Johnny Skeptic

I don't need to. Your evasiveness here adequately proves that you are evasive.

It is you who are involved in gamesmanship, not me, and you just proved that you are more interested in gamesmanship than you are in replying to my arguments. You did not reply to ANY of the arguments in one of my previous posts. Here is the proof. You said:

I replied:

You did not reply to that argument.

You did not reply to that argument.

You did not reply to that argument.

You did not reply to that argument.

You did not reply to that argument.

You did not reply to that argument. Are you ready to show readers some more of your gamesmanship, grandstanding, and rhetoric, or would you like to reply to my arguments for a change?

I invite you to make a post in my new thread on Biblical inerrancy.

mdarus

Johnny:
How about this for a twist:
There is significant evidence that the New Testament canon has never been finally determined.
This is my evidence for this position:
1) Every Bible commentary written revisits the issue and comes to its own determination using similar but distinctive criteria.
2) Even when councils make pronouncements, they only reflect of the people and denominations represented by the council or who later ratify the decision of the council.
3) When Bibles are published, they are published with more or less books in them and using various notations regarding questionable passages like the ending of Mark.
4) Even though there is substantial agreement among publishers about the 66books that usually included in the Bible, the determination of the publisher means little.
5) Individual believers are free to make their own determinations. Most believers in fact make a determination by focusing on the parts of the Bible they find meaningful and neglecting or ignoring the parts they find difficult or less inspiring. By this criteria, the Bible starts to look more like Jefferson's version. A more honest faith would be to reorder one's life rather than reorder the Bible.

Steven Avery

LOL... case closed ! ~ readers can decide.

hatsoff

Geez, be a little patient. I have work, school, music and Captain all filling my time.

Of course not. I'm agnostic, remember?

Johnny Skeptic

But there is nothing left for readers to decide. They already know from reading your posts and my posts how evasive you are.

But what are these answers? In this thread, your answers have been conspicuous by their absence.

It is you who are involved in gamesmanship, not me, and you just proved that you are more interested in gamesmanship than you are in replying to my arguments. You did not reply to ANY of the arguments in one of my previous posts. Here is the proof. You said:

I replied:

You have embarrassed yourself and you know it.

hatsoff

Actually, it's just the opposite. Face it, Johnny: You don't come here to enlighten yourself; you think you have all the answers already. Your threads are designed to show that you are right, and that anyone challenging you must therefore be wrong. You refuse to bend, even when you know (or should know) you're mistaken. Praxeus seems to recognize this, and responds accordingly.

Johnny Skeptic

You are grossly mistaken.

Praxeus said:

Praxeus replied:

I replied:

If you go back and read all of praxeus’ replies to me, you ought to be able to see that he was more than happy to debate the New Testament canon with me until my arguments got better. When they did get better, it was then that he said “and you ignore the answers if you don't think they are satisfactory or 'sufficient,’ when if fact he didn’t give ANY answers to the arguments that I previously stated in this post.

If you are actually a skeptic, then surely you do not believe that God chose which writings were included in the New Testament canon.

Regarding “Your threads are designed to show that you are right, and that anyone challenging you must therefore be wrong,� for your information, my favorite arguments against Christianity are the following, which I am currently using at the GRD forum in various threads:

“If God is an evil God who is masquerading as a good God, and plans to send everyone to hell, he would easily be able to duplicate anything that the Bible attributes to God. If a lying, deceptive Devil with supernatural powers is reasonably possible, then why not a lying, deceptive God with supernatural powers?�

Obviously, your statement “Your threads are designed to show that you are right, and that anyone challenging you must therefore be wrong� does not apply to those arguments. I am willing to agree that we do not know what God’s true nature is one way or the other, but Christians most certainly will not do that. Now then, who is saying that it must be their way, or that their arguments are much better, me or Christians?

“The only way that skeptics can fairly be held accountable for rejecting the God of the Bible is if they know that he exists and still reject him. If God exists, if he clearly revealed himself to everyone, surely some skeptics would become Christians. Regarding skeptics who would become Christians if God clearly revealed himself to everyone, that would prove that they did not actually reject God, and that they deserve to go to heaven.�

I have never said that Christians “must be wrong,� but they frequently say that the evidence that the Bible is true is much greater than the evidence that the Bible is false. They claim that you deserve to go to hell for rejecting Christianity, and yet, you take issue with skeptics at this forum much more than you do Christians. You even criticized one of the moderators. I must say that for some time, I have suspected that you a closet Christian, possibly from the Theology Web, who is masquerading as a skeptic.

You said that I am not trying to enlighten myself, but I must ask you how you are trying to enlighten yourself? Why did you reject Christianity? Do you think that you might have been wrong?