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During their brief appearances, for instance, Vatican Latinist Reginald Foster and astronomer George Coyne, who are both Roman Catholic priests, make it clear that contemporary Catholic theology resists literal readings of Scripture and is not in the least anti-scientific. You can find liberal Christians who will argue that the resurrection of Jesus was somewhere between a con game and a dream sequence, and numerous Jews who treat the Torah as legendary material and God as a distant hypothesis.
Does it even count as lipstick on a pig when they think the pig is merely a metaphor? These biblical scholars are a lot like post-modernist literature reviewers; they can feed you almost any line they want in their interpretation. They can tell you that even the (rare) straightforward declarative statement means something entirely different. It's political flim-flammery on top of a schizophrenic book written over (at least) hundreds of years.
Since these persons arguing about religious texts are called "academics", we interpret an aura of reasoned discourse about their discussions. There is nothing of the kind there; incestuous loops of logic abound.
