Freethought & Rationalism Archive

schriverja · 06-24-2011, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

Quote:

Originally Posted by schriverja

[invoking my best simon tone]

Sorry about that. . .
It is to clarify the meaning of John 9, and remove any misunderstanding regarding it from becoming a basis for someone's argument.
No, I think they are all separate reasons, as I have separate reasons for my kid not walking the long trip to school on a public road.
Each reason stands separate and on its own.
Why is that not a satisfactory explanation for the differing reasons given in the Bible for suffering?

This is the point I have been trying to get at. If you presume that all books are equal, essentially written by the same author you could come up with multiple explanations. But the Bible isn't that. It's a diverse collection of books from a lot of different authors.

For instance, if you lived in the 5th century BCE and you only had the Torah, you would presume that suffering is solely the result of sin. However, if you only had the Ecclesiastes, you would presume that suffering comes as a result of a lack of wisdom. If, for instance, you only had Job (likely the oldest book in the Bible, predating the Torah), you would assume that God has willed your suffering for his own purposes and has nothing to due with your sinfulness or wisdom..

Then you get to John's gospel, and suffering is explained to be there so that God's glory can be revealed.

These are different reasons. Incompatible reasons. Yet you, assuming the Bible to be essentially one work instead of an anthology, smoosh all of these inconsistencies together...

<snipped remainder of post>

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by schriverja

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

Quote:

Originally Posted by schriverja

[invoking my best simon tone]

Sorry about that. . .
It is to clarify the meaning of John 9, and remove any misunderstanding regarding it from becoming a basis for someone's argument.
No, I think they are all separate reasons, as I have separate reasons for my kid not walking the long trip to school on a public road.
Each reason stands separate and on its own.
Why is that not a satisfactory explanation for the differing reasons given in the Bible for suffering?

This is the point I have been trying to get at. If you presume that all books are equal, essentially written by the same author you could come up with multiple explanations. But the Bible isn't that. It's a diverse collection of books from a lot of different authors.

The Bible claims otherwise.

Quote:

For instance, if you lived in the 5th century BCE and you only had the Torah, you would presume that suffering is solely the result of sin. However, if you only had the Ecclesiastes, you would presume that suffering comes as a result of a lack of wisdom. If, for instance, you only had Job (likely the oldest book in the Bible, predating the Torah), you would assume that God has willed your suffering for his own purposes and has nothing to due with your sinfulness or wisdom..

Then you get to John's gospel, and suffering is explained to be there so that God's glory can be revealed.

These are different reasons. Incompatible reasons. Yet you, assuming the Bible to be essentially one work instead of an anthology, smoosh all of these inconsistencies together...

<snipped remainder of post>

And that necessitates my big project on the unity of the Bible.

schriverja · 06-24-2011, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

Quote:

Originally Posted by schriverja

This is the point I have been trying to get at. If you presume that all books are equal, essentially written by the same author you could come up with multiple explanations. But the Bible isn't that. It's a diverse collection of books from a lot of different authors.

The Bible claims otherwise.

Actually, one or two authors (out of an unknown number of discrete authors/editors) of the Bible claim otherwise. The Bible never was an official canon (whichever canon you prefer) until centuries after the last book was written. Those same authors that claim the Scriptures are God-breathed neglect to mention what texts they actually mean. Paul easily can be assuming the Book of Enoch to be God-breathed. Or some text that no longer exists. He also can be dismissing any or all of the prophets or chronicles as God-breathed.

2nd edit: There are boatloads of texts referred to within the Bible that never made it into the canon. Check it out for yourself.

edit: for that matter, since the canon was far from determined and some writings that came after Paul's writings came to be included in the canon, he could have assumed that the Koran or Book of Mormon were God-breathed, as well...

<snipped>

Deus Ex · 06-24-2011, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Sin is usually defined as anything a person does that is against the will of God, but which will is that? Calvinists claim that God has a prescriptive will, where God lays out all the things that he wants us to either do or not do. But we are told by Calvinists that God also has a secret will, where God decrees that people do things which violate God's prescriptive will. Assuming a completely sovereign God, we are not able to resist this second will of God, and a case can be made that God himself is the cause of our violating his other will.

Quote:

You are aware that Paul raises and addresses this very objection.

Paul simply ducks the question by stating that we have no right to ask the question in the first place. I'm gonna ask whether Paul thinks I have a right to or not.

Davka · 06-24-2011, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaybees

No astronomers at that time noticed this:

"Joshua 10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel."

It's safe to say it never happened. I'm not arguing about miracles, I'm just wondering why no one outside these few acres of land even noticed it.

Don't you agree that someone, someplace, somehow would have realiazed that the sun stood still that day?

If not, please explain.

That's outside my purview.

Well, it has quite a large amount to do with your interpretation of the Bible. If you believe that the earth actually stopped, then the fact that it is reported nowhere outside the Bible is problematic.

If you continue with your somewhat facetious claim that all you are doing is "reporting what the Bible says," then you don't need to answer any more questions. We're all quite literate, we can read the Bible for ourselves and see what it says, and some of us have literally spent decades studying the Bible.

We have no need of a reporter, with all the implicit bias that reporting entails. We can read directly from the source.

Failte · 06-24-2011, 11:50 AM

Quote:

We have no need of a reporter, with all the implicit bias that reporting entails. We can read directly from the source.

But...but...we are still misunderstanding it, obviously, since we come to different conclusions than simon kole does. And since he KNOWS that the bible is true, we must be wrong!

The interpretation is flawed, and by continually reducing the scope of his 'purview", simon has effectively shut down any actual discussion. If we disagree, we misunderstand. If we rightly argue that the bible says false things, we are taking about this outside of the narrow field he has defined by injecting reality or observable fact. If we point out specific contradictory verses in the bible, they are not actually contradictions because they can be explained away.

