If some parts of the Bible can't be trusted how can any of it?

That is not a fact; it is an artifact of your (and AIG's) peculiar interpretation of Genesis.

The Bible is not a Science Book. It is not even a very good history book.The Bible deals with Holy. With your relationship with God and with Man.GOD does not lie and when you look at the world you find that Evolution, Old Earth, Big Universe, No Flood, No ARK, are all true and written clearly in the world around us.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No, science (as asgara pointed out in post 59) has no method of determining the validity of the supernatural. Science only deals with the natural; what is so hard to understand? Science does not exclude the possibility of the supernatural; it simply doesn't have the ability to examine it. Good question. Of course, I do not know. I only have an idea, but I cannot offer any proof to back it up. But whether God started life spontaneously or gradually (or another way), has nothing to do with my belief in God.
Why would it? It's as if you believe that if you can somehow prove evolution to be false, that creationism wins by default.
Wrong.
You would then have to prove that all the other creation accounts from all the other religions are wrong.
If you can prove evolution to be wrong and simultaneously prove creation to be true based on the available (or new) evidence, then you would win the Nobel prize. Good luck. That's a good theory! Perhaps God did cause everything to be 'just right' for the formation of life, and 'it' simply happened.
Was it divine providence or happenstance? Or something else? I do not know. How do you know? You should have said, "No supernaturalism can be proven to exist in a naturalist world."To get back on topic almeyda, if I discover through casual research that smoking cures cancer, I will not throw away my trust in medical science; everytime I read the bible (rarely) and I find a something that is false, historically and/or scientifically inaccurate, I do not refuse to believe that the rest of it is crap.
Jesus said to Love your neighbor as yourself. I try to follow that as much as I can. I usually have to meditate (in quite prayer of just silence my mind) to assist me.
My neighbors are as F'd up as I am! lol!

I do not know, except that I believe that all Gods are one. I do not believe that the God of the bible exists, except in the minds of the writers; they were unware of what causes storms, famine, death and disease. So I believe that God was unjustly credited with starting those things to happen.
Oh, and I do not believe that Jesus was divine. I think that you and I believe in the same God, but that you are basing your belief off of a book, and thus the title of this thread. The biblical God 'chilled out' as the bible progresses; I do not think it has been established that the books appear in the bible in the order that they were written in; but in the NT, satan is credited with causing the very things that God was supposed to cause. Blame shifting perhaps? I believe that it was simply a matter of misinterpretation.The bible does not have the luxury of changing it's words, since it is believed by biblical believers to be complete. But, science changes based on new evidence. I just cannot believe that you or anyone would abandon your faith just because a book is wrong in a few or many places. Not t osound like a complete a'hole, but it matters to me not if my beliefs are 'ok with you'. My faith is personal and with the exception of this forum, I do not discuss it. I have shared a few of my beliefs with my wife and son, but only whenthey want to discuss it.Thanks again for your reply.

Of course you can trust the Bible in absolutivity. You simply determine that what was written is truth in different forms. The story of Jonah is truth for what it is meant to convey. To me it means that you can't run from God when he has his eye on you and nothing is completely lost (Nineveh) until it is completely lost (Sodom).
What part of this is a lie?
I'm not necessarily speaking to you, Almeyda. You have a fine ability to reason abstractly.

Next time please tell me when you're actually taking me up on an offer to start a new topic; this really hit me by surprise to see myself being quoted. My point of view on this subject fluxuated from untrusting to fully believing in the Bible almost daily so here's the current answer:It's not so much what can be trusted, it's what I agree with morally.Lot was a scoundrel to offer his daughters to the mob, yet God would help him escape and turn his wife into a pillar of salt for turning around? ...Well, He did specifically tell them not to look back, but the point is that Lot was a punk. Also, some of the things that happened during the Exodus certainly weren't moral. To flood the entire world including women and children is pretty aweful too, whether it happened on am actual worldwide scale or just on a large piece of land.The thing is, Jesus's teachings were by far more reasonable than that of the old testament: He has no prejudice, He wasn't sexist, and he wasn't for violence at all. However, he showed 'em that there were times to stand up and be a man (when he wipped the pimps and gamblers out of the temple) and times to give the blade a rest(told peter to stop pulling a Tyson and drop the sword when they came to take him away).In other words, what I believe really happened and didn't happen at all fluxuates constantly, but what I believe to be teachings that could bring enemies together (and it works, I've tried it with nothing but success) is what Jesus taught; to feast with your enemies. If you were a moment away from fighting someone, wait till it cools down and try to play nice. The best part is how surprised they look when the guy that was going to punch them a week ago is now loaning them a dollar for a soda. I have only read the very first message of this thread, but I felt it would be appropriate to answer the original question.

---

Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.

I always enjoy reading your take on these issues, Preach. You're right, there is much immorality in the bible. The worst of it is in the OT, of course, but there are bad things in the NT as well.What I think so many fundamentalists lose sight of is the fact that if there is a God, surely he knew what he was doing when he gave us the ability to reason for ourselves. Perhaps Hamlet said it best, in Act IV, Scene IV: "He that made us" is, of course, God, and Hamlet is pointing out that the ability to reason is what separates us from the beasts. We can learn from the past and anticipate the future, unlike other creatures. God did not give us this ability so that we might eschew it in order to blindly follow a book. Of course, Hamlet wasn't speaking about the bible, but his logic extends to it.

