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Author | Topic: Importance of Innerrancy to Moderate Christians | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
The issue of Canon is important. If there is no one set of books that can be identified as the "Bible", then how can there be innerancy?
i once heard that the resurrection is the core of the christian faith, without the resurrection... yeah. If the mundane parts are in error, wouldn't it be reasonable to suspect that the more exceptional parts are also in error? Again, that has to go back to your definition of innerancy. If a story is true in the sense that it teaches a moral or lesson in life, does it have to be factually true? I believe that the ressurection (and it is not as much the core as the Ascension) happened but even if it were not true, the basic message of Christianity would still be valid. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: All I can say is how it appears to me. The people who express such a view typically have a very high regard for their own opinions - despite the fact that they don't take much care to check their facts. Some of them seem unable to read anything without forcing into their beliefs - often getting it completely wrong. And they tend to be very intolerant of disagreement, and get upset at any criticism of their (frequently bad) behaviour.
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
if noah was just some dude on a boat, it's still an inspirational story, sure, but it would by no means be a base for faith. i don't believe in god because of some dude on a boat. i also don't believe in a god who was so daft as to make a mistake he later regretted and said he'd never do again. i also don't believe that god created the rainbow less than 4000 years ago (after said boat incident). does this make me not believe in god? no. does this make me not believe in the god referred to in the bible? i don't think so, but there are those here who do.
yet, you're treating the bible as a "good read"? And, if you're doing this, then is there still faith in the resurrection? actually, it's a horrible read. it's badly written and even worse, many of the topics and commands are disturbing at best and disgusting at worst. do i have faith in the resurrection? i'm not sure anymore. i haven't worked it out yet. i'm getting there. but i do have faith in the idea of the resurrection... that god has forgiven us our wrongs and we need only cling to him for grace and all is forgiven and all is forgotten and we don't have to feel guilty anymore. i believe in a god who wants to teach us how to 'glorify and enjoy him forever'. you can't glorify and enjoy if you are trapped in guilt. free, free, free at last. free to dance naked before the lord because he is enjoyable and i am free of the guilt and the shame that was given to me by my world. that is the sum of the text to me. that david loved god and god loved and forgave david and david was so freed because of this love that his very nakedness was no longer shameful. this can be an inspiring and faith-bringing experience (because i have felt the same, and by reading, i know i am not alone) whether or not israel actually defeated the king of whatever country as the bible says or didn't as the art of that king's reign suggests.i'm kind of a mystic. i'm into the experiences that people share of their god. i'm interested in the blind man who was no longer enslaved by his blindness, whether he actually was healed or not. i'm interested in the idea of a forgiving god whether jesus was his son or just a prophet and whether he lived or died. there is no unimpugnable evidence whatsoever outside the bible for the existence of this man at all, much less his ressurection. but somehow only the innerrancy of scripture would allow a consistent belief in it? there are more problems here than simple inerrancy. Being skeptical, the only way i could believe in the resurrection is if i also believed in the inerrant nature of the bible. being skeptical, the only way that i can believe in the resurrection is to NOT believe in the inerrancy of the bible. if the bible is absolutely perfect, then it is absolutely wrong. if it is absolutely consistent, then it is absolutely bullshit. the world was not created ex nihlo 6000 years ago. it simply wasn't. can't possibly be. the only possibility is if god created in the earth an appearance to lie and to deceive and to appear old. my god does not deceive. and don't tell me about satan doing it. it is clear to me that satan does precisely what god tells him to. he tempts, he does not create lies. how could satan create? for there to be lies in the earth, they must have been created (if the earth was created). satan isn't a creator. that would give him power equal to god and THAT is polytheism and heresy. it is easier for me to believe in the grand idea of the bible if the whole thing is not absolute and consistent and 'true'. Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
pure force of will and purposeful ignorance of reality?
in some, however, the tradition of thought simply does not allow any other options. i have been raised to understand that the reason things stick to the ground is beause of gravity. if someone suddenly described that it was some other thing, i'm not really sure i would be capable of even beginning to wrap my head around it. some assumptions are so fundamental that they don't allow any flexibility. there was a woman (conservative jew) in a bible history class i took. when the professor suggested such things as "this bit about such and such happening before there were kings in israel suggests that the book was written after there were kings in israel" she had a total mental block. she couldn't imagine anything except that god had dictated the torah to moses. you could literally see smoke coming out of her ears. her most fundamental assumption was that god had written the torah through the hand of certain people and that was how it was. that was the only potential reality and anything that went against that simply could not compute. Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.
