Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Amlodhi · 08-23-2004, 10:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spookie Here

Does anyone know the bible verses to explain whether we reach a state of grace through good works versus belief in the power of God?

You can find these in the canned goods aisle; look in the worms section.

Hi Spookie Here,

More seriously, welcome to the board. You may also like to read Romans and James' epistle; they're not very long.

Amlodhi

Spookie Here · 08-23-2004, 02:53 PM

Amlodhi:
Thanks for the kind welcome.
What part of the Midwest are you from? I see you have a sense of humor. By the way, which do you think is best, to reach heaven through good works or through God (presuming you believe there is a God).

inquisitive01 · 08-23-2004, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccolinh

Did you miss my first post where I showed verse 4 as the only verse clearly showing when Satan was trying to act like God?

Are we expected to believe that 7 verses later "God" suddenly really means "Satan"

thats a stretch, man

Just look at the nearby phrases (or you can ignore them, IF you wish).

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregor

Inquisitive

It's good to see that your knowledge of the Bible is a solid as your knowledge of evolution from the E/C board. Who'd have thunk that?

Gregor, did you have something to contribute here, or are you just lost??? Did you find anything yet regarding our ancestry... other than assumptions of evolution, that is?

Also, I assure you that you know nothing of my knowledge regarding either. Got it? :thumbs:

inquisitive01 · 08-23-2004, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amlodhi

You may also like to read Romans and James' epistle; they're not very long.

Amlodhi

It almost sounds as if you're saying one should not bother to read anything in the Bible that might be longer???

inquisitive01 · 08-23-2004, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spookie Here

Amlodhi:
Thanks for the kind welcome.
What part of the Midwest are you from? I see you have a sense of humor. By the way, which do you think is best, to reach heaven through good works or through God (presuming you believe there is a God).

All the good works you can imagine doing will not be enough without accepting Jesus Christ, repenting, and following His teachings. I'm presuming you already knew this... but posted this reply just in case.

Vorkosigan · 08-23-2004, 05:20 PM

Quote:

What part of the Midwest are you from? I see you have a sense of humor. By the way, which do you think is best, to reach heaven through good works or through God (presuming you believe there is a God).

Which foot does Frodo put his socks on first?

Joshua Adams · 08-23-2004, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by inquisitive01

So you're basing you're definite phrase "No, they were not" on divided authenticity based on intangibles (i.e., style, form, content, etc.) from a geocities link???

What does the server host have to do with anything? Tobin is citing reference works just like any credible article, and he is merely telling us what most scholars think. Scholarly arguments are based on higher criticism, which has been successfully used to identify the author of anonymous writings numerous times. See here for an example of higher criticism in action. The incisive point is this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Professor Don Foster proved that writers leave in their works signs of their identity that are just as telling as fingerprints or DNA that may be left behind at a crime scene. If the identify of the person who left the fingerprints or DNA is not known, forensic experts could still determine that the same person was involved in crimes A and B if the same prints or DNA should be found at both scenes. If the fingerprints and DNA found at both scenes are different, this would give investigators reasonable cause to conclude that the crimes were committed by different persons. Literary analysis works the same way. If the identity of a writer is not known, experts can still determine that documents A and B were written by the same person if the same stylistic patterns and other literary imprints are found in both documents. Likewise, if the style, vocabulary, and other literary imprints are very different in both documents, scholars can be reasonably sure that the documents were written by different persons.

We all have little idiosyncrasies in our writing. For example, you frequently use three question marks at the end of your sentences. Can you honestly look at, say, your and my writing (which is quite heavy on things like dash use, parentheses, frequent use of commas, interjection phrases, punctuation marks outside of parenthesis and brackets, the use of Latin abbreviations like "e.g., i.e., etc", etc). and not be able to tell the difference!? I am self-concious of my own style and could probably abandon it if I made a clear effort to do so, but most people aren't going to do that when writing letters. If you looked at a few writing samples of ours, could you not easily see that two different people wrote them? And that's just a superficial analysis; critics carefully compare samples and take into consideration a wide variety of things, not just punctuation like I have.

Hebrews isn't even attributed to Paul, so yes, your knowledge of the Bible is somewhat suspect (as is your knowledge of evolutionary theory, if your posts are anything to go on). The "Pauline" epistles are Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. All of these are headed by "The Letter of Paul to..." whereas Hebrews just says "The Letter to the Hebrews". It doesn't say in the salutation (in fact, there is none) "Paul, an apostle..." or anything similar, unlike the others. Assuming the final greeting and benediction is not fabricated, Hebrews may have been written by someone in Paul's troupe, since he knew Timothy.

