Ed

Hello Beyelzu. Where is the evidence I am making this up? Everything I have said has been based on the "big picture" revealed by the scriptures. First of all the old hebrew theocracy wherein the Israelites lived in no longer exists and God no longer operates thru them. But God does sometimes rescue those who are suffering.

Ed

Hello Sue. It is nice to have a woman join in this discussion. Thanks for jumping in. I never said that atheists cannot distinguish right from wrong. Since all humans are created in the image of a moral God, we all have a moral conscience. However, my point is that unless you have an objective and rational basis for your morality upon which your conscience can be reinforced, the things you mention below can occur. Because if your conscience does not have this over time your conscience can become distorted, bent, and dulled. And I think I have demonstrated earlier in this thread that unfortunately atheists do not have this basis. Christians have that basis in the moral character of God as revealed by his word and experience.

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Sue: If one has no independent sense of right or wrong, then whether you are "good" or "bad" is solely determined by what someone else tells you to do. This, in turn, creates a very real danger that such a person comes to believe that something objectively very bad (i.e. killing) is somehow a reasoned moral choice.

Exactly, as I stated above.

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Sue: And how does one choose the Bible as having the "right" view on morality before deciding to follow the moral principles one thinks the Bible relates? Absent some independent ability to judge for oneself what is right and wrong, how can you believe that you have chosen a text that promotes admirable, rather than reprehensible, morality concepts?

Being able to truly understand what is good and right requires far more than just following rules in a text. You first use your conscience and realize that on your own you can never completely follow your moral ideals. So realize that only with help can you do such a thing and the best source of that help is the One who created your conscience and upon whose character that conscience is based. And he has chosen as his primary source of communication to us the Bible. As you get to know and experience Him in a relationship thru His Son and study his word, you realize with your conscience that His morality is THE morality. Sometimes this is a long process so don't think it will happen over night.

Jack the Bodiless

And it requires a MASSIVE crippling of conscience to believe that the massacre of the Amalekites, or of the Egyptian firstborn, was OK.

Yes, this IS what happens when you have no rational basis for morality.
No, you don't. That's why your morals are screwed.
Earth calling Ed: This is what happened to YOU.
No, he hasn't. The Bible is fiction.

But you didn't stop to check. You have hung everything on the false assumption that the Bible is the "Word of God", with NO reason to believe this is actually true. The reason your worldview can't stand up is because it's built on this false foundation.

Sadly, it appears that you DID have a conscience, and remnants of it still remain. Hence your frequent attempts to rewrite the Bible, to make it into a "morally correct" account. Many Christians HAVE achieved this: but they did it through "liberalism". They abandoned the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, and chose to believe that parts of it were "inspired", but parts were not.

Ed

No, it is adultery because she was betrothed. The scriptures just mention him humbling her because the man is held more responsible for the behavior than the woman because in OT times the man held the leadership positions.

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ng: My point is that since she did not cry they did not know for sure that it was adultery. She may have been afraid for her life etc. etc. so she is punished (killed) because she did not cry and not because she humbled herself (adultery as you put it). The man on the other hand was punished because he humbled her (ie rape). It is the uncertainty which makes it different from plain adultery.

The legal code of the ancient hebrews was similar to our modern laws, ie they are not exhaustive. Legal principles are derived from typical cases such as the one we are discussing but then the judges would apply those principles and others to judge the merits and evidences for a specific case. For example they would consider evidence that she may have been afraid for her life.

Ed

No, "son of " was not metaphorical, in ancient times "son" can also mean descendent of. It is similar to someone today saying that their ancestors came over on the Mayflower. They are recounting a genealogy of their family albeit an abbreviated form. There are different kinds of genealogies detailed ones and abbreviated ones. This plainly WAS a genealogy and you have not provided any evidence to the contrary.

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jtb: A genealogy is a detailed list of names, showing who "begat" whom. The best genealogies also give the age of each person when he begat the next: these are never "metaphorical".

No, see above about different types of genealogies.

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Ed: No, I Chronicles and Ezra were written at approximately the same time, so the Jews living at the time would have been able to compare each of the books and either corrected them or rejected the one that was incorrect. jtb: They did not do that. In fact, they NEVER did that. The Bible contains many contradictions between the writings of different authors, in both the Old and the New testaments. Probably, nobody dared to correct these "holy" books.

No, there is evidence in later copies of the scriptures where some scribes DID try to "correct" what they thought were errors.

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jtb: It is likely that both Chronicles and Ezra were compiled from oral traditions, and that the names missing from Ezra were simply forgotten before they got written down. Ed: Ezra was a biblical scholar in his time, it would be absurd to believe that He thought there was a grandson of Aaron and a son of David coming up from Babylon with him after the captivity, also he could just go out check for himself. That would be like a well known historian believing that George Washington's son fought with him in the Vietnam War! He would have to be a delusional nutcase! I am afraid your theory fails the test of credulity. jtb: Many of the books in the Bible were written centuries later (e.g. Daniel). Records were poor, and no actual calendar dates were used in the books that became the Bible. A better analogy would be Walter Raleigh's son fighting in the War of Independence, with no dates given in the history books that would contradict this. The Bible is a book of stories, Ed. Some historical, some mythical: but all mixed up by people who didn't know the difference between history and myth.

