worldling

malookie, in reply to my question asking what process of reasoning led you to accept the veracity of the Bible documents, you write:
I know you can do better than that.

Forget about the historicity of Jesus. You are right in saying that it is not strictly relevant to the question in hand.

Oxymoron

Still awaiting a response, malookiemaloo...

Kosh

I think you committed Argumentum ad Numerum... but perhaps you should follow that link, scroll to the top, and read the entire FAQ before continue to make me ashamed go be Scottish!

Lobstrosity

Malookie, what he's primarily saying is that it's stupid to believe Adam and Eve existed because you think maybe some guy said that Jesus once mentioned Adam. I'm not a big fan of "faith," but even you should see that you're not supposed to have faith in everything! First of all, there's always the chance that Jesus was wrong and that he was incorrectly believing the accuracy of the Old Testament, although I guess your faith precludes you from even considering this. Ok, so let's bypass that for now. What about the chance that the guy who wrote that part of the Bible was inaccurately writing about Jesus' words? This guy was human. He was fallible. Maybe he incorrectly believed in the accuracy of the Old Testament and decided to just sneek a few of his words in there for literary effect. Is there any specific reason you should have faith in the perfect accuracy of this author? I guess you'd probably answer this with a "yes" as well, huh? Moving on, the Bible wasn't originally written in English, you know. It's been copied and translated and copied and translated some more. After undergoing this process at the hands of fallible, error-prone man time and time again, you're willing to have faith that everything is still perfectly accurate? That's just naive to the point of absurdity. That simply reeks of desperation in your need to believe in something.

There's a reason US courts don't allow hearsay evidence except in extraordinary circumstances: it's blatantly unreliable!

Jan Haugland

Not only did not Adam and Eve ever exist, there weren't even any two first humans.

If there was anyone that ever qualified as the first human, it would be just because we draw some rather arbitrary genetical line in the sand and says "this is human, everything before is pre-humans."

In that case, we'd get one first human (or two of the fluke chance it was a identical twin, etc), but that individual would not look different from his or her siblings. S/he would mate with one we'd characterise as non-human (arbitrarily; it was after all one of the same species!) and their offspring (and their offspring again) would probably vaccilate back and forth across our line between pre-humans and humans for a while.


- Jan

...who rants and raves every day at Secular Blasphemy

doodad

Yeah, and after all those begats all but Noah and his crowd were drowned in the flood. Where's the relevance? The same crap takes place over and over again in the OT. Apparently the name of the game is to be one of the chosen few. We need to remember the OT is a book about Jews and was written by Jews, one of the most exclusivist crowds on this planet.

To me Genesis is a symbolic fairy tale that was intended to answer some basic philosophical questions. Granted the answers have holes in them but for the casual reader they seem to serve the need. It is in large part a history of the ancient Jews, and a dubious one at that.

Not only the issue of creation is attempted, but also the origin of sin or temptation, the answer as to why we are not immortal, and the reason why females experience pain with childbirth. Modern science has given us better answers, but at the time of Moses the bible seemed to be the best thing going.

Let me harp one more time. I read the bible looking for moral principles that appear to be valid and appropriate for my needs.
Much of the biblical text is mere rhetoric so one must read between the lines to obtain any value from it. There's a lot of figurative language in the bible, especially the OT, so one who reads it and takes it verbatim is very apt to get an incorrect view of what the text really means. This seems to be a fault of the fundamentalist believer who has been taught not to question the bible verse.

malookiemaloo

Hope your not upset at being dumped out the cup!!

No, I am not ducking the question, just find it difficult to answer, that's all!!

It's a feature of the Bible that it never tries to justify itself or even prove the existence of God. I suppose atheism wasn't around in thoise days. Just shows how much life has regressed!

But to your question. Why the Christian faith as opposed to any other?

When studying the Bible it is an error to start at Genesis and work through. I look at Jesus and find an authority is what He says and does that I find nowhere else. Aside from that, and even of more importance, His claim to be God. If God has become one of His own creatures (mind blowing sci-fi stuff when you think about it) I have no need to look elsewhere.

Yes, it is to a degree a faith stance which brings derision on the Sec. web but this is the best I can do.


m

Kosh

It is to a VERY LARGE degree a faith stance. What isn't faith, is due to the fact that you were raised in a predominantly Christian society (if not a Xian household). I'm of course assuming here that you were raised in Scotland rather than being some kind of native Nepalese who was converted by missonaries and then relocated. Had you been raised around Muslims, you would have been likely to take that religion on "faith".

Xians tend to begat Xians
Muslims tend to begat Muslims
Mormons tend to begat LOTS of Mormons
Hindus tend to begat Hindus

malookiemaloo

Yes, I agree with your last statement from a sociological point of view. In fact it is self evident.

However, to view matters spiritually a different picture emerges.

I am sure that you are well aware of the distinction between being a christian and following religious nominalism-whether it be christian or otherwise.

Yes, there are muslim, hindu, shinto etc lands but there are christians there too! Doesn't get any publicity in the press though so we assume there are no christians anywhere except in WASP land.

May have strayed from the point. It's time for my lunch.

Will get around to replying to DOODAD sometime.


m