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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: biblical inerrancy
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Au contraire it succeeds on all levels but I guess that is another story. And yes, I have read it
I see. So you ask for examples of where it doesn't read as a coherent whole and then effectively reply "nope, it works on every level, actually."
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
Indeed. There's another problem. If your framework tells you evolution is false, then your framework is wonky because we know that evolution is not false, as surely as any other model within science.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
This is the central argument re biblical inerrancy. If it is axiomatic that it is without error, then you have to analyse the "apparent" contradiction and come up with explanations which preserve the axioms. And if you can't find them, you can fall back on "well, I don't really understand that, but I believe that God's Word can be trusted".
Which, I guess, is why the discussions here are "endless and without resolution"!
For example, my "trajectory" view in my earlier post is perfectly legitimate on a "plain reading of scripture" basis. The evidence that the Bible contains different and changing understandings of the nature of God is very impressive, on a plain reading. One of the ironies of these discussions is that belief in "the plain meaning of scripture", i.e. that scripture is perspicuous, was a key argument in the Reformation. "Anyone could see" that there were aspects of Catholic Holy Tradition which were not to be found in scripture. A deliberate and specific undermining of the authority of the Catholic Church, based on what could be seen from a plain reading.
What was not fully realised at the time, I think, was the extent to which the "plain meaning" argument exposed scripture to the kind of honest criticism which would spot inconsistencies, incoherencies and contradictions which could simply not be explained away on the basis of "plain meaning". The "paper Pope" came under close scrutiny. The current understanding of biblical inerrancy is actually different from previous understandings about the authority and inspiration of scripture. It is, ironically, a kind of counter-Reformation defence of the authority of the "paper Pope". "The Bible says it, I believe it, that's it" works provided you apply it selectively!
For someone like me, who is quite comfortable with marrying a high view of the value of scripture with a historical-critical approach to its contents, the acceptance of the "trajectory" view, an emerging understanding of the nature of God, is very easy. But for those whose axioms involve a different kind of trust in Holy Scripture (or Holy Tradition), such arguments can seem very uncomfortable, heretical, wrong. I think we have to learn how to live better with our differences. And our respective discomforts.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Beautiful Baranabas62.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
Beautiful indeed.
But it does involve acknowledging just how deep the differences run. Biblical inerrancy will always be idolatrous to me. How can that be accommodated?
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. There's another problem. If your framework tells you evolution is false, then your framework is wonky because we know that evolution is not false, as surely as any other model within science.
That reminds me of the old joke, 'there must be a God, because I don't understand how things work'.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
ThunderBunk--
Pray for them and treat them well, as they should do for you?
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Beautiful indeed.
But it does involve acknowledging just how deep the differences run. Biblical inerrancy will always be idolatrous to me. How can that be accommodated?
Same way we'd expect those from an iconoclastic tradition to accept Orthodox and Catholic practices regarding icons and statues.
Same way I expect folk like Jamat to accept what to them might seem an idolatrous attitude towards science and reason.
It's not easy.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Beautiful indeed.
But it does involve acknowledging just how deep the differences run. Biblical inerrancy will always be idolatrous to me. How can that be accommodated?
Same way we'd expect those from an iconoclastic tradition to accept Orthodox and Catholic practices regarding icons and statues.
Same way I expect folk like Jamat to accept what to them might seem an idolatrous attitude towards science and reason.
It's not easy.
Before we get to that, however, I'd like to understand how stripping God of mystery, making the bible self-explanatory and self-consistent and treating the bible as the inerrant witness to the nature of God is treated by its exponents as not idolatrous. How is that not making God in the image of what they find in the bible? Or is it simply a matter of that being an accurate description how God is through their eyes, albeit not framed in their words?
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Beautiful indeed.
But it does involve acknowledging just how deep the differences run. Biblical inerrancy will always be idolatrous to me. How can that be accommodated?
Same way we'd expect those from an iconoclastic tradition to accept Orthodox and Catholic practices regarding icons and statues.
Same way I expect folk like Jamat to accept what to them might seem an idolatrous attitude towards science and reason.
It's not easy.
