This is why I oppose the unlimited expansion of the humanist “religion” deriving from the so-called Enlightenment: it naturally privileges a small section of people over the vast majority.

Its elites – self-proclaimed “Experts” – are taken to be more Enlightened than others, creating a hierarchical structure that is rigid and authoritarian in a way that reminds me of the Inquisition (though hopefully we are capable of learning from our past and will not let secular humanist priests get so out of control as Christian priests once did!!!)

The main point of intersection with Mr. Mangalwadi’s article seems to be the first sentence of the fourth paragraph, viz.:

Back in the old days, people actually believed their religions instead of just believing in them.

I have not reproduced the links in that sentence, but they may be worth following.

I am not affiliated with that site, nor even a registered commenter there.

Interpretation of Scripture always involves both the literal and allegorical senses. Obviously, in the case of the incarnation (and resurrection) the literal sense has to be true, i.e., it has to have happened, or all of Christianity is a waste of time, as St. Paul says.

But when speaking of God, the literal is necessarily metaphorical to some extent; there is simply no other way space-delimited, time-delimited mortals can talk about Him.

God did not become incarnate in the same way we do, and he did not rise from the dead in the same way as, for example, Lazarus or the man in II Kings 13:20.

So, if you learned the incarnation was not like the incarnation of a normal human, for example, that Christ did not have an appendix or developed a notochord, would you stop believing? But wouldn’t this mean, to some degree that the incarnation was “not quite true?” Or if you read that the resurrected Christ was able to pass through walls and be in multiple places at the same time, would you stop believing in the resurrection?

How different can the phenomenon be, when it occurs in the divine order, from its way of occurring in the human order, before we say the doctrine is “not true?” That’s the question the students seem to have thought they had been asked.

That is why evolution has turned into dogmatic “occultism” (Rodney Stark) where non-initiated intellectuals are not allowed to ask for evidence.

Er… nuh-uh. The problem is getting people to actually look at the evidence available.

I’m not surprised to see you come to the defense of simplified versions of history. The Christianity of the Enlightenment and the materialism of two thousand years of Christian thinking slip right past you because it’s not convenient for your tidy packages.