gregor

ahhhh, the argument from personal incredulity or ignorance (not in the perjorative sense).

FatherMithras

If YOU are incapable of doing something so simple, please don't thrust that inability on us.

Doug Shaver

Maybe you can't. I don't share your intellectual disability.

Not me. I have a good logical reason to believe it will happen. Faith has nothing to do with it.

Jack the Bodiless

I still don't understand this sort of attitude, even though I've seen it several times.

I consider the Bible to be fiction: but it's a fiction which incorporates numerous real places, people and events. But many inerrantists give responses which indicate that, on some (maybe subconscious) level, they believe it to be entirely fictional, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: utterly removed from any recognizable, verifiable history (which is presumably why they get excited when archaeologists find a place that's actually mentioned in the Bible: I've been to London, does this mean that Sherlock Holmes was real?).

If Herod and Quirinius were merely fictional characters like Sauron, Gandalf and Frodo: there wouldn't be a problem. It's because they were actually real people that the problem exists. Do you seriously imagine that if Herod and Quirinius were REAL people (as indeed they were), then we wouldn't know when they ruled, or when they died?

Herod the Great, a REAL PERSON (not just a Biblical character) died in 4 BC, when Publius Quinctilius Varus (another REAL PERSON, not mentioned in the Bible) was governor of Syria (which didn't include Herod's kingdom then). Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, another REAL PERSON, was governing central Turkey at this time. He became governor of Herod's former kingdom a decade later, when Luke's Jesus was supposedly born.

...So the question remains: why are you still continuing as if the Bible is true, when you're addressing people who have established the fact that the Bible is false? (...for many additional reasons too, I might add).
On the contrary: I can explain God rather easily. We evolved as social animals, with an instinctive desire to respect the pack leader. But our intellect now prevents us from believing that any human pack leader is truly worthy, hence the invention of an idealized "pack leader". This is particularly obvious in the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, which stress loyalty and submission to "God", and the notion that anything God does (no matter how barbaric it would seem if anyone else behaved this way) is "good".

Faithful

Since I am not qualified to give any input on this subject, I best quietly bow out and move on.

Sven

Can you say "false dichotomy"? :wave:

Sven

Faith has never been a reliable guide to truth. Just look around in the world.

That's not faith, that's hope and/or trust. You are equivocating.

:huh: It's of course entirely irrelevant that we understand the development of the fetus quite good back until it's only a bunch of cells.

Sven

So the argument now is: "The bible is still inerrant, even if I'm not able to argue for it?"

ksen

No more of a false dichotomy as saying the Bible is either: A) a myth, or B) a pack of lies. :wave:

ksen

No, it's since people are just going to pound me for my answers instead of engaging in civil debate, then why bother?