{"id":2274,"date":"2011-10-14T12:31:53","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T16:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=2274"},"modified":"2011-10-14T12:31:53","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T16:31:53","slug":"pete-enns-on-literalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/10\/pete-enns-on-literalism.html","title":{"rendered":"Pete Enns on the Inconsistent Literalism of alleged &#8220;Biblical Literalists&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/peterenns\/2011\/10\/al-mohlers-theory-of-apparent-age-two-more-problems\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Pete Enns\u2019 blog has moved to Patheos, as regular readers of it will know. Take this opportunity to update your subscriptions if you haven\u2019t already, and check out his latest post, which points out the inconsistency of Al Mohler\u2019s \u201capparent age\u201d approach to dealing with issues at the intersection of Bible and science. Here\u2019s the conclusion<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If Mohler were consistent, a literal reading of Genesis 1 would be as intolerable to him as a literal reading of those places where the Bible speaks of a flat, stationary earth with a dome overhead.<\/p>\n<p>Mohler speaks of \u201capparent age\u201d with calm assurance. But it is a explanation that creates many more problems than it tries to solve. Those problems are rooted in Mohler\u2019s unexamined precommitment that Christians have no\u00a0choice\u00a0but to read Genesis literally.<\/p>\n<p>They do have a choice, and Christians have been making it for a very, very long time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/peterenns\/2011\/10\/al-mohlers-theory-of-apparent-age-two-more-problems\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Click through to read the rest and see how he gets there<\/a>. Many other parts of the post are just as insightful and every bit as quotable.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pete Enns\u2019 blog has moved to Patheos, as regular readers of it will know. Take this opportunity to update your subscriptions if you haven\u2019t already, and check out his latest post, which points out the inconsistency of Al Mohler\u2019s \u201capparent age\u201d approach to dealing with issues at the intersection of Bible and science. Here\u2019s the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,137,139,28,43,85,108],"tags":[461,1003,1835,3217,3675,3840,6618,6621,7313,8994,10886],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-religion","category-evolution-science","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-genesis-bible","category-inerrancy","category-science","category-young-earth-creationism","tag-al-mohler","tag-baptist","tag-christian","tag-evolution-science","tag-fundamentalism-religion","tag-genesis-bible","tag-literal","tag-literalism","tag-metaphor","tag-peter-enns","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pete Enns on the Inconsistent Literalism of alleged &quot;Biblical Literalists&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pete Enns&#039; blog has moved to Patheos, as regular readers of it will know. Take this opportunity to update your subscriptions if you haven&#039;t already, and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/10\/pete-enns-on-literalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pete Enns on the Inconsistent Literalism of alleged &quot;Biblical Literalists&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pete Enns&#039; blog has moved to Patheos, as regular readers of it will know. Take this opportunity to update your subscriptions if you haven&#039;t already, and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/10\/pete-enns-on-literalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-14T16:31:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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