Before we get to that, however, I'd like to understand how stripping God of mystery, making the bible self-explanatory and self-consistent and treating the bible as the inerrant witness to the nature of God is treated by its exponents as not idolatrous. How is that not making God in the image of what they find in the bible? Or is it simply a matter of that being an accurate description how God is through their eyes, albeit not framed in their words?
I think it's exactly that. To the literalist inerrantist, the only accurate picture of God is that gained from reading the Bible literally. An image of God that differs from that is not an image of the real one and is therefore an idol, understood as any false God.
[ 06. October 2016, 10:22: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
TB--
It's not idolatrous to them, because it's the book that *God* gave them--even to the point of dictating it to the writers. It's a user's manual for...everything.
But where do you get the idea that it rids God of mystery? Just the opposite, IMHO.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
TB--
It's not idolatrous to them, because it's the book that *God* gave them--even to the point of dictating it to the writers. It's a user's manual for...everything.
But where do you get the idea that it rids God of mystery? Just the opposite, IMHO.
Because if everything is set out there clearly, there's nowhere to go with it. The true Christian has to follow Buddha and sit under a tree and read: perfect reading leads to perfect knowledge of God and, since the text is entirely revelatory and accessible, there is no mystery which is not resolvable by this method.
To my mind, the incarnate God requires us to follow him by living: no written record is an adequate account of God's mystery. By living in relationship with God and each other we carry on our pilgrimage, and that of the body of Christians, into the reality of God. All witnesses provide useful evidence of where the pilgrimage has been and suggestions as to where it might go, but none adequately define the destination.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So, basically, it's internally consistent, it does everything you want it to, and lots of people agree with you.
I don't think I need to mention how many seriously flawed worldviews there have been with those qualities.
As a cradle Catholic I found series flaws in that background world view. How does one avoid serious flaws?
You tell me. You laid out a hermeneutic which does not preclude serious flaws. We're not talking about the RCC worldview right now, but yours. How do YOU avoid serious flaws?
quote:
Whether it is one person falling over a cliff or a couple of billion, it is still a cliff.
I wonder that you should say this, when it was your argument that the large numbers of people who share your understanding of Scripture constitute some kind of witness to it.
quote:
One thing Catholicism did not offer me was a personal assurance of salvation.
Perhaps your assurance is baseless and wishful thinking.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The (nearly) Medo-Persian, Ptolemaic, literalist legalist is perfectly safe as long as he never fails to keep the law and due to the abrogation (hence the nearly) in the narrative he doesn't have to be circumcised, he can eat bacon if he's really liberal and he doesn't have to have ringlets.
He is perfectly safe. Until he looks at another woman of course. Then his fate hangs in the balance until he repents. Phew!
When Armageddon comes to the rest of us he'll be raptured with the handful of true Christians, except his wife it sounds like, or taken to a place of safety and rule those of us who survive with a rod of iron under the returned God the Killer on Steroids.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Beautiful Baranabas62.
'strewth! I meant banana bus.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Comfort is over-rated.
We humans like to pick a viewpoint and stick with it. Doesn't mean it is the right thing to do.
Yes, you said that before. But it's almost besides the point: whether we like it or not, comfort is a big (a) motivator and (b) draw for people. If I find myself within a group with a shared identity that I find comforting, then I (might be) less likely to reject or question the assumptions behind it.
Saying from the outside in a stern and disapproving way "oh, you know, that's not the kind of thing that you should be doing" might have some intellectual support but is no help in understanding the attraction of those beliefs.
Not completely from the outside. Christianity does not have a monopoly on such behaviour.
And if understanding the why of such behaviour is the entire point, then you brief summation is all that is necessary.
But that isn't the point. There is a purpose to belief and trying to get the important bits as correct as possible is integral to the conversation.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Not completely from the outside. Christianity does not have a monopoly on such behaviour.
And if understanding the why of such behaviour is the entire point, then you brief summation is all that is necessary.
But that isn't the point. There is a purpose to belief and trying to get the important bits as correct as possible is integral to the conversation.
I see. So stating that I think Buddhism is an utterly morally bankrupt idea that everyone just needs to grow up and reject would be absolutely fine in the context of a debate about the finer points of Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, would it? No of course not. In fact repeating the same point multiple times does not move the conversation on and is more likely just to entrench positions.
