Spider Man comic books contain references to real places (New York) and real things (guns, drug dealers, etc).
The Bible contains references to real places (Jerusalem, Bethlehem) and real things (temples, bread, etc).
If the miracles in the Bible are real because of this, then so is Spider Man.
To directly address that, I’m of the opinion that you’re doing someone a favor. If you aren’t comfortable or interested in doing so anymore, just don’t.
The question then would become how to convey that with tact, I guess.
I’ve been asked to make a copy of some software for friends. It would cost me nothing to do so. Yes, it’s illegal but put aside the ethical considerations for a moment because honestly I may not personally feel guilty about it. But I just don’t, because after all if you’re asking for a favor then I can just say nah, don’t wanna.
But may nonetheless be true. And sounds from what she’s reported that it is.
Your irrelevant and unsolicited advice is unnecessary, as is your faulty analogy. You cannot justly compare an opinionated poster to a dangerous, poisionous cult leader who routinely causes heartbroken families in mourning unspeakable distress.
I am far from young and impressionable and happen to share many of **Der Trihs’ ** opinions, and support his right to speak his mind, just as I support the rights of those I profoundly disagree with. In fact, I often learn more from those I profoundly disagree with. Perhaps you could open your mind a bit before tossing out unwarranted insults in a thread which is, in the opinion of the original poster, already quite productive and successful.
It is not “Spider Man”, it’s “Spider-Man”.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Czarcasm
9thFloor, that would be the easy way out, but I feel compelled to handle an ethical concern, well, ethically. An eye for an eye. (That’s from The Bible)
I’ve no problem saying no. I was just sincerely curious as to how common it is for a Christian to make the leap from Bible to Universal Reference Book, and if so, if I were guilty indirectly contributing to the distribution of deliberate misinformation. But now I agree strongly with dangermom that I’ve no right to purposefully withhold knowledge and fact, and that the teenagers in her classroom must at some point be accountable for their own feelings and beliefs and should process information accordingly.
I thought insults of other members were frowned on in Great Debates?
Is this OK: “Atheists, such as Stalin and Der Trihs, believe in purging the millions whose opinions differ from theirs.”?
Which is not to say that you’re wrong for that small minority of people professing Christianity who are in it for the money.
Beaucarnea there is a archaeological bible where the scriptures are paired with the known discoveries and artifacts.
Which one of them? One temple they had, well at least a alter, is to a ‘unknown God’, this was revealed to Paul as the one true God in Acts 17:16-31. Even though the Greeks were in spiritual darkness, they somehow knew there must be something more, a real God beyond what they knew in their gods but had no way to find Him on their own. It was a missing part of their being till Jesus opened up God and salvation to all people.
I would imagine if this was something missing from all Ancient Greeks, there would have been more than one such temple. It seems somewhat arrogant to say “Aha! They had one altar to a god they didn’t know; clearly this shows they were all missing something significant!”. I mean, I could use that very same logic to say they had many temples to Zeus; clearly the unknown god didn’t give them all they needed either.
Also your logic doesn’t work; this was after Jesus lived and died. God and salvation had already been opened up.
You might as well ask why do Christians eat or need water. Because what you are observing is a very real and measurable phenomenon among humans - **all **humans not simply “Christians”.
Bias in science is something that constantly needs to be guarded against. One purpose of peer review is to guard against this. Although of course there is dishonesty - really the danger is that experiments are subtly designed to prove hypotheses and/or do not offer an equal chance to disprove them. Brilliant minds find ways to subtly do this in really brilliant ways. It is almost never an attempt at dishonesty.
Any critical thinking course will also offer this observation and techniques to guard against it.
Bias in selecting what stories are real, what is important to be covered and what is not is a well documented feature of the news media.
Read any GD political thread & you will see (or think you see based on your own biases) examples of this.
So bottom-line selective memory/seeking or maximizing or selecting supporting evidence/dismissing or minimizing or not seeking contrary evidence is very human - it really has nothing to do with “Christian” thinking. It is natural human thinking and always needs to be guarded against.
Polycarp, you might take note that another poster, who appears to be on your team, also spit a bit of slander upthread. Let’s call it even, shall we?
kanicbird, that is very kind of you. I may hunt that down and refer her to it. Do you mind providing your own POV on my question? Does proven historical records that match Biblical history somehow prove inerrancy for you, or are they just interesting artifacts?
jimmmy, I am familiar with confirmation bias- I’m certain I’m guilty of it on occasion as well, and I have the education and experience to know better. You are right on point: What bothers me about this issue is whether or not a *person in authority * ought to be teaching flawed science, despite the private domain. Shouldn’t education follow the same ethical constructs whether in her Sunday school class or in her public high school class? At least when not discussing actual faith?
I’m having trouble posing my question because I’m not certain if we have established a delineation between faith and Biblical knowledge- let me try again. Shouldn’t matters of faith be kept separate from discussions of provenance, history, and other provable Biblical evidence?
