Ignorant Creationists vs. Knowledgeable Evolutionists

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Evolutionists, including creo-lutionists MUST severely undermine the Biblical record

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Actually, we just have to let the material world undermine the biblical "record".

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAThat should be like framed and sold as the worlds best example of desperate rationalisation.

It was in response to your post above.

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It's not desperate rationalisation.

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Its extraordinarily desperate - you have just rendered the bible worthless.What is sin and how do we know it exists? Because the bible tells us.If the bible is meaphor rather than literal, its all gibberish. I can claim sin doesn't really exist anymore than the garden does, now that the garden is the whole of africa. I can claim that god itself is a metaphor for social order, if I want. I can say the "breath of life" is, say, language. I can treat it exactly the way any other aboriginal myth would be treated - with your consent.You've just destroyed the idea that the bible is evidence or reportage of god. You've destroyed the idea that the bible conveys any information, or that there is anything to be learned from it. Certibaly, NOTHING AT ALL that can be comared with modern, procedural science.

Because christianity kills. Becuase christinaity justifies war. Just on Monday night we got to see a US marine chaplain explain that America was the vehicle of the just wrath of god being exercised against the sinners of Fallujah. And thats quite apart from my own direct experience of the christian hate-factory, which served as the primary ideological justification for apartheid. Thats why.This message has been edited by contracycle, 11-11-2004 04:48 AM

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Besides - people already claim sin doesn't exist and that the biblie is baloney - so why do you think I care?

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Because you claim to.

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I just don't believe Jesus is literally a lamb.

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No no - Jesus is just a methaphor for your inner peace. There was not actual person called Jesus. There was no death on the cross. IT's JUST A METAPHOR.

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There is room for a lot of latitude. It seems to me, as an outsider, that a reasonable Christian position is on taking the existance of God and Christ as true. After that the details of the stories don't really count. The message is what counts.

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I find this position utterly mind-boggling and always have. It should be abundantly clear that iof the stories are not true, then the message cannot be true either.What is a "message"? A vague feeling? A nebulous sentiment? No its INFORMATION. You cannot simultanouesly choose to ignore the errors of transmission in the medium AND claim the "message" is inviolable.The "message" of christinaity is not supposed to be a feel-good factor, a personal satsifaction. It is supposed to be the herald of the truth, the good news that man is saved by the glory and grace of god. The details of the stories are absolutely critical to the legtimicay of these claims. If the stories are not true, we have not the slightest reason for thinking ANY of it is true.

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Now suppose that the person telling the story gets some of the details mixed-up and inadvertently makes it into something that obviously cannot have happened the way it is told. It is no longer a true story. Does that mean that the message is no longer true?

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But the problem you are describing is only a technical transmission problem - the signal repeater that is the speakers brain corrupted some of the original signal data and was unable to rebroadcast it accurately.Therefore we resort to: independant verification, not hearsay. It certainly is the case that making an incoherent, impossible argument destroys the credibility of that argument.Further your use of "true" is a bit suspect. Is what true, the intended claim or the actually articulated claim? The actually articulated claim is clearly not true - and because it is not true it cannot convey the message it intends to convey. The "message" itself might remain true in some external way, but this is irrelevant to the local conversation actually occuring in real space becuase that message was never expressed.

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Though it may diminish (or "destroy", as you so vehemently put it) the credibility of the argument, its incoherence or impossibility does not alter the facts. In this case, the fact is that there is at least one person who is not a selfish bastard, and that's the basis for the crippled story. The message is about the fact. The message remains true.

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It does not - becuase the only access I have to the "facts" is via this message. That is the very purpose of the message - to convey to me these "facts".If a speaker wished to demonstrate that there are unselfish people in the world, but their statement contains no comprehensible evidence in this regard, then it can and should be rejected. The only basis I would have for not rejecting it - seeing as it communicated no information - would have to be sympathy of some sort for the speaker.As I metioned, it may be true in some abstract sense, but the fact remains that in this argument the case has not been demonstrated, and must be rejected as contentless. Lots of noise, no signal.

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If your mother told you that your nose grows longer if you lie, would you not get the message? (In case you don't, it is: "You should not lie")

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Then my mother would likely be conducting a wholly different exercise, one in which her statements refers to information I already have - the story of Pinnochio. These are nothing alike; knowing that Pinocchio was cursed in this way means I am able to deduce the reference.And if I didn't know the story of Pinnochio, then the signal I receive would carry no information, mean nothing, and I would go "huh?". After all, I can test whether my nose will grow if I lie, and therefore decide whether my mother is bonkers.

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That's why most of us have acquired the technique of "reading between the lines".

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... resulting in many Americans believing that Saddam was sheltering the 9/11 hijackers.

