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Author | Topic: Why read the Bible literally? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Restoring the posts original content:
Here's the post.
Of course it isn’t how YOU think you think, that is where the cognitive dissonance comes in. The thing is, everything I said in the post is completely accurate. If you knew this is how you are living your life then it wouldn’t be cognitive dissonance, and if it wasn’t for cognitive dissonance you would not be a literalist, pure and simple fact. No, nobody can fail to be aware of the "cognitive dissonance." The dissonance doesn't make me a literalist, my being a literalist is how I resolve the dissonance. You resolved it yourself in favor of science. I resolve it in favor of God. So all your carrying on here is nothing but your insisting that you are right and I'm wrong.
We KNOW the scripture is true and EVERYTHING proceeds from that absolute knowledge. But you don’t KNOW this, you THINK it is, you BELIEVE it is, and the reasons why you think it is because you have absorbed so much pro materials that you are unable to open your mind up to the possibility of accepting anything that contradicts your view of the Bible. I started OUT accepting a ton of stuff that contradicts my current understanding of the Bible. I GREW into my understanding of the Bible. You are merely imposing your own prejudice on me. Your faith was too weak to survive your confrontation with science, mine is solid, perhaps because I believed all that stuff before I came to belief.
Answer this simple question: What could I, or anyone else, show to you that would disprove something in the Bible? Nothing whatever. You have NO idea all the ways the Bible has proved itself to me. You ask for paltry little evidences, but the proofs of the Bible are so beyond what I can tell you and you can imagine that your question is ridiculous. Someone whose faith is not very well grounded, who hasn't read as much as I have, heard so many different kinds of preaching on it, who hasn't lived its truths, may have a very low threshold for having his faith disproved. That was apparently the case for you and others here. It's not WHAT would disprove something in the Bible that persuades, it's about how much you have actually experienced its reality and know it's the word of God and are therefore willing (or unwilling) to stick it out through all the challenges you can't answer.
But, the fact is, for you to KNOW that the Bible is 100% accurate you would be required to be very well educated in a whole range of disciplines, from theology through to Syro-Palestinian archaeology, and no one, not even you has mastered all the subjects related to studying the Bible. All those methods are nice to have WITH faith, but they are not at all required for knowing the truth of God's word. No, all I need is to trust God and take His word the way a small child would take his own earthly father's word, as the absolute truth. From that point God teaches His children more and more from His word. If you balk at it, you can't take anything in, end of teaching.
Another fact of the matter is that you will never learn even the basics of any of these subjects because to learn the basics requires someone to be open minded and to look at the evidence before they come to a conclusion. You will never grasp even the basics of, let’s say Syro-Palestinian archaeology for one simple fact, and it isn’t because you are not capable, it is because you will not study objectively, you will not read a wide range of materials. No one can grasp the basics of anything if they don’t look at the pros and cons during their introduction to a particular subject. Just one insult after another.
You may believe that you have looked at arguments against your stance, but you really haven’t looked at that many because you leave far too many questions unanswered and show in certain posts that you don’t know the basics of a particular subject, yet you still declare that the experts are wrong because what they say contradicts the Bible! That is correct. However, I've shown a lot more knowledge than you will admit to. But it's irrelevant. The Bible is not a man-made writing and as long as you labor under that delusion you will always be looking for God in all the wrong places. Except apparently you stopped looking long ago and now content yourself with endlessly proving to yourself that you made the right choice and viciously insulting those who made the opposite choice.
It is pure unadulterated ignorance Faith for you to turn around and dismiss someone’s life work, say someone like William Albright, a conservative Christian scholar who devoted so much of his life to excavating the Near east and trying his best to fit the Bible into an historical context, is completely and utterly wrong simply because you say so! Oh dear, I've always appreciated Dr. Albright's work. What did I disagree with of his? I don't really need to know however. No human being can stand against God. If he contradicts GOd's word, he's simply wrong.
You have not got a clue about archaeology in the near east, yet the ‘Father of Biblical Archaeology’ was wrong about the date of the destruction of Jericho, or he was wrong about the date of Ai, or Lachish. But no, this guy has got to be wrong because you can click a mouse button and find a website written by some nutball who thinks he has refuted all the archaeological findings at Jericho in the last 140 years! I'm sorry, I do not recall discussing Ai, Lachish or Jericho at all.
