Jorge

Allow me to hazard a guess: because of 'selective text mining', that's why.

Here's how it works: if it supports what they wish to believe, then it "must be true". If it doesn't support their belief system, then it must be a myth. Makes a lot'ta sense, doesn't it?

Jorge

Jorge

Point taken... it's off to the BC&H I go.

Jorge

Echo

HELLO??? POT???? Are you there, Pot??? There's a kettle looking for you.

Wayne Delia

Says who? What you've described is nothing more than the fallacy of assuming your own conclusion. The "heart-condition" you're vaguely referring to is nothing more than the typical requirement that the existence of God is assumed as a premise, in order to investigate whether God exists or not. Absolutely. But that doesn't make every concept equivalent, demonstrable or not. You're going down the path of begging for parity for your God idea on the basis that since nothing can be proven to 100% certainty, why not just believe in your preferred religious belief? The problems are many, and include the observation that you most likely wouldn't drop your Christian faith and accept a non-Christian faith on the simple basis that the non-Christian advocate points out that neither his faith nor yours can be proven. Secondly, that which I believe in would include the scientific method, and the simple conclusion is that science actually works, while religion is notoriously unreliable. That's exactly the question you are begging with respect to the existence of your God. Does your belief have an objectively independent and real existence? Nothing which you, or many other Christian apologists, can demonstrate without requiring the presupposed belief in your God in order to show that your God exists.

That's strange; in the Gospels, Jesus says that it's up to the Holy Spirit. Just not in any real-world way, I guess. I haven't seen anything coming even remotely close.

Quote:

The acceptance of God is dependent on the person's 'heart condition'.

If that's true, then you've contradicted your assertion above: your God does not, in fact, have an objectively independent and real existence. His existence is totally dependent on the required presupposition that He exists. Unfortunately, an object's existence does not depend on a person's acceptance. An object either exists or it doesn't. Your acceptance of God's existence, based on the assumed premise that God exists, in no way necessarily entails your God's existence. Indeed. The reasons seem to stem from a bigotry and prejudice that few Christians (thankfully) such as yourself have against physical disabilities. If someone does not agree with your theology, you describe them as spiritually "blind". If someone does not have the proper attitudes toward what you believe, you chalk that up to a "heart condition." What makes it so comical is when you mix your metaphors, as you did above: the heart functions as a pump in the circulatory system, and is not equipped to "see" anything. That function is carried out by the eyes. If the specification of organs does not matter, I'd like to see the liver and pancreas get more attention as they have been historically overlooked. But if someone does not understand your theology properly, in your opinion, you describe them as metaphorically physically defective - WITHOUT explaining the proper understanding which was missed. Perhaps you have something of that "heart condition" as well. It's very difficult to understand your point here, as you did not communicate it effectively, but it seems that you are only looking for someone who is willing to make the same presupposition you've made. That's hardly a persuasive argument.

WMD

Wayne Delia

While this discussion might be more appropriate for the Bible Criticisms area, one of the "apparent" atrocities and brutality is summed up in three short verses beginning the 15th chapter of the first book of Samuel.You haven't remained silent on whether there might be atrocities and brutality in the Old Testament; you've clearly identified it as "apparent" atrocities and brutalities.

1 Samuel 15:1-3 (NIV) reads "Samuel said to Saul, 'I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. This is what the LORD Almighty says: "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."' "

Now why would the LORD Almighty specifically target innocent women, children, and infants? In verse 2, the Amalekites referred to during the Exodus (350 to 400 years earlier) were the ancestors of the Amalekites of Samuel's time, and their offenses were punished by God similarly wiping them out. All of a sudden, God suddenly gets the urge to wipe them out again, because He still holds a grudge against their ancient ancestors whose offense was not much more than defending their homeland against the invading homeless Hebrew ex-slaves.

I'm certain, though, that you will be able to provide a suitable explanation why God found it necessary to specifically target women, children, and infants to be killed for the offenses of their ancestors 350 years earlier. That would be roughly equivalent to the United States suddenly, and without warning, attempting the genocide of the nation of Japan in the year 2291 over their attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Let's just say I'm eagerly awaiting your wisdom on explaining 1 Samuel 15:1-3.

