Re: Observe the trend

On Thu, 20 Mar 2025 02:43:54 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jpil69@gmail.com>:

On Wed, 19 Mar 2025 16:38:00 -0700, Bob Casanova <nospam@buzz.off>
wrote:
>

If the literal meaning of "literal" is irrelevant, the
phrase has no meaning and the accepted definition of the
word itself might as well be "a word means whatever I want
it to mean, no more, no less" a la Humpty Dumpty. It's
always been my understanding that agreement regarding
meaning is important for communication, but perhaps I was
mistaken.

>
>
As this very topic shows, different people use "literal" to mean very
different things, which is the case with almost all words.  That other
people accept and use different meanings than you do doesn't make
their meanings incorrect or inconsistent, or your meaning the only
correct one.  I know you know this.
>

Of course. But if literally (sorry...) *any* meaning applies
and is equally valid, all meaning is lost. I tend to go with
the current dictionary definition as "correct", while
acknowledging that it changes over time, and that others may
use the word differently (the example I noted were
"literally Hitler" and "I literally died", both of which are
false usage according to the OED definition). I simply don't
accept a definition by which "literal" and "figurative" are
synonymous.

>
More to the point, that isn't even my point, which you continue to
conveniently ignore, as usual.  WRT the original context, and once
again, my point remains: the meaning of "literal", whatever it may be,
doesn't sensibly apply to any interpretations of Genesis texts, any
more than does the meaning of "orange".
>

I didn't "conveniently ignore" it; it simply had no bearing
on the point I was trying to convey.

And "as usual" was uncalled for, since I don't ignore points
which are relevant to my comments.

>

--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
 the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov