DaveJes1979

HRG
Dave: why is what the Scriptures say "undefined"? Yes, varying interpretations exist, but that does not change the nature nor the message that Scripture objectively contains.

It is still wrong of you to say that "I appeal" to my own interpretation. I HAVE an interpretation, but I do not "appeal" to it as such. My interpretation is subject to the Scripture.

Your argument assumes that, for the Scripture to have any meaning, it must be given meaning by the reader. I can only imagine that one can justify such a bizarre idea by appealing to post-Enlightenment philosophy, which teaches that meaning doesn't exist until the human mind bring meaning to a given reality.

Dave: by the means of reading the Bible, and debating the issues exegetically, from Scripture.

Is this ANY different from any other field of study? The scientific community does the same thing with a given set of data (analogous to Scripture). The data is interpreted (as is Scripture) and physical formulas are derived (analogous to Christian doctrine). The Christian, as a matter of fact, is in a much better position to interpret his set of data than is the scientist - since we have a fixed set of data in the Scripture, as opposed to an ongoing accumulation of scientific data.

Dave Gadbois

FarSeeker

I'll take that bet, what do you care to wagger?
Or are you going to run away from your own words?

doodad

I understand your reasons for not believing that God exists and cannot fault you for that. We humans lack the ability to observe or to converse with a supernatural being.

What argument is unavailable to us theists for obvious reasons?

I agree that people have wrongfully used religion to justify their behavior.

Consider this about religious law versus secular law. In ancient times nations were essentially theocracies or the ruling party was heavily influenced by the clerics. Judaism, the religion of the ancient Jews, served more than their spiritual needs, as it was also the secular law, or the law of the land, to a large extent.

Granted, we have less need of religious law to regulate civil behavior than in the past, but the secular laws have concepts of morality that compare to those advocated by religion. Would you rather have a child learn concepts of morality in church or in a court of law? Yes, the family should impart morality to its kids and the church is not needed for that. One can also home school the kids, but it's common practice to send them to public school for their education.
Religion is a service in much the same sense that our education system is a service and in a developed society people employ services rather than doing it all themselves.

wordsmyth

I see that you, like most xians, use an interpretation which suits your own individual standards rather than accepting scripture as the literal truth you profess it to be.

<strong> The more you impose your personal interpretation on scripture, the more it confirms my impression that xians, on the whole, are vapid thinkers who will resort to the most absurd semantics maneuvers to defend the irrational.

Once again, you are using poor semantics to defend your position. If the bible were the dispirited idiom you seem to be claiming it to be, then we have only the interpretations of those, like yourself, who profess greater insight of the bible's true connotations. Unfortunately, none of those who claim this "great insight" seem to agree one to another, and so I have to ask this.

What qualifications do you have that I should accept your interpretation as the inviolate true meaning of the bible over the multitudes whose elucidation differs from your own?

Romans 1:1-32 makes the claim that any who deny God suddenly become amoral. This passage only bolsters your position if you make the claim that everyone denies God. Is that the claim you are making?

Xians always accuse infidels of taking things out of context and yet here you are guilty of that very thing.

So you are saying that if the church mandates to exact God's wrath, then voila!, suddenly killing children becomes the moral obligation of every xian. That explains the crusades and inquisitions in which these atrocities were sanctioned by the church in the name of the "sky daddy".

You are going to have to use a little more logic if you want to defend your position. Oh wait, I forgot, logic is the antithesis of faith so that won't be possible for you.

It is wrong for God(or anyone) to kill children because they do not yet possess the capacity to understand why they are being killed. It is for this very reason that our society considers it inhumane to execute those without the mental capacity to acknowledge what they did was wrong.

Your only justification for killing children is that a book says it's acceptable in some circumstances. It is attempts by xians to justify killing in the name of the omni-ego that led to atrocities like the crusades and inquisitions.

The atheist worldview does not take God(s) into account and yet they invariably do value human life. Apparently they value human life greater than xians who attempt to justify the atrocious destruction of human life by their unseen, unheard, yet allegedly omnibenevolent "sky daddy".

So, what you're saying is that anyone with the capacity to murder(i.e. everyone) should be treated the same as those who actually commit murder.

It is my deepest hope that you don't have, nor will you ever have, children. For you to believe it acceptable to kill children based solely on what they might do at some future time is abhorrent to me and I fear for the life of any child you come in contact with.

