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Author | Topic: Is the Bible the inerrant word of God? Or is it the words of men? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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And that is why Biblical Christianity is a threat to mankind and needs to be feared and constantly watched; and as Faith has said they think it is alright to censor and control and oppress any thoughts that might disagree with them.
Oh, Faith goes far beyond that! She wants a secular government in which only those who share her beliefs will have any political power, whereas those who do not agree with her will have no political power whatsoever. Yes, she did backpedal mightily to say that she did not want to change our current political system, but in the end she did still wish fervently for a political system in which only her own religious beliefs held any power whatsoever. But here is the real problem: Is the Bible the inerrant word of God? Or is it words of men? Is the Bible the inerrant word of God? What if it is? Shouldn't it be implemented? If it is truly the inerrant word of God, shouldn't it be implemented? It is perfect, isn't it? So what are you waiting for? That is precisely the argument that I have heard. "God's Law" is perfect!!!!!!!! So implement it already!!!!!! Forcing rape victims to marry their rapists. Stoning disobedient children. Stoning anyone who violates the Sabbath (Oh, I forget! Is that Saturday or Sunday? Starting at what time of the day?). Killing anyone who does not observe the Day of Appropriation, not that anybody has any idea what that could be! And all other kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. Oh, no!, modern apologists will say. Or not. ... .... .... . The old ways were for olden times, not modern ones! Which merely serves to create a modern filter of "God's Absolute Laws". Modern day Christians already pick and choose which parts of "God's Absolute Laws" to observe and insist that the rest of us must observe. What else could we expect when they come to actual power? Actually, we did encounter this before. The Geneva Bible translation was too egalitarian, so King James wanted a different translation, one that more greatly solidified his own divine rule, one that more greatly solidified the Divine Rights of Kings. The problem with the "Divine Rights of Kings" is that the King could never possibly do wrong. If ever the King made the wrong decision and you opposed it, then you were not only opposing the King, but you were opposing God Himself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What was the fundamental statement of the Declaration of Independence? Fuck the Divine Rights of Kings!!!! From whence did kings derive their right to rule? From God? No fucking way! It was from the consent of the governed! From whence was the mandate for the Constitution of the United States of America?:
quote:In the words of the Radical Religious Right in the early 1980's: secular humanism! Is the Bible the inerrant word of God? Or is it the words of men? If it is the "inerrant word of God", then what do we do with it? How do we interpret it? Faith had something to say about this, but frankly it's too late in the night to remember. For all practical reasons, somebody has to decide, right? Somebody has to decide. What do we implement and what do we not? Even Faith has admitted that only some of the Laws still apply while others do not. On what basis? How do we decide? I recall Faith saying that it had to do with our particular culture, but then how could that be reconciled with God's Laws being ABSO-fucking-LUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? Here is what will happen. "God's Law"will be declare as being absolute. All the idiotic Christians will agree that if it's in the Bible, then it's "God's Word" and must be perfect. Then the person in charge, the Supreme Religious Authority, will pick and choose and decide which parts of "God's Absolute Law"applies and which parts do not. Any and all attempts to challenge anything whatsoever that that Supreme Religious Authority says will be tantamount to challenging what God Himself says. Jar, Biblical Christianity is a far greater threat to mankind that you could ever possibly imagine.
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
You're not really discussing in this thread, just preaching and testifying. It's fascinating to see such irrational beliefs expressed so forthrightly and unabashedly with no hint of embarrassment. That you've once again become upset and frustrated probably means you have unrealistic expectations, neither desiring, expecting or brooking disagreement.
You're arguing for inerrancy, yet the primary driving force behind the interpretations you're forcing on the text is the assumption of inerrancy. You can't assume what you're trying to prove. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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Perhaps it's a lost cause but I would like to run the content of Message 1502 by you all again, because I do think it contains actual factual evidence for the claim that the Bible is inspired by God, and isn't just me preaching something. As I say there, the "coincidences" between the story of the intended sacrifice of Isaac and the actual sacrifice of Jesus Christ, actual events separated by nearly 2000 years, do strongly imply God's overseeing the entire history that is reported in the Bible, which makes good evidence that this whole history is God's doing and evidence that the Bible is His word.
