Bible Literalist Church

I have chosen to accept the Bible as true and to judge all else by it. Every one accepts something as true unless they have gone crazy. Insane people are the only ones who really live without accepting something as true. I take the Bible to be true and where people have taken it upon themselves to add to it, I feel free to throw that out, especially if doctrinal issues are based on those alterations. The writers of the KJV felt that these words needed to be italicized because they were added. If you hold nothing but your own opinion to be true, you live as a solipsist. I hold that the Bible is true and my opinion is true only when it correctly follows the Bible. The truth of the Bible doesn't rest upon anyone's understanding of it.

But it's possible to accept as true the position that ultimate truth is inaccessable to the human mind (as we can only experience the universe through our imperfect senses). Thus, it can be stated that nothing we can know is strictly "true".But then, only a crazy or ignorant person sets up "truth" as a bivalent condition. The reality is, truth is a spectrum - some things are more or less true than others. Science is a process (for instance) where scientific models, over time, approach truthfulness. How do you tell the difference between something that was added and something that was "always there", especially in a work that has come down to you, translated through several intermediate languages? And how do you know that it's not the case that ALL biblical content was "added"; i.e. made up by people to support doctrine? Doesn't that make you a solipsist? If your assertation is that only the bible is true, but it's just your opinion that the bible is true (which must be the case, or everyone would agree with you), then haven't you, by extention, said "only my opinion is true"? If this were true nobody would have to interpret the bible. There would only be one church instead of thousands. Everyone would agree. That everyone doesn't agree suggests that there is no inherent truth to the bible - it's all in interpretation. As Mr. P said, even literalism is a kind of interpretation - due, in part, to the mutability of language.

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The truth of the Bible doesn't rest upon anyone's understanding of it.

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Then why are there so many violently different interpretations of all the basic truths?Mr. Pamboli's post acknowledged all sorts of facts aside from the existence of a mind. All I get from it is that you must ultimately synthesize all these inputs and formulate a decision based on them. It is not solipsism (which is irrelevant anyway) but rather a basic fact of communication that every message must be interpreted by the receiver, and Christians are nowhere near a consensus on various parts of the Bible. The disagreements have been sufficient to start wars in the past, and people are still dying over them today. So tell me how understanding doesn't matter.

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I have chosen to accept the Bible as true and to judge all else by it.

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I think that sums up the literalist postion perfectly. You have chosen and what you have chosen becomes the sole instrument of judgement. But it remains a choice grounded in your psychology and culture. It is as close to pure solipsism as one can get.Remember also, that you are judging truth by that which you yourself have chosen to hold as true, which is precisely the same position that you criticize. The mere fact that you have chosen an external reference makes no difference: you could have chosen the Bhagavad Gita, or the Qur'an, or your own opinion, but you chose the Bible.

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The truth of the Bible doesn't rest upon anyone's understanding of it.

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... but whether your understanding is any closer to the truth than anothers is a matter of judgement, but you judge all by the Bible, so you judge the truth of others understanding of your standard by a standard you have chosen. It's a house of cards, thinly disguising your own cultural, linguistic and psychological preferences as objective.

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Every one accepts something as true unless they have gone crazy. Insane people are the only ones who really live without accepting something as true.

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Danger of getting off the subject, but this strikes me as complete nonsense. Visit any hospital for the incurably mentally ill and you will find many people who cling to truth - whether a truth they have chosen, or a truth irresistably forced upon them - with all the desperation their souls can muster. It is as unbearable, as their truths are, to them, undeniable.(Edited to remove a duplicate sentence)[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 04-28-2003]

I painted a painting with egss and oil paint. If you believe that I did or if you believe that I didn't, I still painted that painting with eggs and oil. The actions I committed in the past were actions that were committed by me. Your understanding of them has no effect on them. Reality is real. If a tree falls in the forest, and you aren't there to hear it, there is still sound. If I am wrong about the Bible, it doesn't affect the Bible at all. It is still true. We'll all find out in the end if I'm right about this.

But if the bible makes claims that directly contradict our experience of reality, which is more likely? That 6 billion humans are somehow self-deluded or hallucinating, in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY; or that one book, written by a couple of people with all-too-limited knowledge, might not be accurate?Me, I'm inclined to believe my senses and reason, as opposed to believing in something for which there is no evidence. But I guess I'm crazy like that, or something.