How can you possibly expect anyone to accept your philosophy when you don't even appear to understand the meaning of the words you use to form that philosophy.

First you must know the meaning of the word(s) to comprehend what is written and only then can you understand the intent. Your lack of understanding the former has caused your poor interpretation of the latter.

You have not in any way, shape, or form shown your interpretation to be anything more than a bad attempt to justify your position with poor semantics. The contextual hurdles an xian will leap over are quite amusing and make me envision someone fishing in the middle of a desert.

(Edited for grammar)

[ May 27, 2002: Message edited by: wordsmyth ]</p>

DaveJes1979

wordsmyth

Dave: I don't know what you mean by "literal" truth - I am simply defining my terms in light of the context they are used in. That is proper procedure for any area of literary and semantic study.

Dave: taking into consideration contextual issues is hardly "imposing" my own interpretation. If that is so, then I am following a long line of textual and literary scholars. It seems to me that you want me to, in effect, employ the interpretive methods of Fundamentalists.


Dave: I don't claim to possess any great insight - I simply am taking into account the context of words - what you call "poor semantics."

Dave: who are these multitudes you speak of? I am hardly the first person to notice the difference between KNOWING and ACKNOWLEDGING.

Dave: absolutely. Everyone HAS denied God (thus, the Christian doctrine of depravity). It is by God's grace that some repent of it. This is the whole point of the first 3 chapters of Romans - "all have sinned and fall short of God's glory."

Dave: that hardly "explains" the Crusades and inquisitions. There is no such mandate given in the New Testament. Power hunger is a far more plausible explanation.

Dave: antithesis of faith? Why is it that I have not yet heard an atheist account of logic (for, say, induction)?

Dave: but this does not at all take into account the Christian contention that all are guilty - before any conciousness of it - of Adam's sin, as he represented us.

Dave: but my challenge is this: WHY do atheists value human life. I see nothing in a world that is only matter in motion (materialism) or perhaps the result of impersonal evolutionary processes (the fittest survive, and no more) that would justify the existence of moral norms.

Dave: but not everyone will actually murder, whereas everyone who is born will actually sin.

Dave: you are jumping to a very absurd conclusion about what I must believe based on erroneous understanding of my position. See my response above.

Dave: you are missing the boat because the crux of the debate is precisely WHERE meaning is derived from. You say from human convention. I say from God. I have shown you how I can derive, say, moral meaning from God (since God is the non-contingent standard). You have not shown me how to do so from human convention only (since humans disagree and are contingent).

Dave: this is a facile claim to make that you have not at all backed up. I defended my thesis from the context. On what basis do you charge my interpretation as poor?

Dave: contextual "hurdles"? Huh? Are you criticising the fact that I actually take into account context, whereas you ignore it? How else will you come to understand the author's use of a given word or meaning in a given verse without understanding the author's larger intent?

Strange.

Dave G

David M. Payne

What do I bet, hummm, I bet a gotcha. If I win, I gotcha. The reverse will be true if you win. I suspect this will be a draw, as all biblical passages are so open to interpretation that any definitive answer will be very illusive. When I asked this question on a past thread I received a few speculative, “I think this is where the free will argument comes from” replies, all different passages. I have a searchable bible that I can use to pull up all passages with the chosen words entered. I typed in “free will” and got a few hits, but nothing definitive. I got nothing when I typed in the statement “God gave man free will”. Hopefully you’ll give us a passage that is a clear-cut definitive statement that says “God gave man free will”, and here is the passage that says that. I would pay a gotcha to see that.

David

David M. Payne

If a supernatural being existed, I would be hard pressed to understand why we would lack the ability to see or to communicate with such a being. If one existed.

this one; As for your question, “can we really blame God for that?” No strictly speaking, but that is of course because he is a myth, a non-existent being. This is an argument that is unavailable to you theists for obvious reasons. (He {God} is a myth, a non-existent being.)

