The Bible was NOT man made, it was Godly made

That's not a fair comparison. You're talking about understanding reality itself. I'm talking about communicating an understanding of reality. If God understands quantum mechanics, can He communicate that understanding to us? I'm only talking about one small aspect of God's behaviour: His attempt to communicate with us via the Bible. In that context, yes, He does have to behave in a certain way which I expect and understand. That's exactly what I'm doing, investigating how communication DOES work. Is the receiver working? Is the channel clear? Is the sender transmitting a comprehensible signal?The responsibility for communication begins with the sender.If the message isn't getting through, it's reasonable to examine the sender and the medium, not just blame the receiver.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Obviously the problem could be with any of the three pieces (sender, channel, or receiver).But isn't the MESSAGE of the Bible relatively clear? What is being argued in this thread is not the message, but the author.

Why make the claim that the photon is a particle? We have lots of evidence that it is a wave. But providing more and more evidence that it is a wave does NOT negate its also being a particle.Likewise, providing evidence that the Bible has human authorship does NOT negate its also being written by God.

The parts that are clear are the parts that we could have figured out without a message - e.g. love thy neighbour. The parts that are not clear - e.g. who gets to heaven - are the parts that are in contention. If the Bible was "Godly made", we should expect those parts to be a whole lot clearer. If it was manmade, we would expect different versions from different men - which is exactly what we see.My point in Message 146 to you was that the God-moves-in-mysterious-ways excuse makes no sense if God is trying to communicate with us.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I agree with you that if God is trying to communicate with us, at least the major points of His communication should be comprehensible.But I don't see that this implies anything in particular about how He should go about generating this communication, or what specific form this communication should take.

The topic is about the specific form that the communication (supposedly) does take - the Bible. The multitude of different interpretations suggests that the major points are not comprehensible. How can that imply anything but an incompetent God or a human origin? How could a competent God fail to communicate?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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OK, let’s see if the analogy works in this case. The photon has some clear particle properties (the photoelectron effect, for instance) and some clear wave properties (diffraction, say). Similarly, nearly all of the bibles have some divine properties (saying nice things like love thy neighbor), and some human things (such as the barbaric morality and historical errors. Just as a photon is neither complete particle nor completely wave, but rather has properties of both, the bibles are neither completely human nor completely divine, but instead have properties of both.Did that work?Maybe we agree on what the evidence shows (as I mentioned in my last post). It appears that we agree that the Bible has some pieces of divine information subsequently handled, translated, and partially changed by humans, in addition to human additions/changes.If this is indeed what we agree on, then how could one say which is the origin of any specific verse? What I’ve seen Christians of all stripes (liberal and conservative) do, is take the parts they agree with, and say those are divine remnants, and take the parts they disagree with, and say those are the result of humans. This seems to be a slightly more honest approach than the inerrantist approach, which is to claim that it is all divine, and all is saying what they say, and then creatively “interpreting” the parts they disagree with (not that the others never do this as well).I think the OP was arguing that because the Bible is completely divine in origin (not a mix as you and I hold), it can be used as a reliable guide. The end result of a mix is the same as that of a human origin - namely, that one must use reason and logic to decide which parts are useful and which are useless.Have a fun weekend, I’ll be out until sometime next week--Equinox

Are the main points necessarily incomprehensible? Isn't it possible that they are comprehensible, but are intentionally ignored or misunderstood? To use your communication system analogy, is it possible that the receiver is filtering out the signal?

Close, except that the photon has ALL of the properties of a particle, and ALL of the properties of a wave. It is fully both.Likewise, orthodox Christianity says that Jesus is both FULLY God and FULLY man. Attempts to limit either nature were declared heresies at Chalcedon.Similarly, the Bible is both FULLY human and FULLY divine according to orthodox Christianity.

No. The Creator of the universe would be capable of transmitting on all frequencies, so that no filter could remove everything. There would be no possibility for anybody to miss the message.All you're doing is changing "the message is incomprehensible" to "the transmitter is weak".

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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So you would make man a deterministic robot, with no free will to ignore God's message? The biblical picture of God's communication is different. Transmission of God's message depends on the willingness (or absence of filtering) of the receiver:

quote:

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“If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself." -- John 7:17

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If the message was crystal clear, spoken face to face to each individual human by God Himself, they would still have the free will to obey or disobey. We're talking about communication of the message here, not what is done with the message after it is received. Do you really not see how ridiculous that sounds? You're using the message to determine whether or not the message is accurate: If the message says A, then A.That's like getting an email from somebody who claims to be your banker, telling you not to trust anybody else who claims to be your banker.That's no way to determine who the message came from.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Scene in a PBS miniseries about the Manhattan Project. Group discussion trying to solve a serious problem with the gun design for the atomic bomb (later use in "Little Boy", Little Boy - Wikipedia). Oppenheimer (Sam Waterston) cites Navy research in high-velocity gunnery and the problem they encountered with the barrel warping after a few firings; (quoted from memory):

quote:

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Voice in the back of the room: Uh, excuse me, may I ask a question?
Oppenheimer: Yes, certainly.
Voice: How many times is this gun going to be fired?
[scattered laughter throughout the room]
Oppenheimer: Good point. OK, next problem!

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A stupid question if I may: Why this belief that the Bible was made by God? Where does it come from? What is it based on?Compounded with this basic question is my observation of several creationists who insisted emphatically that they only believe the Bible, along with insisting that if even one single error is found in the Bible, then the entire Bible is false, God is a liar and doesn't exist, etc. Does this mean that the Bible itself says those things? If so, then where? Interestingly, those creationists I requested that information from did everything they could to avoid responding.So then, that belief that the Bible: where does it come from and what is it based on?Edited by dwise1, : Corrected actor's name

How do you get any of this from what I wrote??I said nothing about determining whether or not the biblical message is accurate; I'm talking about authorship (which is the topic of this thread, BTW).The point is that if someone doesn't want to believe something, they'll "filter it out" and deny it. This is true of biblical authorship as well as of most areas of life. Do you disagree with this?

It's the same thing. If the book makes claims about its authorship, you have to determine whether or not those claims are accurate. Where are you getting information about authorship if not from the book itself? If you look at external sources, there's certainly no indication of divine authorship. Of course I disagree. That whole trying-to-deny-God thing is fundie bullshit.Give people some credit for objectivity.If billions of people receive the message and less than one billion agree on its content, how can you claim that the majority is filtering out the "real" message?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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