spin

How can you make the distinction between being inspired and being a deluded paranoic? Obviously only by evidence, and y ou keep showing you've got none.

The church is a bunch of men. Can you show that I am wrong? If not, think of them as a bunch of men.

No, not grace, which is something you can only guess about. Blind-faith is apparently your only tool. Blind-faith pushes the suicide bomber to work, pushes the ascetic to whip himself, pushes the zealot to burn people at the stake.

You cannot simply trust a text that you use, especially a translation that pacifies your ignorance rather than one that attempts to say what the original said.


spin

spin

It's very hard for English speakers to say much intelligent on the subject of linguistics. The translation which uses "had" plus past participle doesn't reflect the original Hebrew, for all the verbs are Qal imperfect.

And because one uses an erroneous translation one comes to erroneous conclusions. The Hebrew verb forms are what one expects in a normal narrative: x happens, then y, then z. We are not dealing with the equivalents of English past perfects.

Read what the text actually says before you start interpreting. That way you might have a chance to understand what the writer says.

Verse 2:18 tells us that God said that he will make the man a help, which is followed in v19 by God making animals and birds, yet in v20 we still find after this that no suitable help was found. It is then that God makes a second attempt and creates a woman. (You won't like this, but it is what the text says.)

This is incorrect. God formed (YCR) the animals out of the earth, just as he had formed (YCR) man out of the dust of the earth. I don't know where you are getting your versions of the text, but they have no direct relation to what the Hebrew says.

The grammar and the narrative explains that that is exactly what happened. Please go and ask someone who understands Hebrew grammar well enough.

If you dealt with the text as written you would know that this is simply wrong. I understand that you believe first so you must be correct, but understand you are not dealing with what the text actually says.


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TheDiddleyMan

Hmmm....

Magus, you could be right. However, most of the texts do not have "had" but use a different tense, at least it would seem so. I think I should investigate the differences.......




Kevin

spin

Sorry, but Magus 55 is plain wrong. He shows he doesn't know what he's talking about by not even using a recognised translation, for what he says bears little relation to the Hebrew original.


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TheDiddleyMan

I got this from Answers in Genesis, here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1272.asp

THEM: Jewish scholars apparently did not recognize any such conflict with the account in chapter 1, where Adam and Eve were both created after the beasts and birds (Genesis 1:23–25). Why is this? Because in Hebrew the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context. It is clear from chapter 1 that the beasts and birds were created before Adam, so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb ‘formed’ in Genesis 2:19 to mean ‘had formed’ or ‘having formed’. If we translate verse 19 as follows (as one widely used translation* does), ‘Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field …’, the apparent disagreement with Genesis 1 disappears completely.

ME: Okay, so I know AiG is not always the most reliable source of info, but if what they say about the tense is correct, then there is not a contradiction. And to be honest, I find it hard to believe that the original writers would be so silly as to place two totally contradictory accounts right next to each other. Does anybody know of any good places to go that provide a different interpretation?


in spite of what I said above, I find it hard to believe as well that no other translation other than the NIV (that I've looked at, anyway) uses "had formed", even the amplified bible doesn't, because an English reader, not reading the Hebrew, would read Genesis 2 differently if the "hads" are not used. For example, the NKJV

18Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for[5] him." 19So out of the ground the LORD God formed[6] every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

Verse 19 says "So", implying that it was because of what happens in verse 18 that God creates animals, not that God had already created animals.

The Amplified Bible:

18Now the Lord God said, It is not good (sufficient, satisfactory) that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper meet (suitable, adapted, complementary) for him.
19And out of the ground the Lord God formed every [wild] beast and living creature of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name.

It uses "And" which suggests strongly that after the events in verse 18 were animals created.

It's hard to see what is the real story here, at least for me.

Kevin

Amos

When common sense returns and all the contradictions are removed.

Yes I think so. The Church is built on divine revelation and the Papal seat is just occupied by mortal men (with due respect nonetheless). They have a system in place to maintain and update this truth if revelation would have it so, and so on, and so on, but I seem to always forget how it works exactly.

It first began when Peter recognized the dual nature of Jesus as the messiah and was therefore called the Rock. To be sure, not Peter as Peter but the insight of Peter was the Rock.

Next, the removal of doubt from Thomas defrocked Peter who was the twin of Thomas because faith cannot be conceived to exist without doubt. After the removal of faith and doubt from "Jesus the Christ" the exclamation of Thomas "my Lord and my God" signified that Jesus and Christ had now become one and the same and therefore "Jesus Christ." The upshot of this is that from that point on earth and heaven is one and the same = heaven on earth.

Next they go fishing and here Peter was still without faith (defrocked) and therefore could not catch anything in the waters on the left side of the boat. So then, when Jesus told them to throw their nets on the other side of the boat Peter once again put on his cloak of faith and dove headfirst into the celestial sea, which is on the right side of the boat and that is where inspiration catches the big ones that will 'never' get away.

This is how the evidence ends that the Catholic church is Holy and why it is that the gates of hell will not prevail against her.

Not blind faith, sir, because it is our comminion with the saints in heaven that provide us with the inspired passages, icons and artifacts that we contemplate daily. Communion exists because these sacraments and sacramentals are inspired and therefore abound with grace.

Of course you can but you must first learn to "walk on water." This, of course, is also a metaphor and means that you must learn to trust your own celestial sea and actually "go by it."

