Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: Just like you frequently did at the EofG Forum, you keep refusing to reply to my favorite arguments, arguments that deal with the nature of God. I have found that these kinds of arguments give Christians, including you, much more trouble than any other kinds of arguments. Typical of many fundamentalist Christians, you enjoy debating WHAT happened, but my nature of God arguments deal with WHY things happened. This gets into MOTIVES, which are just as important as WHAT happened. In this post I will repost some of the arguments that I made previously in this thread, and at the EofG Forum. It seems that you are afraid to reply to them. I don't blame you. I would not want to try to defend the nature of God. If you refuse to reply to all of the arguments, I will assume that you have admitted that you have lost our debates. It is not nearly enough for you to reasonably prove the Biblical HISTORICAL RECORD. You must reasonably defend GOD'S character. Using the Bible as evidence will not do you any good at all. There is a large amount of evidence that convicts the God of the Bible of breaking his own rules and committing numerous atrocities against mankind, atrocities that are directly opposed to they way that the Bible tells Christians to live. It does not matter one twit whether or not the Bible is historically inerrant, including the Resurrection, if God does not have good character.

The following is from the EofG forum, which you conveniently DID NOT reply to:

Actually, the hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing the Gospel message because God did not want them to hear about it were at a decided disadvantage. Human effort never has been, and never will be sufficient to let everyone know about the Gospel message, which is just as your unmerciful God intends for it to be. Following your own same line of reasoning, if no one wanted to share the Gospel message with anyone, no one would ever get saved. How utterly absurd. That would be like saying that if a lifeguard at a beach refused to save drowning people, no one else should bother to save drowning people. Get this: Decent people make themselves available to help out when indecent people refuse to do so.

If the God of the Bible does not exist, it is to be expected that no one would know about his specific existence and will except through human effort. If he does exist, if he has good character, he would not go out of his way to make it appear to billions of people that human effort alone has accounted for the spread of Christianity.

If a man had two children who were drowning, and refused to try to save both of them, he would be ostracized from society, even from Christian society, and he would possibly be convicted of negligence and sent to prison. If an ordinary man were willing to suffer and die for some people (some skeptics are willing to suffer and die for some people), and killed some people (God kills people with hurricanes, including some of his most devout followers, and babies), he would be considered irrational, bi-polar, and mentally incompetent. Why should the behavior of a God be considered any differently? No rational minded and fair minded person can will himself to accept a God who is a hypocrite, a God who has no concept of fair, merciful, and just punishment. Making people blind, deaf, and dumb, and killing one fourth of the people in Europe with the Bubonic Plague is most certainly NOT fair, merciful, and just punishment. Are you so naïve and gullible that you will claim that those detestable practices provide benefits to mankind? END OF QUOTES

Although God plays favorites regarding who he reveals himself to, to his credit, when he injures and kills people with hurricanes, he does not play favorites.

Are you aware that no PARTICULAR Christian can expect to receive ANY tangible blessing from God, including food, shelter, clothing, good health, and long life. When I was young, I read that 10,000 people died from starvation every day, and that half of the people in the world went to bed hungry. Tangible benefits are distributed to human in a random manner that DOES NOT indicated divine involvement of any kind.

It is not nearly enough for the Bible to SAY that God has good character. Trust must be EARNED. God HAS NOT earned the trust of mankind.

Please be advised that from now on, ALL of my arguments will be about the nature of God. You will never be able to convince any rational person to become a Christian unless you can reasonably defend the nature of God. You have adequately proven that you are way out of your league when it comes to debating philosophical arguments. One example of your ineptness was at the EofG Forum where you said that people can test God by honoring their parents and tithing. I easily refuted your arguments and you conveniently did not reply to my rebuttals. We shall see how bold and prepared you really are. I once debated a Christian philospher at the Theology Web about the nature of God for over a year. I eventually ran him out of town and no one ever heard from him again. I assume that you will join him sooner or later.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: At the EofG forum, you once said the following:

You mean ONLY people who God decides to reveal himself too, right? Would a loving God provide food to starving Chrisitians who are devout and faithful Christians? Would a loving God clearly tell Christians that slavery is wrong? Would a loving God tell Old Testament Jews that if a Jew kills a Jew, he would be killed, but if a Jew kills slave, he would be punished, but not killed?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: I had planned on only discussing the nature of God from now on, but I couldn’t resist discussing the following blunder that you made:

Well, the following arguments from Richard Carrier most certainly do not “deal with minor and insignificant situations and almost always involve a difference in numbers.”

