Opera Nut

So is Jesus a good, loving guy, or does he come with a sword to split families apart and make people leave their homes and destroy their families to follow him? Which guy is he?

lpetrich

Radorth:
It's a great marvel how some supposedly "rational" atheists question the older Gospels and pastorals, and even declare them complete myths,

Why not? Radorth, you act just like a little kid who has been deprived of his favorite toy.

while asking why heretical junk written much later was left out of the canon.

Heretical junk? Called that because Radorth doesn't like those documents, I'm sure.

Radorth

No, I just like my historical information written before 250 AD and maybe mentioned by an anti-Nicene church father, unlike yourself apparently.

But then it only take a single document or letter to disprove your theories, so I don't need to take seriously anything written after 110, unlike yourself.

Rad

Tercel

So true. I'm am often amused to see atheists at great pains to rubbish everything in the Bible and support everything outside it... (and I firmly believe that if the Bible had been chosen differently they would still demean the canon, and support the extra-biblical books)

You are right, such "skeptics" are not interested in truth and are simply intellectually dishonest.

Bree

Sounds like you've got the wrong thread; this is the one about the stereotypical Christian, not the stereotypical atheist .

seebs

The lists of contradictions I've seen have been of poor quality. This isn't to say there's no contradictions; it's just that enough of the so-called contradictions are obviously willfully bad misreadings of the text as to make the whole exercise seem pointless. I think a smaller, better-focused, list would work better... That said, contradictions are only a problem for the people who think the whole Bible is literally word-for-word true; this is a modern invention (maybe 150 years old?) and not a very coherent position, IMHO.

SimplyAtheistic

If you cannot take the bible literally , you cannot trust the bible at all. It is asserted in the bible that the entire bible was god inspired and wholely truthful. It doesent say "Um, some of this is true, while other parts are only true if you interpret them in a certain way." If you start taking things figuratively you lose all the value in the bible. I mean, how could you know genesis wasnt referring to the creation of the human, you know, light representing your good nature, the earth representing your body. Obviously that is a poor example but you get the point.
Jake

seebs

Why should that be?

Truthful does not mean literal. I believe that, entirely apart from any religious affiliations, the story of the Good Samaritan is *true*. I don't know whether the events in it happened, but the *meaning* of the story remains correct regardless.

Furthermore, the passage generally cited for that is ambiguous; it could just as easily mean "all Scripture which *is* inspired by God is suitable for ...", and the ambiguity is unresolved in the text.

It's a wonderful example, because it shows that we've got a two thousand year history of reading Genesis as a myth - go back and look at what Augustine wrote about Genesis.

It is only by taking the myths as myths that we get any value from them at all! It makes no difference to me at all whether or not a specific Samaritan ever rescued some guy... but it makes a *lot* of difference in my life whether I foolishly assume that people not-like-me cannot be my friends or neighbors.

Tercel

I have recently posted a discussion of the various Christian views and interpretations on inspiration, which I think you would benefit from reading, here. (I post under the name "Starlight" on that board)

Opera Nut

The concept of biblical inerrancy was invented and fostered by 19th Century Presbyterians at Princeton THeological Seminary to prop up church authority.