Some good points here doodad. Humanity did have many theocracies in the early days, but we evolved to more advanced social structures or regimes. Much of the secular law came out of religious teachings, but in the end those teachings are the words of men, not God, so we are following our own morality from the beginning, and always have been.
Some of that morality couldn’t be called “good” as the point of this thread shows. God kills everybody but Noah and kin for the sin of corruption? Not a very good display of “good” morality in my view, and in the view of many others around here. And there are more of these kinds of examples that have been posted here and other sites.
Your choices aren’t the only choices available as to where morality can be learned, doodad. I think morality should be learned at home for the most part, but not all homes offer the proper environment to do that well. I see nothing wrong with letting the schools carry some of the load, as well as other social institutions. Morality is teaching right from wrong, and in the modern world there are many ways to do that. For example the work that is done right here on the Sec-Web in opening the eyes of those who think the God-religion thing is the only source of “good” morality. I could handle religion if it could drop the God myth and the authoritarian structure. Don’t see it happing any time soon though. When and if religion evolves into a progressive, benign social club like the Elks, then it will be no longer a threat to our survival as a species. As 9/11 and 4000+- years of history shows, the Abrahamic religion can be very dangerous to humanity, and will continue to be dangerous, so as long as they exist in their present form.

FarSeeker

And what passages were those?. Otherwise, I can't judge the extent of your closed-mindedness.

wordsmyth

Do you believe the bible is the literal word of God?

That is precisely the problem. You are defining your(subjective) terms when you should be examining the(objective) terms.

What you are doing is only proper procedure for literary works of fiction where the reader is expected and encouraged to impose personal interpretation. The bible is both a historical and religious work and to impose your own subjective interpretation on it is intellectually dishonest.

Do you not understand that subjective interpretation of the bible is the main reason there are so many different denominations each of which claim greater insight into the “true” meaning of the bible and xianity.

You are imposing your own interpretation by attempting to change the context to suit your definition of terms as you said above. You are following a long line of fundamentalists each of whom is guilty of the intellectual dishonesty I have pointed out.

You are already employing the interpretive methods of fundamentalism. I actually want you come to this realization so that you can take a step back and look at the bible objectively. Then, hopefully, you may finally see the one glaring fact that xian fundamentalists always ignore; which is that the same arguments they use to discredit other religious works (i.e. the Quran) can be used just as effectively on the bible.

You are attempting to force a square peg into a round hole. You are forcing the context to fit your interpretation and that is poor semantics. Subjective interpretation of the bible is the reason there are 5,000+ sects of xianity.

”Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning." – Robert Green Ingersoll

Now you have re-worded the argument. What you originally claimed was that we can define(know) good and evil, but we can’t distinguish(acknowledge) between the two without God imposing his morality. My claim was that we can distinguish (acknowledge) between good and evil because we can define (know) what constitutes good and/or evil.

At this point I would ask if you could give an analogy of knowing what constitutes two separate things without being able to acknowledge (i.e. distinguish) which is which?

Your claim that Romans refers to everyone is fallacious and not supported by context.

Romans 1
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

If this verse referred to everyone it should read either all men or simply man. It does not.

Romans 1
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

If this verse referred to everyone then it would imply that nobody glorifies God or is thankful. Evangelizing and prayer are all about glorifying God and giving thanks.

Romans 1
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

If this verse referred to everyone then it would imply that everyone hates God. Do you hate God?

Romans 2
9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;

This verse refers specifically to “man that doeth evil” and not everyone.

Romans 2
12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;

This verse states “as many as have sinned” and nowhere do we see “as all have sinned”.

Now, in Romans 3, he begins to use the word all, however he is quite obviously referring only to all those who do not believe as stated here:

Romans 3
3 For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?

When he says that none are righteous and none seek God, he is referring only to those who do not believe because we know that…

Noah was righteous:

Genesis 7
1 The Lord then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

Some men are righteous:

James 5
16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Xians can even become righteous:

1 John 3
6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.
9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.

I have explained the context and demonstrated why your argument fails. Your interpretation that Romans refers to everyone is false and I have given other verses in support of that conclusion. If some are righteous then the statement that none are righteous cannot refer to everyone, but only those who do not believe in God as I pointed out above.

You did not say there had to be a mandate in the NT. You said…

Therefore you are implying that you consider it moral to kill children provided the church mandates it. Since you consider mandates by the church to be morally justified, I then infer that you believe the crusades and inquisitions were morally justified because the church mandated them. Furthermore, I infer that you consider any mandate given by the church as morally justifiable, including killing children.

