anime

All right, what did I claim about myself? Provide an exact quote.

Millenial teaching is in Ezekiel 44 and Revelation 20:1-4. See also an interesting in the very last verse of Jonah.

I know you do not like this argument, but the Bible says that most people do not search with their whole heart.

I don't think I fully understand what your confusion is, bgponder.

WWSD

Indeed, no one will like that argument one bit.

This is because it is circular, self contained, and therefore, worthless to someone who doesn't believe the same as you do.

I could make a similar argument against your belief system using the holy words of another belief system and then claim that you do not understand because my system says you won't.

It becomes a matter of setting up an argument that is self inclusive, and therefore justifies itself with itself, which makes it untenable.

If you can demonstrate, without using the bible, that most people don't search with all thier hearts for the truth, then you'd have a valid point. But that is, IMO, impossible.

anime

I'll try a different approach then.

Historically, especially in the Major and Minor Prophets, the "priest and the prophet" were the chief source of confusion and apostasy, though many of them did it in God's name.

The same holds true today.

A very good example happened just last night:

I generally isolate and never go to any local church, but I thought I would give these guys a chance and attended a Bible study. Well, there were two or three verses quoted, but much of it was yackety yackety yack. In fact, the source book of this Bible study is not the Bible! It's some other book. Oh, there are Bible verses in it, but it is not the Bible.

Pastors, preachers, and students going to a Bible study in the name of God and main study book is something other than the Bible.

Does this example help to clarify what I am saying?

bgponder

Dearest, dearest anime,

Great!! I'm all ears.

Uh oh. And you got this from--let me guess--the Bible, right?

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

Look, anime. I started to create a little play of sorts, where you were this Jehovah's Witness-type of person who comes to my trailer door with a Bible with a 3-d DragonballZ/Sailor Moon cover. Stuff like that is my usual tack.

But I am sincere now, and I realize that you are sincere. I admire your focus and determination, I really do. But there is a fine line between tenacity and tedium.

You are smart enough to reference Nizkor, and you are smart enough to get what others have been posting against you. You are preaching to a non-existent choir. This very thread was begun by a newly-awakened atheist.

Most of us here are nontheists, and we do not recognize the source you continue to reference as valid in determining whether any god exists (this IS the EoG forum), and we ascribe to the principles of logical argumentation and consider your arguments circular, and therefore not valid.

I reiterate: You cannot, in any wise, argue with us that the Bible is true in its representations of God/prophecy by making reference to the Bible, because we do not believe it. Though somehow you seem to think that you have the Truth in your interpretation, or the interpretation of a particular school of thought, we have seen it before. Millenial teachings are nothing new to us. Many of us have been deeply studious Christians. We come from all manner of backgrounds, from Catholic to Protestant. Some of us are able to read the earliest extant texts in their original languages.

We do not agree with your conclusions of how it can be known that prophecy is real, that any gods, or the Judeo-Christian Godhead exists, or prophecies about them correlate, by referencing the Bible. These things carry not one featherweight with us.

If you want to get our attention, you will have to stop saying, "Look! It's true! Just read and study it!"

You will have to come up with something that adheres to logical argument, that is fresh or at least a new twist.

For instance, you could reference some recent finding about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and present a logical argument that shows how the finding agrees with certain key concepts of Revelations. (Though such an argument might properly be moderated to BC&A.)

Do you get my drift?

Inasmuch as I have committed ad populum in my exasperation, I defer to the majority.

Sincerely to all, BarryG

diana

anime,

Regarding the quotes you've seen in this forum, they usually take the form of one of two possibilities:

1. They are an interesting site that someone wants everyone to take a look at. These should start a thread of their own, or may sometimes be included as an afterthought in an ongoing discussion, but mustn't detract from it.

2. As sandlewood said, the person using the link provides the information from the link he feels is applicable to the argument he's making, and provides the link in the event anyone wishes to check his context.

Concerning quoting bible verses to support your argument, this is only considered valid support for an argument if we've granted, for the sake of argument, that the bible is true, and are trying to determine the meaning of a passage in its context. However, when the argument is over whether the bible is or isn't true (which the argument usually is), your producing bible verses to support your position that it is true makes as much sense as a person "proving" the Koran is true because it says it is. To appeal to the claims of the book in question to determine its veracity is to accept Anna Anderson's claims that she was Anastasia Romanov simply because she said she was.

sandlewood summed up the crux of your problem here: You responded: "Because I had green beans for breakfast" (or its logical equivalent).

Oh yes. You said:

Which of course is a non-sequitor. You have not explained how one's spiritual temperature has any bearing on whether one has been granted the right to read the bible correctly. According to your bible, God has already determined that some people will be told lies on purpose, and mislead on purpose. I gather from that that no amount of effort on your part will help you jump from one class to another. The question remains: how do I know I'm going to understand the bible correctly or not? Until I know, what good does it do me if I memorize the damn thing?

Yes, I think most of us know where you got your reference. Those who don't know and are interested will ask. Or, alternately, you might just give the reference (for those who are curious) without the quote. We can look it up on any number of online bibles in the blink of an eye.

I say this because, unless the discussion is specifically about the passage in question, quoting verses is not only completely unnecessary, but sounds like preaching. Most of us have had more than enough of that.

Back to the "how do we know if we're understanding the bible correctly" discussion. You yourself provided a good case in point: You said:
Then you said: Hm. How do you know the first is "a spiritual number"? Is the second reference also "a spiritual number," then? If not, how do you make that determination? The bible at no point uses the words "a spiritual number." That is your addition. Where did you get it?

In a later post, you complained about some Xns who studied a book about the bible and not the bible itself. The whole point of such study guides, though, is to help you learn how to interpret the Bible. In short, they tell you how they want you to interpret the bible.

But in essence, you've just committed the same error with us, in that you are presuming to tell us how to interpret the bible instead of simply telling us what the bible says.

Physician, heal thyself.

True, that. sandlewood pretty much has this one sewn up, but I'd like to point out that it is impossible to point out similarities without also noting differences. You cannot have a concept of one thing without already having a concept of its opposite.

I think the point of analogies in argument is to help the other person see something the way you do. Unfortunately, analogies are used as arguments--which they are not. As sandlewood pointed out, the usual tack we see here is that the Xn produces the analogy, presuming to use it as a means of argument, but when he's cornered with its implications, he shrugs it off with "well it's just an analogy."

Please decide whether you want to have your cake, or eat it.

d

(Thanks, sandlewood, for saying most of what I would have, but better.)