excreationist

Here's an interesting Bible passage:

<a href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=Is+63%3A3-6&version=NIV-IBS&showfn=yes&showxref=yes&language=english" target="_blank">God's Day of Vengeance and Redemption - Isaiah 63:3-6</a>

Jayhawker Soule

But isn't this little more than cherry-picking the Torah? What will you end up with other than some "Torah-of-the-Gap?

In BAR's current issue, Hershal Shanks comments on a contentious plenary session of ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research) entitled "Can a History of Ancient Israel Be Written?". Shanks notes:

This ommission was noted by Hugh Williamson, Regius Professor of Old Testament at Oxford. Note that, in the following continuation, Shanks is referring to featured speaker William Devers, "excavator of Gezar, former director of the Albright School in Jerusalem, and prolific author", ...

As for the response to Datheron's "Would you give a gun to a little kid, then blame the kid when he pulls the trigger by accident? anology, the problem seems to be that the anology is not strong enough. If you wish to capture the character of the Old Testament, the analogy would be one of giving a gun to a little kid, and then instructing him to pull the trigger.

You write: Religion is not the knife, but the instructions sold with it. By cherry-picking the Old Testament, you simply (and thankfully) choose to ignore some of those instructions.

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Echo

Tercel,
But *did* God actually command them to kill these other people, or did he not..or is there even any way to tell?

You seem to think God probably did not order them to kill anyone and that they, like others past and present, simply attributed the commands to God to suit their own purposes. That sounds quite reasonable, but it leaves me wondering how we're supposed to determine which passages of the bible describe actual revelations from God and which were just "propoganda" or mistaken attributions to God.

Echo

Well I don't particularly care what is written in these books either, but I am curious as to *how* you've come to reach your conclusions about God's nature. You say that God never commands anyone to kill and that at some point he judges people for their actions. I'm wondering how you determined this. Did you have some personal revelation, or did you read this in some allegedly inspired scripture?

Jayhawker Soule

Good question. Note that this is the same Blu who asserts that "Evolution is mentioned in the book of Genesis. Read the beginning where it talks about the creation of the Earth.... then get back to me.." so be prepared for some creative vocabulary.

(By the way, great city. I've particularly enjoyed the Leu Gardens and the Morse Museum!)

Datheron

Tercel,

...and indeed, almost all tools that I can think of are of mixed value. This is quite the subjective judgement.

Or, in other words, abuse of a tool does not necessarily represent the tool's intentions. I agree. And as I said above, a tool's positive and negative merits are based on a subjective ground. "Good" is subjective, after all.

However, as you will note, I find the intention unimportant. It matters not what the creator wanted it to do, but rather what the user does with the tool. (I also note that this is precisely the argument for God-given free will) For example, with the knife example above, yes, it is true that knives can be used for stabbing. Hence, we have created a variety of knives, some not needing to be sharp as others as to make it harder for the stab-happy fiends to abuse knives. Another example would be having safety locks on guns, or even the concept of safety pins. All in attempt to make the user do as the creator intends.

BTW, I used those specific analogies more to illustrate a clear point. Here, for example, I can revert to knives or safety pins and make the same argument.

Not so; like I discuss above, every tool has positive and negative effects - nuclear bombs stopped the death of more Americans in WWII, and guns can be used for self-protection. The opinion of whether these goods outweigh the bads is of course a subjective matter.

What I am focusing on, however, is the ease at which we can abuse these tools. Take, for example, a Monarchy. In theory, if we have a good ruler, then a monarchy is a very good and efficient form of government, with a well-defined chain of command and authority (look at our American democratic gov't now...). But, as the adage says, "absolute power corrupts absolutely", and it is precisely this ease of corruption and abuse that makes monarchy a bad model in our eyes, after what history has shown.

By comparison, I can make the same argument for the Crusades. True, Christianity itself was not the cause of the repeated pillaging of the Holy Land. However, the fact that peasants so readily believed corrupt popes and clergy, the ease at which their beliefs could be manipulated for the good of a few, that was one of the main factors which made the Crusades possible. From this, I say that such tools, while they can be useful, are ultimately not good ones for they allow too much opportunity for abuse.

Tercel

Well, of course we can't know for sure. However the evidence seems to seriously suggest political propaganda.

