Jack the Bodiless

mata leao:

This thread was set up to allow you to DEMONSTRATE that the Bible (indeed, any PART of the Bible, chosen by YOU) is divinely inspired. You have failed to do so. Therefore I will assume that you cannot.

Is all this hysterical posturing merely your reaction to having the foundation of your worldview shot out from under you?

Do you have anything of substance to contribute?

mata leao

checks underneath him carefully...nope, world view still intact and doing nicely.....fulfilled prophecies require divne inspiration...only a divine entity could know that tyre (its palace) would be scraped bare like a rock. Usually conquerors seized the palace and used it for themselves. Only a divine entity could know that the jewish people (an internationally persecuted minority) would regain their capital (jerusalem) and regain their nation (israel) after almost 2,000 years in diaspora. Only a divine entity could know that over and over again would armies surround Jerusalem ( a city with no significant wealth, no oil reserves as yet developed, etc. The Bible has power behind it, the stones cry out, it mocks antiquity, the Bible has the power to keep millions of intellectuals glued to its every word and studying even its punctuation and syntax. All of us here right now are evidence of its power....what lies behind that power? what is its source? I have a copy of Mein Kampf, but its collecting dust on my library shelf. Do you ahtiests study every word, sentence, and syntax of mein kampf?

someotherguy

If millions of people started claiming it was divinely inspired you can bet there would be lots of people doing just that.

Johnny Skeptic

The Bible disagrees with you. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 say "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee."

If God has the right to test us, then we have the right to test him, and he has failed my test due to his questionable actions and allowances. For your information, there is no logical correlation that can be made between the ability to predict the future and goodness. I just showed you that the Bible admits it in Deuteronomy 13.

In the NIV, Ezekiel 26:4 says "They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock." The NASB says "a bare rock." The English Standard Version says "a bare rock." Young's Literal Translation says "And I have scraped her dust from her, And made her for a clear place of a rock." I doubt that any competent historian will attempt to make an open and shut case for dating the Tyre prophecy based upon Ezekiel 26:4 alone. If you believe otherwise, then I suggest that you contact some historians and post your findings. We don't know if Ezekiel meant partially bare or completely bare. A person who is bare naked does not have on any clothes at all. The mainland settlement and the island settlement were built upon rocky ground. Due to the fact that Alexander did not have modern excavating equipment, it is not likely that he made the mainland settlement a BARE rock.

Your argument is completely false as usual. Genesis 17:8 says "And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." Your argument fails completely because it is uncertain what the boundaries of the land of ancient Canaan were. In addition, the borders of Israel have changed frequently since 1948, and who knows what they will be a century from now?

The Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia says "Canaan, in the Old Testament, designation of the land to the west of the Jordan River, later known as Palestine, and the name of the reputed ancestor of the Canaanites, the original inhabitants of that land." The Jews DO NOT control all of the land to the west of the Jordan River.

The Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says "Canaan, area variously defined in historical and biblical literature, but always centred on Palestine. Its original pre-Israelite inhabitants were called Canaanites. The names Canaan and Canaanite occur in cuneiform, Egyptian, and Phoenician writings from about the 15th century BC as well as in the Old Testament. In these sources, 'Canaan' refers sometimes to an area encompassing all of Palestine and Syria, sometimes only to the land west of the Jordan River, and sometimes just to a strip of coastal land from Acre (ÅAkko) northward. The Israelites occupied and conquered Palestine, or Canaan, beginning in the late 2nd millennium BC, or perhaps earlier; and the Bible justifies such occupation by identifying Canaan with the Promised Land, the land promised to the Israelites by God." Please try to conduct some legitimate research for a change.

How utterly absurd. Titus demolished the Temple and killed many thousands of Jews in 70 A.D. In the early part of the 2nd century, Trajan went to Palestine to put down a Jewish uprising and killed over 500,000 Jews. Hitler killed over six millions Jews. If those are examples of God's protection, who needs him? The people in New Orleans could have used some of God's protection from Hurricane Rita, and many Christians prayed for his protection from the hurricane, but obviously, God would have none of that. Why do you worship such a barbaric entity? Are you attracted to human fathers who do not attempt to protect their children from hurricanes?

Ubercat

Um.... no. What gets under "atheists" skins is the fact that in the world today, we have a large segment of the population (in America anyhow) who base their lives on the ancient myths in the bible. People who think they have the right to control the lives of others, and are happily trying their damndest to sink us back into another dark age. People who's answer to scientific and rationally determined facts, consists of lies and juvenile irrelevancy.

If we had a large segment of the population basing their lives on the ancient Greek myths, then we'd be fighting about a different set of nonsense. How about you go visit India or Saudi Arabia, and see how much power the bible has?

-Ubercat

Jack the Bodiless

There is no such prophecy. TYRE was supposed to be scraped bare and never rebuilt: not the PALACE. This one, of course, failed.
...Then maybe he should have told someone about it? As far as I am aware, there is no prophecy that specifically applies to the re-formation of Israel in 1948: such "prophecies" are generally constructed using out-of-context references to the re-emergence of Israel from the Babylonian captivity.

And even if some NT author DID say "Israel will rise again!" after the destruction of 70 AD, this would be an entirely unremarkable thing to say: that's what any Jewish patriot of the time WOULD say. On the other hand, if you're suggesting that the re-emergence and survival of modern Israel was ITSELF miraculous: why are you not a Zionist? You have apparently chosen the wrong religion! Of course, there's also the fact that the Zionists strove to MAKE this happen.
This has been happening throughout history. Jerusalem probably qualifies for the title of "most conquered city in history" (due to its location). But you cite no prophecy here anyhow.
Very few Christians study the Bible in such detail. Probably most of those who DO study the Bible in great detail are historians, who also study other old texts: these are the people who learn things about the Bible that the ignorant fundies reject. Also, millions of Muslims study the Koran in great detail. And what about the Hindu scriptures, much bigger and older than the Bible? You don't appear to be making any cogent point here.

So, in summary, your reasons for claiming the Bible to be inerrant are:

1. A nonexistent prophecy fabricated from a failed one.

2. A nonexistent prophecy fabricated from out-of-context material, which would be unremarkable even if true.

3. A trivially obvious observation.

4. Another obvious observation, which completely ignores the issue of WHY some people study the Bible, and which also applies to every other "holy book".

...So, no actual demonstration of inerrancy presented so far. Would you like to try again?

Helpmabob

The books of the Bible agree in doctrine despite being written over a number of years by a variety of people who had never met and had no means of crosschecking what each was writing. This points to a single source of divine inspiration.

Jack the Bodiless

You couldn't be more wrong. The books of the Old Testament were written over a period of centuries by people who would have had access to earlier books, and the gospels show evidence of extensive plagiarism (the "Synoptic problem", the grafting of material from John onto the ending of Mark, and so forth).

mata leao

utterly amazing...so much power..so much influence..so much continuing scrutiny for somehting the ahteists say is completely wrong,errant and superstitious.....one side is wrong......I choose the power, the hope and the glory! choose wisely my friend.

SaintCog

I think ML's eyes just rolled into the back of his head.

There go the exclamation points again.