Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

Why do I have to take a plain reading of the text? That is Faith's understanding of things where she makes the Bible her focus of worship whereas I make Jesus the focus. Jesus affirmed the OT and corrected it where necessary. The items He corrected was where it strayed from His message on things like an "eye for an eye". I'm confident that this is a similar case.

Doesn't it matter to you that what you believe in is true? It doesn't matter at all if you believe it's all made up. It only matters if you don't. Well in my example, the text says that Jesus would return within the time of the generation he was speaking to. He didn't. As the core Christian believe is all about that, it's pretty critical to the belief don't you think? So GDR has to start 'interpreting' and 'putting in context' in order to maintain his belief.

Woah! The belief is supposed to come from the book, you can't just reinterpret the book to suit the belief you'd prefer. Well you can, and you do, but it self-deception.

I'm having trouble understanding this, too. GDR and Phat reject inerrancy, but they do believe the Bible captures the general outline of events. But once they begin filling in the blanks and reconciling the contradictions there's nothing to place any limits on their speculations. Faith's inerrancy claim (combined with the everpresent "we can't explain that yet") actually becomes the lesser nonsense.--Percy

It isn’t that hard. Religion is mankind’s attempt at understanding deity. It isn’t all from a book or in the Bible’s case a library of books. Even the Bible talks about the world we live in as attesting to God.
My contention in arguing with Faith that Christianity can essentially focus on an inerrant Bible or the position that Jesus perfectly embodied the nature of God. Just because I reject an inerrant Bible does not mean that I reject it at all. What it does mean though is that I read it in order to understand what God would have it tell us. I think that even non-believers such as yourselves would agree that the event in question if read as plain text is 180 degrees out from the nature of God as we see in Jesus.Incidentally, this incident is recorded only the one time in Acts. It isn’t mentioned in the Gospels or anywhere else in the NT. You guys on the one hand are just like Faith. You cherry pick verses to make your point and then insist that the Bible has to be understood from an inerrancy POV, which incidentally is a largely, though not completely an American understanding of Scripture. The Bible is written by men who were inspired to write their observations about God, what He wanted and what He was doing, but it is written from their perspective and sometimes they get it right and sometimes wrong.One of my favourite Christian writers is the physicist John Polkinghorne who asks the question about how one can square the OT’s claim that God ordered the genocide of the Canaanites with Jesus’ command to love our enemy. He simply answered the question by saying you can’t. I’m asking the question of how can one square the idea of God killing Ananias with Jesus’ message of forgiveness, mercy and love, and the answer is obviously that you can’t. (No matter how hard Faith tries.)

Once you rule out innerancy you're in grievous difficulty because you have rejected the idea that the bible IS the word of god. So the innevitable happens - people make stuff up about it and you have the 38,000 formal interpretaions now representing Christian beliefs and who knows how many personal interpretations - probably as many as there are believers.My mother, for example, was a protestant who converted to Catholicism but refuses to believe in the devil because she was nice and thought everybody ought to be nice too. Quite sensible in my view. Sure, which is what GDR is doing inorder to suit his preferred belief. But that just means his belief is not based on the bible, it's based on his version of it. I'm not sure about lesser nonsense, it's stark staring bonkers; hopelessly irrational. But ir is at least honest. The only way a semi-rational person can stick with his/her beliefs in the face of a flat out contradiction is to invent his/her own 'truth' to suit his/her pre-existing personal beliefs. That's intellectually dishonest.

Yeh, that's rather our point. Yeh, that's rather our point.And you can't escape with the 'that was the OT, Jesus changed all that' trick. The OT god is a violent, vengeful, psychotic god, Jesus is a nice guy, it's not just a contradiction it's two utterly different things. And the NT has it's own contradictions and prophecy failures that are central to the belief system which you also can't explain.Your belief is based only on the bible, eveything else - the traditions and conventions, philosophies and interpretations are all man-made derivatives from that single source. Show that source to be wrong in crucial parts and the house of cards falls. In your terms, it's built on sand.

As I have been telling Phat, the text is the only source you have. If you disregard the text, your Jesus character is entirely a figment of your imagination. Jesus didn't "correct" the Old Testament so much as He corrected the incorrect interpretations of the Old Testament. Exodus 21:23-25 says, "thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." That's "give", not "take". It was always about compensation, not retribution.

The Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the firstborn of Egypt, etc., etc.In the New Testament, besides Ananias and Sapphira there was Herod (Acts 12:23), not to mention threats of future mass murders in the Revelation.Nope, seems exactly like God's M.O. Jesus had a temper tantrum involving money changers and another involving a fig tree. Althogh neither resulted in homicide, there does seem to be a characteristic personality disorder.