No, you misunderstood my analogy. Ezra was traveling WITH these people back from Babylon! He KNEW that it would be impossible for Aaron's grandson to be traveling with him. Let me restate my analogy, it would be like a Nobel prize winning historian believing that George Washington's son fought with this historian in the Vietnam War! Now do you see absurdity of your claim? So this is plainly an example of a deliberately abbreviated genealogy.

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Ed: And there are many other examples. jtb: Of course there are! Like the contradictory genealogies of Jesus, for instance. But they're ALL Biblical errors. This is clear from the specific count of "fourteen generations" in Matthew. Ed: Fraid not, see above. Nothing "above" addresses the specific problem of Matthew's "fourteen generations". You have failed to provide any credible answer to this problem. Therefore, when you say "Fraid not, see above", you are attempting to direct us to a rebuttal which exists only as a hallucination in your own increasingly addled mind.

No, I have demonstrated with the Ezra genealogy that often there are gaps in biblical genealogies.

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jtb: Nor have you actually provided any support for the claim that ANY culture has EVER used this bizarre "X became the ancestor of Y when he fathered the one destined to become the NEXT ancestor of Y" system. I win, you lose (again). Ed: See above. I never claimed that other cultures used that type of genealogy, only the hebrews. jtb: And there is no evidence that the Hebrews did either! This is apologetic nonsense, invented in an attempt to patch up one of the contradictions between the Bible and actual history: the date of the Flood. As there WAS no world-inundating Flood since the appearance of humans on this planet, this is entirely unnecessary. Why invent this nonsense when you can simply use Biblical hermeneutics to argue that the Flood was a local event, as Hugh Ross has done?

There is no computation or summation of these genealogies in the scriptures to fix a date for creation or the flood as there is for the exodus so if the author had intended such a computation, he would have included it. Also Moses lived among the Egyptians and had a high office so he would have access to the Egyptian historical records that show plainly that people lived before 6000 years ago, so he would not intend for these genealogies to be summed. I have yet to be convinced that the flood was local but with more evidence I could be convinced.

Jack the Bodiless

It is absolutely clear FROM THE BIBLE. The Abraham-David-Jesus linkup is IMMEDIATELY followed by the DETAILED genealogy. The author is plainly saying "Jesus was descended from David who was descended from Abraham, and here's the actual genealogy which shows HOW."
Then they did a VERY poor job of it. The Bible still contains references to polytheism in the Old Testament, and even in the NT Matthew ascribes "prophecies" to the wrong prophet.
How do you KNOW that this book was written by a man who was travelling WITH these people back from Babylon?

You DON'T.
I'm not disputing that there are GAPS, Ed.

I'm disputing that they would DELIBERATELY leave out entire generations, and THEN say "these are ALL the generations", and put in a COUNT of the generations which is ALSO deliberately wrong!

The Bible says "ALL the generations".

The Bible says "FOURTEEN generations".

How much CLEARER can this possibly BE?
The author DID include the information which allows the Flood to be dated as surely as the Exodus can be dated.

But historians now believe that the entire Exodus story was fictional. Not just the miraculous parts, but the whole premise that the Jews were ever captives in Egypt and then left in one large group. There is no archaeological trace of them in the places they're supposed to have stayed at, and DNA analysis shows that the Jews are identical to the Palestinians except for the European genes picked up after the Diaspora.

There is no reason to assume that Moses existed, or that he held high office and had access to Egyptian historical records even if he DID exist. Many aspects of the Moses story (including the baby in the floating basket) are blatant rip-offs of earlier myths.

They're just dates ascribed to a fictional genealogy written centuries later by a primitive people with no access to any historical records that would contradict their story.

NOGO

So if the man was married or engaged and the girl was single then she would have humbled him, right?

Very interesting. However, I doubt that you will find an example in the bible to show your point.

Ed, the word "leadership" is misued. The word "dominance" is more appropriate.

Ed

Huh? It is not that complicated. I am just trying to dispel myths about the doctrine of original sin.

Ed

No, sociological studies have shown (like the Harvard study I cited in an earlier post) that regular churchgoers are less likely to engage in antisocial behavior, and non church goers are more likely to engage in criminal behavior.

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Sue: And how does one choose the Bible as having the "right" view on morality before deciding to follow the moral principles one thinks the Bible relates? Absent some independent ability to judge for oneself what is right and wrong, how can you believe that you have chosen a text that promotes admirable, rather than reprehensible, morality concepts? I remain interested in a response to this query.

See my response to your earlier post above.

Ed

No, but if your lawyer fails the case then you are liable for punishment. No, they are punished for their own sins not what Adam and Eve did. But what Adam and Eve did caused all humans afterwards to have a desire to disobey God and reject him.

But a computer would always be limited by its program. Humans are not limited in such a way. Only humans can freely react to novel situations.

No, we were also discussing such things as science and moral choices.

That was just an analogy for man's problem of always desiring to disobey and reject the true God. There may or man not be actual spiritual DNA but there appears to be something with similar characteristics of such a thing.

No, all of your attempts to refute my arguments on this subject are just superficial and exhibit tunnelvision to the overall context of the scriptures. The story of the Amelakites is just one story within a bigger story.

No, this was the historic teaching of the majority of Christianity for at least 1800 years. Only in the last 200 years have liberal theologians rejected this core doctrine. Beginning with primarily Wellhausen as I stated above.

This is the end of part I of my response.