In a Facebook group I really love, one member has been doing a fantastic job of exposing the selective literalism of someone who rejects “theistic evolution” and any other form of accommodation to modern science, in the name of the literal truth of the Bible's creation stories.
The person in question accused the self-proclaimed literalist of accommodating to theistic heliocentrism.
He then went on to counter every claim that such language in the Bible is merely poetic, or reflects the perception from a human standpoint, quite admirably. The famous Joshua passage has Joshua address the sun, not the Earth. The Earth is said to be unmovable, firmly placed on pillars. And so on, through Biblical passage after Biblical passage. Using the same methods the other person had been using to insist on six literal days.
When I want to expose selective literalism, my favorite examples to turn to are the dome in Genesis 1, Paul's references to the heart as the center of human mental activity, and the lack of controversy over secular meteorology. Sometimes I will throw in Jesus' demand in Luke that anyone who wants to be his disciple give up all his or her possessions – just to make clear that the selectivity is not limited to descriptions of natural phenomena.
What Biblical material that those falsely called “literalists” ignore or treat metaphor do you find it most useful to draw attention to, to get them to notice their selective literalism?
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