Fair enough, perhaps, to make the point. But to repeat it as if nobody is listening and it is something important everyone needs to take on board? ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Au contraire it succeeds on all levels but I guess that is another story. And yes, I have read it
I see. So you ask for examples of where it doesn't read as a coherent whole and then effectively reply "nope, it works on every level, actually."
I don' understand, what examples? You gave a couple of ridiculous canards that any serious Biblical scholar can dispense with. It's a bit like the so called Pratt arguments against evolution. I can only assume you haven' t a clue about the Bible.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Not completely from the outside. Christianity does not have a monopoly on such behaviour.
And if understanding the why of such behaviour is the entire point, then you brief summation is all that is necessary.
But that isn't the point. There is a purpose to belief and trying to get the important bits as correct as possible is integral to the conversation.
I see. So stating that I think Buddhism is an utterly morally bankrupt idea that everyone just needs to grow up and reject would be absolutely fine in the context of a debate about the finer points of Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, would it? No of course not. In fact repeating the same point multiple times does not move the conversation on and is more likely just to entrench positions.
Fair enough, perhaps, to make the point. But to repeat it as if nobody is listening and it is something important everyone needs to take on board?
I've heard Christians sermons that specifically address the comfortable vs calling issue. So those priests/pastors are irrelevant?
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Au contraire it succeeds on all levels but I guess that is another story. And yes, I have read it
I see. So you ask for examples of where it doesn't read as a coherent whole and then effectively reply "nope, it works on every level, actually."
I don' understand, what examples? You gave a couple of ridiculous canards that any serious Biblical scholar can dispense with. It's a bit like the so called Pratt arguments against evolution. I can only assume you haven' t a clue about the Bible.
Not a spiritualized Medo-Persian (circumcision of the 'heart'), Ptolemaic one, no.
We're not smart enough to do all the epicycles, deferents and eccentrics.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. There's another problem. If your framework tells you evolution is false, then your framework is wonky because we know that evolution is not false, as surely as any other model within science.
Karl, to me it is a morally bankrupt thought system that sinners use to excuse themselves. Behe, Meyer and Berlinski I find convincing on the subject. It does not explain biogenesis, it's 2 mechanisms are blunt levers. Meyer's 'Signature in the Cell' underlines the complex nature of DNA coding calling the whole thing into question. Anyhow, Berlinski says it better than me.
berlinski
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
Shock horror! A scientific theory doesn't explain something it doesn't set out to explain! Next you'll be telling me that General Relativity can't tell me anything about magnets.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. There's another problem. If your framework tells you evolution is false, then your framework is wonky because we know that evolution is not false, as surely as any other model within science.
Karl, to me it is a morally bankrupt thought system that sinners use to excuse themselves. Behe, Meyer and Berlinski I find convincing on the subject. It does not explain biogenesis, it's 2 mechanisms are blunt levers. Meyer's 'Signature in the Cell' underlines the complex nature of DNA coding calling the whole thing into question. Anyhow, Berlinski says it better than me.
berlinski
No he doesn't.
How does the fact of evolution excuse me from being a sinner? How does the fact of evolution give me eternal life?
And how does Original Sin make me culpable of anything?
[ 06. October 2016, 20:22: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
How does the fact of evolution excuse me from being a sinner?
Indeed! The whole idea is one huge category error. Evolution wasn't developed to free people from culpability. It was developed to understand the course of development of the biosphere. I can't imagine why anybody would think the former, if looking fairly and honestly at the reams of historical evidence.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. There's another problem. If your framework tells you evolution is false, then your framework is wonky because we know that evolution is not false, as surely as any other model within science.
Karl, to me it is a morally bankrupt thought system that sinners use to excuse themselves. Behe, Meyer and Berlinski I find convincing on the subject. It does not explain biogenesis, it's 2 mechanisms are blunt levers. Meyer's 'Signature in the Cell' underlines the complex nature of DNA coding calling the whole thing into question. Anyhow, Berlinski says it better than me.
berlinski
No he doesn't.