The apologists claim to have studied and have interpreted the book which satisfies basic Christian consensus on one level. Critics have trashed the apologists as largely making stuff up in collusion....but have never given a reason why they dont respect the scholarly disciplines that many of these people have earned to gain their reputation. We get back here to EvC and find arguments from laymen who dont even specialize in the field of study and are told to plainly read the text. Then what happens?We find contradictions and inconsistencies concerning the character of God and Jesus as presented in the book. And then are told---by laymen outside of their field of study and expertise, remember--that this only proves that the entire religious and belief systems are like so many houses of cards. Which is one reason that you are atheists, I suppose.The other chief reason would likely have to do with so many Christian believers appearing to be bonkers and in jumping through so many hoops themselves in order to justify the belief. Which is fine. At least you are logically consistent. One question before we go on. Why does no one trust the apologists? Have they spent their lives studying fruitlessly? Cant we trust these people?

The Bible was written by men who were inspired to write down their beliefs, histories and observations. What they wrote was not dictated by God and in many cases they had political agenda. They were also impacted by the other cultures around them.Howver, throughout the OT there are many references to a God that is not as you depicted. Even as early as in Leviticus they are told to love their neighbour. Beyond that though it is obviously a progressive revelation. As we get to what is written later their understanding of the nature of God has evolved considerably. For example just look at my signature. This progressive revelation then climaxes in Jesus where we can see God's full nature in the flesh. My beliefs are not based solely on the Bible although that is no doubt the predominate source. My belief is also based on life experience and my observations of the world we live in. I would even add that the sciences are part of that.What are the crucial parts of the Bible. From my POV the only really crucial part of the Bible is the resurrection of Jesus. If that is not historical then I would agree with you that Christian theology is based on a lie or a mistake. (It still wouldn't negate the message of love, forgiveness and compassion.) I have heard the arguments for and against that and historically it is the only thing IMHO that makes sense of the rise of the Christian church. All the arguments I have heard in opposition to the resurrection are based on the idea that we know that this doesn't happen so any other explanation is more reasonable.I agree that the Bible is full of contradictions about the true nature of God. However, if one believes, as I do, that Jesus did perfectly embody the true nature of God then we can use that lens to understand where the writers got it wrong and where they were on the right track.The whole NT is consistent in the belief that God resurrected Jesus which is a affirmation of Jeusus' life and message.

It does get rather difficult to present any argument. I threw away inerrancy simply for the sake of argument. I rarely agreed with Faith because she appeared so hopelessly mired in cognitive dissonance regarding flood evidence and in sticking to her guns regarding the Chicago Statement.I was willing to toss aside Biblical Inerrancy for tghe sake of argument, believing personally that Jesus is alive outside of the book and that He Himself reinterpreted the book within His own times on earth...GDR believes similarly, I think. But then what ends up happening is that the other side claims that we either limit ourselves to accept the nature of the characters to the book itself or that evidence clearly shows the characters cannot exist apart from the book.SO it slowly dawned on me that neither you nor Tangle nor ringo have ever embraced even the possibility of the idea that God exists and that Jesus is alive and larger than the book(s) themselves. Which basically means that we are left holding our beliefs and having no evidence which your side prefers to use exclusively in arguments. In that sense, Faith alone seems truer to her belief in inerrancy, even if she seems illogical most of the time.

They don't respect the scholarship because it isn't scholarship - it's called making shit up. Anyon3 can do it, Faith and creation do it all day long. All you and they have is the bible - they have nothing no more than that. We can all read that bookk, it's a simple set of stories for simple folk. This isn't structural engineering, it's a single, simple book. No special education is necessary to read it. We understand the tale. Sure, it's very obviously tosh. Well it's one good reason, there are several others - it's like RAZD's dating concilliance, all roads lead to Rome. We can't trust them because they have no more knowledge than anyone else - all the available knowledge is held in one book. Just read it and you have the lot. Everything else is people making shit up that can't be verified. Read the crap creation writes, that's ho2 daft it is.

I don't know which translation you are using but this is from the NIV.

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23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

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Taken in the context of the whole passage it is obvious that it is about taking life. For example: "29 If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull is to be stoned and its owner also is to be put to death."Jesus did "correct" that when he says this in Matthew 5.

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38 You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
Love for Enemies
43 You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

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I'm not claiming to be an apologist nor do I believe that either Faith nor creation can claim enough knowledge to be one. I am talking about people such as this guy:
I'm not claiming any special authority on the educated apologists nor do I see any in educated skeptics. I simply respect the effort behind the arguments, such as Craig Parton. You claim that no special education is necessary to understand this stuff, but I would give some of these people a modicum of respect...just as Faith gives the authors of the Chicago Statement.