Another discussion board I frequent has a poster who is both a practicing astrophysicist and a Haredi Jew living in Israel.
He would accept Genesis 1-11 as metaphorical, except that he also insists using the word "Genesis" means you're talking about the horrible Christian Bible which is nothing at all like the Torah, because it's full of mistranslations by ill-meaning Greeks and completely ignores the Oral Torah, which makes it clear that duh, of course it's metaphorical.
Hmmmm, imagine what would happen if I ever talked to this guy...
You guys would probably agree on some stuff. Like disliking Jews who only call themselves Jewish as an ethnic thing.Well I shouldn't make assumptions but if a Haredi it's quite likely that he holds to the view that those born into Judaism have to follow all these rules and those who aren't don't, basically two standards (so of course Reform Jews are not "true" Jews), and I doubt would show much consideration to any Jews that opted to convert to something else, or really respect anyone's right to convert to something else than what they were born into. It's a common attitude amongst a lot in "the East" (you know in India, the Hindu extremist parties actually want to ban conversion), Islam and very conservative Jews. So if he does feel that way, the disagreement would be much worse.
Another discussion board I frequent has a poster who is both a practicing astrophysicist and a Haredi Jew living in Israel.
He would accept Genesis 1-11 as metaphorical, except that he also insists using the word "Genesis" means you're talking about the horrible Christian Bible which is nothing at all like the Torah, because it's full of mistranslations by ill-meaning Greeks and completely ignores the Oral Torah, which makes it clear that duh, of course it's metaphorical.
Hmmmm, imagine what would happen if I ever talked to this guy...
Another fun fact: he supports gay marriage now. Put that in your stereotype and smoke it. 
So how did he come to that? Also what does he think of intermarriage? Being opposed to religious intermarriage for any reason is a really sore spot to me for reasons that I've talked about before, it kind of hits home a little.