How does the fact of evolution excuse me from being a sinner? How does the fact of evolution give me eternal life?
And how does Original Sin make me culpable of anything?
Martin its a faith stance without any moral substance ergo really convenient to escape responsibility if one wants that.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The (nearly) Medo-Persian, Ptolemaic, literalist legalist is perfectly safe as long as he never fails to keep the law and due to the abrogation (hence the nearly) in the narrative he doesn't have to be circumcised, he can eat bacon if he's really liberal and he doesn't have to have ringlets.
He is perfectly safe. Until he looks at another woman of course. Then his fate hangs in the balance until he repents. Phew!
When Armageddon comes to the rest of us he'll be raptured with the handful of true Christians, except his wife it sounds like, or taken to a place of safety and rule those of us who survive with a rod of iron under the returned God the Killer on Steroids.
Too old to look with intent now
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethiefYou tell me. You laid out a hermeneutic which does not preclude serious flaws. We're not talking about the RCC worldview right now, but yours. How do YOU avoid serious flaws
Perhaps your assurance is baseless and wishful thinking.
Well, I do it partly by talking to you and the rest of the people here. I find trying to understand how you all think keeps me grounded.
As for my assurance, it is far more than intellectually based but only when the final whistle blows..
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Beautiful Baranabas62.
'strewth! I meant banana bus.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) You're forgiven. Sometimes I re-read my own posts and wish I'd gone under a bus. On this occasion, not so much.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Thunderbunk
To my mind, the incarnate God requires us to follow him by living: no written record is an adequate account of God's mystery. By living in relationship with God and each other we carry on our pilgrimage, and that of the body of Christians, into the reality of God. All witnesses provide useful evidence of where the pilgrimage has been and suggestions as to where it might go, but none adequately define the destination
Well I totally agree with this. Would only say that the Bible exists in the context of our experience. It helps me make sense of where I find myself. Otherwise Ford Prefect makes more sense.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Shock horror! A scientific theory doesn't explain something it doesn't set out to explain! Next you'll be telling me that General Relativity can't tell me anything about magnets.
Not what I meant. Just saying it posits a morally neutral universe. No good and bad or right and wrong. Also think Scientific is a stretch. It is religious. As tenaciously defended as any other faith. It is the only player for those who want to avoid God, morality, responsibility, judgement.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Shock horror! A scientific theory doesn't explain something it doesn't set out to explain! Next you'll be telling me that General Relativity can't tell me anything about magnets.
Not what I meant. Just saying it posits a morally neutral universe. No good and bad or right and wrong. Also think Scientific is a stretch. It is religious. As tenaciously defended as any other faith. It is the only player for those who want to avoid God, morality, responsibility, judgement.
I see the problem. You think it's a religious position, in which case the amorality would be a serious flaw. When in fact it's a scientific position, and it's not the place of science to tell us right from wrong; that's what religion is for. You conflate the two and you get problems. If you let science be science and not force it to be religion, you won't have to scold it for being bad religion.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Barnabas wrote:
What was not fully realised at the time, I think, was the extent to which the "plain meaning" argument exposed scripture to the kind of honest criticism which would spot inconsistencies, incoherencies and contradictions which could simply not be explained away on the basis of "plain meaning". The "paper Pope" came under close scrutiny. The current understanding of biblical inerrancy is actually different from previous understandings about the authority and inspiration of scripture. It is, ironically, a kind of counter-Reformation defence of the authority of the "paper Pope". "The Bible says it, I believe it, that's it" works provided you apply it selectively!
This may well be true. ISTM though that the 'inconsistencies,incoherences and contradictions' are very glibly cited and that citing them in a dismissive way is an excuse for not grappling with them.
The critical tone in many posts here seems to be more about the contradictory moral content. 'God wouldn't kill babies.' This is quite a different category of criticism to how many days Noah was on the ark which is Bible trivia.(380 I think).
Another chestnut is the OT Yaweh vs the NT Father of Jesus and Jesus himself. Anyone with a bit of Biblical mileage knows that the judgements of the OT, stoning for adultery etc, are superseded by the offer of grace on the basis of repentance. But God has not changed as sin is now dealt with in Christ. So the 'inconsistency' insisted on tends to vaporise on examination.