Tiresome, and utterly predictable. The bible "says" whatever a believer wants it to say, so explaining it to us is entirely unnecessary. We know the script.

Davka · 06-24-2011, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

The Bible presents itself as true.

No, it does not. The Bible does not refer to itself in any way at all. It cannot.

Some of the books included in the Bible present themselves and/or other books in the Bible as true. But the compilation as a whole has nothing to say about the compilation as a whole. It would be irrational to expect that it could.

Davka · 06-24-2011, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

The Bible claims divine authorship.

No, it does not.

There is no mention of God in the entire Book of Esther.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says very clearly that it was not authored by God.

Both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts claim human authorship.

Even in the Prophetic books, there are clear delineations between "thus saith the Lord" and mere human writings.

That Timothy 2 says "all scripture is god breathed" is NOT the same as "the Bible" claiming divine authorship. It is a LETTER, written by a HUMAN, which was added to the Biblical collection by other HUMANS. So what we have is a single letter making a very vague claim (what is meant by "all scripture?") which has been appended to an anthology of Jewish sacred writings.

Please stop making absurd claims about what "the Bible" says about itself. It says nothing at all about itself. Your claim is comparable to claiming that because one version of "little red riding hood" claims that the "mother goose stories" were written by mother goose, therefore the mother goose stories claim to be written by mother goose.

Imnotspecial · 06-24-2011, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Failte

Quote:

We have no need of a reporter, with all the implicit bias that reporting entails. We can read directly from the source.

But...but...we are still misunderstanding it, obviously, since we come to different conclusions than simon kole does. And since he KNOWS that the bible is true, we must be wrong!

The interpretation is flawed, and by continually reducing the scope of his 'purview", simon has effectively shut down any actual discussion. If we disagree, we misunderstand. If we rightly argue that the bible says false things, we are taking about this outside of the narrow field he has defined by injecting reality or observable fact. If we point out specific contradictory verses in the bible, they are not actually contradictions because they can be explained away.

Tiresome, and utterly predictable. The bible "says" whatever a believer wants it to say, so explaining it to us is entirely unnecessary. We know the script.

Yes, the entertainment factor is quickly fading away.

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Failte

Quote:

Originally Posted by simon kole

Quote:

Originally Posted by Failte

Ok. How did Judas die? How do you explain away the contradictory verses without having to add something to them to make it work?

That's a good question. But just because a specific statement is not included in the account, does not mean it is not inferred by it.

To say that Judas bought a field with his money is not entirely inappropriate, since those to whom he gave the money bought a field with it. I do not see this difference as a material contradiction, because I use a more practical dynamic understanding of the texts, as opposed to a theoretical static understanding of them.

In one account he "hanged" himself, in the other account he "fell headlong."

In a more practical understanding of what occurred, could it not be that he hanged himself, and when the body finally fell, either because someone took it down or because of decay, it was in a decomposed condition and so broke open in the middle?

The texts do give two different reasons for calling it the Field of Blood. One says it was because it was blood money to betray Jesus. The other says it was because his body broke open.

Could it be the chief priests called it the Field of Blood for the first reason, and "everybody in Jerusalem who heard about his body breaking open" called it that for the second reason?

I agree, the accounts are not forensically identical. But I don't require that kind of identity between accounts to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of them, particularly when the differences are not material to the rest of the Bible.

But when the differences are material to the rest of the Bible, I go over them with a fine-toothed comb, as I did the basic doctrinal inconsistency of the Bible, in post #35 on this thread.

Just as I expected. "It's not REALLY a contradiction".

You simply interpret the two completely different stories to be the same, since you have to make it fit. Sorry, I'm not buying it. That is not what the bible says, which you have been preaching to us throughout the thread. What is says is pretty clear and it's quite different in those two books. I'm not misunderstanding what is written, I just refuse to elaborate and embroider the stories as written to make them the same.

Did he hang or did he fall-and-burst? Did he buy the field or did he throw away the money?

The two accounts are not reconcilable unless you add to them and start to "explain" how it might be plausible that both are true. The bible doesn't say that -- what it says is contradictory. In one he hanged himself, in another he fell-headlong and died. In one he bought land, in the other he threw away the money.

You have to add possible explanations and "could it be"s in order to make the two stories jibe, not just read the two accounts, which are actually quite clear.

If the stories were about two different characters -- for example, if I presented you with a statement that 'Bob threw the money he got for betraying his friend into the temple, and then went away and hung himself" and a bit later told you that "John bought a bunch of land with the money he got for betraying his friend, but then fell into the field and died, spewing out his intestines" would you even consider that the two stories described the same actions? Of course not. They describe completely different scenarios and imply different motivations and actions of the main character.

But, since the bible has to be contradiction-less, and the stories both tell how Judas died, they must be describing the same event! They have to, or your assertion that the bible has no internal contradictions is false.

I hear you, but it is not my job to persuade, only to present.

Each has to use his own standards to decide whether to accept or reject it.

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Which were created first? Adam (and possibly eve) or the animals? What "could have beens" must you invoke to reconcile the two genesis accounts?

I assume you are referring to Ge 2:19.

In the general account of the whole creation, in Ge 1:24-25 the animals were created before Adam and Eve.

In the specific account of the creation of Adam and Eve, Ge 2:19 says,

"Now the Lord had formed (completed past action) out of the ground all the beasts of the field. . ."
The verse is not stating present action (creation of the animlas) at that point in the narrative.

So in the specific account of the creation of Adam and Eve, the animals were created before Adam and Eve.

I prefer to address specific textual contradictions on the Bible Contradictions thread, so that is what I will do from here on.

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