The answers I got to that post didn't deal with anything in it at all, so I would like to request now that at least some elements in the post itself be addressed in any answers to this. NoNukes did at least address the statement about the "lamb" but other elements in the story are far more clearly prophetic of the sacrifice of Christ than that one. Of course it does foreshadow the role of Christ as "The Lamb of God that Takes Away the Sins of the World" as John puts it, but the lamb figure shows up in many other OT passages with that same foreshadowing, while I'd like to stick to the specifics of the story of Isaac. Some things to note: It was said that these correspondences are just made-up and that it's not hard to make up such connections, but of course nobody offered an example to prove it. Except Golffly who kept trying to show that the story of Jephthah in Judges 11 was somehow similar, and that his story was prophetically fulfilled in the resurrection of Jairus' daughter by Jesus as reported in Mark 5:22 and Luke 8:41. But there is no similarity at all between these events. Abraham was called by God to sacrifice Isaac, Jepthah simply made a rash vow on his own that he'd sacrifice whatever came out of his house. The claim of any connection with the raising of Jairus' daughter is equally ridiculous, since the point is to find SIMILARITIES between the stories, and there was no raising to life in the story of Jephthah's daughter, nor anything else in the story that reflects the Jephthah event. We're looking for SIMILARITIES between events. So I'm going to repeat the most salient points in Message 1502 to see if it's possible to avoid the red herrings that were the main response to the first posting. The common objection that it is not hard to come up with such correspondences just from pure imagination failed miserably with Golffly's supposed example, so if anyone still thinks it's so easy, I invite further attempts to prove it. Remember, again, we're looking for SIMILARITIES between widely separated events. There are in fact many events and figures in the OT that look forward to Christ, but the challenge is that you aren't going to be able to invent any as you think you can. Again the point of this is to show that the facts in the story in Genesis 22 parallel elements of the story of Christ and His sacrifice, which is why the story is traditionally understood to be a "type" or emblem or prophetic picture of that event so far in the future, and that such a correspondence of events so widely separated in time suggests the work of God Himself in ordering history toward His own purposes. That said, here's a revised list of what I consider to be the evidence of God's hand in Biblical history and I'll include quotes since that was an issue for the first post. This time I'm dividing the list into five of the most clearly prophetic elements, above, and a lower list of four that are less clear.
===========Extended List: Here I'm listing some other correspondences that aren't quite as clear as those above but which often figure in the traditional understanding of this passage as prophetic:
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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NoNukes Inactive Member
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What you post is all after the fact reconstruction in which issues of fact that are clearly contrary are dismissed.
This is a red herring because Genesis 22 clearly STATES that Isaac was Abraham's only son I don't care what Genesis 22 states. We both know that Isaac was not Abraham's only son in anything like the same sense that Jesus was God's only begotten son.
No Nukes had various objections to this but since it is clearly stated in the passage, at the very least it foreshadows the provision of the ram, and the ram of course foreshadows the later provision of the sacrifice of the Messiah. Not 'of course'. Every time you editorialize that means you aren't sticking with the text. Je Suis Charlie Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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jar Member (Idle past 393 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: No Nukes had various objections to this but since it is clearly stated in the passage, at the very least it foreshadows the provision of the ram, and the ram of course foreshadows the later provision of the sacrifice of the Messiah. --> This is emblematic or prophetic of the fact that God would Himself provide the Sacrifice that saves the world almost 2000 years later, by "The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." A lamb is not a ram. It is not the sacrificial lamb that takes away sins but rather the 'scape goat' that carries away sins. Once again you simply provide evidence that either the Bible is simply the words of men or the God that inspired it is not capable of ever getting a story straight twice. It's not the stories that are at error but rather the utterly silly attempt to pretend that the stories all have a common purpose and are without error, contradictions and discrepancies. The problem is not the Bible but rather that the theology you try to market just makes no sense and does not stand up to examination or reality.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Here's a simple question. If we grant that the statement assigned to Abraham foreshadows the appearance of the ram, how is that evidence of inspiration?
