Vinnie

Qualititive inspiration, maybe

Vinnie

Vinnie

I was all alone in my house with my cat the other day. I put some cat food on the floor and left the room. When I came back the cat was sleeping and the food was gone. Since I wasn't there to view it I do not have valid reasons to assume or think my cat ate the food. As penia and Roger Pearse would correctly argue, I am simply being prejudical and making baseless assumptions by feeling highly confident that my cat ate the food. In fact, I should put more down in case she didn't eat it and she is still hungry! Can't ever be too catuious!

If anyone is engaging in prejudice its rights here!

Vinnie

Doctor X

That is because it was the Invisible Pink Unicorn that ate the food. . . .

There are levels of uncertainty. I cannot prove, conclusively, that everytime I drop something it will fall . . . this does not inspire me to try to jump off a building [Unfortunately.--Ed.]

With all due respect to Penia, his complaint against evolution appeared the simple pat complaint delivered by someone who has not had the opportunity to study it other than claims of "anti-evolutionists."

It is similar to claims that "all of the Bible's prophecies came true" or that there are "no errors." It is just a claim born from hope. The problem is most people do not have the time to study the issue. They have no reason to doubt someone who tell them that "they found" human footprints with dinosaour tracks any more than they will doubt that Junior's bro's bone box was found sitting on some guy's toilet!

Prejudice bad.

Evidence good.

One has to make sure the prejudice does not "generate" evidence, and one must evaluate the quality of the evidence.

--J.D.

rmadison

You're giving him too much credit.

Penia said, "I don't believe in evolution but I know nothing about science so I don't try to use facts and numbers that I don't even understand to try to disprove it.

I stay away from that arena because I don't have the facts. but I do believe the Bible is inerrant so I study that.

Sounds to me like he's had the opportunity, but has willfully ignored it.

*edit* Not only that, but since he stays away from that area, he will NEVER get the facts. His overall strategy leads to perpetual ignorance.

Doctor X

Oh . . . I was hoping he was not another "hit and run" poster. . . .

I try to remain an optimist.

Nevertheless, I think he avoids the subjects--evolution, biblical criticism--because of what he might find.

--J.D.

Vinnie

its like openeing up a can of woop-ass on a dead horse.

Its quite simple: Penia believes certain facts are true. These facts mean evolution is false. Thus, since Penia accepts these certain facts are true, evolution must be false.

Penia knows the discussion is over his/her head. The issue will require far more studying than he/she is willing to investigate into it. If you want to show people like Penia that evolution is correct, you have to meet them on their own terms and hit their presuppositions,

So Penia, why do you feel the Bible is inerrant? Do you have any positive reasons why we should accepts its trustworthiness?

How about the old Historical J.C. evangelical route?

--->

The Gospels are historically reliable enough (NO Comment on Inerrancy) to reconstruct stuff about Jesus.

The crucifixion is well attested. The woman testimony, eyewitness gospel accounts, the fact tat no one dies for lies, no good reason to make it up and so forth.

Through historical apologetics it is likely Jesus rose from the dead and he performed miracles and thought he was God.

From all this its claimed there are good reasons to believe Jesus was God incarnate.

From that we go on to say that "God incarnate" accepted the factuality of the Old Tesament. So this gives us good grounds to affirm that the OT is the word of God.

Woulkd you accept this approach as valid? Even if you do, how do you authenticate the New Testament? You must have a different way since it was written entirly after Jesus' death. The OT wasn't fully canonized during Jesus' era either. His OT was not our OT but I am willing to let that go for now.

Feel free to state why you acccept the trustwothiness//inerrancy of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures.

Vinnie

TheDiddleyMan

Question for Vinnie:

I tend to agree with a lot of what you say. I once accepted the bible as innerrant and now do not.

