If your only reference material is the bible or other people whose only reference material is the bible, how do you know which is symbolic and which is to be taken literally?
I can usually generate some defense to almost any of the negative posts on this website, but you’ve demonstrated such absolute and unassailable expertise in this particular area that I will just have to maintain a slim hope that you’re just plain wrong about it applying to me also.
(This is one of those times that I wish Tom was on my side - he could just charge you with lying and we could be done with the matter. Where’s a moderator when you really need one?)
Incidently, reading the scriptures clarifies nothing. If it did, there wouldn’t be literalists and a wide variety of cherry-pickers. There are plenty of believers who are infinitely more savvy than you in biblespeak, and I’d venture to guess most of them are snickering behind their hands at your interpretations.
Ah, I see. He won’t speak to me in person, because I don’t believe in the Bible and things that preachers say.
Why, then, were you trying to get me to speak to God? You know i’m not a christian, nor do I believe in the Bible. Using your own logic, I wouldn’t be able to speak to God anyway - so what, you were just taunting me? Lying? It doesn’t seem very nice that you’d put me on a false route to your God like that.
Bzzt. Evolution and the God of the Bible are completely incompatible if one believes Genesis is a literal description of creation. You’ve already said some parts of the Bible are more along the lines of simile and metaphor; who says the creation story can’t be that? Being a christian and an evolutionist are no more incompatible than being a christian and not stoning adulterers is.
Man is the best place to look for God? Sure, i’ll give it a go. 
As long as you promise to go looking too (Hint: use the second part of my screen name).
Impersonal? Impersonal is one of the best insults you can come up with for evolution? Horrors! Nature is impersonal! Well, now I see the errors of my ways. However could I have believed in such an impersonal scientific conclusion? Madness.
Oh, and i’d say God was considerably more bizarre than evolution. All concepts of evolution can be explained in human terms and using logical concepts. God can’t.
Unsupportable? There’s plenty of support for it. It’s easy to support, in fact. Merely because you’re ignorant of said support doesn’t make it unsupportable.
I love the falling back on the word theory approach. It’s just a theory, not fact! It’s just a guess! I’m going to take back my suggestion of you reading some evidence for evolution and suggest instead some primary school science textbooks; at least until you can understand scientific terms, anyway.
Alright. I’m going to take the christian route and wish you good luck in your endeavours, and health and happiness and all that jazz. Here, you can even have the last word;
People are at different stages of growth and understanding, it’s a process to attain unity of the faith but it does happen at times (1Cor1:10).
I would expect that after they’re through chortling, they would jump right in the discussion - iron sharpens iron (Prov27:17). And frankly, just pitting evolutionary nonsense against the Word of The Great God of Heaven is like bringing a rubber knife to a gunfight (Jeremiah23:29, Hosea6:5)
He’s also the no-so-great god of hell and all things evil, if he exists at all. But admitting that would put your version of god in the “Unworshippable” column, so I don’t expect you’ll acknowledge the holes in your story. (Rational Thought 1:1)
Thanks for saying so. I watched 15 minutes and saw enough BS to decide not to watch anymore. Somehow the fact that Romans killed Christians made evil religion responsible for those deaths. WTF?
True in part. IMHO one thing people don’t realize and don’t do is to actively seek out opinions and scholastic information that doesn’t agree with them. People within a certain religion will read material written by others with similar beliefs who are presented as scholarly. I think if we really are looking for the truth on a matter that concerns us we need to consider factual evidence and reasonable arguments that don’t support our opinion or theory.
In recent years more information is readily available for anyone sincerely seeking and although it takes some time it is something the average person is capable of. The first step is to be willing to sincerely consider other opinions and beliefs when offered in a reasonably intelligent manner. The second step is to be honest wit yourself and look at your own motives for embracing certain beliefs.
Thanks for the courtesy Mr. Threshold, don’t forget where home is (Matt11:28-30)
I doubt it will happen at all until we get to the place where faith passes away and we know as we are known.
It doesn’t do any good to jump in and attempt any iron sharpening when you simply bail on a discussion and avoid direct questions as you did in the other thread. As a believer myself I challenged some of your beliefs, claiming they are unsupported by the very Bible you consider the word of God. I maintained then and now that several key components of your belief are based on mans tradition rather than anything found in the Bible or taught by Jesus. Your answer to my questions was to simply cease responding. You were unable to support key components of your belief with the Bible , even if we accept it as inspired writing. That may indeed be a form of faith but the question that occurs to me is what is it you have faith in; God, the Bible, The Holy Spirit, or a tradition unsupported by any of those?
