Freethought & Rationalism Archive

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 01:02 PM

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Originally Posted by Deus Ex

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Sin is usually defined as anything a person does that is against the will of God, but which will is that? Calvinists claim that God has a prescriptive will, where God lays out all the things that he wants us to either do or not do. But we are told by Calvinists that God also has a secret will, where God decrees that people do things which violate God's prescriptive will. Assuming a completely sovereign God, we are not able to resist this second will of God, and a case can be made that God himself is the cause of our violating his other will.

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You are aware that Paul raises and addresses this very objection.

Paul simply ducks the question by stating that we have no right to ask the question in the first place. I'm gonna ask whether Paul thinks I have a right to or not.

Lemme' know if what he says agrees with what I present.

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 01:09 PM

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Originally Posted by Davka

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Originally Posted by simon kole

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Originally Posted by Jaybees

No astronomers at that time noticed this:

"Joshua 10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel."

It's safe to say it never happened. I'm not arguing about miracles, I'm just wondering why no one outside these few acres of land even noticed it.

Don't you agree that someone, someplace, somehow would have realiazed that the sun stood still that day?

If not, please explain.

That's outside my purview.

Well, it has quite a large amount to do with your interpretation of the Bible. If you believe that the earth actually stopped, then the fact that it is reported nowhere outside the Bible is problematic.

If you continue with your somewhat facetious claim that all you are doing is "reporting what the Bible says," then you don't need to answer any more questions. We're all quite literate, we can read the Bible for ourselves and see what it says, and some of us have literally spent decades studying the Bible.

We have no need of a reporter, with all the implicit bias that reporting entails. We can read directly from the source.

I'm not the one who proposed internal contradictions, some of which upon examination are not, in fact, contradictions.
Someone "quite literate" thought those non-contradictions were contradictions.

Looks to me like there is work here for a "reporter" to do.

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 01:11 PM

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Originally Posted by Davka

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Originally Posted by simon kole

The Bible presents itself as true.

No, it does not. The Bible does not refer to itself in any way at all. It cannot.

Some of the books included in the Bible present themselves and/or other books in the Bible as true. But the compilation as a whole has nothing to say about the compilation as a whole. It would be irrational to expect that it could.

Paul thought otherwise.

Failte · 06-24-2011, 01:16 PM

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I hear you, but it is not my job to persuade, only to present.

Each has to use his own standards to decide whether to accept or reject it.

Then present what the verses actually say, not what you have to bend them to say to make the story the same. You are not "reporting" or "presenting", you are editorializing and adding some rather ridiculous conjecture to the words to make them work, despite your disingenuous claims.

Reading the verses, in context, reveals that they describe two completely different stories. They contradict. They do not agree on how Judas died. That is the only honest conclusion that is possible.

Except if you're christian, I guess. Then you can just wave away the facts and the clear, quite literal reading of the text.

And here's what my bible actually says in genesis 2:18-19.

"2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. "

The various versions of the bible use 'formed' or 'had formed' and 'having formed', but if you actually read the verses, they are "having formed these things, he brought them to adam", which means he created them and brought them to adam after realizing that adam should not be alone, it does not say that he created them earlier, before adam was around and was just holding them in a pen somewhere waiting for the human to show up. That's quite clear from 2:18.

Any honest reading of Genesis reveals that the author knit together two completely different creation stories. Why is that so hard to admit?

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 01:20 PM

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Originally Posted by Davka

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Originally Posted by simon kole

The Bible claims divine authorship.

No, it does not.

There is no mention of God in the entire Book of Esther.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says very clearly that it was not authored by God.

Both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts claim human authorship.

Even in the Prophetic books, there are clear delineations between "thus saith the Lord" and mere human writings.

That Timothy 2 says "all scripture is god breathed" is NOT the same as "the Bible" claiming divine authorship. It is a LETTER, written by a HUMAN, which was added to the Biblical collection by other HUMANS. So what we have is a single letter making a very vague claim (what is meant by "all scripture?") which has been appended to an anthology of Jewish sacred writings.

And yet Paul states very clearly, "All Scripture is God-breathed."
There is no denying he was referring to what was accepted by the Jews at the time as Sacred Scriptrue,
including the Prophets' writings where it did not say "thus saith the Lord."

And then there's Jesus who referred to a statement in Ge, which was not from the mouth of God, as "God said."
In Jesus' view, what Scripture says, God says.

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Please stop making absurd claims about what "the Bible" says about itself. It says nothing at all about itself.

Please stop denying the plain teaching of the Bible that Scripture is the word of God.

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Your claim is comparable to claiming that because one version of "little red riding hood" claims that the "mother goose stories" were written by mother goose, therefore the mother goose stories claim to be written by mother goose.

dockeen · 06-24-2011, 01:28 PM

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the author knit together two completely different creation stories

Read through the story of David, from his early years, through to him becoming king.
Tell me that it doesn't read like a number of --- "David stories" that are sewn together
into one narrative. It reads very much like someone watched a dozen or two random
episodes of "I Dream of Genie", and tried to paste them together into a coherent
narrative.

Sometimes the pasting looks quite strange. How many times did David have a clear
shot at Saul, in very similar circumstances, and not do it? Does it look like similar
accounts of the same event, but put in their twice to increase the impact?