The author of 2 Thessalonians clearly states that God is the one sending delusions. There is nothing in the text that indicates he is actually referring to Satan in disguise as God in 11-12. "Paul" is saying that God allows people to be deluded because they snubbed him. If he were the God of truth, he would not allow people to be deluded out of spite, "so that they be damned", now would he? If "Paul" had meant Satan sends strong delusions, he would have said Satan. Verse 4 draws the distinction between God and "lawless one"/"son of perdition", NOT conflates them into one! If "Paul" had consistently used the word "God" as a synonym for Satan and it were obvious what he meant, then you'd have a strong case. But he didn't do so: Satan is mentioned in 9-10, and Paul would not have made the new subject as "God" but rather continued with Satan or "he"; or he would've used God in 9-10 and others.
"9 The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, 10 and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, 12 so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.'
In other words... Satan is always trying to pull us away, and God lets him so that he has an excuse to condemn us. Not: Satan pulls us away, and Satan, somehow disguised as God, lets himself do so. That interpretation is simply arbitrary.

Based on the phrasing of verse 9, it seems the "lawless one" is not Satan but more likely the antichrist, by the way, but that is immaterial.

Angrillori · 08-23-2004, 06:29 PM

Keep in mind, this is the inquisitive01 who gave us these bon-mots and....uhmm...how can I say it..."creative?" readings concerning biblical slavery:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=93895&page=1

For those who don't want to trudge through, inq's reading and creative use of the defintion of the word "he" if applied consistently renders:

this: 20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

to mean: If a master beats a slave and then the master dies, then the servant should be punished only if the master dies, and not if the master gets up in a couple of days because the master is the slave's property.

Sooooo.....is it really surprising that "creative" grammar strikes again?

My point being that there's a plain reading of the bible. There are conventions of english use, syntax, and grammar, and the translators used them. There's a reading that every single translator and group of translators seem to uphold. These are people with degrees in laguages, theologies, history, archaeology, linguistics, ancient cultures, etc. People who know their stuff, and yet somehow, every time they come up with a reading different than inq's. In one case, they all agree that it is the slave who is being beaten and whom the master is punished for killing, and their syntax and grammar reflect that. In another case, every one of the translators agree that the message is that God sends a delusion, and not the devil, and their sytax and grammar support that.

Now, you can say that that's just argument from authority. However, argument from authority is NOT fallacious if the authority in question IS in fact an authority in the field. The biblical translators are. Their job was to faithfully render a document from one language into a form easily readable by those using a different language. The easy, accurate, and grammatically correct way of reading 2 Thessalonians? Yup, that's right, God sends powerful delusions.

inquisitive01 · 08-23-2004, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Angrillori

Keep in mind, this is the inquisitive01 who gave us these bon-mots and....uhmm...how can I say it..."creative?" readings concerning biblical slavery:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=93895&page=1

For those who don't want to trudge through, inq's reading and creative use of the defintion of the word "he" if applied consistently renders:

this: 20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

to mean: If a master beats a slave and then the master dies, then the servant should be punished only if the master dies, and not if the master gets up in a couple of days because the master is the slave's property.

Sooooo.....is it really surprising that "creative" grammar strikes again?

My point being that there's a plain reading of the bible. There are conventions of english use, syntax, and grammar, and the translators used them. There's a reading that every single translator and group of translators seem to uphold. These are people with degrees in laguages, theologies, history, archaeology, linguistics, ancient cultures, etc. People who know their stuff, and yet somehow, every time they come up with a reading different than inq's. In one case, they all agree that it is the slave who is being beaten and whom the master is punished for killing, and their syntax and grammar reflect that. In another case, every one of the translators agree that the message is that God sends a delusion, and not the devil, and their sytax and grammar support that.

Now, you can say that that's just argument from authority. However, argument from authority is NOT fallacious if the authority in question IS in fact an authority in the field. The biblical translators are. Their job was to faithfully render a document from one language into a form easily readable by those using a different language. The easy, accurate, and grammatically correct way of reading 2 Thessalonians? Yup, that's right, God sends powerful delusions.

We should all take lessons from these "authorities" since they - even though they are only human - must be perfect and must have never made any mistakes.