If sincere people believe they are seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit and still disagree then what should they conclude? For me it’s an indication that our quest for and surrender to the truth is incomplete. There is wisdom and honesty in understanding the difference between “I believe” and “I know”
Actually, it’s one of the few things we agree on, consider for instance Isaiah45:7 (Amplified), “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace (national well-being. Moral evil proceeds from the will of men, but physical evil proceeds from the will of God), and I create physical evil - calamity; I am the Lord Who does all these things…” What you don’t recognize is that the God of the Old Testament and the New are the same but we have received massive amounts of grace through the perfect life and sacrifice of Christ. This grace and opportunity to come to God through Christ will last until “the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (seeRom11:25 and Luke21:24). And I can assure you that the time of that fulfillment is at the very door.
What you don’t realize, Bible man, is that as long as you seemingly demonstrate pride, condecension, judmentalism, the inability to admit you were mistaken, the inability to learn from someone else, a lack of integrity, and hostility, few will be motivated to follow the path you’ve chosen. Yikes!
You may not even have these characteristics, but you are coming across that way. Where are the fruits of the spirit?
No. They are not completely incompatible. I have been a Christian for a very long time. I don’t think that I ever took the Old Testament explanation of the Creation as anything other than a way of explaining that the heavens and the earth have a Divine origin. My ideas on what that means shift and refocus, but always I believe in the Creator God.
And as soon as someone explained the basics of Darwin’s ideas to me (and I don’t pretend to know more that just that), I thought that that made more sense than any explanation that I could imagine. It sounded so reasonable and comprehensive! And on such a grand scale! And in some ways it is so unifying.
I respect your point-of-view for yourself. But it is contradictory to tell other Christians that their beliefs are incompatible. I refer you to the passage that you quoted earlier: “Lean not unto thine own understanding.” (KJV) (At least where other people’s religious beliefs are concerned)
Changing direction for a moment: Should women and men serve in the military?
So much for “no man knoweth the hour or the day” huh? The angels don’t know, but Bible man does.
I heard that “it” was going to happen any day so much when I was a child that I would wake up screaming in the night because the trains blew their very loud whistles when they came around the curve near our home. I always thought it was Gabriel blowing his horn. Adults may look forward to Judgment Day, but it is a scary concept to a kid.
Back then the “signs” were the Communists, the bomb and rock ‘n’ roll.
Many of my troubles are due to being seperated from more money.
I heard it was going to happen before Jesus’ friends died (Matthew 24:29-34 and Matthew 16:28).
I didn’t say what I knew, I said what I thought. You got a problem with that?
All those are possible, and likely what they would use as excuses for when and why they decide to vacate a discussion. However, I will maintain that my analysis is by far the most likely to represent reality. Of course Suburban Plankton could come back and really put me in my place with some irrefutable arguments, but you and I know that’s not the way to bet.
Since when did I claim to be an authority? Since when is speculating on another’s feelings illogical.
If I’m an indeed an offensive character, I should think that certain liberal Christians who can back up their beliefs with sound argument would be eager to put me in my place, just like you all are doing to Bible man. The reason I think you don’t, is because you know you can’t, and there is only one way to prove otherwise.
Sure it’s possible. Would you be any different in discussing your differences with a young earth creationist? If not, have yourself a nice helping of hypocrite pie.
Perhaps, but I haven’t had to do any of that.
That’s not fair to say, unbelievers are not willfully blind, they cannot will or work for salvation, they can only hope that god will give them the gift of his grace, which he does arbitrarily (see Rom 9:15-20).
That’s surprising coming from you. Do you really mean that you don’t literally think it would be better to pluck out your eye than to have your whole body cast into hell?
What do you think hell is like?
Was that a foray into some judgementalism of your own? I didn’t mention a day or hour. Jesus said we would not know that but we would definitely know the season (Matthew24:32). That day will not be a surprise to genuine believers ie, 1Thes5:4 “But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to overtake you by surprise like a thief”. Unbelievers, however, will be caught unaware - 1Thes5:3, “…in a moment unforseen destruction will come upon them as suddenly as labor pains come upon a woman with child; and they shall by no means escape, for there will be no escape.”
The season is here and the times of the Gentiles are rapidly concluding (Dan2:44, Rev11:15, Dan7:14).
Yes - I take that point. I’d call it a permanent delusional state rather than lying. I’m sure he is terrifyingly sincere in his god-cowering bible cherry-picking literalism.