symbolism
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Yet some take a further delirious step, illustrated by those ‘fundamentalists’ who claim, for instance, that the biblical account of Creation must be taken ‘literally’. This account occurs in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and is part of a wide family of creation myths. It is easy to demonstrate that the fundamentalist position is untenable. These accounts tell us of the Creation taking place over six days, with God taking a rest on the seventh.

But what is a ‘day’? It is the period during which the sun shines (as seen from a particular location on earth). Now according to the above creation narratives, the sun was created by God on the fourth day of creation. Therefore there cannot have been days before that. Accordingly this story cannot be read literally, but only symbolically. Quod erat demonstrandum.

[A very simple example of a symbolic interpretation: some Muslim apologists suggest that the Arabic word for ‘day’ in this context in the Qur‘an should be understood to mean ‘period’.]

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