WMD

ComestibleVenom

Why should you need a PhD to realize that the bible is balderdash and that one don't need to spend eight years bending in intellectual loops to justify the blatantly human inperfections in that frequently absurd book?

Wayne Delia

As do I; some of them are blatantly obvious. For example, Matthew 10:9-10 contradicts Mark 6:7-8 on whether Jesus told the disciples to bring a staff and sandals. (Mark says yes, Matthew says no.) You betcha! Even the better Christian apologists attempt to resolve the contradiction with the possibility that Jesus gave two different speeches. They're not accepted because they contradict each other. What you're leaning on right now is the noted apologist Gleason Archer's recommended strategy: assume there are no contradictions, only that the apparent ones have not yet been explained. That is intellectually dishonest. So the contradictions don't really bother you? That makes them no less contradictions.

That's quite simple: it effectively knocks down the claim that the Bible is inerrant. Suddenly, the apologist will backpedal to the point where "inerrant" means "without error in only what matters most in the Bible," while sweeping the existing errors and contradictions under the carpet.Really? In one paragraph you've managed to make sweeping generalizations about ancient Hebrew authors and all atheists. Apparently, though, there are some parts of the Bible which should be taken literally, and others which should be regarded as metaphors or analogies. What is your objective test to determine whether a verse should be considered literal or figurative? That's contradicted by the Second Commandment, Exodus 20:5. Apparently, if a person hates God, God will punish the person's children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. Your analogy is invalid. The toy is irrelevant. A better one would be if the father got a speeding ticket, and the father was punished with a fine which was also imposed on the man's children, the man's grandchildren, the man's great-grandchildren, and the man's great-great-grandchildren.That's a shame, because it is perhaps one of the worst analogies I have heard. Your analogy involves children being punished for their own offenses, but the actual point deals with whether children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren should be punished for the offenses of their ancestor.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Don't sell yourself short. You can't even demonstrate the truth of what you claim to have distinguished as being true.Clearly, you have jammed your foot in your mouth up to the knee. There are plenty of scientific errors in the Bible, even some attributed to Jesus. One of my favorites is that mustard seeds are the smallest seeds in the earth, according to Jesus in Mark 4:31. Orchid seeds are uniformly smaller than mustard seeds, and Jesus has made an error of scientific fact. There were no loopholes or conditions on the seeds, such as "Mustard seeds are the smallest that you know about" or "Mustard seeds are the smallest in this area of the world," just "Mustard seeds are the smallest seeds in the earth." Now would not be the time for "Well, Jesus probably meant this or that," or "Jesus had to dumb it down so His audience could understand it." It's an undeniable error of scientific fact. What your instinctive knee-jerk reaction will be, most likely, is to claim that it doesn't convince you, however the challenge was not to convince you, but rather to show a scientific error in the Bible. Definitely. I was a born-again Christian for about a dozen years, read the Bible cover to cover five times, read the proposed contradictions, abandoned the idea that the Bible was inerrant (along with the rest of my faith, eventually) and I've honestly been happier than I was when I was trying to hold together a fragile theology and ignore the obvious contradictions.As Axl Rose said, "Welcome to the Jungle!"1. Are you referring to something other than a large, elaborate house of worship when you use the term "Church"? There are several churches in my town, and not all of them are Catholic.
2. If so, and you actually are referring to "Denomination," then you still have the same problem. There are many other denominations which identify themselves as Christian, but not Catholic. What exactly is it about the Catholic Church that makes it valid, while all other churches are necessarily invalid?
3. If your answer to the question in the previous point involved some sort of appeal to the authority of the Bible, why is the Judeo-Christian theology of the Bible necessarily true, at the expense of the invalidity of all non-Christian religions supported by their own holy books?
4. Falling back on your previously-admitted ignorance of not knowing everything would not be a good strategy at this point. If that's the excuse you plan on using, you might want to withdraw your claim that the Catholic Church is the only Church.
The identification of the smallest seeds in the earth is a scientific claim which is wrong. And what makes much of the Old Testament so mind-numbingly boring is the rather extensive history of Israel, particularly the geneaologies, which you seem to consider "unknown".Well, my areas of interest and expertise involve logic and Christian theology, but it appears you're making a mistake similar to those of published Christian apologists such as Josh McDowell. The historical accuracy of ordinary events in a particular ancient text lend no credibility to the claims of extraordinary events. For example, it is known that Kansas is hit with tornadoes rather often, but that can't be used as support for the fictitional events in the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Nor are the accurate details of 16th century Eastern Europe found in Bram Stoker's Dracula any kind of support for the existence of vampires.

