Johnny Skeptic

That is false. For example, the Gospel accounts of the events at the tomb are not consistent, and are needlessly confusing if a God inspired the Gospels.

The apparently different accounts of the death of Judas are needlessly confusing if a God inspired the stories.

Ezekiel claimed that God would give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar as a compensation for his failure to defeat Tyre. There is not any historical evidence that that happened.

There certainly is not any credible scientific evidence that a global flood occured. Even many conservative Christian experts know that.

Many books and articles have been written about Bible inconsistences. Some of those arguments are not valid, but many are, and there is no way that you would be able to adequately discredit all of them.

You are a Calvinist. If Calvinism is true, since God chose who he will save before the foundations of the world, what difference does it make what people believe about anything?

Since I have gotten off topic, if you wish, I can start a new thread about your claim that the Bible is consistent.

rhutchin

Faith undergirds all beliefs, yours as well as mine.

rhutchin

That they are confusing does not mean that they are not truth. I find physics confusing, but that does not mean it is not truth.

You are always encouraged to identify inconsistencies that you think exist between one section of Scripture and another and let discussion sort out what we know.

Johnny Skeptic

The Bible says that God is not the author of confusion. The Bible has caused lots of confusion, even among Christians. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the God of the Bible does not exist.

On the contrary, it is you who first said "Within the Biblical context, each of the Biblical writers is telling us the truth, and the true statements given by one writer will be consistent with the true statements given to us by another writer." Therefore, it is up to you to reasonably prove that the Bible is consistent. Even so, I already mentioned inconsistencies about the events at the tomb, the death of Judas, and the claim that God would give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar as a compensation for his failure to defeat Tyre.

You are an inerrantist. The claim that a global flood occured is adequate proof that the Bible contains errors. The probable fact that a global flood did not occur is well-established by science, and even by many conservative Christian experts. Those conservative Christian experts do not have your emotional need to have a God who inspired and preserved inerrant texts. Why must God conform to your emotional needs?

Since you are a Calvinist, don't you believe that nothing that you say at this forum will change who God saves?

rhutchin

That God is not the author of confusion does not prohibit those who read the Bible being confused. The Bible can be difficult to understand and people who want it to say things that they want to believe can find it confusing when it does not do that.

I don't think this is true. Do you have a source for this?

That is correct. The purpose for explaining the Bible is not to save any particular person but to bring all people to a correct understanding of their relationship to God. In your case, you seem to have a good grasp of your situation.

Johnny Skeptic

Do I have a source for what, that a global flood probably did not occur, or that many conservative Christian experts do not believe that a global flood occured, or both? Some time ago, I brought up the topic of the global flood in a thread at this forum. You started a new thread about the flood at this forum. It was transferred to the Evolution/Creation Forum. You went to that forum, made a few posts, got into trouble, and quickly left town. Do you wish to repeat that peformance again at the Evolution/Creation Forum? If you do, I will partly quote some conservative Christian experts who disagree with you, including geophysicist Glenn Morton.

Johnny Skeptic

But that disagrees with your defense of Pascal's Wager, which threatens skeptics if they make the wrong choices. On numerous occasions you have threatened skeptics, and have told them that God will punish them. What sense does it make for you to tell skeptics that God will punish them if they cannot do anything about it?

Please read and reply to my post #10 in a thread at http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....14#post6220614 which relates to these issues.

Please reply to my previous post in this thread.

Johnny Skeptic

How is it possible to prohibit confusion?

God is the author of confusion since he needlessly inspired many writings that are confusing. For example, during the U.S. Civil War, Jefferson Davis was the President of the Southern Confederacy. He believed that the Bible endorsed his accepted version of slavery. Whether or not the Bible endorses Davis' accepted version of slavery, if what the Bible says about slavery was very clearly written, since Davis was apparently a devout Christian who tried to live according to the teachings in the Bible, he cannot be blamed for misunderstanding the Bible. The blame must go to God, or if the God of the Bible does not exist, which is probable, to the Bible writers.

neilgodfrey

That's bull. I can believe it is raining because I can see rain and feel it and hear it when it happens. Not one bit of faith is necessary.

Things I argue and discuss here are not my "beliefs". They are tentatively held ideas open to revision and discarding.

If I believe something it is because of a life-time of experience that leaves no exceptions to a rule, confirmed by the experiences and tests and projects of many others where the rule is totally relied on to work every time. Gravity, for example.

But even then I don't "believe" in gravity really. If a better explanation was advanced by physicists and found to be a better explanation for my falling ground-ward when I lose my balance then I would be open to going along with it.

But belief in God is very often something regardless of evidence and experience -- and reason. That's where faith kicks in.

Julio

rhutchin IS confused. He believes in a God that KNEW we would get confused with his holy text, and yet went ahead and published it!
That is confusing, indeed!