Summations Only

What blasphemous effrontery to pretend you are a Christian. I already answered your absolutely idiotic bleating about the numbers of animals, jar: the first is a general list, the second more specific about the clean animals. This is very similar to the pattern that is found in Genesis 1 and 2 you also don't understand: First a general statement is made and then it is elaborated more specifically in the next chapter. There is nothing contradictory about saying all the animals were taken by twos, and then in the next chapter adding the fact that the clean animals would be taken in larger numbers.But nothing will satisfy you since you are determined to put yourself up as the final arbiter of what God means no matter that millions of believers disagree with you, and I fully expect you to continue your utterly ridiculous rant.God will of course eventually straighten you out. Too bad in the meantime you make so many false statements you mislead people.

Except Faith, that is not what the Bible actually says, is it?Here it is yet again since it seems you have never read the Bible. Note two fowl, not two clean fowl and seven unclean fowl. Seven fowl, not two clean fowl and seven unclean fowl but seven fowls.And the stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2&3 are completely contradictory, The gods are different, the orders are different. In Gen 1 the god is competent, aloof, overarching, creates by thought alone and without error or hesitation but does not interact at all with the created while in Gen 2&3 the god is personable, intimate but somewhat blundering, unsure and learning on the job.Have you ever read the Bible Faith?Shall I post Genesis 1-3 for you?

May God show you the truth since you won't listen to anybody else.

Mere "millions of believers"? Coming from you, a "popularity" argument rings quite hollow. Are you aware that there are something like 1.2 billion Catholics? Does that stop you from going on your ridiculous rants about Catholicism? No, it does not.

For sure I agree. GDR is similar to the way I was. Believing certain things and not others.
The point of realization for me was once I could accept, using only the bible, there is no more reason to disbelieve Noah, than there is to believe resurrection. The distinction of fact/fiction was based only on I what I wanted/ needed to believe. When looked at unbiased resurrection fails as easily as Noah's myth.
But for sure GDR is debatable and rational and a very smart guy. Unlike, true literalists we don't have total delusion, and the inability to debate them at all. Literalists are consistently deluded as you say.

You are the one claiming that the Bible is god's word not I and it is what is actually written in the Bible that I have posted.

I guess we could add a billion or so Muslims and a billion or so Hindus and others to the popularity contest.
The 5, 10, 15 million ( depending on how critical one is of numbers) of Mormons are also going to achieve total domination and belief in Mormonism over time. So we'll get some more billions there ( not that I believe a word I just wrote about ultimate Mormon world popularity)
Anyway the popularity contest, as No nukes says, has proven quite a poor argument.
The once deceived, it proves hard to convince people they have been fooled, is universal regardless of the religion though.Edited by Golffly, : Messed up

Sigh. Context-challenged as usual, the lot of you. The reason I mentioned the millions was to contrast with jar's single lone wolf reading of the Bible. Why can't you people read?

When nobody can read what you write, maybe it's the writing that needs improvement.

jar just posts what the Bible actually says and not what millions of people think it says.Sorry if you cannot handle what the Bible actually says and have to make shit up instead.

How does Jar read, what seems pretty much like most would read, differ from how you want it to read? There are hundreds of these type of " errors". Do they all require the special magical read, and how did you get qualified to be able to do that?

You need a secret decoder ring.

Fair enough. What I have written before on this forum and what I meant in this case that there are two essentials of Christianity that I take on faith. Yes I believe that God isn't guilty of the atrocious acts that Faith believes he has committed, and I do believe that we gain an understanding of the nature of God and the nature of our purpose in life from the Bible, but those beliefs flow from the two essentials of the faith. If God resurrected Jesus then it confirms Jesus life and message, it confirms the idea that God is good, kind, just etc and repudiates much of what is written in the OT including public stonings, genocide etc.IMHO I believe I have a very consistent way of understanding the Scriptures. As I take on faith the resurrection I see the life and message of Jesus as being affirmed and so that is my starting point in my understanding of the scriptures.As we can see that there are huge inconsistencies between what Jesus taught and what parts of the Bible had God doing we can be sure that the Bible isn't inerrant. If the Bible isn't inerrant, and if what is written doesn't involve morality such as the suggestion that God created the world in 6 days then, (although from a Christian POV it is inconsequential), we can only form conclusions on our own reasoning and information that we can gain from other sources.My point is that I do have a consistent method of understanding the Bible that isn't arbitrary. Faith on the other hand on the other hand is inconsistent about how she explains away the many inconsistencies between the various books in the Bible in trying to consistently show that the Bible is consistent as it has to be if it is inerrant. To recap, there are two essentials that I take on Faith. God is good and God resurrected Jesus. All else that I believe flows from the faith that those two essentials are accurate. It means, for a start, that Jesus accurately portrayed the nature of God, that God is involved and is not a deistic god, and that He has a purpose for our lives and for all of creation.

As Reagan would say, there you go again. The Bible is 66 books and not one. Different authors in a very different time. Actually there are good reasons to accept the resurrection as being historical but there is also an argument against it as well. I went through one philosophical rationale earlier. I also have yet to find a version of the explanation for the rise of the early church that IMHO is reasonable, whereas an historical resurrection easily explains it.I can find all sorts of reasonable reasons not to believe the legend of Noah as written about in the book of Genesis.

Belief in the resurrection explains the rise of the early church, just like belief in other things explains the rise of other churches. Belief in X does not necessarily correlate with reality of X.