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...n/rubicon.html

Richard Carrier

Holding claims there are no significant disagreements among the Gospels, not even in the chronologies of Luke and John. The general consensus of experts does not agree with him. But I will grant that with some interpretive acrobatics, one could force the chronology of John to fit that of Luke--by admitting, for example, that John erred when he said Jesus was crucified on "the day of preparation for the Passover" (19:14-16 and 19:31), or that Luke erred when he said it was already the Passover when Jesus was crucified (22:7-16; also the interpolated verse at 23:17), and by admitting that Luke did not "carefully follow everything from the beginning" as he claims to (1:3), since he left a lot out. For example, John describes the ministry of Jesus through three Passovers (John 2:13-23; 6:4, 6:10; 11:55, 12:1, 13:1, 18:28, 18:39, 19:14); but Luke, only one (Luke 22). John also only mentions Jesus clearing the Temple once, “years” before he is executed (John 2:13-23), and long before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (John 12:12-20), but Luke only mentions Jesus clearing the Temple once, mere days before he is executed, and “after” his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Luke 19:28-48). Similarly, John records a miraculous catch of fish after Jesus died, not before (John 21), while Luke only records a miraculous catch long “before” Jesus died, not after (Luke 5:1-11). And so on. But other contradictions are just too huge to allow any rational harmony. For example, see the closing example in my Plausibility of Theft FAQ. For more, see the articles relating to the New Testament in the Secular Web section on Biblical Errancy.

Johnny: Rhutchin, these arguments are just the beginning. You will be forced to start doing that will you least like to do, CONDUCT RESEARCH. I will be quoting Richard Carrier extensively, and you will surely find out that his knowledge of the Bible is much superior to yours. I will also be extensively quoting the quite distinguished author, college professor, and liberal Christian Dr. Elaine Pagels. As Pagel’s has aptly said, “the victors rewrote history, ‘their way.’” Anyone with just a modest amount of common sense knows that early Christian writers pirated the Jewish religion. If a supernatural being inspired the writing of the Bible, it was his intention to confuse people much more than he told them the truth. He succeeded in his attempt quite well since he needlessly ensured that three fourths of the people in the world are not aware that he exists. He has not gained anything at all by hiding, but mankind would surely have much to gain if he clearly revealed his existence and will to everyone.

Sauron

That is NOT how Till describes the difficulties in the biblical texts. Till points out many mistakes that are far more than minor disagreements over numbers.

Nice try, though.

1. In which cases, specifically?

2. And what evidence do you have that they "apparently knew something that we don't?" What evidence do you have for this? You wouldn't, by any chance, be trying to speculate here and get people to accept your speculation as substitute for evidence, would you?

By what measure?

Sorry; did you prove that somewhere and I was just not looking? So far the problems are much more substantial than you claim, and no one has demonstrated that they are insignificant. On the contrary; actually.

More speculation that you're trying to pass off as a conclusion.

If that is so, then you have no business telling everyone here that these diescrepancies are minor and insignificant - after all, you admit you don't know Hebrew, so how could you possibly make such a determination?

Answer: you are engaged in wishful speculating again.

Gotcha.:wave:

aa5874

No, Rhutchin, a person reads and studies the Bible and then comes to a determination of whether the Bible is inerrant or not.

Are you implying that all doctine before John Calvin was born are all heresies.


Your reasoning is meaningless or incoherent. You accept the Bible as inerrant, you believe it is inerrant, you discover what the inerrant Bible says and you finally believe it is inerrant. Mumbo Jumbo.

All you have to say is that whatever you believe is absolutely true.