While it's true I am compared to other shipmates pretty literalistic, I deny 'ptolemaic' or 'wooden'. I think paper Pope and 'If the Bible says it I believe it' might be fine for the Appalachians but can't see a reflection in that mirror.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Shock horror! A scientific theory doesn't explain something it doesn't set out to explain! Next you'll be telling me that General Relativity can't tell me anything about magnets.
Not what I meant.
Nevertheless it's what you said. Why on Earth should the Theory of Evolution address the origins of life?
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
I don' understand, what examples? You gave a couple of ridiculous canards that any serious Biblical scholar can dispense with. It's a bit like the so called Pratt arguments against evolution. I can only assume you haven' t a clue about the Bible.
No, sorry, I wasn't talking about whether there are things that apologists can explain away, I was talking about things that do not read as a contiguous whole in the bible.
The Noah story is hard to put together as a whole metanarrative because it fairly obviously has been patched together from several stories.
Genesis 7:7 - flood of 40 days
Genesis 7:24 - water on the earth for 150 days
Genesis 8:4 - Ark rested on mountain in 8th month
Genesis 8:5 - Waters receded in 10th month
Genesis 8:10 - after 47 days dove comes back with leaf
Genesis 8:13 - gives Noahs age, suggesting earth wasn't dry until 314 days
Genesis 8:14 - gives date suggesting earth wasn't dry until 370 days
That's not "bible trivia", that's at least two stories mixed together with different details.
So which was it? 40 days, 47 days, 8 months, 10 months, 314 or 370 days?
Next discontinuity: who did Abel marry - his sister? Who were all these other people? Next discontinuity: was Abel or Noah the first farmer?
[ 07. October 2016, 07:19: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
Jamat
There really is no need to take personally the critique of plain meaning and its consequences. I wasn't pointing the finger at you. My main argument is about the methodology. It is always possible to find means of preserving the axiom of inerrancy when looking in detail at the words of scripture. We all know for example that the sun did not stand still over Gibeon. Carl Henry, a conservative theologian, observed that in order for the sun to stand still, the world would have to stop revolving, with catastrophic consequences produced by the inescapable effect of momentum. While it was perfectly possible for the human author to believe, literally that God could stop the sun in the sky, this was only because his understanding of cosmology was wrong. However there are many arguments which can explain that the sun appeared to stand still, but they cannot be based on plain meaning. Therefore Henry, and others, rationalise in order to preserve the principle of inerrancy. They do so because they believe it is essential to preserve inerrancy as a central defence of the authority and inspiration of scripture.
But in order to do that, the rationalisation will move around. Sometimes the defence will be based on textual criticism. Minor differences have crept in as a result of copying errors. The original text has not been properly translated. Sometimes a semantic argument is brought into play. The human author is using allegory or poetry to emphasise his point. That is, obviously, the plain meaning.
There are hundreds of examples to be found in the apologetics of conservative theologians. All of them are intended to defend the principle of inerrancy but they do so at the cost of methodological consistency.
The stopped sun is just one example. There are many others. The gospels are not consistent about the crowing cock and Peter's denials of Jesus. Genesis 2 and Genesis 1 are not consistent about the order of Creation. Goliath was slain by two different people. The accounts of Paul's conversion and subsequent history are not consistent in Acts and Galatians. Matthew and Mark record differently Jesus's words on marriage and divorce. Hundreds of other examples are available on inspection.
And none of this is new.
I have spent my life in an independent nonconformist environment and I have read a lot of conservative apologetics. The quality is very mixed and some of the arguments are very thin. Taken together, they provide impressive evidence that there is rationalisation going on, in defence of the principle of inerrancy. My argument is simple, really. It really isn't necessary to do it. And it becomes dangerous when it encourages permissive attitudes to violence and uncharitable attitudes to people who are different. To quote Philip Yancey, it gives space for unGrace.
[Late PS. An example of a typical conservative argument (over the stopped sun) can be found here.]
