Plognark

Possibly. The mantle of the self-righteous persection victim is hard to let go of once you've got it, I suppose, even if it no longer fits in any way shape or form.

Plognark

Don't insult our intelligence. It's pure semantics. For all intents and purposes, it was a veiled insult.

Lets see, a bunch of non believers, a quote calling them fools and sinners...

Queen of Swords

I wonder if that lame excuse will fly with God. "I didn't actually insult anyone! I just quoted someone else's insult to them."

By that token, Magus, you shouldn't mind if people insult you. After all, they could simply be quoting someone else on the topic.

Too bad you stopped the quote game, though. Perhaps I was winning.

Mageth

Did you read this one? Just curious; perhaps you could summarize what you would consider the main or best argument for Mosaic scholarship and against the Documentary Hypothesis is for us. And, for example, how does Mosaic authorship explain the discrepancies in the merged Flood accounts that are accounted for quite nicely by the Documentary Hypothesis in a link I previously provided?

Their reasons for believing the Torah was written by Moses include the following:

All of those are basically the same argument ("Moses wrote the Torah because the Torah says Moses wrote it"), and none of them establish anything. Moby Dick claims Ishmael was the writer. The first two are not much better at all. Taken together, their arguments are, well, less than overwhelming.

In any case, the only real reason to believe that the Torah was written entirely by Moses is, well, because the Bible says it was, and that tradition holds that it was. Not compelling at all.

You really should read Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?

Lord Emsworth

Ahh, you don't read enough Jack Chick. He has similar plots.





So you have both, salvation by faith at the bottom and "better" salvation by works on top of faith?





OTOH, someone (above example: Hitler) might get off pretty scott free compared to someone like, say, Gandi or a Deist Founding Father. It simply doesn't strike me as particularly just either.

Magus55

So was QoS' quote that mine was in reference to. So why aren't you on her case about insulting theists intelligence? Nm, you just prove my point of atheists backing each other up.

Mageth

We atheists don't hold to a Holy Scripture that claims calling someone a "fool" puts us in danger of hellfire, do we? A stern reprimand from the local mods, perhaps...

Plognark

Because she didn't turn around and hypocritically say "I didn't insult you! It was just a quote!

No no, you mods can relax, I'll take care of my own insulting comment, since i'm honest enough that i'm not going to try and lie about it.

Queen of Swords

Wherever did Jesus say that quoting the bible to someone was an insult?

Yahzi

But I thought the point of God was justice. Wouldn't it be reasonable for people to earn their own salvation?

If you could construct the world any way you liked, wouldn't you like for all the good things we get to be earnable? Unless you want to give them all away for free. I suppose that could be better.

But no, what you said was, it is unreasonable to expect people to earn salvation: instead, it is more reasonable that it should just be handed out arbitrarily, regardless of how one behaves, or perhaps handed out like a secret prize to the lucky ones who find the magic red bottle cap.

I'm not objecting that you think this is the way it is: I am stunned and amazed that you think this is the way it should be.

Have you never earned anything, of your own efforts, in your whole life? Are you unware of how good it feels to earn something of your own, that is not a gift, but yours?