You should be ashamed of yourself, insulting the dedication and lifetime works of thousands of academics who have devoted their lives to clarifying the historical and social world of the Bible and to make matters worse MOST of these archaeologists were CHRISTIANS! Sorry, if it contradicts God there's nothing more to say. You should be ashamed of yourself insulting God as you do over and over and over again. Also, if you are going to accuse me of such perfidy your own conscience should require you to inform me of the specifics of exactly what I'm being accused. I haven't discussed archaeology here.
Albright was a conservative Christian, as was George Wright, Callaway is a Christian, Dever was a Christian, Glueck was a rabbi, the list goes on and on. Why don’t you give these people some credit, why don’t you read some of their works, why do you dishonour their work by so easily dismissing their work without having a fraction of the knowledge or dedication that these people had? Now, I am not a lover of William Albright, the man was a bigot and a racist, but I have to take my hat off to him when I realise just how much work he did in advancing the knowledge of the ancient near east. But what you are doing is basically the same as a ten year old kid going up to someone like Bill Dever and saying Oi Bill, your claim that there was no unified military conquest of Canaan is wrong. You are ranting wildly and I do not recognize one word of this diatribe against me. I have read discussions of Albright's work I have appreciated very much and you are out of bounds, WAY out of bounds. However, if he disagrees with God, which apparently is what you are saying, sorry, God wins.
You have made your mind up that the Bible is error free, despite the FACT that hundreds of thousands of CHRISTIAN scholars have shown exactly where there are errors in it. I have not used the term "error free" and have not even discussed the concept of errors as such. You are making stuff up.
You cannot claim that the Bible is error free, you can claim that you BELIEVE it is, but to make an absolute statement like you have would require you to look objectively at the texts, and you are incapable of doing so. Not at all, it requires me to believe God and all His faithful preachers over the centuries. If science contradicts it, too bad for science. You lack a solid ground for your position so you have to collect a million facts to make a judgment. The Bible is a solid ground and it judges the million facts.
This is not a matter of any of its being endangered, it CAN'T be endangered.
Faith, you are over 200 years behind the times, ' the Bible died in the 18th century. It doesn’t mean that it is a worthless collection of texts, it isn’t, but it certainly isn’t a perfect collection of texts when you take these texts out of their original context. The authors were not interested in recording accurate history, it was only in the 6th century BCE that anything resembling a critical history was being written by Hecataeus. The Bible is a minority report, it was written for specific purposes and accuracy of information was not high on the agenda. Yes, people do get persuaded away from it by scientific claims, but it is THEY whose faith is weak, they lack faith in God's word,
BINGO! And here we have the confirmation. Faith worships her bible before she worships Jesus the Christ. Absolutely amazing! You continually put the Bible before Jesus, it is clear that you NEED an inerrant text because if there is one error in it then that opens up the possibility of more errors, and one of these errors might just be the resurrection of Jesus. I cannot imagine a weaker faith in God than you have. Well I can. Yours. You can't put the Bible before Jesus. That is one of the most idiotic ideas anybody pushes around here. Jesus is ONLY knwon through the Bible. YOu CANNOT know Him otherwise and those who think they do are sadly deluded.
and it's very sad -- some just fold up in the face of the claims of science,
Well, Faith, in the real world, not the fairytale land that you live in, people normally side with the strongest evidence. Your rudeness is sometimes breathtaking. You have no idea who I am or what kind of life I've had but you are willing to judge me anyway -- no respect for another point of view, no benefit of the doubt is there? However, that is correct, people do normally side with the strongest evidence, but I have evidence you know not of. AND Jesus explicitly said NOT to believe in what the world teaches, AND He explicitly taught that those who require evidence have the inferior perspective to those who have faith based on the testimony of His disciples.