Of course, there are always difficulties in interpreting the Bible. Propoganda is relatively easy to detect: writers generally have God sanctioning war against their enemies, and priests have God dictating all their religious laws.
Detecting when writers were sincere but mistaken is much more difficult though. I think the best method is to look at how much agreement there is on issues by different Bible authors. In cases where there is universal agreement on an issue we can be sure to the greatest degree that they were correct and haven't made a mistake. Where there is disagreement, we should be less sure of our conclusions depending on the degree of conflict. We need to also assess whether and to what degree the author was in the position to know the statement made was true. Is there a strong possibility they could be honestly mistaken, or were they right there when it happened?

Tercel

This is Scholarly analysis of the Torah. Hopefully what we will end up with is a clearer understanding of who wrote it and why they wrote what they wrote.

Is it a problem that I don't simply shut down my mind and believe everything in the Bible, but rather critically analyse it? Any "cherry-picking" I do is the result of rational inquiry into the truth of the writings. There's no requirement that the Bible has to be all true or all false you know. Through careful analysis we can determine which parts are what and thus come to a better appreciation of God and his actions in history.

Your point? Are you trying to argue the Exodus didn't happen and the Patriarchal narratives are non-historical? I'm aware that many scholars think that in light of the failure of archeology to produce any significant finds in favour of the occurance of the Exodus and the complete disagreement of archeological finds with the Albright conquest model means that we should conclude that the exodus never happpened.
Personally, I think it is possible the Exodus etc didn't happen but extremely extremely unlikely. Whatever archeology says (and I would suggest that the exodus should be dated to the 16th or 15th centuries BC rather than ~1250BC since the archeological case for an exodus at that time seems to be much better. -Oh and coincidentally, that's where the Bible dates it), it is very clear that the Israelite nation during the 10th Century BC had a very strong tradition of the Exodus and the existence of the Patriarchs. I see it as barely possible for such a tradition to exist and for the Exodus and Patriarchal narratives to have no basis in factual history whatsoever.

I think it could be reasonably argued that when all is said and done, it doesn't actually matter whether the exodus etc is historical or not. The story, what can be learnt for it, it's inspiration for later Bible writers, and the rich tradition it created is what is important. If you could prove all of the Old Testament non-historical, frankly I don't think it would matter diddly squat to Christianity.

Tercel

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Datheron

Tercel,

All you're saying is that the Bible is true, except for the parts that aren't.

That's the problem with any Biblical argument. The fact that not all of it is true means that any part may be fallible, and there is hardly a consensus on which parts are "infallible", if any. In attacking the validity of the Bible, one must necessarily begin to point out errors - and here you are just sloppily dodging around these errors, all the while asserting that the parts which you do believe are true (which, in the challenger's eyes, is unasserted) are indeed true.

And here's an analogy:

I agree with Pat Robertson's opinions of the world, except for the opinions that I don't agree with.

It's an indestructible argument; those passages that can be proved wrong are deemed as wrong, those that cannot be proved wrong are by ad ignoratium and a priori true. With a stance like that, I don't see how you and ReasonableDoubt can hope to get anywhere meaningful with your debate.

Tercel

I thought I was also saying that which parts are what could be found by careful rational analysis.

Of course. However using logic, scholarly investigation, common sense, archeology etc we can generally determine fact from falsity to a reasonable degree.
But you're point is correct, hence my particular dislike for the fundamentalist tactic of taking every verse as absolutely infallible. Rather the sensible path is to gather information from a large collection of verses whose validity has been investigated as thoroughly as possible.

Why would one want to attack the validity of the Bible rather than investigate it unless one is already biased against it - in which case careful unbiased rational investigation is probably impossible and any conclusions are probably worthless.

I don't think I've actually made any such assertions here. I'm merely stating the obvious that some parts of the Bible being true doesn't mean it all it and some parts being false doesn't mean it all is. If you wished to investigate the truth of the parts you say I believe are true I recommend you find and read some unbiased scholarly work on the subject.

Actually, I'm not American so I don't know very much about Pat Robertson or his opinions on anything save for the few complaints about him I've heard second hand.

Utter crap. That is not my opinion at all.
Things "proved" wrong I deem as most probably wrong to a degree depending on how strong the proof is. Things "proved" right similarly. Things which haven't yet been proved either way I assess by analysis of how accurate the author has been elsewhere, how well the author was in a position to know what they alledge to know, to what degree the passage differs or is similar to other passages on the subject by different authors etc as well I use any rational argument that's appropriate, and common sense.

Tercel