Davka · 06-24-2011, 01:30 PM

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Originally Posted by simon kole

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Originally Posted by Failte

Which were created first? Adam (and possibly eve) or the animals? What "could have beens" must you invoke to reconcile the two genesis accounts?

I assume you are referring to Ge 2:19.

In the general account of the whole creation, in Ge 1:24-25 the animals were created before Adam and Eve.

In the specific account of the creation of Adam and Eve, Ge 2:19 says,

"Now the Lord had formed (completed past action) out of the ground all the beasts of the field. . ."

That is a mistranslation of the Hebrew.

The Hebrew says 'v'y'tzar,' lit. "and he is forming." The Masoretic Bible translates it accurately as "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them . . ."

The verb tense in Hebrew is present. It is exactly the same tense used in verse 9, "and out of the ground v'yatzmakh (and he is causing to sprout) the Lord God every tree . . . "

The exact same word, v'yatzar, is used in verse 7, "and the LORD God formed man . . ."

The Creation story which begins with Genesis 1:1 and ends with Genesis 2:3 differs from the story which begins in Genesis 2:4 and ends with Genesis 2:25 in a number of significant ways.

- The first story has the Creating being done by Elohim. YHWH is not mentioned anywhere.
- In the first story, Elohim "creates" (boreh) the heavens and the Earth ex nihilo, and then uses the materials to "make" (la'asot) the plants and animals and humans.
- In the first story, Elohim talks to himselfs in plural form.

- In the second story, all the actions are performed by YHWH Elohim.
- In the second story, YHWH Elohim does not create (boreh) the heavens and the Earth, he "makes" (la'asot) them, a verb which is never used for ex nihilo creation.
- In the second story, YHWH Elohim causes the plants to sprout, then forms Adam, and then forms the animals and brings them to Adam to name.
- In the second story, YHWH Elohim is always singular, suggesting a possible individual member of a pantheon.

The two stories are at odds. Deliberate translation errors which pretend to "fix" this problem only serve to show how far Christians will go to pretend there are no contradictions in the Bible.

Davka · 06-24-2011, 01:33 PM

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Originally Posted by dockeen

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the author knit together two completely different creation stories

Read through the story of David, from his early years, through to him becoming king.
Tell me that it doesn't read like a number of --- "David stories" that are sewn together
into one narrative. It reads very much like someone watched a dozen or two random
episodes of "I Dream of Genie", and tried to paste them together into a coherent
narrative.

Sometimes the pasting looks quite strange. How many times did David have a clear
shot at Saul, in very similar circumstances, and not do it? Does it look like similar
accounts of the same event, but put in their twice to increase the impact?

Exactly. And Genesis 1 through Genesis 12 reads like a series of "just so" stories cobbled together into a single narrative. It is likely that these were all the various Hebrew oral traditions told around the campfire for generations, until someone decided to write them down as if they were a single story.

simon kole · 06-24-2011, 01:40 PM

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Originally Posted by Failte

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I hear you, but it is not my job to persuade, only to present.

Each has to use his own standards to decide whether to accept or reject it.

Then present what the verses actually say, not what you have to bend them to say to make the story the same. You are not "reporting" or "presenting", you are editorializing and adding some rather ridiculous conjecture to the words to make them work, despite your disingenuous claims.

Reading the verses, in context, reveals that they describe two completely different stories. They contradict. They do not agree on how Judas died. That is the only honest conclusion that is possible.

Except if you're christian, I guess. Then you can just wave away the facts and the clear, quite literal reading of the text.

And here's what my bible actually says in genesis 2:18-19.

"2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. "

The various versions of the bible use 'formed' or 'had formed' and 'having formed', but if you actually read the verses, they are "having formed these things, he brought them to adam", which means he created them and brought them to adam after realizing that adam should not be alone, it does not say that he created them earlier,

That's what the grammar says.

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before adam was around and was just holding them in a pen somewhere waiting for the human to show up. That's quite clear from 2:18.

The grammar of 2:19 does not support your understanding of 2:18.

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Any honest reading of Genesis

That's kinda' what I was thinking about the whole thing.

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reveals that the author knit together two completely different creation stories.

Is that a problem?

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Why is that so hard to admit?

Because it is not what the texts say.

Deus Ex · 06-24-2011, 01:46 PM

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And yet Paul states very clearly, "All Scripture is God-breathed."
There is no denying he was referring to what was accepted by the Jews at the time as Sacred Scriptrue,
including the Prophets' writings where it did not say "thus saith the Lord."

And then there's Jesus who referred to a statement in Ge, which was not from the mouth of God, as "God said."
In Jesus' view, what Scripture says, God says.

First off, scholars are pretty much divided as to whether Paul actually wrote Timothy, or if it was someone writing later in Paul's name.

Second, at best you would have a claim to divine inspiration that only extends to the Hebrew canon since it would be doubtful that the author of 2 Timothy would have thought that his own particular epistle was itself inspired scripture. If truly written by Paul, then his letter would have preceded the gospels--the only scripture known to Paul would have been the Hebrew canon and perhaps oral tradition of Jesus' actual words (which Paul is incredibly silent about).

Third, Paul's claim would only be authoritative if you already accept that Paul was writing under divine inspiration--which I do not grant.

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