For example, we know for a fact that people don’t live for 969 years, and the remains of thousands of excavated tombs and graves confirm that even a few thousand years ago humans were lucky to live for fifty years, then how can you blame Christians for concluding that Methuselah didn’t live for 969 years. No doubt you will have some crazy excuse for that one, let me see, is it because genes were purer then, or was there a different atmosphere then, or some other equally ridiculous excuse, I am sure there will be something. But, you see, that is all that you require, any straw to grasp on to at all is fine for you, it’ll do nicely, it doesn’t even matter if it has any support or that it even sounds plausible! Look at the genealogies. There is a gradual overall decrease in the life span from over 900 down to our present "threescore and ten" over the first couple of millennia from Adam. Methuselah is simply the longest-lived in that reported lineage of men who all lived hundreds of years. It is all of a piece with the Fall, showing the accumulation of sin and its effects over the centuries. It has implications for the theory of evolution but if you insist that things now are the way they always were instead of being willing to learn from God's revelation you will never get it. And by the way, it is the RIGHTEOUS lineage from Adam through Seth that is reported. How long the life span was for the line of Cain is unknown. There is no reason to assume that ALL lived such long lives. The righteous Abraham and the righteous Job lived well over a hundred years, but we can't assume that the most idolatrous peoples maintained such a record. Death is the consequence of sin. The more death the more sin. The more sin the more death.
That was the point of Jesus' saying to Thomas that those who didn't need to see him were blessed. It's believing the testimony and NOT requiring empirical proof that's true faith.
But Faith, you spend your whole life LOOKING for empirical proof of the Bible events! I do? Where are you getting that piece of nonsense? I'm looking for ways to present the Bible's claims, perhaps, and I'm looking for ways to show the problem with evolution. Otherwise I'm not the slightest bit interested in empirical proof of the Bible. Such arguments BORE ME TO TEARS as a matter of fact. I usually try to avoid them and only get sucked in when I think I have something to say on a particular point. But I'm trying to learn to resist that temptation too, because that kind of argument is tedious and fruitless.
Why else do you post so much unsupported crap in response to criticisms? Because the basis of my position does not need that kind of support and the incessant demands for it here are tediously irrelevant and I often regret getting into that morass. I will engage on that level occasionally but mostly I really can't stand that kind of argument.
When faced with a problem such as the one I mentioned abut Jericho why don’t you just say that you have faith that God’s word is accurate and you don’t need evidence. I don't remember one thing about Jericho. Perhaps I just skipped it because I'm impatient with your lengthy harangues, but if I skipped it then you haven't the slightest idea of how I'd respond to it if I cared. I'm tired of your insults. I have no idea what you said in the rest of this post. I simply do not care. If you would like to try to be civil and boil down your concerns to something clear and manageable perhaps I will answer. Faith's replacement text when she deleted the orginal content: *******CENSORED POST*******Sorry Nosy. You treat me this way, this post is outa here. I'm sure I'll awaken tomorrow to find myself banned for good or at least some period of time. Incredible what goes on here in the name of Reason. This message has been edited by Faith, 06-21-2005 03:28 AM This message has been edited by Admin, 06-21-2005 09:55 AM
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AdminNosy Administrator Posts: 4754 From: Vancouver, BC, Canada Joined: |
It is apparent that Faith will not be able to participate in any evidence based threads. This thread is not in that category so she may continue here.
Other admins may override later but I am suspending indefinitly Faiths access to the evidence based threads.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
My my, somehow you can suspend a person from evidence-based threads for not following the evidence rules on a non-evidence-based thread? You must think you're psychic or something.
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Brian Member (Idle past 4985 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
I think when I asked you:
What could I, or anyone else, show to you that would disprove something in the Bible? When you replied (which you have now removed): Nothing whatever. This is just one example from your deleted post that informs admins that there is no point in you entering into a discussion that requires that evidence be produced to support you arguments. A thread, for example, like the census one that Ramoss and Paulk are involved in, requires historical evidence to back up positions, you have more or less stated here that it wouldn't matter what Ramoss or Paul posted you simply wouldnt even consider their arguments. Do you think it is fair that someone could spend a lot of time on a post to you, gathering sources, constructing arguments, using up their valuable time, only to discover that there is nothing that you will accept as evidence against the Bible anyway? You have stated your ultimate position regarding evidence, it is immaterial where you state it because your stance will be the same regardless of which thread you are on. I wish I had copied and pasted your reply into Word as I normally do with posts here, because some of your remarks were priceless. A great example, and some great insight into the tortured mind of a fundy. I was going to nominate it for POTM as well!! Finally, for your information, science did not lead me away from my Christian faith. Brian.
