The flowchart is among the greatest tools for facilitating human understanding of an issue, second perhaps only to the limerick. While exploring the arguments people are making (apparently with a straight face) about how other people entering into marriages with members of the same sex somehow infringes on their rights (to live in a society in which they never have to think about two dudes kissing, I guess), I came across several helpful flowcharts that I am reproducing here in the fun and happy spirit of Fair Use.
The first, dealing with the purportedly sinful nature of homosexuality, was posted by Marc Barnes to the Bad Catholic blog on Patheos:
He goes into some great detail about exactly why all of these arguments (except the “icky” one) are wrong, and it’s all worth a read.
The second flowchart comes to us from James F. McGrath, who blogs at Exploring Our Matrix on Patheos. He addresses the question of whether a given Bible verse is intended to be taken literally or metaphorically:
He adds:
Terry Firma shared the above image. It helpfully illustrates what is really going on in fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Their view should never be referred to as “Biblical literalism” since it only insists on the Bible being literally true when it is desirable to do so, and not where it is “obviously” a metaphor, such as the dome over the Earth, or in its teaching about gluttony or giving up all your possessions. Calling the fundamentalist view “Biblical literalism” makes it seem as though they have a high ground of sorts, however dubious it might be. But it is not as though they are being consistent while others are not. Quite the contrary. Indeed, that fundamentalists have managed to convince so many people (including themselves!) that they are in fact “Biblical literalists” deserves to be acclaimed as one of the greatest PR exercises in modern history.
Claiming that something is just a metaphor is usually a trick pulled out when a religious argument dead-ends, when science overwhelms a religious claim, or when someone learns that they won’t actually be going to Salt Lake City. When it becomes more convenient to call it a metaphor, in other words.