[ 07. October 2016, 09:22: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Your God, Jamat, as was mine, is Killer above all in His dealings with mankind. My Ptolemaic cult would argue that He was deftly, minimally lethal except when He had to be otherwise, that He hardly ever intervened, centuries would go by, millennia even (1656 years of sublime patience before the sad drowning of toxic kittens in a bucket). Over the course of 4004 years of 'history' He only killed twenty million people. Stalin, Hitler and Mao were each a hundred times more efficient.
God will make up for it by a factor of a hundred over them around His return of course.
You come here to refine your Ptolemaic wooden orrery.
Careful.
That's what I did.
But hopefully you're too old to change and your theology is safe.
You confirm the spiritualized temporary abrogation of God's killer instinct in Christ whom He killed instead of us in the ancient Egyptian scales of cosmic justice. Strictly God the Father only killed that once. Jesus did all the killing up to His incarnation and will do one hundred times as much at His return. What's the theology behind the mandatory pacifism that you must logically believe in since the Incarnation? Killing is now so holy since God killed His Son that only God can do it?
So you must be against capital punishment despite God ordaining it after the Flood?
Or can you kill? In just war and capital cases? Can you serve on a jury in such?
We couldn't do any of that. I doubt that you are that pure. But you do have the icing on the cake of eternal damnation in hellfire, there is no pragmatism in your God.
Since coming here what tinkering have you had to do with your Ptolemaic theology? None at all I suspect. It's absolutely perfect.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Indeed. There's another problem. If your framework tells you evolution is false, then your framework is wonky because we know that evolution is not false, as surely as any other model within science.
Karl, to me it is a morally bankrupt thought system that sinners use to excuse themselves. Behe, Meyer and Berlinski I find convincing on the subject. It does not explain biogenesis, it's 2 mechanisms are blunt levers. Meyer's 'Signature in the Cell' underlines the complex nature of DNA coding calling the whole thing into question. Anyhow, Berlinski says it better than me.
berlinski
Why would you expect to get morality from a scientific model? Do you ask electromagnetic theory its opinion on racism? Do you look to gravitational theory to give you a perspective on sexual mores?
And, as other people have said until blue in the face, Abiogenesis =/= Evolution. Evolution is what happens to self-replicators that already exist. It does not attempt to explain the origin of the self-replicators, any more than Special Relativity explains how to build spaceships.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
Evolution is perceived as a threat because it is believed to undermine the doctrines of Creation and Fall. There are parallels with the Copernican revolution and the controversies surrounding Galileo. Amusingly, the best explanation of what was really going on came from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When reality is in conflict with the book, then the book is right and reality is wrong. It is an authority-based defence of received wisdom.
[ 07. October 2016, 11:36: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Barnabas--
Re reality vs. Book:
"Star Trek: TNG" had an episode called "Remember Me". Basically, Dr. Crusher was caught inside a sort of artificial space/time anomaly, and didn't know it. People she knew kept disappearing, and the remaining people didn't remember the missing ones. They think she's crazy. Finally, she and the computer are the only ones left on the ship--and the ship is headed for disaster.
She and the computer have a confab to figure out what's going on. She checks out all sorts of possibilities. Meanwhile, space has shrunk to just outside the ship, and threatens to crush it. And the computer no longer remembers that space was ever any larger.
So she desperately goes over her logic, and has an inspiration: "If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!" In her particular situation, she was right--and made it back to her normal reality, just before the artificial one collapsed.
PS Your comment about H2G2 was made on page 42 of this thread, which is an appropriate occurence. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Barnabas--
Re reality vs. Book:
"Star Trek: TNG" had an episode called "Remember Me". Basically, Dr. Crusher was caught inside a sort of artificial space/time anomaly, and didn't know it. People she knew kept disappearing, and the remaining people didn't remember the missing ones. They think she's crazy. Finally, she and the computer are the only ones left on the ship--and the ship is headed for disaster.
She and the computer have a confab to figure out what's going on. She checks out all sorts of possibilities. Meanwhile, space has shrunk to just outside the ship, and threatens to crush it. And the computer no longer remembers that space was ever any larger.
So she desperately goes over her logic, and has an inspiration: "If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!" In her particular situation, she was right--and made it back to her normal reality, just before the artificial one collapsed.