At this point we are back to that same "stream of consciousness" journey and that is where I will stop.

spin

TheDiddleyMan

I don't really know why you don't read what I said on the matter. AnswersInGenesis has an agenda: they want the texts to make sense to their conscience, ie there can't be contradictions, so let's bend the grammar and logic to fit our presuppositions.

I have explained that the translation given is not a reflection of the Hebrew, so the logic based on such an English translation has no value.

As you have looked at a number of translations -- and I can add the KJV, ASV, RSV, the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate --, the NIV past perfects should be seen as ideological and in no way reflecting the text. I would leave the NIV on the shelf because it too often proves to be an ideological tool, as in the way it translates Gen 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" without even a footnote givng the alternative reading which is the main form used in the RSV "In the beginning when God created..." Not even putting the alternative reading in the footnotes tells you to be wary of the NIV. Another fine example is Isaiah 7:14 when NIV gives the mistranslation "virgin" instead of "young woman" as per the Hebrew. This is an unacceptable modern translation prone to ideological concerns and not what the text says.

I suggest that you seek a good beginner's grammar of Hebrew to undersand the Hebrew verb system if you want to go past where you are now. You'll get no help from apologetic sources such as AiG.


spin

spin

You have no way of deciding then if you are paranoid or not. Common sense needs a coherent foundation on which to work. That is called evidence. Why don;t you want to deal with evidence?

This maybe your belief.

but shouldn't you know? Why depend on their errors?

You are not talking about what happened but about what you've read. You have no way of knowing whether what you've read happened or not. You need evidence, but you don't use evidence.

Doubt is what you use to stay alive. Faith is what you use so that you don't have to think all the time. You have strayed far from the topic: you're starting to run on drivel mode. You are talking to yourself and not your interlocutor.

When you cross the road do you look both ways or do you walk under the first car? What you do in real life should be a guide for you. You use the evidence from the world around you on which to base your decisions. It might be nice to have mummy hold your hand all your life, but she just can't be there all the time, so you have to wing it by yourself. The solution that best suits you is to go nowhere and do nothing. That's safe but unrealistic.

Mummy is till a virgin, so her children are immaculate.

And the tooth fairy exists as does Santa Claus. Well everyone says so, so itmust be so. You make statements that are based on your beliefs to people who don't hold your beliefs, so you are wasting your breath in that you are unable to communicate with your interlocutor. It's like the paranoid schizophrenic who simply can't tell people about his special friends -- because the people can't see his friends, it means that they are at loss.

Metaphors are no good to you when you cross the street and you get hit by a car. It's better to look at the car and work on the evidence you receive to make you moves. When you go on about "walking on water" and "celestial sea", do you think you are trying to comunicate? You are highly selective in the way you use information. You go about the real world, acting as though you are part of the real world, making moves based on real world data. Then arbitrarily, you withhold real world data when dealing with matters of "belief".

In the end I find, 1) you don't make an effort to communicate with the people you seem to be responding to, 2) you don't work on communicating in a way that shows you want to communicate, 3) you make assumptions based on assumptions based on assumptions based on assumptions (and because of it I can understand why you say such weird and wonderful things).

Well, if you want to communicate, you should leave off with the stream of consciousness, because the willy-nilly outpouring of unordered thoughts from your head doesn't give much hope for your poor readers to see that you have anything meaningful to say. If your aim is not communication, you might say so and no-one will attempt to communicate with you.


spin

Amos

Yes, that is a problem for me and I recognize that. Much of my reasoning is based on my readings of literature in the past and for the most part I would not even know where to look for it. But as I told you before, the same problem will arise there because even if I would show you how and why all divine comedies are the same it would still remain subject to your acceptance of my interpretation.

Yes it is my belief and no, I don't need to know. I am not the Pope and so it is not mine to protect. I actually don't see why I should 'depend' on my religion because I don't believe much of what I hear and don't really know what I am asked to believe. Let's just say that I am happy to be a poor Catholic like most of the rest because it is impossible to know all there is to know about the Church.

Most people are still arguing about what the "rock of salvation" really is and to me it makes perfect sense that insight is the rock of salvation if understanding must set us free from religious indoctrination.

My reason for adding this was to show that faith should not be the basis for religion itself but understanding of the entire journey of faith is and that faith is resolved in the final understanding when all doubt is removed. Hence the "infallible" position of the church is a declaration of their own comprehension.

And that is exactly why the historic Jesus doesn't have to hold our hand. We are on our own and just recently have added revealed dogma to the constitution of the Church (with the Immaculate Conception, I think it was -- for which there exist a simple philosophical argument as well).

Perpetual is the word we use.

There is nothing wrong with providing a different perspective and may even be beneficial if it can shake the faith of my reader.

Interesting. I once wrote a "Character Delineation of 'We'" that was submitted for publication upon the recommendation of my prof. who was a mature expert (?) in Slavic Languages and Literature. It was rejected by the publisher pretty much out of fear that my controversy would destroy all or most of the existing criticism on that work and that would be unfair at this late stage in the game.

To built on existing criticism is good but there is nothing wrong with a revolutionary perspective unless revolt is not desired. With that I can agree, but the my problem is that I can't 'untink' the way I think (oh and please say that I need psycho help).

spin

Sadly Amos, most of your response seemed to me more of the flow of consciousness, so I'll "cut to the quick":

People with revolutionary ideas are always so misunderstood, aren't they?

I don't mind revolutionary perspectives. They usually bring clarity.

You can learn thinking techniques, if you want. Logic is not one of the mysteries.


spin