Even though I’ve already decided to continue providing my co-worker with media that references The Bible, I’m trying to wrap my head around a method of sharing a respectful dialog with her that poses the problem of confirmation bias without offending her. As I said earlier, I feel confident that the verifiable historical and scientific articles and videos that I frequently provide her with are beneficial, but I am concerned that she might be guilty of using her rather strong personality to steamroll her sizable (mega-church) youth class into Biblical inerrancy rather than allowing them to arrive at conclusions that reconcile their public educations with their faith. (And that bugs me a bit, and I am allowed to be bugged by this, as I am facilitating her teaching methods.)
While there are some verifiable names and places in the Bible, they are usually peripheral to its key historical claims and it’s not remarkable, in any case, that the authors would be aware of the existence of Egypt or the King of Babylon. Obviously, pointing to the verifid existence of Nebuchadnezzar as proof of the Bible’s inerrancy is hugely specious. It’s like saying that the Empire State Building exists, therefore King Kong must have existed.
In point of fact, there is a great deal of archaeological, historical and scientific evidence which compromises, contradicts or outright disproves some of the central claims of the Bible as literal history.
Incidentally, Simcha Jacobovici (the “Naked Archaeologist”) is actually not an archaeologist or a credentialed scholar of any sort. He is a documentary filmmaker with an M.A. in International Relations who specializes in popular, sometimes sensationalist (he was the filmmaker behind the “Jesus Tomb” special) films and specials on generally non-scholarly theories. His own methods and scholarship range from shoddy to downright ridiculous (I saw an episode of NA a couple of days ago where he was attempting to defend Mosaic authorship of the Torah by means several fallacious arguments and hand waving).
He is not stupid. He comes across as well prepared and erudite and has a knack for making superficially valid sounding points (I saw him dominate a panel disussion after the Jesus Tomb special through sheer force of personality and bullshit alone), but when all is said and done, he isn’t a scholar, just a filmmaker.
You nailed my previous error, Diogenes. I have been guilty of assuming that the majority of educational programming coming from secular sources is at least somewhat reliable and falsifiable. Not that I buy into any of it personally, but I’ve assumed that information coming from politically neutral backgrounds would have been fact-checked and verified by experts before being sold to the public domain, if for no other reason than to preserve the sponsor’s reputation as a legitimate source for information. Lazy thinking on my part, but I tend to view such programming as entertainment, and do not personally subscribe to any significant theory that has not passed scientific method.
Thing is, I’ve been able to spot bias and apply critical thinking to most media since I was a kid; I would expect my studied co-worker to do the same. But it suddenly became clear to me that she is not. Hence my minor ethical dilemma.
Yeah. Spider Man is not real. Spider-Man is. 
To quote Mark Twain on this issue, from The Innocents Abroad:
“If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are wanted, to satisfy the headstrong and the foolish that this is the genuine centre of the earth, they are here. The greatest of them lies in the fact that from under this very column was taken the dust from which Adam was made. This can surely be regarded in the light of a settler. It is not likely that the original first man would have been made from an inferior quality of earth when it was entirely convenient to get first quality from the world’s centre. This will strike any reflecting mind forcibly. That Adam was formed of dirt procured in this very spot is amply proven by the fact that in six thousand years no man has ever been able to prove that the dirt was not procured here whereof he was made.”
Ask her to read the 82d Psalm in the King James version the Psalmist tells the men he is speaking to that they are gods. So in that sense every one is divine. Jesus also used this Psalm to defend his calling God his father.
Taken as a whole Jesus never thought himself more divine than anyone else. He always said my father and yours, Not, you will be adopted sons after I am dead and risen.
Monavis
That Bible should be easy to find.
To answer your question, not really. God has shown literal accuracy in parts of scriptures that prove to me personally that man’s science and discoveries are totally inadequate for proving the truth. When a discovery matches the Word I am surprised that we were able to figure that out. Also I have not been lead towards the historical accuracy of scriptures aspect but your friend seems to be and that would be a great gift IMHO.
This was in Athens, not the entire country. There is reference in Acts about poems to the unknown God, I suspect it was fairly well known.
According to the Word, this Unknown God did provide everything.
We (believers) are the body of Christ, we are the ones to open up the word to all God’s people.
In The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman present a compelling case that, with respect to most Biblical events recorded as occurring prior to the reign of King Josiah (almost the last king of Judah), not only is there insufficient evidence that the event occurred that way, but there is sufficent evidence that it didn’t. Most of the Old Testament is a pack of provable lies, pure and simple. There was a House of David, but it ruled only the area immediately around Jerusalem. There never was a united kingdom of Israel and Judah, ever. There never was an Exodus from Egypt. And Father Abraham never came up out of Ur of the Chaldees. Most of these stories, apparently, were made up after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and the Israelite priests and nobles fled south to Judah. They settled down in the court of King Josiah and then got started on a massive propaganda campaign to create a new national-religious myth. There’s even some question as to whether Israel or Judah really had a monotheistic religion before that time. See this review by Daniel Lazare in Harper’s, and this thread from 2003.