Oh yeah, thanks for attempting to use previous, yet valid arguments of mine - for the 2nd time (the first had to do with evolution) - against me. Can nothing else be done here but this? Pathetic, to say the least.

inquisitive01 · 08-23-2004, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jagan

What does the server host have to do with anything? Tobin is citing reference works just like any credible article, and he is merely telling us what most scholars think. Scholarly arguments are based on higher criticism, which has been successfully used to identify the author of anonymous writings numerous times. See here for an example of higher criticism in action. The incisive point is this:
We all have little idiosyncrasies in our writing. For example, you frequently use three question marks at the end of your sentences. Can you honestly look at, say, your and my writing (which is quite heavy on things like dash use, parentheses, frequent use of commas, interjection phrases, punctuation marks outside of parenthesis and brackets, the use of Latin abbreviations like "e.g., i.e., etc", etc). and not be able to tell the difference!? I am self-concious of my own style and could probably abandon it if I made a clear effort to do so, but most people aren't going to do that when writing letters. If you looked at a few writing samples of ours, could you not easily see that two different people wrote them? And that's just a superficial analysis; critics carefully compare samples and take into consideration a wide variety of things, not just punctuation like I have.

Hebrews isn't even attributed to Paul, so yes, your knowledge of the Bible is somewhat suspect (as is your knowledge of evolutionary theory, if your posts are anything to go on). The "Pauline" epistles are Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. All of these are headed by "The Letter of Paul to..." whereas Hebrews just says "The Letter to the Hebrews". It doesn't say in the salutation (in fact, there is none) "Paul, an apostle..." or anything similar, unlike the others. Assuming the final greeting and benediction is not fabricated, Hebrews may have been written by someone in Paul's troupe, since he knew Timothy.

The author of 2 Thessalonians clearly states that God is the one sending delusions. There is nothing in the text that indicates he is actually referring to Satan in disguise as God in 11-12. "Paul" is saying that God allows people to be deluded because they snubbed him. If he were the God of truth, he would not allow people to be deluded out of spite, "so that they be damned", now would he? If "Paul" had meant Satan sends strong delusions, he would have said Satan. Verse 4 draws the distinction between God and "lawless one"/"son of perdition", NOT conflates them into one! If "Paul" had consistently used the word "God" as a synonym for Satan and it were obvious what he meant, then you'd have a strong case. But he didn't do so: Satan is mentioned in 9-10, and Paul would not have made the new subject as "God" but rather continued with Satan or "he"; or he would've used God in 9-10 and others.
"9 The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, 10 and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, 12 so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.'
In other words... Satan is always trying to pull us away, and God lets him so that he has an excuse to condemn us. Not: Satan pulls us away, and Satan, somehow disguised as God, lets himself do so. That interpretation is simply arbitrary.

Based on the phrasing of verse 9, it seems the "lawless one" is not Satan but more likely the antichrist, by the way, but that is immaterial.

I write a wee bit different elsewhere. Higher criticim? Naaah . . . only if that's your choice to see it as such. I think the professor just got lucky. Oh yeah, would what you're trying to use here as some sort of proof (100% proof as usual huh

) about who wrote or did not write these books by Paul happen to be fully accepted as 100% fact, or are you just using the human professor's examples in support? <-- Look - only one question mark?!?!?

:notworthy: I figure when the arguments are no longer good ones, the thread will quickly be closed so it will be moved on down and forgotten?

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08-23-2004, 02:53 PM	#72
Spookie Here Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 47	Amlodhi: Thanks for the kind welcome. What part of the Midwest are you from? I see you have a sense of humor. By the way, which do you think is best, to reach heaven through good works or through God (presuming you believe there is a God).

08-23-2004, 06:29 PM	#78
Angrillori Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: A world less bright without WinAce. Posts: 7,482	Keep in mind, this is the inquisitive01 who gave us these bon-mots and....uhmm...how can I say it..."creative?" readings concerning biblical slavery: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=93895&page=1 For those who don't want to trudge through, inq's reading and creative use of the defintion of the word "he" if applied consistently renders: this: 20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money. to mean: If a master beats a slave and then the master dies, then the servant should be punished only if the master dies, and not if the master gets up in a couple of days because the master is the slave's property. Sooooo.....is it really surprising that "creative" grammar strikes again? My point being that there's a plain reading of the bible. There are conventions of english use, syntax, and grammar, and the translators used them. There's a reading that every single translator and group of translators seem to uphold. These are people with degrees in laguages, theologies, history, archaeology, linguistics, ancient cultures, etc. People who know their stuff, and yet somehow, every time they come up with a reading different than inq's. In one case, they all agree that it is the slave who is being beaten and whom the master is punished for killing, and their syntax and grammar reflect that. In another case, every one of the translators agree that the message is that God sends a delusion, and not the devil, and their sytax and grammar support that. Now, you can say that that's just argument from authority. However, argument from authority is NOT fallacious if the authority in question IS in fact an authority in the field. The biblical translators are. Their job was to faithfully render a document from one language into a form easily readable by those using a different language. The easy, accurate, and grammatically correct way of reading 2 Thessalonians? Yup, that's right, God sends powerful delusions.

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