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LinearAq Member (Idle past 4702 days) Posts: 598 From: Pocomoke City, MD Joined: |
Faith writes: I know it when I see it. Sorry, I might be able to establish some clearer criteria if I were willing to spend hours assembling all the examples, but I'm not. Could you, perhaps, provide the names of some reference material that might provide this criteria? BTW: It was studying the Bible, in order to better understand what God wanted for my life, that took me away from literalism. The deeper I got into my studies the more questions it raised until I could not reconcile the conflicts and maintain the literal interpretation.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
It was a factual statement, in context, and absolutely correct for a Bible-believer, and to say it on a BIBLE STUDY thread OUGHT to be acceptable here.
God requires my faithfulness to HIM, not to YOUR rules and that is what I was affirming. As it is, people keep demanding SCIENTIFIC evidence here no matter how carefully one explains that it is WRONG ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE to need to prove anything in the Bible SCIENTIFICALLY, which has been the substance of much of my argument with you in this thread. I live by faith not empirical evidence. I thought the Religion forums were supposed to be a SAFE ZONE for NONEMPIRICAL ARGUMENTS. My mistake. One gets bullied on the same grounds here as on a Science thread. You MAY NOT demand that I follow YOUR rules about MY beliefs on a thread in the section set apart for us believers. In THIS part of the Forum you should play by BELIEVER'S RULES, and RESPECT my statement of fidelity to God. In fact I should have the right to suspend YOU over here for your utter incivility, and have my own POTM thread where I ridicule you along with some others. AND YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY WRONG: The fact that my messages follow MY rules in THIS forum says NOTHING WHATEVER about my willingness to follow the rules for evidence in Science fora. I will NOT submit to being the butt of ridicule at the POTM thread. Never mind about your outrageous abusiveness, I have learned in Wonderland to go with the utterly irrational system, not make waves, not complain, let the powers-that-be act as irrationally as they like, but I must protest having my posts ridiculed on a POTM thread.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1471 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
BTW: It was studying the Bible, in order to better understand what God wanted for my life, that took me away from literalism. The deeper I got into my studies the more questions it raised until I could not reconcile the conflicts and maintain the literal interpretation. You allowed yourself to study it with a critical eye. The Bible MUST be read in faith. For heaven's sake, GOD IS GOD, doesn't anybody know WHO GOD IS? You DON'T subject God to interrogation and criticism. God is to be revered and trusted and contradictions are to be put down to your own inability to understand, not His error. In humility ask Him to show what you don't get. There is no other way to approach God and His word. {EDIT: THere are good conservative commentaries to help with the Bible. Nobody can read the Bible cold. You have to have help. There are commentaries at Blue Letter Bible dot org and I'm sure there are other online commentaries.} Reference material for my own attempts to spell out how I know the difference between parable or metaphor and historical writing? Of course not, I was trying to spell out MY OWN criteria. I knocked myself out on this thread giving what I could come up with of whatever criteria guide me. There's a lot on the thread, different criteria in different posts unfortunately as they came up in context. If I weren't upset at what Brian and Nosy are doing to me I might try to collect it all in one place. It probably still wouldn't satisfy anybody but it would be a start. All together I think what I've given should go far. But as I just said, the Bible must be read in faith, submitting to it and not making it submit to you. Everything depends upon that, and no criteria matter if you are of the mental set to deconstruct it, trusting your own mind rather than submitting to God. This message has been edited by Faith, 06-21-2005 07:10 AM This message has been edited by Faith, 06-21-2005 07:19 AM This message has been edited by Faith, 06-21-2005 07:20 AM
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1493 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
It reads like straight factual narrative from beginning to end. No, Faith, it doesn't. Just like a nursery rhyme doesn't read like "factual narrative", Genesis doesn't either. The recurring poetical devices are characteristic of mythological poetry, not "straight factual narrative."
Real events were remembered and passed down through poetic forms in oral traditions What real events? Only mythology has been passed down this way.
Bible exegetes who take it all literally take numbers into account. Here's one: C'mon, Faith. Numerology is the province of mythology, not "straight factual reporting." What other straight factual narratives have you ever read that supported that level of numerologic legerdemain? Your quote supports my contention, not your own. What did you expect - Genesis to have a big "NOT TRUE!" sticker on the front? The book is beating you over the head with clear indications that it's mythology, and your perverted intellect takes that as evidence that it must be factual.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1493 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
You DON'T subject God to interrogation and criticism. God is to be revered and trusted and contradictions are to be put down to your own inability to understand, not His error. Here's the power of "faith", right here. It's the scalpel that performs the lobotomy.
