Is it customary to require cites for personal opinions? I thought they were just for factual claims, which this topic really doesn’t support.
Lib started his paragraph spouting wise about how he believed he was both Christian and Muslim, atheist and theist and then about his experiences. However from the part of the paragraph that I quoted he started asserting himself in quite the “factual” manner.
If Lib wants to clarify that what I quoted was meant to be only his opinion then I will accept that. If not then let me reiterate:
CITE?
Yes. For instance, I’ve been told several times (I’m not sure why this particular example is so often used) that the Koran stated that there was non-salted water in the seas, though this could only be proven true by men recently (refering to undersea springs of soft water, which indeed exist).
By the way, would someone know where one could find such a reference in the Koran?
That these springs have only recently been shown to exist would be disputed by a friend of mine. He went to Arabia in the mid 1950’s as a heavy equipment operator in the oil industry.
He described one village along the coast in which their only source of fresh water was undersea springs in the adjacent bay. They went out in boats, dived down and filled bags with the water. The village was not of recent origin but was quite ancient.
Of course I suppose that it could be argued that they could only have found out about the springs with divine assistance. It does seem to me, though, that only a malicious God who, having all power, would put the only source of fresh water out in the sea.
You want what, exactly, my diary?
I just wanted it shown for the record that your assertions had nothing more backing them up than a because I said so statement. Looks like I got that. Thanks.
If this were the GQ forum than a cite request for a religious opinion would be warranted, but since is GD, and since GD is the designated forum for witnessing, then I think it’s rather churlish to demand a cite.
I didn’t take Libs’ post as purporting to be anything more than a subjective, personal religious opinion. He has described his conversionary experience a number of times on this board and has explained that his views are largely based on subjective, personal, theophanic experiences which do not lend themselves to empirical analysis by others. When he writes the kind of post like the above, I’m pretty sure that most everyone on the board understands that he is presenting a subjective, personal view and is not attempting to mislead anyone into thinking that he’s giving an objective factual answer to anything.
The nature of religion threads is that people will post a variety of subjective takes on certain question and that they won’t neccessarily clutter up their posts with a bunch of superfluous “IMO” qualifications.
I mean, really, are we going to yell “Cite” at anyone who says that “God is good,” or “Jesus saves?” I suppose we could do it but it wouldn’t make for a very open or engaging forum. It’s a given that religious opinions don’t necessarily have cites.
Now, if someone wants to make a claim about something that is subject to observation or testing (i.e. YEC) then it is fair to ask for a cite but I hope that most of us can tell the difference between a falsifiable claim and a pure philosophical opinion.
You mean, like the statement you just made, for example. If I were to demand a cite for the assertion that you just wanted it shown for the record blah blah blah, you would offer what exactly? Nothing more than a because I said so statement?
See, I’m not as nice as Polycarp. If you’ve decided to reverse your position that I’m too crazy to debate with, then you’d best brace yourself. I’ll blow your position to pieces. Poly probably cared about your feelings, and I couldn’t care less. Bring it on.
You give the impression that the issue has been decisively settled. From reading this Wikipedia article, and the articles it links to (some of which address Finkelstein), I get the idea that many of the assertions you listed are still very much open questions, with arguments on both sides.
I don’t take issue with your major point here, but I do with some of your examples. I think sometimes people read Biblical accounts of what happened and jump to unwarranted conclusions about the writer’s and/or God’s approval of what happened.
Take your example of “seeing your father naked.” I assume you’re referring to the account in Genesis 9:18-27 in which Ham, one of Noah’s sons, sees his father passed out drunk and naked in his tent and goes to tell his brothers about it. Now, I’ve always been somewhat puzzled over what exactly Ham’s offense was, but I’m sure there was more to it than just seeing Dad without his clothes on! But more to my point, while the writer makes it pretty clear that what Ham did displeased Noah, he doesn’t actually say that it displeased God. And I can’t tell for sure that the biblical storyteller thinks Ham did something wrong and expects his readers to think so (though that is one reasonable interpretation).
There are people with religious agendas who are resistant to certain findings. That doesn’t mean that the questions are really “open.”
There are people who still try to argue for a global flood but grom a purely scientific standpoint there is no debate.
If you really read the archaeological material you’ll see that almost no one takes the Bible as being an accurate reflection of history, they just argue about whether certain stories have authentic historical kernels.
The argument over David’s kingdom, for instance, centers on whether David was a local chieftain or whether he is a purley legendary character like King Arthur.
The archaeology is indisutable that Jerusalem was a small, undeveloped mountain settlement at the alleged time of David, while the cities to the north were highly developed, fortified and were not Israelite in population or culture.
The Exodus story simply cannot be supported by archaeology or extra-Biblical documentation. Some minimalist theories exist about nomadic immigrants from Sinai bringing their own tribal traditions into Canaan (possibly traditions involving a Volcano god) but there was no enslavement in Egypt and no mass Exodus. Nor was there a time when the Israelite people were absent from Palestine. The archaeology shows a continuous, unbroken occupation.
There was no large influx or migration from the desert and there was no Israelite conquest of Canaanite cities.
These are facts which can’t really be argued with. The archaeology is what it is, religious objections notwithsatnding.
Maybe so, Boink, maybe so. But I’m using the very meaning of the word as espoused by those christians (and others) who use it to “answer” the harder questions.
We’re talking about religious faith, right. Not about trusting your friend to give you a ride to work in the morning as promised, but divine trust in what someone tells you that god wants. God only accepts blind faith, not those weak, watered-down varieties. Proof is for science.
When God makes a point of drowning everyone in the world but you, I take it as a given that God endorses you and the things you stand for. My big problem with Genesis is that God favors people who do terrible things, and the stories about them have no clear moral message beyond “God favors some people over others, who knows why.” In later books, it comes into focus a bit better.