PS Your comment about H2G2 was made on page 42 of this thread, which is an appropriate occurence.
There was an analogous storyline in Stargate Atlantis, when Dr Weir was being messed about by nanites. And of course there is the Matrix. "Take the red pill .." is also a rather good analogy.
But I'm impressed by the wholly unintended 42 coincidence.
[ 07. October 2016, 12:33: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Evolution is perceived as a threat because it is believed to undermine the doctrines of Creation and Fall. There are parallels with the Copernican revolution and the controversies surrounding Galileo. Amusingly, the best explanation of what was really going on came from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When reality is in conflict with the book, then the book is right and reality is wrong. It is an authority-based defence of received wisdom.
It's also a kind of reverse engineering, I suppose, (which is what you are saying). It reverses the method of empirical observation, in favour of a preconception. Oh damn, it's just what you said.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
[Late PS. An example of a typical conservative argument (over the stopped sun) can be found here.]
Whoa, Nelly! I ain't got a shovel that big. Interesting his potential explanation #3 mistakenly believes the length of the day has to do with the earth's revolution around the sun, rather than its rotation about its axis. A scientific error of this sort in an article meaning to explain a scientific error in the Bible really doesn't make me feel confident that his final answer won't be scientifically erroneous.
To show this is not a mere one-time error in his writing, his explication to #4 makes the same error: says "God caused the rotation of the earth to slow down. The earth, therefore, made one full rotation around the sun in a longer period of time." This clown doesn't know the difference between a day and a year.
In the conclusion he quotes someone more knowledgeable than he, who gets the difference. How sad, then, that he didn't read that person well enough to take on board the difference, and reflect it in his own prose.
I lack the will to go through the rest of the nonsense point-by-point. I am completely at a loss as to why he drags in the apocryphal story of the unnamed astronomer who finds the answer to his scientific riddles in the bible and converts himself. The author then goes on immediately to discredit it. Perhaps he realizes his readers are likely to believe that, and wants to reduce the number of their erroneous beliefs, even if he insists on their retaining at least one.
In short this article is a dog's breakfast. It demonstrates quite nicely a point I made upstream considering whether one's focus is on God or the Bible: It says "Reverence for Gods Word should encourage us to suspend judgment until more evidence is available."
What about reference for God? Reverence for God should encourage us to not posit desperate nonsense in defense of the Bible.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The (nearly) Medo-Persian, Ptolemaic, literalist legalist is perfectly safe as long as he never fails to keep the law and due to the abrogation (hence the nearly) in the narrative he doesn't have to be circumcised, he can eat bacon if he's really liberal and he doesn't have to have ringlets.
He is perfectly safe. Until he looks at another woman of course. Then his fate hangs in the balance until he repents. Phew!
When Armageddon comes to the rest of us he'll be raptured with the handful of true Christians, except his wife it sounds like, or taken to a place of safety and rule those of us who survive with a rod of iron under the returned God the Killer on Steroids.
Too old to look with intent now
Longing, loss, eros, even if the machinery isn't up to it, is JUST as bad. It is for me. My mother's hairdresser this morning is jaw dropping on a bad day. She had an off the shoulder down the elevator shaft top on today. 'strewth!
I'm sorry your wife gets left behind and then burns in Hell with my Dad and the Jews of Auschwitz (again!) forever and ever, as is only right and just, so is your God I'm sure. But don't worry, you won't remember her as you tread her ashes under foot.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Bloody hell, Martin, I come here for peace and quiet, and what do I get, Tarantino on steroids.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
An accolade I don't deserve and will forever treasure.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
Pretty bad, isn't it, mousethief? But I thought it worth including. I've read worse.
Carl Henry's arguments were put much better but contained similar premises IIRC. Can't find any copies online yet.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
An accolade I don't deserve and will forever treasure.
Blindness, is it a gift or a curse?
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
You tell me.
Ignorance is bliss that's for sure.
[ 07. October 2016, 22:36: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
You tell me.
Ignorance is bliss that's for sure.
May you be greatly blessed! (By the real God)
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I am. Careful, you'll get what you wish for others.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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