Deus Ex

I say read everything that you have time for, and let reason be your guide; I can usually tell when a book has an apologetic bent to it.

If your reasoning lets you down, pray to Mighty Thor for guidance.

gurugeorge

Yes, the Bible says it, but you have made the decision that what the Bible says is true, you are the one who is assenting to the truth of that idea, and trying to pass it on. There is nothing that intrinsically makes marks on paper be true - we have to decide, as individuals, based on whatever criteria, whether we take those marks on paper to be true or not. You have decided to assent, I and others have decided to dissent.

It's your bet (about the way the Universe is) against ours, that's all.

Well of course very few people here would believe these question-begging propositions - you really have an uphill struggle if you come to this board and try and tout them. I'm just trying to explain to you why.

I already told you - I did test it, from a very young age, and I've only found a few moral propositions in the Bible to be true, the rest is just religious stories, with varying degrees of historicity, credibility. Also, there is much in the Bible that I find not only false but positively evil and immoral. IOW it's a mixed bag, with very little in it that I would take to be the word of God. It's far too parochial and petty to be that, for the most part.

The most I might grant you is that SOME bits may have been inspired, or the work of genius. But that's no different from what happens in ordinary life. Great scientists, artists, musicians, etc., are "God inspired" in the same way, some things they do are divine, and speak to us of the "numinous", in a poetic sort of way.

Again, even if I did believe in God, I would still have to test whether any given example of purported-God-text in the world really is "from God" in any meaningful way. The existence of "everything this book says is true" in a book is simply not a guarantee of the authenticity of God-communication in that book. There is no logical necessity there whatsoever, it's just a punt you (and other Jews and Christians) have made. Rationalists and freethinkers haven't made that bet, because that kind of all-or-nothing betting on the truth based on trust is alien to the rationalist worldview.

Sure, that's how it looks from your point of view, I understand that. But from my point of view (and others here) what you are doing here is not rational, it's not based on evidence, it's based on a prior commitment in light of which the evidence looks a certain way. That kind of prior commitment is, as I have said, alien to the rational way of going about things.

Why should I need any help to see that the idea of Adam's rib is quite plainly a bit of stinky human propaganda meant to conceptually subordinate women, and that it goes contrary to the direct evidence of the senses, which is that women are fully equal to men as thinking beings (albeit each sex has its own specialisms)? That I made that conclusion as a child is irrelevant - because it's still valid to me, now that I'm 50.

I assure you it's not. I don't have the slightest feeling of awe about the Bible at all, in any way, shape or form. It's just another ancient religious text to me, with some interesting bits and some crap bits, just like every other religious text. I simply do not believe, I have no faith. I lost it as a child and have never recovered it, and never regretted it. The idea of running my life according to what the Bible says, just because the Bible itself says it's true, is absolutely laughable. I mean, really, you have to get this about rationalists in general - as soon as you take this tack "oh but secretly you believe but don't want to face the truth", your credibility in our eyes has already plummetted. If you at all want to turn us away from what YOU see as a bad path, then this is absolutely not the line of argument you want to be taking. I am the authority on what's going on inside my head, not you, and if you attempt to psychologise me and get it wrong, then you've simply made a fool of yourself.

DCHindley

"Loaded" language.

That means the use of "colorful" terms and emotionally charged labels/adjectives describing the evidence or how a critic has interpreted it.

Example: Stephen C Carlson's use of the term "forger's tremor" to describe irregularities in the writing of Greek letters in the "Clement fragment" published by Morton Smith. It may be evidence of a tremor, but not all writer's tremors are "forger's tremors" (a modern technical term used in handwriting analysis when trying to determine whether signatures on legal or financial documents and sometimes suicide notes etc are genuine).

Other terms are "merely" "speculative" "unimportant" or "obviously" "surely" and the like to describe evidence. At one time I went as far as to remove them from my spell check dictionary to force me to re-write things where I inadvertantly used them. When these terms are used to describe things they are injecting value judgements into them.

If somebody proposes, say, a cultic meaning for the countless small stone rings found in excavations of ancient archeological sites, the crtitics who have reason to oppose such an interpretation may say "Those are merely spindle whorles." That was a term invented to explain their use although no one really knew how they would serve the purpose of spinning or pottery making etc. Describing them that way denigrates any suggestion that they had a religious purpose instead.

Remember, there are "bare" facts, and there are interpretations or explanations for facts, but they are not the same thing.

DCH

Doug Shaver

We're not. But we already know what Christians believe and why they believe it. You have nothing to tell us that we don't already know. If we're going to learning anything new, it has to come from elsewhere.

Doug Shaver

Doug Shaver

The OP was by someone who used to be a Christian. Many of us here are also former Christians. We need no instruction in the faith. It's reasonable for us to suppose that the OP needs none, either.

Doug Shaver

Translation: We have become infallible. We are incapable of error.

mountainman

Not only that but the infallibility has been canonized by a historical process which is described infallibly by Eusebius and the canonical christian regime which inherited, preserved and deified this imperially canonized seal.

andrewcriddle

The ccel translations are usually reasonably good. They are mostly out of copyright typically 19th century translations which sometimes means that they rely on inaccurate texts or interpretations.

Do you have any specific issues with these translations ?

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

It's ok to read anything you want. But if you're trying to sift reality from fantasy, it's best not to use sources which you know a priori to be highly biased and likely to present facts in deceptive ways, or to state opinions in a way in which they appear to be facts.