I take this as a gradual evolution of the idea that moral behavior has some kind of godly imprimatur, a notion pretty absent from much pagan theology.
This is pure BS. If you’re an atheist, you believe God does not exist. If you’re a theist, you believe God exists. To assert otherwise is to play fast and loose with the terms.
It would be like saying “I believe that Chicago exists and I also believe Chicago doesn’t exist, because to me, Chicago is a state of mind, some people have it, some people don’t, it’s all personal”.
In fact, theism and atheism are mutually exclusive positions… because the question is not a matter of “mere intellect”. The existence of god is a question concerning the actual world, not one’s mind.
L defines God as love, but then, God becomes a synonym for love, so we might as well dispense with talking about God and just talk about love. But we’re not talking about love, are we? The OP certainly isn’t.
Besides, the Bible, which is the topic here, never asserts God=love. Write down the properties of the Christian God (or El or YHWH) and the properties of love and you’ll see, they ain’t equivalent terms. Love did not deliver the Promised Land into the hand of the Israelites. Jesus will not sit at the right hand of an emotion and Judge the quick and the dead.
I’ve said before, the answer to the OP (both in its original and subsequent phrasings) is simply “no”.
Gauntlet down: If the answer to the OP is “yes”, someone say so and say why. Otherwise, why isn’t this matter closed?
PS: I’m slowly getting accustomed to this board. I’m used to less polite environments where deviation from the topic is severely punished. Spank me if I’m out of line. (After all, I enjoy it so.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Badchad
I just wanted it shown for the record that your assertions had nothing more backing them up than a because I said so statement. Looks like I got that. Thanks.
Nope, nothing more than that. See my statement is not what most would call an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence to back it up. If I read you correctly then you are saying that your earlier statements, regardless of how sure they sounded, were nothing more than your opinions, and thus I am happy with that clarification. If however you were stating them as facts regarding the nature of god or Jesus then, like I said before: Cite?
No your not. Polycarp, as much as I used to disagree with him he at least made an effort (for the most part) to be nice, which was consistent with how he thought his god wanted him to be. You however.
Off topic, I have noticed Polycarp’s posts of recent have been considerably more reasonable than before and I even recall him mention that he was considering giving up on calling himself a Christian, though he still thought it a good thing to live as Jesus did. Not sure how serious he was but I always thought he’d make a good secular humanist.
No, I have not changed my view that you’re nuts. And while I think your chances of blowing my position to pieces are between slim and none, I don’t intend to spend hundreds of posts over several threads describing why your ontological argument sucks, since others have been there and done that ad nauseam and you demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that you were/are to dense to get it.
Originally Posted by Libertarian
No no, Thingol. It makes perfect sense. If your nuts.
The majority of Christians I’ve talked to don’t know a lot about the Bible. They know the stuff that is quoted at them by the religious “leader” they listen to. I’ve talked to a few of these religious leaders. YAWN!
Investigate THE BIBLE CODE, there are plenty of websites debating this pro and con. I have used the program. I like the idea of a sneaky God slipping one past the RELIGIOUS LEADERS talking bullshit.
Does Chernobyl meaning Wormwood signify anything in Revelations?
Does the statue in Nebachadnezar’s dream refer to the Roman empire splitting in two at the legs.
Dal Timgar
You think the Bible Code is amazing? What about the Moby Dick Code?? I find it even more amazing that He slipped information into a book that nobody every claimed was divinely inspired! Praise Herman!
Are you kidding or are you serious. The Bible Code has been debunked more than once on this board and so has the Chernobyl=wormwood assertion.
Chernobyl does not mean “wormwood”. It means “black” in Ukranian. The Greek word sometimes translated as “wormwood” in English is absinthos or absinthe. “Chernobyl” has no relationship either to absinthe or to wormwood. This whole Chernobyl/wormwood thing is just fundie mythology with no basis in fact. All you have to do is ask someone who speaks Ukrainian, but the fact that this canard is still prevalent on the internet shows that some people are not concerned with getting the facts about anything.
The divided statue in Daniel symbolized the divided and weakening Ptolemy/Seleucid empires. Daniel was written during the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid king, Antiochus. The story was set during the Babylonian captivity and the dreams were representations of things that had happened previous to the Seleucid occupation. The events of the dream were “predictions” relative to the characters and setting of the story but were past and present events relative to when it was written. Rome does not figure into Daniel in any way, nor does any event subsequent to the second century BCE.
You will have to excuse me if I don’t regard THIS BOARD as an AUTHORITY. In fact I don’t regard any AUTHORITY as an AUTHORITY. Someone pointed to the Moby Dick business to refute my mentioning THE BIBLE CODE before. I did a search on MOBY DICK and THE BIBLE CODE and easily found a site refuting that MOBY DICK site.
There are BELIEVERS and ANTIBELIEVERS. Antibelievers often have this delusion that they are LOGICAL.
There is only one way to think. That is to think FOR YOURSELF.
I have used the Bible Code program myself. I taped a show about it and watched it 3 times and decided to order the program and experiment with it myself. Have any of you actually used it?
If anyone is interested they should do their own research and think for themselves. A lot of people seem to get upset if other people think differently from them. IF YOU DON’T AGREE WITH ME THEN YOU MUST BE STUPID. I consider that to be a ridiculous attitude. I don’t BELIEVE anything, but too many things about the Bible seem too improbable for there not to be a cause for the improbability. I am not a statistician if you want to play credentials games but I have always been good at math. The Moby Dick site doesn’t hold water for me. I have personally found too many things in THE BIBLE CODE and I looked for stuff not mentioned anywhere else.
Dal Timgar