You make good arguments about the alleged supernatural elements of the bible, but what about the Resurrection? It seems to me that you have defended the resurrection and its historicity here before (I could be wrong), but why not Balam's ass whining or Jonah being swallowed by a whale? What differentiates them? There are a few obvious things, of course, but if you reject the other stories because they are supernatural in nature, why not the resurrection?

Or (highly likely) am I misunderstanding you completely?

Kevin

Vinnie

Well, I don't accept the rez anymore. Up above I was going reductio ad absurdom. Trying to get into Penia mind frame. I am pretty much disgruntled by all claimes of the supernatural from UFOs (yes I said ufos = supernatural!!!!) to non-placebo healings, to dead men rising and so on.

But I will say that you can distinguish between a talking ass and the one time event--foreordained from eternity past, that atoned for the sins of the world and brought about he possibility of God and man being united. It can be argued the whole Bible centers around this event, not the talking ass of Balam. A denial of the factualy of Numbers 22 does not undermine the entire Bible. Of course, without the rez the NT would be pretty lacking wouldn't it?

A qualititative inspiration propent can believe Balam' ass never talked but that the Rez occured. This is a very complex subject and the theodice proble finds itself at the center of it. The nature of the events are different. But the evidence for both is quite lacking anyways.

I still think there are valid questions to be asked about the origins of Christianity. I just don't think anyone can answer any of them. My source reconstruction leaves nothing but a big mess in the first stratum. No one can piece it together convincingly at this time.

Vinnie

Abolish

After reading the article I say "Bunk!" and that's coming from a theist. The key to an understanding of the Bible cannot be found in just studying it, which this article suggests. Let the Bible interpret itself here. I'll point out just two sections:

Matthew 22:14: "For many are called, but few are chosen."
Who does the choosing? Of course, we needn't ask. And if God does choose you, of course, you'll understand what you're reading in the Bible. It will make sense, somehow.

And there is the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. The parable is of seeds being scattered. Some take root and others do not.

In other words, we are all influenced by our surroundings, just like the seeds in this parable. Some will take root, grow stong, others will rot in the ground, others may grow only to whither, etc., etc.

So there is a very strong element of chance in the Bible influencing who will believe and who will not. So apparently, Einstein was completely mistaken when he said that God does not play dice with the world; and the author of this article is deluded if he thinks study will uncover the Bible's secrets; which by the way -are not easy to digest or understand. The Bible is in fact impossible to understand --if God decides for whatever Divine reasons He has in mind, to hide its secrets from you.

Vinnie

We started off good......

Still going along smoothly....

Brickwall! Smash!!! That had to hurt. Two things:


1) The Bible is an inanimate object. It is not going to interpret itself. We have to interpret it no matter what. Our hermeneutic may of course utilize this process of interpreting Biblical verses in light of other ones. This brings me to the second point:

2) The Bible was written by over 40 authors over thousands of years. Various authors with differing (even if slightly) worldviews, that came from different walks of life, that had different opinions, and listed contradictory things when compared.

To let the "Bible" [= whole Bible] interpret itself ASSUMES that there is some unifying message to be interpreted. That assumes its God's word to begin with. Otherwise no one would go to these books (if not bound together into a canon) and assume they were consistent in message and scope. Ths assumes canonization as well. Why should Paul's comments be interpreted or force-fitted to cohere with the book of Isaiah or the Gospel of Mark? I don't force fit the writings of The Gospel of Thomas with 1st Clement or any other extant ECW (early Christian writing) that has not been canonized.

Your method assumes the Bible is divine revelation. Being such it is inerrant and all errors are just apparent ones. That's great. You may in fact be correct. But a few questions arise:

1) Why should we believe the Bible is inerrant or is God;'s message toi begin with?

2) How can we believe this without first interpreting the Bible to see if it had a unifying message--to see if its consistent? Obviously you need to come up with another method to actually gget us to your method. Otherwise this is nothing more than a circular position of presumption that undercuts itself.

edited to add: So the key to understanding the Bible is studying it!

Vinnie