In all seriousness thank you. It helps to know at least a few people don't think I'm crazy.That hamlet quote is great, and that's a good possibility tha by 'in His image' the Bible means something other than physical appearance.
In the decisions to do right and wrong would be a good idea if not for the apple-eating thing.(unless God set it up on purpose, which is what I would do in His shoes) It's clear God can do some destructive things too. Somewhere in Lamentations and Isaiah there are the following lines."I create light and create darkness; I, the Lord, do all these things."
(I'm pretty sure the above is Isaiah.)"(something about dealing with suffering without whining)..., for the Lord has laid it on him."God isn't afraid to lay the smack down and is more than able to, and so are we to a lesser extent. Remember an image is just a flat, 2D vision of the original, so ofcourse He is many times amplified in whatever image we are of Him.I enjoy agreeing with you, partly because I know my superiors would be pissed off like a redneck in a distance whizzing contest if they knew I was on good terms with somebody like you even just on an internet forum. Nothing like breakin' the rules for a good cause

---

Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.

Is that even in doubt? I'm not exactly up on the latest thought in Biblical exegesis, but even when I was a pup in Catholic school, it was obvious that "in His image" didn't mean that God was about 6' and possessed of a navel and genitalia.I don't understand how a person of any intelligence could read that and come to the conclusion that the Genesis writer meant that God is the exact shape and form of a person. I mean, on one hand you have a brilliantly poetic way of describing how the human faculty for introspection and insight is like Gods, and on the other, you have a really stupid insistance that God has a body like a person, down to what's under the fig leaf. That's a hardly Christlike position for them to take, don't you think? If they get all up in your face, remind them that Jesus spent more time with prostitutes and tax collectors than he did with the righteous. Christ ministered by getting to know people, by getting into their lives and seeing from their perspective. Surely there can't be anything wrong with following suit?

Re: "[That it's] a good possibility [that] by 'in His image' the Bible means something other than physical appearance."Genesis, Chapter 1, verse 26: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'" (The New American Standard Bible)Let's look at a few of the Hebrew words in this passage."Let Us MAKE MAN in Our IMAGE, according to Our LIKENESS ... to RULE OVER [the other animals]."(MAKE) asah: make, FASHION, produce, prepare.
(MAN) adam: man, human being, (or as more often intended in Torah) MANKIND (note the plural usage of "let THEM rule over...").
(IMAGE) tselem: image (usually in the sense of a heathen god), likeness, SEMBLENCE.
(LIKENESS) d'muwth: likeness, similtude, MANNER.
(RULE OVER) radah: dominate, have dominion over, rule, tread down, subjugate.So, briefly:Elohim said, "Let Us fashion mankind so that he rules over fish, birds, cattle, and the other creatures in Our natural creation similarly to the manner in which We would if We chose not to create mankind."This, I think, is how the fabricators of the story viewed mankind's status in the natural order.Peace. Ab.

You're absoluetely right; it's just that the only connections I have with people that are in the ministry and are willing to help the up-and-coming newbies happen to be Southern Baptists. Although there are some exceptions to the Southern Baptist stereotype,I think that speaks for itself.

---

Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.

I'm a little confused. Who's Elohim? Judging by how things have been going on earth for the past millenia, whether fabricators or recitors of God's word, I'd say they were right.

---

Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.

The bible is actually filled with science. I'm surprised you have not noticed. From strategies for war, to modernizing living conditions, it is all there. A good example would be Hezekiah's method of bringing water into the city (Discovery Channel: Technology in the Bible - this program speaks of many other examples). As for history, start at the beginning of Daniel and then read Revelation. Both books are filled with history and accurate accounts of each and every world empire starting with Babylon all the way to Rome. Accurate to a tittle on an 'i'.
A good source for study would be Uriah Smith's 'Daniel and the Revelation, a book.

Well, first let's look at your example of science. That certainly cannot be called science, perhaps history, but nothing more. It does not answer any of either the engineering or scientific questions that would be needed to learn anything from it. Was the pool above the city? How did he build the conduit? What was used to seal the joints? How was elevation calculated?Sorry, that is not science in any way.And when it comes to history, the problem is trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. The problem comes when we try to accept the Bible as Historically accurate. It is like trying to pin down historic references in the Arthur Legends or the Iliad. We know for example, that if the Exodus happened, it was no where near on the magnitude described in the Bible. If it had been, someone else would have noticed and commented. We know that the time is off or that parts were exaggerated, for example consider the occupancy issues revolving around Jericho.The Bible is, IMHO, an important and essential document, not just to Christians but all people. But trying to make it into something more than it really is simply leads to opportunity for non-believers to tear it down and trivialize it.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Re: "I'm a little confused. Who's Elohim?""Elohim is the common name for God. It is a plural form, but "The usage of the language gives no support to the supposition that we have in the plural form Elohim, applied to the God of Israel, the remains of an early polytheism, or at least a combination with the higher spiritual beings" (Kautzsch). Grammarians call it a plural of majesty or rank, or of abstraction, or of magnitude (Gesenius, Grammatik, 27th ed., nn. 124 g, 132 h). The Ethiopic plural amlak has become a proper name of God. Hoffmann has pointed out an analogous plural elim in the Phoenician inscriptions (Ueber einige phon. Inschr., 1889, p. 17 sqq.), and Barton has shown that in the tablets from El-Amarna the plural form ilani replaces the singular more than forty times (Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, 21-23 April, 1892, pp. cxcvi-cxcix)." (Catholic Encyclopedia)P.S.; Re: "Judging by how things have been going on earth for the past millenia, whether fabricators or recitors of God's word, I'd say they were right."Barring any sudden impacts with large asteroids, I would agree. Peace. Ab.