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No - this doesn't break the rule I made. Jesus being a human is highly probable, Jesus on the cross is highly probable....Infact - the four different texts demand that Christ did die and came to life again

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People tell stories about Brer Rabbit, and Santa Claus too.Those four texts are just four versions of the same methaphor about inner peace. There was no christ - there was no resurrection - there was no ascent to heaven. It's just a metaphor.

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f this here verse says that Jesus is a lamb - and in Genesis it says snakes talk - then the WHOLE bible is metaphorical.

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Nope, not at all. What I'm saying is that varuous christian denominations pick and chosoe which bits of the bible they are going to treat as literal, and which as metaphor. In which case, I acan do exactly the same, and tell you that you have failed to understand your own holy book.

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I still think the bible is the inspired words of God

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Except for the bits you choose to treat as metaphorical, right?

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- I am not afraid of people trying to say it is wrong if not taken literally - they are under the spell of one-way thought - they are focusing in on one miniscule part of the painting.

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No no - because christians are claiming to have Revealed wisdom, revealed to them by god. It is not illegitimate to hold christians to their own claims. Either the book is the revealed word of god - or it is not. Pick one, you cannot have both.

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No - they depict human events. The authors declare their testimonies as true. It's that simple to figure out contracycle.

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They don't depict human events becuase humans do not come back from the dead. That was just a metaphor about the uplifiting spirit of god. You must stop resisting and read the bible clearly so that you can welcome god into your heart, which is to say, discover inner enlightenment.

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For example - you'd say Jesus is metaphor - but the rule I stated isn't applied when dealing with what God can do - as he isn't bound by natural law. I'll repeat the rule for you from message #69 of this thread;

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No but you see, god is just a metaphor for your own enlightened spirit. There is no god and nobody should ever have confused the metaphor for a claim to actuality; that is merely a result of a corrupt reading of the text.

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To prove my point - look at Revelation, it's just as poetic and no one cares about it that much.

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Nonsense - what about Rapture Ready? See, you are choosing which bnits are metaphor and which literal. Why should revelation be poetic rather than true, and the gospels true rather than poetic?

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But what wisdom do we claim - that you want to know about? I have some wisdom I couldn't have previously had - but I've seldom come across anyone who wants to know about it - but when I go to christian forums, to my surprise - they already "have" or "know" what I have derived from the bible, despite me reaching those conclusions without knowing there own conclusions.

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Well lots of things, like which orifices I'm allowed to insert parts of my body or have other peoples body parts inserted into. What is good, what is bad. Why homosexuality is wrong - all that wisdom which christians claim comes from god.Clearly they misunderstand, becuase as I pointed out already, god is actually just a metaphor for your own inner enlightenment. Mormons, Baprtists, Adventists, Catholics, Calvinists - all of them have a corrupt and distorted faith becuase they mistake the metaphor of god for a reality.

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It is the revealed word of God

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No its not, becuase god is just a metaphor, and metaphors do not act and cannot reveal anything.

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But claiming that it is inspired, doesn't mean I am claiming it has no errors, it also doesn't mean I am claiming it is perfect, and it doesn't mean I am claiming it is all factually true.

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Well thats a pretty wuss revelation from the almighty, then. In that case you acknowledge that even if the bible says that homosexuality is wrong, the bible is wrong in this regard. As you yourself admit, the bible is NOT necessarily perfect, and factually true. Thats becuase god is just a metaphor.

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Since the predicate of metaphorical is irrelevant to it being the inspired word of God - metaphor will not contradict it being inspired by God.

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Technically your are correct - but, if you can't interpret the metaphor you're in deep trouble. Look at all the people who have mistakenly thought that the story of christ rising from the dead was fact rather than metaphor - they're all going to hell, you know. They should have listed to what god had to say. Serves the sinners right.

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If you say the whole leaf(bible) is red(metaphor) - then it cannot be green(literal) in places. You have stated that the leaf(bible) is not completely red(metaphor) - so it CAN be other colours, because - quote; ". nope, not at all" - in response to me saying that you think it is all metaphoric. You then argue as if it is all metaphoric. Which is it?

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Neither, its an object lesson. It's easy to talk like a preacher - all I have to do is insist that my audience cannot understand my position because of their moral failings and insincere faith. It's got to be the easiest, laziest job in the world and I reckon I could easily make a living doing it, were I morally comfortable with lying professionally.All I have to do is to decide which bits of the bible I think (that is, want to be) are "true" and which "metaphor" and *shazam* I have doctrine indistinguishable from any other. And I can preach it just like any other by telling people that they don't understand due to their lower level of spiritual developement/failure to welcome god into their heart/the corruption of the text/whatever. None of is testable; none of it is verifiable; all of it depends on my social credibility alone. It's snake oil, retailed by the barrel.This message has been edited by contracycle, 11-16-2004 11:28 AM