Summations Only

I have no doubt of your sincerity. Where we part company is here: Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, etc. have equally valid and sincere claims that are exactly like yours. There certainly is some of that here. But one might note that you also possess some views that are held by an extremely small minority of Christians. "Thousands of Bible believers" isn't very many, particular when the term "Bible believer" is viewed through the excluding lens that you use.

I would never tell a man that. Wives are a lot of things, but one thing they are not is fungible.

When does this train of thought become hyper-Calvinism? "all you can do to further that desire". That would be nothing, right?My wanting to or even taking action, according to you, is of absolutely no consequence. No action on my own part can aid me in achieving salvation, right? Wouldn't I be practically a Jehovah's Witness if I thought otherwise?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Careful, Faith. You did not pay close attention to the point I called you out on.Here is what you said."want to do all you can to further that desire".Neither my desire, nor my actions mean anything with regard to my salvation. God chooses and in fact has already chosen based on criteria that don't involve any choices I've made or the state of my soul.Note that I am not suggesting that you should not try to help me understand. What I am saying is that you are encouraging me to feel a way that you yourself know to be false and that you believe is laden with hubris. My desire is meaningless.Beyond that, I reject your definition of hyper Calvinism anyway. I'm simply applying exactly what Calvin himself says. Namely that every human is too wretched to make even the slightest movement towards salvation. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You understand. Except that such a thing is not hyper-Calvinism. It is instead exactly what Calvin himself proposed. I am not sure why people bother to call themselves Calvinists if they don't subscribe to his ideas. Despite the fact that Faith insists on calling it hyper Calvinism, she has yet to provide any explanation for Calvin's own words.Calvin believed that is beyond your station to believe that your actions, thought or deeds can advance your chances of salvation. It is apparently hyper-Calvinism to acknowledge that to be the case. Yes. All despite the fact that with regard to salvation, Jesus is quoted as describing actions that men, women, and children must take. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You call things hyper-Calvinism despite the fact that they are inaccordance with Calvins own words. Sure Faith. And when you lose your temper here because you come up short in a debate, well that's God's doing too. And when you pray for forgiveness, you are actually rebuking God's will.Your statement that all of your feelings come from God is Calvin doctrine. And that doctrine has direct, logical consequences. The issue is that you deny all consequences of that doctrine even some of which Calvin explicitly stated. Well so do I, but then I deny that Calvinistic pre-destination has any validity whatsoever.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

What would be the point? You've seen dozens of Calvin quotes and you didn't have any answers for them before.If you are claiming to have done some homework on the topic, I'd be happy to discuss it. Just tell me that you aren't bluffing.

I did not say anything like that.

Where does this idea come from?

Well, we can quibble about whether the following constitutes a meeting. I'm not sure how much of the disagreement is about the quibble.

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3 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

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4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

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5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

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6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

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7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

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"prejudice against supernatural happenings"I suppose this is the way a superstitious person describes a non-believer. As a matter of fact though, something very near 100% of the time, that "prejudice" against the supernatural is absolutely correct. If racial profiling was correct with that regularity, the practice would not be controversial. Nonsense. There is essentially no evidence that the "meeting" or whatever is appropriate to call the event occurred. At least not evidence that corroborates the description of the event in the Bible. The truth is that believers accept the story without such evidence.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No matter how many times I hear this argument it still sounds inane. I'll note here that you weren't willing to put your name to it. You just used the anonymous term "critic".

In making my post, I tried to convey the point that the terminology was a quibble, and that I hoped the substance of the argument to that point was not over the quibble. But if quibble, we must, we might note that Paul heard Jesus voice, but neither he nor the men with him saw anything or anyone. Many people would not claim to have 'met' the person whose voice he heard.In my opinion, it is scarcely worth arguing about. The more important question is whether it happened at all. I personally find the story of Paul's conversion credible. But I don't pretend that I reached my conclusion based on the evidence. Because there is no evidence. Absolutely none. Because the idea is not obvious. It's inane.I was completely clear about my reasoning. 'Prejudice' (if that is the word) against the supernatural is entirely rational. Natural and not supernatural is the state of affairs encountered and expected all of the time. To label such thing as prejudice is akin to complaining that people are 'locked into' rational thinking or reasoning.In short saying someone is 'prejudiced against the supernatural' really means that the person is not subject to superstition.I'm sure even you catch yourself exhibiting the same bias on a regular basis. When you cannot find your keys, I'm sure you look for them rather than immediately trying to think of a way to get them back from a poltergeist. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Did Paul actually tell the story differently on separate occasions? As jar has pointed out, Luke and Acts are not a first hand accounts.But more crucially, we seem to agree on at least one route for errors to get into the Bible. Clearly at least one of Paul or Luke did err and the Bible contains their errors stated exactly as if those errors are the truth. I'm actually becoming embarrassed about my participation in this thread. You've already admitted that dismissing superstition is improper, so what do I hope to accomplish with a lecture about inductive reasoning. Nonetheless, getting details wrong is generally not evidence of truth even if it does not indicate lying. We don't say such things about, say testimony in front of the Ferguson grand jury, so why should we say it here? If we are to find truth in such stories, it must be found despite, and not because of, the discrepancies.

Unless you have an argument that the inconsistencies are really nothing of the kind, then we have multiple accounts with at least one wrong statement which cannot be assigned. It is true that we cannot decide which is correct without a gold standard.But is assigning the error really important?As to whether the errors are any consequence, we may well agree that the error is of no consequence; at least until you make the claim that the Bible is literally inerrant. You are either the greatest mage I've ever encountered, or you are full of nonsense. I cannot make much sense out of about three fourths of what you post anymore. And you never respond to my requests for clarification. I don't think I'm going to bother with your posts anymore.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

There are some threads in the 'Accuracy' forum where we've vetted some inconsistencies with some discussion with defenders of inerrancy.In most cases, proponents won't acknowledge any deviation from the purest accuracy. Faith has already deviated from this position by a bit.On the other hand, I agree with Faith about the piddly nature of most of the last few inconsistencies pointed out here. In most cases it is not even clear that there is an error. I think an inconsistency should either be substantial to Christianity or require substantial twisting to resolve as not an error.For example, while I agree that two is not seven, I don't have much problem with God providing broad outlines in a first talk with Noah and additional detail later on. So what's the point? Is that anywhere near as hard as believing a global flood occurred a few thousand years ago?On the other hand, I've always been bothered by the description of Paul's men sometimes hearing and other times not hearing Jesus voice. In my view, someone erred, but the error is of no consequence.And there are, of course a number of non-denial errors in the Bible. Judas death and burial is inconsistently described in different ways that cannot be reconciled. There are also contradictions with Jacob's renaming as told in Genesis 32 and 35 and then not being called Israel in any consistent manner afterwards. Did the choice of punishments God offered David include 7 years of famine (2 Samuel 24:13) or just 3 years of famine (1 Chronicles 21)? Was David put up to the evil deed to "number Israel" by God or by Satan as described variously in those two accounts that resulted in the punishment?In my opinion, those discrepancies are impossible to reconcile into not being fairly substantial errors. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : Edit Bible reference