Kyzra

perhaps, but less so than the bible. what the SAB was designed to do, it does very well.

1) it shows how easy it is to misinterpret most of the bible verses. thus giving rise to multiple denominations, sects and cults each with their own agenda to push, thanks to the vagueness of the bible.

2)it shows that the bible was written by spiteful, racist, sexist men with primitive knowledgy of geography, biology, astronomy and physics. and certainly not the inspired work of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent god.

incidentally, their god(s) has/have the same characteristics of wandering desert nomads. and i say gods for there are many gods listed in the bible (borrowed from other, established civilizations of the time) who strangly enough, later merged into one god and even stranger still, later split into 3 gods.

btw: if you have issues with anything in the SAB, you are free to post in the SAB forum or e-mail the author from his site. if you make a convincing enough argument, the author will modify the SAB.

Koyaanisqatsi

Your intent is obvious, regardless of your baby step approach. You are attempting to fully discredit the SAB or as fully as possible discredit the SAB.

Unlike most cult members, we're not idiots.

That is nothing more than unsubstantiated bullshit in order to attempt the full discrediting of the SAB through unwarranted and unsupported hyperbole.

I've seen it so many times here that it physically makes me sick every time.

You find one or two comments that can be redirected and then attempt the exploded conclusion that it's all worthless (all the while maintaining a lie of scholarship obfuscating this goal) and then use words and phrases like, "obviously" and not "applying critical thinking," and "much of it does not," in order to make false, grandiose conclusions from vague, ancillary observations.

The Bible is it's own source of blatant and irrefutable contradictions that demonstrate conclusively that it is nothing more than a collection of fictional cult propaganda. All the SAB does is provide a quick and fairly exhaustive reference guide to the majority of those contradictions and/or questionable elements and that's it.

Believe me, no one in here needs the SAB to prove squat! That's not its purpose.

(edited for lysdexia - Koy)

[ November 14, 2001: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]

Angelfish

This is the whole point regarding the SAB in a nutshell. The fact is the interpretations and judgments on the Bible contained in the SAB are incredibly restrained considering the options that exist for less restrained interpretations.
For Layman the option does not exist to critique a critique while not being critical and unbiased toward the original.

hezekiah jones

Seems like someone is desperately in need of a new straw man.

Photocrat

It is not "incomplete" if it leaves out horrible misreadings of the text. There are *many* places it badly abuses context. "A text without a context is a pretext." Half the book seems to be a pretext. The problem is that it's like a puffer fish--it blows itself up to look scarrier than it really is. Yes, there are legitimate theological problems & schisms; but those are *far* better presented if not mixed with a load of crap. It's like putting dog poop in brownies--does anyone care that it's only a "little" or would they be "incomplete" without it? C'mon!

I would throw it in the dustbin because it does not seem to be the least bit serious. THAT is the problem. If it's not even serious, I can't be bothered to take it seriously. OTOH, should someone come back with the more legitimate theological problems (e.g. the part about early believers, who DID think that Jesus was going to come back earlier) with rational arguement; I will be quite happy to take them seriously. No, I see the logical fallacy--I can't just wipe out the straw men & ignore the real arguements. I'm not. But I don't want to have to wade through an army of straw men to get to the few defenders. Something like that may have worked for Vlad the Impaler (who put all the dead on stakes outside his castle & creeped out the opposing army in a bad way...) but I wouldn't waste my time on that.

In my next post, in fact, I will attempt to address the part about the early Christian belief that Jesus would come back earlier.

BTW, the answer to the question "are we punished for the sins of others" is to ask--"in what respect?" In the sense of literally being guilty of said sin, no. In the sense of do we suffer some of the consequences; yes, we do (as did all the Isrealite children who got to wander through the desert for 40 years until their parents' generation died out). THIS is where context is important. That is why I prefer to ignore lists where the author doesn't even seem to understand english. I've been tempted to take skeptics out of context & see how they like it (or even in context, in many cases...) but I hope the point is not lost on you.

Photocrat

First problem with that: Jesus didn't know when He'd return! "Of that day, no one knows the day nor the hour, not even the Son, but only the Father" (IIRC--please look that up for yourselves! This is from memory, sorry

Yes. Early Christians did seem to believe that. But Paul & co. themselves tried to convince them otherwise (That's one of the main ways we know of this belief! They were apparently concerned about how the earlier letter was taken to indicate the He'd be back really soon. Yes, I would bet that you'll dispute the authorship of the second letter, making it out to be by someone else, despite the personal references [which indicate it to have been written "improbably early" right? :] ... ahh well

Of course, if you look at the parallels, with the above it may be argued that Mark (or was it Matthew? sorry, look for whichever has two, not one, question there; it can't be that hard to find, but I have too many other things to do right now retains the original form of the question, so the answer really applies to the destruction of Jerusalem (which *did* happen within that generation--70 CE saw the temple destroyed; the revolt was 67-73 CE) That goes hand in hand with the last part (which is *far* more debateable, I realize

Lastly, we have one theory of the prophetic timetable of all this which I seem to have mostly forgotten. Basically, when Jesus came, we were in the last "week" until the end of the world. That clock stopped in 70 CE, with the end of the Jewish sacrificial system. In other words, up until that, as far as they knew, they were in that last week. Afterwards, they realized that there had been a "time out" as it were. I can't say that I can vouch for this theory, I can't claim that it's strong, undebateable or anything of the sort, but it is a possible answer & it does make a wierd sort of sense :] The previous paragraph, however, is on far less speculative grounds, mind you. Yes, I realize that it would also imply that, if ever Isreal grabs the Temple Mount & begins sacrifices again, it would "restart" the clock. That and the fact that I don't know much about said theory is why I can't vouch for it.

