Cross Examiner

emur and Asha'man,

If you like IT analogies then God's communication to man is a bi-directional connection-oriented process, like TCP, not like UDP. Did you not configure your TCP/IP stack to receive TCP conversation streams? No? He won't make you talk TCP if you don't want to. Or, do you expect to receive a message on 2.4GHz if your reciever is set to 2.4MHz? Where you set is your own bet . Don't know where to find the right frequency? Ask someone. Got a beef with the Bible? Ask a Bible scholar for insight. You are responsible for that much I suspect. Human. Culpability.

Regards,
BGiC

Asha'man

So, to continue your analogy, God is clearly an idiot savant. He wrote the entire OS, invented TCP, but is trying to communicate with me on an IP port that he didn’t configure! Not only that, but he knows that he left that IP port without a handler. Even worse, he doesn’t even bother to try the next port down, which is the well-known-port for external communication, and has been running just fine since the system was booted! If I was his manager, he’d be fired for incompetence on the spot!

Let me say this again:If God is trying to communicate with me, he is failing. Omnipotent and Omniscient beings should not fail at such an easy task. Apparently, you are a more competent communicator than God.
I assume you mean a theist biblical scholar? I asked, I got nothing but apologetic crap. Anyone with half a brain can see past some of their pitiful excuses. They have blinded themselves to logic and reason, deliberately, to feed their emotional need.

On the other hand, when I started talking to atheist biblical scholars, like the ones that hang out here, I started getting straight answers that made sense.

emur

Whaaaat? Sorry, my original post stands. You just limited omnipotence.

Yes, I have a beef with the bible. I have a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies from Biblical Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. The seminary is inerrantist and evangelical.

Obviously, I have since rejected such teaching. And I have done it while being in pastoral ministry for 15 years.

Problems with the bible: (not an exhaustive list)
It is NOT inerrant. A simple read shows that.
It does not fit with reality.

Just this is enough for me to reject any kind of special divine inspiration of the bible. It is a human book filled with the human flaws we see everyday. It's just that in the bible, those flaws are claimed as God's will. Nuff said for now.

Mel

Rational BAC

I agree with you completely Emur. The Bible is errant, and was man made man inspired. God had nothing to do with it at all as was His choice.

None of which has anything to do with Christianity or being a Christian.

Asha'man

How can you say that? Without the Bible, Christianity has nothing to stand on. It's the only piece of objective evidence ever presented.

Christianity is about a belief in Jesus. Without the Bible, there is exactly zero information about Jesus. You couldn't even say he existed, not to mention knowing anything about what he preached. Your religion would be utterly empty of content.

emur

I would agree, if there were nothing true in the bible. But IMO, if one takes the basic gospel accounts of Jesus' life (obviously by faith), while believing that the gospels are errant, Christianity still stands.

It goes like this: An event happens. A number of people observe it. They in turn tell a number of other people, and so on. During this process, facts about the event get distorted, embellished, etc. Yet, when it is all said and done, the errors don't mean the original event didn't happen.

I think that's where we are with many Christians. They are not fundies - EVERY WORD IS TRUE, AND YOU ARE TOAST IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! They believe something happened. They have faith that the basic event of Jesus as given in the gospels happened.

As for me, I'm agnostic on the existence of Jesus. I'm absolutely convinced that the gospels, and the bible for that matter, are errant. I'm not convinced that something didn't happen. I'm also not convinced that something did.

Mel

Jack the Bodiless

Billy Graham is cool:
I already know a good place to look for those.

In Kashmir, there is a Buddhist legend of a lama reicarnated in Israel, in 1 AD or thereabouts. Buddhists brought him to Kashmir when he was 14, and trained him. He went back to Israel to preach Buddhist philosophy: non-violence and suchlike. He was known as "the healer" and "the shepherd". His mission ultimately failed, and he barely escaped with his life. He returned to Kashmir, badly wounded (especially in the wrists and feet). But he recovered, and lived in Kashmir until he died of old age, at about 80.

His tomb still exists. An Islamic holy man is also buried there. Underneath their shared shrine, there are two cavities (which can't be opened because of Muslim objections). One is oriented North-South in the Islamic tradition. The other is oriented East-West, in the Jewish tradition.

How would excavation of the bones convince you?
When you say "the Bible", do you actually mean the New Testament?

If not: the Genesis creation myth, Noah's Flood, and the Tower of Babel were fictitious. This has been "proved".

BadBadBad

No, it's not like I get to choose my application or how it communicates. I was programmed from the factory to require certain information to make decisions. I wasn't programmed to comminicate with TCP/IP or UDP/IP. I was programmed to communicate via an audible sound wave protocol. Perhaps we can go to God's corporate web site and get a free download with the new communication stack. Should we find this basic problem with our communication stack listed under the known bug section?

You know, I've been in this business for 15 years. I just hate it when I call technical support and they deny they have a bug. They tell me it's my fault. They make me do all the troubleshooting. This is not a user error problem. It's a bug, and I want a free upgrade or my money back.

Cross Examiner

brettc et al.,

And sometimes, once every blue moon , user error is involved. You told them what to do but they weren't paying attention, lacked basic understanding or were just plain-old belligerent.

C'est la vie. C'est l'homme. Qu'est-ce qu'on fait?

Regards,
BGiC

BadBadBad

Look. I've been doing testing on this for quite some time. You're communications stack sucks. I told you. It doesn't even have TCP/IP you dip! It's got audio and video, and that part's working fine.

You're telling me I need to go back to the manual? Are you kidding? How wrote this piece of shit? You know what? It just flat doesn't work. That prayer program you call a communication stack? Ha! Is that like vaporware or what? Nice little marketing scheme you've got going where you can put it on all your color glossy's and then deny any responsibility later. Who are you kidding? It doesn't work for anyone. We've got a user group, and the whole community is talking about it. Our group is growing faster than you can sell this shit. One day we're going to be shutting you down. Just you wait!

You know if I thought anybody else's program worked any better I'd buy that, but the whole damn industry is outsourcing all their programming, every other company has the same shoddy crap you do. I'm getting out of this religion business. Maybe I ought to just go out and sell computers or go home and play with the kids or something. This is ridiculous.