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Brian Member (Idle past 4987 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
that has both glaring errors and inherent contradictions to the point that it is impossible to distinguish truth and fantasy; This isn't the Bible though. I wouldn't say that it is easy to distinguish between 'truth' and 'fantasy' in the Bible, but it is fairly easy to tell between plausible stories and fantasy. For example, Joseph rising to a very high position of power in Egypt is entirely plausible, whereas the tales of people living to 900 years plus is clearly fantasy. Of course, I am talking about when people who are rational research the Bible and not the type of person who will tie their cerebral cortex in a double knot to preserve their wee fantasy world complete with imaginary friends. Brian.
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AlienInvader Member (Idle past 4953 days) Posts: 48 From: MD Joined: |
quote:but the message isn't the faith... hell, i believe in most of the messages.
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AlienInvader Member (Idle past 4953 days) Posts: 48 From: MD Joined: |
so in essense, you're a diest?
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
but the message isn't the faith... hell, i believe in most of the messages. And I agree. But the topic is on the importance of Innerancy. My point is that before that can be answered you need to define what is meant by first "the Bible" and secondly by innerancy. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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AlienInvader Member (Idle past 4953 days) Posts: 48 From: MD Joined: |
well, to the average american, that'd be the king james right?
inerrancy, is that the bible (king james version) is accurate in all it's accounts... the real question is, why aren't all christians literalists? and shouldn't it be important that a holy text be accurate in it's account? Edited by AlienInvader, : No reason given.
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Brian Member (Idle past 4987 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
Personally, I'd answer:
1. Whichever Bible version the particular person prefers (invariably the KJV), because they will promote that over all others. 2. Without any errors, everything can be taken at face value. At least that's how I have come to understand the weird fundy inerrant chappies.
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
i really don't know. i'm working on that. but, in my opinion, god exists outside of the professions of him, so why should i change my title? god is the same, it it only how i understand my comprehension of him that has changed. i've been a christian since i was three. why should that change now?
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
well, to the average american, that'd be the king james right? I think you may still be mistaking what I'm saying. The KJV is but one translation of the books contained in the common Roman Catholic Canon and Apocrypha or Western Canon. But that is but one of the Canon. The Western Canon is a list of what Books should be included in the Bible, but it is not the only such list. Other Christian Churches have different Canon. They include or exclude books that are in the Western Canon. The question then becomes, "If Christianity cannot even agree on which books should or should not be in the Bible, how can we say that any one Bible, regardless of translation, is innerant?"
and shouldn't it be important that a holy text be accurate in it's account? That depends on what you mean by accurate. If you mean that every word must be lierally true, then any honest reading of the Bible will bring up numerous mutually-exclusive accounts. Just look at the hoops folk go through here to try to resolve the conflicts between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. For me the bigger question is "Why did the redactors that assembled the stories include two mutually exclusive accounts?" I happen to believe that the folk that wrote and edited the stories were not idiots, they too saw all the conflicts, but chose to include the stories and not even to merge them as was done in the flood stories. Why? One possiblity is that the two stories teach us lessons about how people of a given period saw GOD, different aspects of the external entity, the Territory that is GOD. In Genesis 1 we see a transcendant separate GOD, sure, overarching, aloof. In Genesis 2 we see a personal GOD, a friend and companion. Two different lessons. The tales do not have to accurate as history, or science, any more than Hamelin really had to have all of the children drowned to teach a lesson. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 4.5 |
The Bible is the story of the Jewish people's struggle to understand their God. That they made mistakes along the way, and that their concept of God evolved over time, does not imply that fails as a guide. That it is not inerrant does not pose a problem.
If anything, it is the assumption of inerrancy that poses the greater problem. For those who believe inerrancy must accept that their God is massively confused, is at times evil, and is highly inconsistent.
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Nighttrain Member (Idle past 4022 days) Posts: 1512 From: brisbane,australia Joined: |
so, what kind of thing makes for the strength of belief that can legitimize a faulty text? Self-delusion?
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AlienInvader Member (Idle past 4953 days) Posts: 48 From: MD Joined: |
quote:actually, that's a whole different topic, my question isn't about which canon, that's unimportant, what i'm questioning is the source of belief regardless of the group of text. quote: salvation isn't supposed to be a "lesson" it's supposed to be a promise. A tale, a parable even, isn't good enough to qualify as a holy text, pandering in the salvation of souls. my question is about the why of the belief structure, and foundation, of those who don't "jump through loops" to reconcile the bible, but instead acknowledge it as flawed. Do they, as you do, consider it a moral guideline, one extended parable, and little else? and if so, how do they justify their belief in an afterlife with its only base in this extended parable? and if not, then what do they believe?
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