Photocrat

Yup, for the reason you mention.

And *that* is what makes it worthless. I mean, do you really want something which tells you what you want to hear, gives you every possible weak arguement you could make, etc.? When Meta posts a list of arguements he at least thought of himself, it's called a "crap flood;" I don't see why this should be spared that critique. As you admit that it's not very scholarly and I rate it at the level of "atheist chick tract" and I don't think I'm being the least bit harsh on it, either.

I look on this just above how you'd look on someone trying to defend YECs to you because of their "overwhelmingly large faith" which is "more exhaustive than thorough" ... :]

It makes a bad starting point because you're supposed to make up your *own* mind; not start out pointed in a particular direction & build that up with any old thing you can find. That is the very antithesis of a "free thinker," is it not? I could swear that I've seen the lot of you rant against various Christian analogs of that, frequently using phrases like "don't you see?" LOL. I do; don't you?

Ah well, that's enough irony for one day :]

Grumpy

Up until about a year ago, IIRC, the site used a ranking system (one star to four stars, for example) to differentiate the stronger criticisms of the Bible from the more tenuous ones. It was abandoned as too cumbersome and subjective.

Or maybe I just imagined that SAB used such a system for a while. Either way, you can see how it would be useful for separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, while presenting the chaff for the readers to judge themselves. And you can also see how it would be difficult to implement, especially when we're talking about annotations for thousands of Bible verses.

As for how the "skeptic community" views the SAB -- I'm like Pantera. I use it as my go-to online searchable Bible. I use its catalog of atrocities and absurdities. And if there's a certain contradiction I can't quite remember, a quick perusal of the SAB can remind me.

Photocrat

[FYI, this is a combined reply to Angelfish & the post right before it. Much of the rant below is addressed to the *earlier* post; I hope there is little confusion :]

One last, for the road.

Please understand this: we're against ever so "flexible" interpretations no matter who is twisting them. There's even a Bible verse about how you're not supposed to twist the meaning of the verses; sheesh :] I don't care if it's a Jehovah's Witness or a skeptic abusing the context of a verse, it's all just as bad.

Who is to say who is right, you say? Most of the people who have studied this for a long time only quibble over minutea nowadays. Granted, the mystery of Romans 7 does have some theological import, but not that much as a practical manner. Sectarian divisions usually hinge on five words [or verses] in the Bible & 500,000 words [not to mention deeds...] by some church father, the RCC, Luther, or others... Not to mention that I can make the [hyperbole of an] arguement: "your words are so vague, I could come to bizzare conclusions, like supposing [for no apparent reason] that you are a pedophilic homophobe from them; therefore, your arguements are invalid." Obviously, what I'm trying to say is that while reasonable people can have an honest dispute, there usually isn't that much latitude for the truely bizzare things people like to toss out when things are taken [badly] out of context. You should all know of the Bibliomancer who read in succession:

"Then Judas went out and hung himself."
"Go ye therefore and do likewise."
"What you do, do quickly."
[Appropriately, I've forgotten the verse references offhand, but they should all be in the gospels, possibly even a single one... I think that Matthew has Judas hang himself; but my memory is imperfect on this point. :]

*Obviously* that's a horrible abuse of the context of those verses. A text without a context is a pretext. We should all be more demanding of the context people quote things in.

I do my very best never to knowingly abuse the context of any verse whatsoever. Moreover, as skeptics often say of the Bible, there's nothing there to mark the weak claims from the real ones [of the Bible; the skeptic's analog of that is hyperbole, etc.]

Now then, to the one who ranted along the lines of "you're trying to use straw men to disprove it all!" -- prove it! I didn't see evidence of that. For myself, I specifically addressed that notion. I can answer any claim out of there, but I get bored with the weak ones. I am not that stupid; I know that it's a logical fallacy. OTOH, it is also a logical fallacy to claim that we're wrong about the weak claims because because we're trying to "use them to disprove the whole thing" [in the skeptics own words, again--prove it!]. That charge is called ad logicam and is just as bad a fallacy as the fallacy you're accusing us of.

BTW, how come I get so many different readings of the author's intent? Can't anyone tell me the real intent, or will you use whichever intent you might dream up which best supports your arguements? I want proof here; proof from the author's own words, please.

I realize that you can [hopefully with a tounge rather far in that cheek of yours :] claim that you're trying to "act like us to show us how dumb it is." One problem: I don't do that. I'm human; I make mistakes, but I'm not quite so dumb as to blithely fall into the traps you appear to think I'm doing in the earlier post ...

I'll condense this:
1a) I don't like straw men.
2a) The SAB contains lots of straw men.
3a) By 1&2, I don't like the SAB.

Correllary to that is:
1b) Skeptics don't like straw men [at the very least, theistic ones, in my observation].

Since I can support 2a, above, rather well, I'm wondering why the skeptics who do like the SAB do so, just as much as the original poster. Does 1b not hold? Do skeptics really not put much stock in the SAB, as SingleDad reluctantly granted? This is what needs explaining. I suspect I'll just find out that it's some mix of illogical skeptics and others who don't put much stock in it, but use it as a reference for their arguements and [hopefully!] investigate the context of all the material they intend to use, beforehand...

That *is*, at least, a defensible use of it; though the purpose of the book is somewhat dubious...

Angelfish

Photocrat , scourge of the straw man
Just Kidding
I gather most of your response is as per your intro is not directed at my post as this would be at odds with the amount of effort that went into it.
I love the SAB simple as that. Yes it is biased but its just so forgivable
Skepticism towards Christianity does not compel me to be skeptical or demand exactness in all I read or use.

Baby