It is the very definition of faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

If you have not heard an atheist account of logic, I would say you haven’t been listening. Read more, write less, and you might just learn something.

Which is why I’m thankful for the wisdom behind the separation of church and state. It’s also why I’m thankful I’m not a xian with such a dejected and disparaging view of humanity.

Rather than killing Adam and Eve for that original sin and beginning again; an act that would mean only taking a mere two lives; God forced the proliferation of sin on each successive generation knowing that every descendant of Adam would possess the sinful trait. Then God killed everyone (except 8) even those who, though they carried the sinful trait, had not actually acted in sin. Your justification for this is that, even though many of them had not actually committed sin, they had a “sinful nature” which everyone is guilty of. If everyone has a sinful nature, that would also include Noah and his family and yet they were spared. Maybe it was because Noah was righteous… although it doesn’t say whether or not the rest of Noah’s family was righteous or not. What about the animals that were saved… were they righteous too?

God allegedly created the world in six days, yet he wasted forty during the flood destroying it. Would it not seem more logical for him to simply destroy the entire world, including Noah and his family who possessed the same sinful nature as the millions of others who died for that very reason, and then begin again?

The whole situation is illogical and hypocritical. I submit that for God to kill for any reason is immoral because God more than anyone has the ability to prevent the actions which would lead to his eventual resolve to kill. Not only has God provided for eternal damnation, but we also find that God has cut short the lives of millions of people he forced to be born with the sinful trait, which would potentially lead them to hell eventually anyway. There is nothing moral about eternal damnation and no amount of xian spin that you use to justify it will convince me otherwise. If God was truly omnibenevolent he would not even consider creating such a place let alone creating a soul that he has foreknowledge will end up there eventually. It would be far more merciful for God to never create that soul in the first place.

It is because I value my own life that I can recognize the value of all life. At its core it is a simple survival instinct. The existence of moral norms is simple common sense. I want to survive… it is then reasonable to assume that others like me also want to survive. This assumption is easily testable. If I attack someone and they attempt to defend themselves, that is evidence that they want to survive. Now I see someone who (for whatever reason) has not survived. They don’t move, they don’t speak and eventually they begin to stink and rot… this condition is unappealing to me. I know what things can cause this condition and so I avoid them. Since this condition is unappealing to me it is again reasonable to assume that this condition is unappealing to others also. Again, this assumption is testable as above. I now know that the condition known as death is generally unappealing and so now I can infer that it is wrong to force this condition on others.

Let me ask you this. Do animals other than Homo sapiens have moral values?

Earlier you made a distinction between a sinful nature and actually committing a sinful act. Now you are claiming that they are one and the same. Please clarify what you mean because it really seems like you are back-pedaling.

Your statements have led me to understand that you believe someone with a sinful nature should be judged the same as someone who has committed a sinful act. I used murder as an example of a sinful act in trying to point out the absurdness in your philosophy that those capable of committing acts of sin should be treated the same as those who actually commit those acts.

Even xians disagree, so your argument fails. If all xians agreed one to another on the precise meaning of the bible, then you might have something. As I said earlier there are some 5,000+ sects of xianity and no two agree on precise meanings of the bible. You have derived individual moral meaning based on your personal interpretation of the allegedly God inspired bible. Seems quite odd that a divinely inspired work would have so many different interpretations.

I have backed up my claim succinctly. You are letting personal bias interfere with your interpretation. Your attempt to defend this arbitrary position is solely based on your faith (see definition above) that the bible is the divinely inspired word of God. The verbal contortion of words and meanings based on your subjective interpretation of context is substantial evidence of intellectual dishonesty.

I am criticizing the fact that you are attempting to change the context to suit your interpretation. How can you understand “the author’s larger intent” if you don’t first understand the meaning of the individual words used to form that intent? Here is an example: You must plugh before you leave. Now if you don’t understand what plugh means how can you understand the intent of the sentence?

You keep trying to change the context to defend your belief that the bible is the divinely inspired word of God. I can use the same tactic to defend any religious work ever written, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is intellectually dishonest to do so.

David M. Payne

Nice try FS, but you said you had the definitive passage that would show me how wrong I was on the free will argument not being in the bible, so lets see it. I’ll ignore the insult, and gladly pay you a “gotcha,” if you deliver.

David