I'll side with the Bible against the entire world. A quick study of people will show you how much they can be trusted. Our senses will fail us and our reasoning is faulty because of our limited knowledge. Have you ever been wrong? Has anyone ever taken advantage of you? Have you ever found anyone who believed anything in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as anyone else? Were you watching when the "couple of people with all-too-limited knowledge" wrote the Bible? Is your knowledge "all-too-limited" like theirs?

You're shooting yourself in the foot here, because by so wonderfully demonstrating the fallibility of human beings, you make it even more obvious that you (just like me) cannot claim to hold absolute truth. Even if you have the book in your hand, you yourself just said that no two people agree, which sounds oddly like something I just posted this morning. It seems strange to so ardently defend your own interpretation and simultaneously deride the ability of any human to know what the truth really is.

Or, more probably in my view of things, we'll each individually die someday, the voltages between our axons will go to zero, and we won't find out doodley-squat. We'll all be dead.

Not just the world, but reality as we know it. Isn't that a kind of madness? Granted. But unless you can show me a way to experience the words of your god other than through my senses (needed to read the book) and my reason (needed to turn symbols into language and therefore meaning), the bible is no different than any other method of determining truth, and thus we must judge it by how well it corresponds with our experiences.As it turns out, the bible isn't bad in that regard. Clearly the people who wrote it were insightful observers of the human condition. But they weren't any better than, say, Shakespeare. And no one argues that he was divinely inspired.There's nothing in the bible that is so great that it had to have been written by a god. There's plenty that's so wrong, however, it could only have been written by humans. Limited knowledge is a condition of being human. In no ones' experience has it ever been otherwise, nor has a mechanism that would allow for unlimited knowledge been proposed. Thus it incumbent on you to provide positive evidence for the ultimate knowedge of the bible writers. Simply saying that I can't know for sure that they weren't doesn't count.Like I said, there's no way to experience the bible except through our senses and reason. Since you agree that these can err, how can anyone experience the bible free from their own interpretation?

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If I am wrong about the Bible, it doesn't affect the Bible at all.

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Perhaps, but if the churchmen who selected the subset of Christian and Jewish writings that you call the Bible were wrong, then it does affect it. And men of good conscience and good faith have disagreed for centuries over these texts.And if the scribes who wrote the manuscripts that convey the texts were wrong, then that affects that set of texts you call the Bible. And men of good conscience and good faith have disagreed for centuries over these masnuscripts.And if the translators who worked on these manuscripts were wrong iut affects our knowledge of that set of texts that you call the Bible. And men of good conscience and good faith have disagreed for centuries over these translations.And if the orginal sources from which the scribes copied the texts, and their sources, were wrong it affects that set of texts you call the Bible. And if the translators who wrote the version you use were wrong, it affects that set of texts that you call the Bible. And men of good conscience and good faith have disagreed for centuries over how or when or how accurately such sources were or could have been transmitted.All this fallible human activity before you even get to your interpretation of a single word of what you call the Bible! All these men whose "senses may have failed them" and whose "reasoning may have been faulty because of limited knowledge."You are not putting your faith in the word of God, but in the hands of human beings. Of course is that is your choice and you have made it. It remains, however, your choice, based on yourreasoning, yoursenses and yourknowledge, and thus no measure whatsoever of the standard of truth that man should live by.

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Here's a nutty idea - maybe so-called "Biblical Literalists" are only literal about the things that are convinient to enforce or keep certain members in positions of authority (like men)?

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BING BING BING!!!We have a winner!

So how can you submit and lead at the same time?How can you be an authority figure (because you are granted this authority to be the leader in your marriage) yet also submit to your wife?I get the "submit to each other part". I have a marriage like that. But I don't get how one person can be the undisputed leader, never a follower in what sounds at first like an equal partnership.It sounds very much to me to be a logical contradiction."We submit to each other and neither one is more important than the other, but I make all the important descisions."See how strange that sounds?

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By the way Mutual submission is insanity, no child can serve 2 masters,

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Uh, don't most children have two parents?

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mutual submission turns out to be tyranny of the most selfish one.

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What a depressing view.So, are you contending that every marriage must have a dominant leader and a submissive follower?Funny, my own marriage doesn't work anything like that, and neither do the marriages of most of the people I know.

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When something seems to contradict itself in the Bible, I assume that it is a problem with me, and my understanding of God. Sometimes I figure it out, too. I just want to find a church to join. One that is simple and literal.

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Sorry, this is contradictory.First you say how you have to "figure things out" from the Bible, then you say you want to find a church that is "simple and literal".There is no such thing as a literalist church. They take things literally when it is convenient to their desired outlook, and interpret when it isn't.