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JoshuaZ comments on A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies - Less Wrong
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I think the claim isn't quite "it has a mistake, therefore it can't be meant to be interpreted at face value" but "it has a really glaringly obvious mistake, therefore it can't be meant to be interpreted at face value".
That's a lot more sensible, and using this principle doesn't make you incapable of recognizing mistakes. It does make you incapable of recognizing when the people who put together your sacred text did something incredibly stupid, but maybe that's OK.
Except that I think another reasonable interpretation is: whoever edited the text into a form that contains both stories did notice that they are inconsistent, didn't imagine that somehow they are both simultaneously correct, but did intend them to be taken at face value -- the implicit thinking being something like "obviously at least one of these is wrong somewhere, but both of them are here in our tradition; probably one is right and the other wrong; I'll preserve them both, so that at least the truth is in here somewhere".
If this sort of thing is possible -- and I think it's very plausible -- then the inference from "glaring inconsistency" to "intended metaphorically or something like that" no longer works. On the other hand, in that case you at least have some precedent for it being OK not to assume that everything in the text is literally correct.
There's also the problem of people taking things meant to be metaphorical as literal, simply because, well, it's right there, right?
For example (just ran into this today):
This is pretty clearly an illustration. "Like this tree, you'd better actually give results, not just give the appearance of being moral". (In fact, I believe Jesus uses this exact illustration in a sermon later.)
And yet, I saw this on a list of "God's Temper Tantrums that Christians Never Mention", presumably interpreted as "Jesus zapped a tree because it annoyed him."
Ooh, I hadn't thought of that.
This is one of the standard scholarly explanations May I suggest this shows that you should maybe read more on this subject?
Yup, definitely. Interested amateur here.