mark9950

I received this reply from a minister from a church about the validity of the bible.

Did God write the bible or man?inspired or not inspired?which parts were inspired and which parts were not inspired?I have of yet received a response.

Read it carefully

Dear Mark,

Thanks for the reply.

The fact that the world is referred to as flat in the writing does NOT preclude the fact that God wrote it. It is an extremely MINOR point and HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SALVATION. The Bible is NOT a book that covers EVERY subject of God. It is a book about personal Salvation.

God inspired men to write this book over centuries and even though He was inspiring them, He communicated to them in THEIR terms, just as Jesus gave parables in terms those people understood. Why didn't Jesus use airplanes, super highways, computers and the Internet in His parables? Afterall, the Bible is something I am using now in this time period. Why don't we see all of the modern technologies mentioned in the Bible? Clearly God could see they were coming. Better yet, why didn't He inspire a new and updated Bible for each generation; one for 500 AD, one for 1600 AD, one for the 1800s, the 1900s and one for last week? This way all the references to customs, objects and such would be up to date. Better yet, why doesn't He just assign an angel to each person on earth who does nothing but provide the truth of God on a daily basis? The angel could do miracles everyday to help the person believe and answer all his or her questions, which would be, no doubt endless. Clearly an all-powerful God could have done it that way. Better yet, why not just by-pass all this human existance and take us straight to the Kingdom? Why all the pretense of going through a human life? He must have His reasons.

CLEARLY HE DOES!! He is attempting to build rightous character in those He has called prior to the return of Jesus Christ. Everyone will have this opportunity at the Salvation Process. They will know all truth. Most will get it directly from Christ and other spirit beings after His return and into the Second Resurrection period. The Bible is the handbook to that Salvation Process and all the elements to Salvation are clearly laid out. Your stated argument is extremely minor and has no impact on the Salvation elements of the Bible.

If we are going to void the Bible on such a minor point, then we can void it on many, many such points. The major question here is WHY DO YOU WANT TO VOID THE BIBLE? If the Bible is NOT the true Word of God in your estimation, what is? Maybe your whole point is that there is no God.

Let me know what your real contention is.

Sincerely,

Chris Cumming, minister
Personal Correspondence

Jinto

Lovely.

In other words "The bible is inerrant only about the things that we can't verify empirically."

And it would not have been beyond him to remove references to geometric impossibilities, such as a tree that can be seen from every point on Earth. After all, they aren't important to salvation, right?

You miss a greater conundrum: why speak in parables at all?

Funny how mere humans can come up with better ideas than this God-person.

Yes... you're getting it... keep going...

NO! A line of rational thought destroyed by an a priori assumption. And you were so close to figuring it out too.:boohoo:

Uh... How exactly does allowing salvation only to gullible people help build righteous character? Moreover, why exactly does God need to build righteous character - couldn't he just engineer humans to be more rigtheous in the first place? And about the return of Jesus - he's 19 centuries late and still counting.

Then why doesn't God do that now and save billions of people from eternal torture? Or better yet, why didn't God do that on time (i.e. before the last member of that generation died) and save every single person born in North America between then and 1492 from damnation?

First of all, the elements of salvation are not clearly laid out. Is salvation by faith or by works? Second, the Bible is the word of God, or at least supposed to be, but if God insists on referring to logical impossibilites, then either we are dealing with a very stupid God (in which case we ought not to follow him), or else our premise is false, the bible is not the word of God, and we should pay it no more regard than we do any other work of fiction.

Which is strong evidence that the bible is the work of MEN, not Gods.

No, the major question is "is the bible true?" and possibly why you assume that anyone who disargees with you wants to "void the bible" (as though it ever had any validity in the first place).

Perhaps you could cut the ad hominem out of your replies and not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is an atheist.

Beetle

Excellent, excellent response Jinto!

Greg2003

He concludes his "argument," if you can call it that, with what sounds to me like an attempt at a dismissive. If you don't really believe in god, then I don't need to deal with you.

The original question was probably more like, can the bible be the word of god if it has these obvious errors in it. But he characterizes it as, can't I just void the bible as the word of god based upon these errors. They aren't the same question. The former asks for a justification of inspiration despite error. The latter, which was probably not asked, assumes no inspiration based on finding the errors.

Also, by recharacterizing the question in this way he is essentially saying, if you believe in god you wouldn't be questioning the inspiration of the bible in this way. If you do question the inspiration of the bible, you probably don't believe in god or are at least contemplating the non-existance of god.

This is an attempt to shift the burden (and the uncomfortable awkwardness) to the questioner. The "real" question isn't what you just asked me, its why you asked me that question. How can I shift the focus to your uncomfortable emotional state and get you to see what a nice guy I am and how you should come to my church, rather than me just taking a few minutes to actually answer the question and/or confront my own uncomfortableness at not having a good answer to the question.

That being said, he did actually give a sort of answer to the question, though it's very lame for all the reasons Jinto points out. I can't emphasis enough what Jinto points out about the great line of skeptical questioning he starts and then how he kills it with statement of faith that doesn't hold up to the skepticism that he himself introduced into the discussion. This is a great example of the poor apologetics and manipulative techniques that evangelicals are left with in the 21st century. This stuff still works on a lot of people, but fewer and fewer each year I hope.

Magus55

Do you think ministers are perfect and know everything? Hello, Catholic priests molest children. One mans opinion, hardly is valid evidence. And i still haven't seen you present one verse in the Bible that automatically assumes a flat Earth. Referring to it as a circle isn't it...

lpetrich

I'm sure that Magus55 will enjoy reading about Biblical cosmology.

The noncanonical book 1 Enoch clarifies much of what the Bible has to say about cosmology, because the writers of its canonical books had not had any interest in discussing that subject in detail.

According to that book, the Earth is flat, with the sky being a bowl overheard. The Sun, Moon, and stars travel on its inside, entering and exiting through doors at its base and going around its base between setting and rising. Except for circumpolar stars, which go around and around and around forever. Stars are anthropomorphic beings that ride chariots; there is even a jail for those that dawdle.

Spaz

From reading that link lpetrich, I got the idea that some people still think that the earth is flat. Is that true? Or did I just misunderstand what he meant when using flat-earthers in present tense?

keyser_soze

Yes, some still believe in a flat earth. They're part of the flat-earth society. Baptists, I like to call them.

Spaz

Wow, that's amazing, people thousands of years ago could figure out that the earth was round, but some people now still can't get it, what's their explanation for not being able to see other continents when looking off the coast? Fog?

mark9950

Read my post on the contraversy of the bibles flat earth and check with your concordence.and if you want every verse that has to deal with the bibles flat earth go to capellas website,he has it all there.

http://web2.iadfw.net/capella/aguide/

you can also email him questions I do not think he would mind answering them,he answered mine with no problem.Just be nice.