>
> On Mar 24, 2010, at 4:53 PM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> I would have liked a fourth option in the poll, between "inspired" and
>> fables, because to commit to "fables and legends" is the equivalent of
>> calling it worthless and meaningless (or pernicious and something like
>> evil).
>>
>
> Hmm well I'm not sure I buy this. Fables and legends are far from
> meaningless and/or worthless - fictions can tell us a lot about human life.
> But I wouldn't want to grant the fables and legends of the bible any special
> status somehow "above" fictions, in the sense that they're closer to
> divinely inspired than anything that Melville or Borges came up with.
>
>
Absolutely. I don't disagree with a word of this. That's the ambiguity of
"inspired" and "fables." What I'm thinking about is the ways that the
options will be understood by respondents, and basically the three options
present themselves (in my reading) as: (1) fact (2) more or less true, and
(3) fiction. in that case both 2 and 3 might draw respondents who mean very
different things from each other. When you say "fables and legends," you're
going to get both the people who see it the way you're talking about it, and
those who'd burn it if they could. Likewise, you might get people choosing
"inspired" who are in many ways actually closer to "fables," but they don't
want to be saying it's worthless. That's all I'm saying.
Maybe that's actually the best thing to ask: is the Bible (1) the only thing really worth reading, (2) worth reading, along with a lot of other stuff, ymmv, (3) meh, and (4) can we burn it?
Or maybe we could say something like, (1) fact, (2) some stuff worth thinking about, (3) total bullshit.
Per the poll on Obama, go for some actual understanding of what people think, and don't get stuck in the mud of technical terminologies or overdetermined discourses like "literal," "actual word of god," "'inspired' word of god" (whatever that means), and so on.