Summations Only

Objectivity and logical thought, my my my, how the arrogant do go on.

That's nice Faith but once again you simply failed to answer or address the questions.What does thinking biblically even mean? How is that different than thinking or being honest about what is actually written?In addition, what would that have to do with whether or not the Bible the inerrant word of God or is it the words of men?

Faith,
Consider posting in a manner that doesn't insult the intelligence of the reader.
If you can't help it, at least quote something from the bible to support...random chance not occurring in life, "casting lots" was something god did for awhile like all the other gods, but he pulled that off the table later and then let dice fall randomly. But life doesn't have random chance either.
It's so ridiculous that it's impossible to consider you have a rational thought. If you can't at least show from the bible where you get this illogical thinking, maybe don't post ridiculous stuff.

This does not answer all of your questions, but it is a discussion of where "casting lots" appears in the Bible, and gives at least one person's take on it.http://carm.org/what-casting-lots-in-the-bibleFor example, here is the given explanation for lots now being "off the table".

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Since the New Testament does not have any instance of Christians casting lots to discern the will of God after Pentecost, we conclude that after the arrival of the Holy Spirit we do not need to rely on that method but instead must rely on the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the further revelation found in the New Testament.

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In short there is no indication that God ever approved or disapproved of the casting of lots.One thing we can say about the casting of lots is that its use removes any human influence or bias from decisions, and makes it impossible to say that decisions were unfair. For most of the times that casting lots is used in the Bible, those features provide ample justification for using it.However, the story of Jonah suggests something different. In Jonah, the lot casters were expected the lots to reveal the cause of their troubles. Proverbs 16:33 indicates that every lot decision is from the Lord. I'm not sure we can get this from any of the other Biblical uses of lot casting. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Context does not save your remarks, Faith. The fact remains that there is plenty of evidence of superstition among people in the Bible.

No nukes, I am familiar with the superstition of casting lots. There is no comment in the bible for or against it as far as god is concerned, in the bible. As you suggest.
It was also used by every other god/ religion with the same claim as ancients in bible.. the god of the day influenced the outcome.
So asking Faith to prove when it was in play and when it wasn't. There is no biblical answer.
She's making it up. This appears to be a rationalization with no evidence before when lots were in play or after. I could just as easily make up my own answer. I could say that superstitious ancients were using this before Yahweh. Using it with other gods. It's simply superstition and always has been.
Thanks for the information on this by the way.

Rational and logical thought don't require us to nit-pick every detail. Forty-two is not an entirely implausible number; rejecting it out of hand is pretty silly. I hope that isn't a prime example of your "rational and logical" thought.

I started this off with this:
Which of these absurdities are fact
Which of these absurdities are fact
2 Kg 2:23-24. God sends two bears to kill 42 kids for teasing a prophet about a bald headSodom/GomorrahNumbers 16:49 god kills 14,700 for complaining about his killings2 Chronicles 14:9-14 God slew a million Ethiopians in either God's biggest mass murder in the bible or maybe second to the flood. The boys snuck this massacre in the bible with little fan fare.Number 31:1-35. Midianite massacre where the boys keep the virgins for themselves to rape.I consider all these such a poor example of any form of morality. The opposite of what any normal person would consider "appropriate" in any way. There are many of these in the bible. A hundred would not be an over exaggeration. It's, in my opinion, so outright absurd.....I can't see them as reality. If Christians do believe them, what nice moral story would someone pick as a bed time story out of the bible for their child?I don't mean to nit pick 42 bears. That isn't the issue really.
What kind of story do we have here. Some kids tease a guy with a bald head. Is that right to do.. of course not. But it's kids and it's exceedingly minor. What is the purported biblical justice for this minor thing. Kill every kid by god sending two bears to maul them. I mean, this is perverted. Who thinks like that? Well the prophet does or the writer does or god does. Take our pick. ( Noah's myth is the same. Sodom/Gomorrah the same).
The fact I don't think any of them happened is partly beside the point.
Because if somebody does believe they happened, then they need a lot of explaining as to why.

