Not just Noah’s flood, but also verses that are used to counter LGBT or verses denoting that government is an institution of God (Romans 13:1). Slaveholders (who took many verses literally) used it to justify slavery.Fundamentalists could be wrong in taking the Bible too literally.
Could be. Yes. That is true of all literature and not unique to the Bible.
BTW, I'm guessing you must be thinking of events such as Noah's flood and the creation account among other things. Fundamentalists believe these events actually took place. So do I.
Perhaps the Bible is not meant to be taken literally.
Whether the topic is the Bible or another book, the correct interpretation of any work is the one that the author meant. If the author intended to speak literally, we take him or her literally. If the author intends to speak figuratively, then we understand the text to be figurative language. And it isn't that hard to tell.
I am guessing you are reacting to Biblical claims concerning Noah's flood, Jonah and the Whale, Balaam's donkey, and the Resurrection of Jesus among other disputed accounts. Is your concern that we take such accounts as literal? Well, such accounts were always taken literally until about the middle of the 19th century when empiricism came into vogue. Have you examined the validity of empiricism?
If I spoke in parables, why would you ever take what I say literally?
It does not follow that since Jesus occasionally spoke in parables he always spoke in parables. Jesus' parables follow a distinctive pattern and mode of expression. His parables are typically stories with an agricultural theme or an activity from everyday life. But contrary to popular belief, the purpose of the parables was NOT to teach wisdom or ethics. The purpose of the parables was to describe the kingdom of God.
They are not the ones who hold the ultimate authority in decided what the Bible means and doesn’t.
No one holds authority over what a Bible passage means. The Catholics believe they do, but that isn't true. Fortunately, the Bible has been translated into the common tongue so that anyone who wishes can read it for themselves. And it really isn't that hard to understand.
Don’t you think a fundamentalist is also born in sin and has biases? Who do fundamentalists think they are?
I agree that fundamentalists, like everyone else are born in sin and have biases. It doesn't follow, however, that intellectual ineptitude is necessarily a characteristic of being a sinner.
Fundamentalists are reacting to the intelligentsia who proposed that the miraculous events recorded in the Bible are mythical, legendary, allegorical stories intended to convey a moral lesson. Why? Because such events don't usually happen and can't be proven "scientifically." Fundamentalists don't agree that all truths are products of the scientific method. Human beings apprehend knowledge by other means.
We don’t know with absolute certainty what the author meant. Anything the ‘author meant’ is yet again, another interpretation or assumption. Like religions claiming exclusivity, there’s hundreds of Christian denominations claiming to ‘have it down’. Whose right? The Catholics? The Mormons? The LGBT pastors? They’ve all read the same Bible. How do we know who's twisting Scripture and who isn’t? What if everyone is twisting the Bible to some extent? Isn’t all of that up to God to decide in the end? That’s what I mean by Christians admitting they are God without admitting it.
It gets even more confusing when you bring God’s nature into question. Something that exists outside of space and time is the equivalent as something that doesn’t exist. To say that something exists outside of space and time is self-refuting. Space and time is where we observe, it is where we can make measurements.
Science has produced much more tangible results than religion ever has. Prayer is inconsistent..sometimes it ‘works’ and other times it doesn’t. Science relies upon repeatability and verifiability. I can’t think of any other reason to believe in God other than to cope with the fear of death.