If you can't answer that then you really ought to reconsider the worth of your argument. (Bear in mind that you cannot assume that Abraham truly said that, because that would require inspiration, making your argument circular)
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Percy Member Posts: 22388 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
How is one event prophetic of another later event that has a couple similar elements, especially with extremely common events like only sons. There have been only sons since the beginning of time, and in Isaac's case he wasn't even an only son.
Repeating the exact same arguments that have already been shown highly questionable is really all you got? All your contrived interpretations make no sense. You fundamentalists would never make these interpretations if not for your need for inerrancy. You have this whole meta-story that has almost nothing to do with what the Bible actually says. You can reinterpret practically any passage in the Bible to mean whatever you need it to mean at the time. --Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9076 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.7 |
Not evidence. Just wild ass assertions and interpretations.
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
What you post is all after the fact reconstruction in which issues of fact that are clearly contrary are dismissed. Oh yes, you brought this up before and I meant to include it in my discussion and forgot. The objection doesn't make sense: of course it's all "after the fact," what else could it possibly be? The events occurred, the participants themselves would have had no inkling of their future implications, they merely lived through them. The only thing in this story that could have been at least cloudily understood by Abraham and Isaac to have prophetic implications is the comment about the lamb because they had inherited the knowledge of the promise of the Messiah God had given first to Adam and Eve and then renewed in various ways throughout history, including to Noah in a way that would be a whole study in itself. But they would have had no way of knowing how God planned to work it all out, or when. This is something we could only know after the fact. And that's how all the events in the OT that are considered to be types of Christ and the promise of salvation are known. After the fact: People think about the story, rehearse it in their minds, put it together with the promise of the Messiah they've already been taught, or later, they hear Moses' account read in the temple and so on, and a less and less cloudy picture starts to emerge of what God plans to do, and as prophecy continues throughout the years the picture gets even clearer. All these types and prophecies throughout the OT finally resulted in the expectation of the soon appearance of the Messiah in Jesus' time. And it's after Jesus comes that we fully see the prophecies and types, which makes the whole picture such a good argument for God's overseeing all the events involved.
I don't care what Genesis 22 states. We both know that Isaac was not Abraham's only son in anything like the same sense that Jesus was God's only begotten son. But of course no type COULD be, could it? But Isaac comes as close as you'll get, having been promised by God and conceived miraculously by parents well beyond childbearing age. Ishmael is regarded by God, as stated in the NT, as "born of the will of man" or "born of the bondwoman" rather than the free woman, which signifies the difference between salvation by works and salvation by grace, while Isaac was the work of God, and that's the parallel with Christ.
Not 'of course'. Every time you editorialize that means you aren't sticking with the text. Good grief, man, the ram HAS to foreshadow Christ, a sacrifice provided by God rather than man, the "Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world." Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I can't very well think that what is actually there in scripture isn't really there just because you don't believe in inspiration. Abraham's remark is there and God provides a ram which fulfills it, that's also there, and the sacrifice of a lamb always points to Jesus, and the ram is simply an older lamb, which fits just fine with the fact that Jesus was in his thirties. But I don't consider this part of the passage to be as important as other parts. How about the Moriah location, or the fact that Isaac carried the wood for his sacrifice as Christ carried the crossbeam for his crucifixion, which I forgot to mention, or the fact that it's a father sacrificing his son, who IS called his ONLY son, like it or not.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
How is one event prophetic of another later event that has a couple similar elements, especially with extremely common events like only sons. There have been only sons since the beginning of time, and in Isaac's case he wasn't even an only son. Well, find another such case of a father sacrificing his son, in the region of Moriah where Jesus died on the cross, and the son carries on his back the instrument of his death as Jesus did, and God provides a ram, instead of a bull for instance, and all the rest of the elements in common between the events, and we'll see how far you can go with that claim.