EthnAlln

There is yet another fact that needs to be taken into account in the case of the Bible: Greek was not the first language of most of its authors. Their ear for the subtle nuances of meaning might be slightly off, as mine is so often when I am abroad (even in Britain!!). For what it's worth, here is the literal text of 2 Peter 3:9:

ou bradynei kyrios tes epaggelias, hos tines bradyteta hegountai, alla makrothumei eis hymas, me boulomenos tinas apolesthai alla pantas eis metanoian khoresai.

Word for word translation, one phrase at a time:

ou bradynei kyrios tes epaggelias (not delays lord of the promise), that is, "The lord is not delaying in his promise." The word epaggelia, whose root is the same as the root of the words angel and evangelist, originally meant a public denunciation of a person who took place in public life after being disgraced. But my dictionary also gives promise as a second meaning.

hos tines bradyteta hegountai, "as some delays suppose," that is, "as some people understand delays." The word hegountai---third person plural--is one of those multi-meaning words. Its primary meaning is lead the way, and it is the source of the word hegemony.

alla makrothumei eis hymas. "but is patient to [with] us." The word makros means long, and thumoo means to become angry.

me boulomenos tinas apolesthai. "not wishing any to perish." Straightforward enough. The word any (tinas) is accusative plural.

alla pantas eis metanoian khoresai, "but all to repentance to come," that is, that all come to repentance. Again the word all is accusative plural. The word metanoia means literally afterthought. It may mean either a change of mind or a change of spirit (nous). The word khoresai is the aorist infinitive of khoreo, which confusingly can mean either to draw back or to move forward. The aorist simply means that the action is thought of as an event rather than a process, which would be the case had the present infinitive been used.

That sort of lays it out. But all the caveats about the historical context and the literary style of the time need to be heeded. You can't just fit this literal translation together into grammatically correct English and believe you have the meaning. Only those with much experience of the literature as well as the language (which isn't me---I know mostly Greek scientific and philosophical works in the original language, not the bible) can really say what the text probably means.

Ignostic Morgan

:angel: :notworthy: :wave: Johnny Skeptic , try a Christian and an atheist forum . Narsil there cannot fahthom there are contradictions between the Bible and with history and science and itself. Fundamentalists love to rationalize their book and its god. But with Richard Dawkins , I decry the errantists who use metaphors: what is the metaphor for the genocides and the Deluge- might makes right.Fundamentalists find themselves so happy they have Yeshua as their slave master . The threat of Hell is so relished for some . Damascus was to be destroyed forever , but Bashir Assad would beg to differ. The brain shield of faith keeps them as slaves to unreason .They think that sin keeps us from acknowledging their master.

Johnny Skeptic

So in other words, you have to become a Christian based upon reading the New Testament in English BEFORE you can understand the ancient Greek writings from which the English was translated, right?

You criticize Richard Carrier, but please tell us what YOUR methodology is regarding how to understand the Bible. Please state in 500 words or less what you would say to a person who is looking for a worldview and knows very little about the Bible. Your presentation needs to be able to be easily understood by the typical layman in any country, including unducated people who live in remote regions in third world countries.

You will find that the Bible will not be of any value to you whatsoever regarding replying to my posts #51 and #52. The so-called "historical record" does not work against my nature of God arguments.

What kind of God would limit tangible knowledge of what he has done to how much a person is able to know about copies of ancient texts? Where is this ancient historical God TODAY? What, if any, tangible blessings can a PARTICULAR Christian expect to receive from God TODAY? Better yet, what, if any, tangible blessings could a PARTICULAR follower of God have EVER expected to receive? If God does not exist, it is to be expected that the only blessings that a PARTICULAR person could expect to receive from him would be subjective spiritual/emotional blessings. Some Christians have said that the modern nation of Israel is evidence of God's existence today. Would you care to defend that approach?

Gamera

Why would you find that odd, since Christians were preaching the gospel decades before the New Testament came into existence. The gospel exists without the NT, and always has.

Indeed, most of the NT is not the gospel at all, but guidance to people who are already Christians, 2 Peter being a case in point.

Gamera

Who knows? But getting back to 2 Peter, it's painfully obvious to me that the author wasn't refering to physical perishing, but spiritual perishing, which is not subject to the empirical analysis you have relied upon.