WMD

Hawkingfan

I see you know nothing about Logical Fallacies as in this thread you have gone from ad hominem to the above classic example of Fallacy of Interrogation/Presupposition (form of Begging the Question), to various other fallacies. Do you ever debate without commiting a logical fallacy?

Wayne Delia

You've got the cart way before the horse. You haven't even begun to demonstrate why any particular poster is clueless, apart from a simple disagreement with your cherished beliefs. Well, it certainly would severely undermine the authority of Christian claims, particularly the supernatural, metaphysical, unfalsifiable claims. "Because it's in the Bible" would no longer be the ultimate theological authority presumed by Christians, if it can be established that an arbitrary verse in the Bible is not necessarily true. Happy to oblige: about thirty years studying the Bible (I'm 46) and I have read the Bible cover-to-cover five times.No. I said about thirty years of study, and five times cover-to-cover.Any spiritual and intellectual "attitude" would be irrelevant. The Biblical claims and arguments fall on their own merit (or, rather, LACK of merit) completely independently of any attitude on my part. To answer the question you are most likely trying to ask, I read the Bible cover-to-cover twice as a born-again Christian, once as a fence-sitting agnostic, and twice as an atheist, when my "attitude" was reading the Bible at face value with no preconceived assumptions that the God necessarily existed.I can show you why you're wrong, if you consider the state of your "spiritual and intellectual attitude" if you were asked to read, cover to cover, the holy book of a non-Christian religion. Most likely, you would decline completely, and you'd be in the same boat (relative to that non-Christian religion) that you think we're in relative to your religion. There you go again. The objective of your argument should be to demonstrate that the Bible is what many people believe it to be, rather than try to assume your conclusion as a premise. No, that does not logically follow. The claim of the "limitless IQ" would be impeached by the numerous errors in the Bible. It really does seem like an epic narrative made up by ancient authors who did not have a complete understanding of science, geography, politics, economics, etc., and surely by coincidence, their omnipotent, omniscient God's knowledge seems to be limited by their imagination. Of course I would! A God with such a limitless IQ would have, could have, and should have figured out a way to clearly communicate the information to people, especially when His administration of the afterlife (including, apparently, eternal punishment for finite sins) entirely depends on people understanding the message. If this was not possible, or not desired by God, or He's playing a nasty trick on us (apologists call this "testing our faith"), then He doesn't deserve to be worshipped.And many on this board could point out to you that experienced Bible scholars, both secular and theistic, are not immune to errors or logical fallacies.It's hard to say. You haven't even mentioned any names, much less their positions on particular assertions.You don't have to pray to us. We don't consider ourselves gods. But as an example, Gleason Archer is one of the premiere apologists in Christian theology, and the logical fallacies he employs are very easy to identify. One in particular has been a favorite of yours: assume there are no contradictions, and that suitable explanations for the unresolved discrepancies simply have not yet been discovered. That's intellectually dishonest (and, of course, a logical fallacy of the assumed conclusion.) You're confusing the concepts of "proof" with "evidence". Lists of many contradictions, errors, atrocities, and brutalities are *evidence* - not *proof* - that the Bible ain't what it's cracked up to be. As did I. The Skeptic's Annotated Bible is an excellent reference of many different types of Biblical problems, particularly absurdities. While I'm sure others have picked this one apart, I'll just mention that you haven't even given a single example of one of these "discrepancies" coupled with your explanation of how it can be resolved. You're a mighty brave man with a gun in your hand, but it seems you forgot to buy bullets.Aye. The stronger the hurricane, the harder you need to cling to the mainsail. That's not necessarily a good thing, though. Again, you've neglected to give even a single example of what prompted that absurd conclusion, nor have you given any indication that you are able to explain and justify the proper understanding. Perhaps you can enroll in those pre-K classes you think we need to be in!I understand perfectly well what you've posted here: you have presented (vaguely) what you believe, you have solicited contradictions which you have generally ignored, and you have condescended to anyone who does not agree with you. Christians like that, honestly, are a dime a dozen.

WMD