by Papias.
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Wait, where was Q condemned? What are the range of views that people take on the synoptic problem, then? Do people tend to hold to Matthaean priority, instead of the more common Marcan priority?
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According to Pew, among American Christians in 2022 25% believed that the Bible is the "actual word of God, to be taken literally" and 58% believed that it was "inspired by God, not all to be taken literally".
They've also found that 20% of Christians believe that humans did not evolve, while 61% believe humans evolved under the direct guidance and intervention of God. 85% of Christians believe in Heaven, 72% believe in Hell, 95% believe in souls, and 97% believe God exists.
It seems to me that quite a few people take the Bible literally, and even more take it seriously, at least in terms of what they believe.
I still know some people like this, and was this way for most of my life (I am not this way any more but still remember what it was like).
To that end, it's at least an argument for a church set up in such a way that it actually can have good answers to the Genesis question simply to scratch that gnostic itch (that is, I feel, the reason why some Christians really do want/have a psychological need for the creation story to be overly? literal). Then again, a structure that can answer that question can also get it wrong.
Giving it up also pattern-matches to the standard slippery slope that, everyone, and Christians since they've been on the losing end of the fight for freedom of religion for the last 50 years are more sensitive to it, intuitively understands- and while the removal of Jesus (and some strains of Christianity do indeed have a metaphorical Jesus, though that is a contradiction in terms) is explicitly addressed in one of the New Testament books the notion of "giving up on position X" is one that's going to pattern match as a descent into "giving up on historical Jesus" (literally the foundation of the religion, pointless without Him). Most of the Pentateuch is on relatively shaky historical ground, and a good chunk of the most dramatic, and miracles that remain in the collective consciousness, come from there- giving them up into metaphor doesn't really help their explanatory power. (I'm honestly not sure how the Jews handle it.)
Oh well, at least we can all just compare ourselves to AI models converging or diverging from Christ as everyone becomes more familiar with those topics, so now we'll get to have the fight over Calvinism if and when that idea starts occurring to the mainstream.
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