Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:If you were to attend a math class and the professor just simply began a prolonged lecture on deep theoretical physics and quantum theory, what are the odds an average Joe like myself could understand it? Probably pretty low. What if the professor reduced his lecture down to very understandable terms and used, say, an animated YouTube video with imagery that was both relatable to me and this particular era of human history?
I take you to be suggesting a general defence that can be offered for any religious teachings that sound too primitive for a modern audience. The defence is to say that the original presentation of the teaching was primitive, because it was made for primitive times, but the real meaning of the teaching is not at all primitive.
It seems to me that this is the basic point of view that any educated modern person has to take, in order to follow any religion that began in pre-modern times. At least up to a point it works well. You can respect the old writings, and even accept them as true in significant ways, in much the same way that you can accept the partial truths of outmoded scientific theories, and respect their discoverers, even though you know the old theories were missing a lot.
If you're a religious person who takes this kind of view, a lot of enthusiastic critiques by non-believers are just kicking straw men—or even soap-bubble men. Why would anyone ever imagine that I believed
that? Unfortunately, though, there really still are plenty of enthusiastic defences of those very same soap-bubble men, earnestly made by fundamentalist believers for whom the Renaissance was something that happened to other people.
Being interested in religion but not in fundamentalism is kind of like being a fan of an obscure novel whose porn-film version is much better known. You keep having to explain yourself to anti-porn activists who have never even heard of the novel. And you keep meeting fans of the film.