The problem is Golffly that you keep knocking down a straw man. There are a group of Christians that insist that the Bible should be read as essentially written by God. Faith is an obvious example of that.However, the majority of Christians don't read it that way and there is no good reason to do so anyway except that it provides something in black and white so that one can give authoritative answers to various questions.The Bible is a narrative of a growth in the understanding of the nature of God and His reaching out to His creation. The examples that you give are obviously written by men with either an agenda or a genuine misunderstanding of the nature of God.The questions that religions of all types have tried to answer over the years is firstly "who is God" and secondly "what is our purpose". The Christian answer to those questions are that they can be found in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ and to the first question the answer is that there is a god who is a god of love and cares what happens to us even though we live in an imperfect world with imperfect beings. And as an answer to the second question, we are to reflect God's love into creation as we are building for the time, whether it be tomorrow or millions of years from now when time as we know it comes to an end a new world is created from the old.The response could well be that we gain our understanding of Jesus through reading the Bible. True enough but the Bible is not one book by one author but a collection of books by various authors. It makes no sense to assign them all equal credibility. So yes, we can read the NT authors, and we can form our own conclusions about what they have written. I am convinced that what they wrote about the resurrection is essentially true while recognizing that there are variations in the times and places of the resurrection appearances. (Look at the various recollections by those witnessing a car accident. They do all agree though that the accident happened.) In my view the inconsistencies actually add plausibility to the accounts as if we found that they all lined up perfectly it would smell of collusion between the authors.In the end though it is a faith, and as I have said numerous times here my faith is based on the understanding of the nature of God is that He is loving, just and merciful, and as a Christian I have faith that God resurrected Jesus which affirms and validates the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Do you have a shred of evidence for your belief ?

Too funny.Did GDR use the term faith to describe the source of his beliefs?Didn't GDR say:

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In the end though it is a faith, and as I have said numerous times here my faith is based on the understanding of the nature of God is that He is loving, just and merciful, and as a Christian I have faith that God resurrected Jesus which affirms and validates the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

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Edited by jar, : fix sub-title.

Hi GDRIf the revelation of God comes through Jesus, how were the people living in the 4000 or 40,000 or 200,000 years (depending on your beliefs) before Jesus able to know what God is really like? As Golffly points out the picture in the OT is often not very pretty.With regard to the accounts of Jesus' resurrection, the differences can not be lightly dismissed. Did the women meet Jesus while they ran to tell the disciples as Matthew portrays? If so, why did the disciples on the way to Emmaus in Luke not know this? They knew the tomb was empty and that the women had seen angels. Did the women just forget to relay the important fact of SEEING Jesus?And Mark says, in the part before the later addition, that the women told no-one.So which account do we believe?

What is the point here? Superstition is what the heathen practice although sometimes God gave them true answers to the casting of lots, such as when they sought to find out the cause of the dangerous storm. Seeking and obeying God is not superstition.Your cats-eye marble worked randomly. I gave biblical context that tells us whether God answered or not.

Thinking biblically means taking the Bible as the entire framework of your thinking, believing what it says and judging all its parts by all its other parts. That way you certainly get a clear revelation of supernatural things you would never get from your own experience. If you judge the supernatural realities revealed there as mere superstition as Golffly does you simply prevent yourself from ever learning anything. If you mangle it with concepts that are contrary to its revelation you are imposing a worldly standard on it and not thinking biblically. This is what you do all the time, and that is what golffly is doing. Calling people who think biblically "irrational" is a stupid bias that no amount of reason is going to penetrate.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So again, thinking Biblically means to shut down any critical thinking, ignore all evidence and reality and instead believe personal fantasies. Got it. We know though that you do NOT believe what the Bible actually says. You prove that with almost every post you make.Are two fowl and seven fowl the same number of fowl?