ex-preacher

How did you decide that those two items were the "only disqualifiers"? I'm also still waiting to hear if a belief in a metaphorical resurrection counts for you.

<strong> Not a very solid basis there, is it? It sounds subjective and arbitrary.

<strong> I'd like a serious answer here if you've got one.

<strong> It's starting to sound like this is all a game to you.

<strong> Let me know what you find out.

<strong> So, in other words, you're pulling it out of thin air based on personal guesswork.

<strong> Just trying to pin you down. Feel free to identify your standards at any time.

<strong> So you have decided to cling to that story as true because the answer would otherwise be a mystery? Actually there are some pretty good theories out there about where the Jews came from. If we had no idea, though, I wouldn't just pick one and decide that it's true. Many, many things in life are just a mystery. That's not a good reason to believe in a fairy tale.


<strong> You gave a list earlier of the fables - I believe you included Noah's ark and Jonah.

<strong> Exactly the point - the Bible is a human book. If there were 33,800 groups with radically different interpretations of, say, the rules for chess, and they all claimed to be following the same rulebook, I'd be very suspicious. Wouldn't you? The fact is that virtually every denomination has some sort of biblical backing for its peculiar views. All claim to be sincere, intelligent and led into truth by the Holy Spirit.

<strong> OK, can you choose to believe in leprechauns, alien abductions, the tooth fairy or Santa Claus? The existence of Yahweh has about as much evidence as any of those. I take that back, I think there may be more evidence for Santa.

luvluv

ex the thing is that I don't read the Bible for the same reason you read it. I read it to apply it to my daily life, and thus even if it is ALL a parable it is the same to me. I came to a personal faith with the personal God. I came to reading the Bible MONTHS after I had been communing with God and getting to know Him personally. If my beliefs STARTED from the Bible I would probably be in worse shape. But my beliefs stem from personal experience. As hard as this may be for you to believe, I have a relationship with God. I talked to Him all day today. The God I know personally is more real to me than the God in the Bible, which is why your questions generally aren't so earth-shattering to me. Yes many of my beliefs about the Bible are subjective and arbitrary. I don't mind that at all, because my relationship with God is real and it is present. I don't know all the answers, friend, but I know the one who does... and I prefer it that way. I have never thought about a lot of the questions you have asked, and the truth is they just aren't that pressing for me. I'm not going to get that worked up over controversies about a person's diary when I can just TALK TO THAT PERSON. His diary would be a good reference point, but having a relationship with a diary would be absurd if I had direct access to the person whose thoughts are recorded in the diary.

This may come across as maddeningly subjective to you, and I am sorry for that. But I KNOW God. I don't know everything about Him, certainly, I am no prophet. But I know Him personally and I always have... not through tradition and not through scripture (although those things are very important reference points). My relationship with God is just not that Bible-centered. I don't read the Bible everyday, in fact in a good year I only read it every couple of MONTHS. My faith is fed through spending time with God, talking to him, reading other books, and talking to other Christians. It is fed from watching life and trying to learn from as many sources as I can, and it is fed through my concious attempts to better myself and become more like the person God has revealed Himself to me to be. I do have a good working knowledge of Christian doctrine, so I feel I am able to tell when I am getting too far out there. But I will tell you what many Christians won't: most of their relationship with God is not grounded in verifiable doctrine. That plays a very small part in my talks with God. Today, for instance, the main focus of my conversation with God revolved around an ex-girlfriend. Yesterday, I prayed a lot about this board and the people on it. Tomorrow, I may be talking with God about my job. Rarely I commune with God about some kind of a doctrine, but interestingly enough I never quite talk to Him about it stuff like that. I am more talking to myself (almost as if He's not that interested in theology. Actually, He's probably not. He's probably more interested in us.)

So anyway, that may be the long short way of summing up my feelings about the Bible. You may say I invented this standard to avoid your argument, in which case I will lovingly say that you overestimate your importance to my personal life. But to answer your question about whether or not God thinks it is a problem that Christians disagree: I was being totally serious. I don't think He minds at all as long as we treat one another with love. As I have been saying to you, I don't know how any group consisting of BILLIONS of people (throughout history) could have had 100% agreement on anything. That has never been true of any theory and free will being what it is, I don't think it's possible.

Laera

What about gravity? If God demonstrated himself to be HALF (well, actually, more than half would be required) as predictable as gravity, there'd be just as many believers in a single "God theory" as there are in the "theory of gravity!"

(yes, gravity is now considered a law, but only because the theory has been so consistently demonstrable - if God were as demonstrable, maybe we'd call the commandments "law")

I mean, BILLIONS of people throughout history have believed that what goes up will come down, yet they can't agree that what's prayed for will happen... Yet, we still can't define what the "essence" of gravity is any better than we can agree on the "essence" of god.

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: Laera ]</p>