Repeating the exact same arguments that have already been shown highly questionable is really all you got? I repeated it of course, though a revised version please note, because it wasn't given a fair hearing. It may not this time either but it seemed worth another try, after which I might venture on to other examples.
All your contrived interpretations make no sense. You fundamentalists would never make these interpretations if not for your need for inerrancy. Oh I doubt that. Most of us learned these marvels well into our Christian lives, believing all along in Bible inerrancy without their help, but they are lovely confirmations. I don't know how anybody could suppose a person could make up such stuff.
You have this whole meta-story that has almost nothing to do with what the Bible actually says. You can reinterpret practically any passage in the Bible to mean whatever you need it to mean at the time. Well, but you can't. Go ahead, try it. But you don't even try to prove your general statement do you? As the others didn't either, which is why I revised and re-presented the story (and I'm glad some others have responded than did the first time). Perhaps you can do better and come up with actual proof that one can "reinterpret practically any passage in the bible to mean whatever you read it to mean at the time?" This is nonsense, I certainly do no such thing, but if you think it's possible that anyone thinks that way then please demonstrate that you can do this intentional interpreting to suit oneself. Golffly tried and failed miserably. Maybe you can do better. You can't and I'm sure you won't try either. But that's OK, I'm glad I repeated the story, I think it makes the point I wanted to make. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: You aren't required to do any such thing. All you have to do is refrain from making arguments assuming inspiration when arguing for inspiration. If you can't do that then I am afraid that you're just too irrational to make a good argument.
quote: None of which is what I was asking about. I ask again how is the foreshadowing of the ram in Abraham's statement evidence of inspiration ?
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
but it's clearly implicit in Genesis 22. NoNukes challenged this but on the basis that God could easily have provided another child to Abraham, which is a pretty far-fetched idea. I had meant to comment on this particular statement because appropriately enough it made me laugh. Abraham thinking there might be another child is a pretty far fetched possibility? Given what Abraham had already gone through with Isaac (remember why he as named that) and Ishamael? I just don't see it your way. And far fetched compared with resurrecting Isaac after Abraham sacrificed him? I suppose the result of comparing miracles is in the eye of the beholder, but I think I would personally be more astonished at Isaac coming back to life than I would be an old man of any age siring a child. Abraham ended up living to be 175 right? And then there is the convoluted substitution scheme where some combination of the ram and Isaac represents Jesus depending on what part of the prophecy you want to work.
since the point is to find SIMILARITIES between the stories, and there was no raising to life in the story of Jephthah's daughter Well, that's a perfect example of what I'd call confirmation bias in action. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Je Suis Charlie Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I ask again how is the foreshadowing of the ram in Abraham's statement evidence of inspiration ? First, please recall that I demoted that part of the story to the second list because it isn't as clear as those in the first list. However, this is what I said about it:
NoNukes had various objections to this but since it is clearly stated in the passage, at the very least it foreshadows the provision of the ram, and the ram of course foreshadows the later provision of the sacrifice of the Messiah. The correspondence of widely separated events is what I'm arguing is the evidence of inspiration. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined:
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Faith writes: The point, Arach, is that God called Isaac Abraham's only son. sure, because he didn't have the other one anymore, since he was sent away (and possibly dead).
Jesus was God's only Son, "only-begotten Son," you know, as scripture says. Mary had other sons but God had only one. that would be incorrect. the sons (plural) of god show up several times in the bible. notably genesis 6, deuteronomy 32, and job 1/2. jesus is never listed among them, though at least once the satan is.
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