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nator Member (Idle past 2196 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: So, the Universe that God made is full of lies? Is there nothing true about God in the Earth that he made? quote: But you didn't answer the question. Is there nothing true about God in the Earth that he made? Like Ned said, we are not talking about perfect knowledge, we are talking about ANY knowledge, or perhaps GOOD ENOUGH or USEFUL knowledge. What would be a good way to tell if we understood some natural phenomena correctly without referencing the Bible?
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AdminNosy Administrator Posts: 4754 From: Vancouver, BC, Canada Joined: |
You get your wish. You're suspended indefinitly for being a snotty child.
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LinearAq Member (Idle past 4702 days) Posts: 598 From: Pocomoke City, MD Joined: |
Faith,
It appears that you have been suspended for an indefinite (not permanent!!) period of time. Despite our butting heads on occasion (or more), I hope to see you here again. Even though the bible study forum does not require you to follow the rules of evidence per se, it is still a debate forum. One would think that you should at least provide support for your position, rather than just state what you believe and tell everyone "that's that". What do you do when you are in conflict with someone from your church about an issue of your faith? Do you ask them to provide any support for their position or is it just a free-for-all-any-belief-goes type of church? You say the this part of the forum should play by "BELIEVER'S RULES" and that "my messages follow MY rules". Are we to assume that those two sets of rules are one and the same? Would other believers agree that your rules are the same as the encompassing "BELIEVER'S RULES"?Can you state those rules? I agree with your statement about not wanting to be a joke on the POTM.
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Admin Director Posts: 13035 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.0 |
Hi Faith,
By editing out the content of your message you've made it impossible for me to form my own opinion. AdminNosy prefers an indefinite suspension, and with the evidence now gone I have nothing on which to base an argument for some other course of action. But looking at this another way, you somehow manage to become a headache for moderators once every couple weeks or so, and this pattern seems to be persistent rather than moderating with time. So I'm going to endorse AdminNosy's decision to make your suspension permanent.
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LinearAq Member (Idle past 4702 days) Posts: 598 From: Pocomoke City, MD Joined: |
Faith writes: You allowed yourself to study it with a critical eye. The Bible MUST be read in faith. For heaven's sake, GOD IS GOD, doesn't anybody know WHO GOD IS? You DON'T subject God to interrogation and criticism. God is to be revered and trusted and contradictions are to be put down to your own inability to understand, not His error. In humility ask Him to show what you don't get. There is no other way to approach God and His word. In order to understand I must believe already? First, a God that cannot stand up to a little interrogation doesn't seem fit enough to remain in his position. Second, I spent much time in prayer before and after studying. Despite that, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit did not seem to think it worthwhile to help me resolve my confusion. One thing I really couldn't understand was two different denominations that claim to be literalists having completely opposing views on particular spiritual practices. After more than two years of studying, reading commentaries and asking for enlightenment, I figured that God wanted me to draw my own conclusions. I walked away from literalism. Hope that helps explain my position a little. Again, sorry you got suspended. However, it does seem like you allow the comments of others to get to you a little too much. Your enemy rarely considers himself evil. Your knowledge of this can help you construct a peaceful solution to your conflict and, barring that, to kill him without emotion.---Lazarus Long
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cmanteuf Member (Idle past 6792 days) Posts: 92 From: Virginia, USA Joined: |
Faith, I'm not certain if you will ever read this. But I post anyway.
How is
Faith writes: I know it when I see it. any different than
Faith writes: It's like putting one's own judgment above God's (From Message 140) In 140 you were criticizing people who interpret certain parts of the Bible in a non-literal way, saying that they were putting their own judgement "above" Gods. And yet in this message you admit that indeed human judgement is absolutely essential to understanding the Bible even within your own tradition. You are saying that your judgement on what is to be interpreted literally and what is to be interpreted figuratively in the Bible is somehow superior to other's judgement on what is to be interpreted literally and what is to be interpreted figuratively, because people who disagree with you are putting themselves "above" God while your judgements are not. How do you know that He did not intend for the Bible to be interpreted in the manner that I do? How does your intepretation make you so certain of things that you disagree with the clear evidence that He left behind of how His creation works? Have a nice day, Chris
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