Do Christians really believe in “The Holy Spirit.” That Voice that speaks Truth?
Have they EVER believed in this Power outside of their own Denomination and whatever an “Authority” told them to believe?
Pentecost.
Look it up.
Believe it?
You don’t?
You do?
It’s all a bunch of mystical, magical bullshit?
You ‘know’ or, you do NOT ‘know’ Christ.
"Pray the ‘Prayer’ and you will be “Saved”…bullshit.
The ‘Backing-and-Forthing’ about ‘Biblical Scholarship’ and who hangs human intelligence on what seems to be nothing more than ‘wishful thinking’ - vs. the really great minds of rational thought (Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens)…gaaahhhhhh
ACTS
In the Bible.
After all of those people experienced this, what did they do? After being ‘touched’ by the Holy Spirit?
They “…sold everything…” and threw their ‘lot’ into a socialist understanding of Life.
I fully realize how stupid this seems to Dopers and Wall Street marketers…
But the FIRST CHRISTIANS were obsessed with knowing that we are all One.
It didn’t last long.
(Goddamnit)
But the example is there.
What Christ ‘wrought’ has echoed down the history of Time.
We are our Brothers (and Sisters) Keepers.
Let’s back off a step from “…holding all things in common…” in deference to the Capatilists…
It is a matter of belief not fact. If one wants to believe they do, what ever one reads ,or is taught, or even from one’s own mind, it can be proven to be just human thinking, not of God. One believes in a human idea of what they think God is,said or did. In such a case one could argue the Koran is directly dictated by an angel of God to Muhammad. A lot depends on what culture one was born into.
The truth cannot contradict it self as the Bble seems to do. If people’s beliefs help them to be a better person and do not use it to harm others then more power to them. But the many different translations of the Bible seem to cause desention and that is one reason why there are so many sects of Christianity.
But the RC’s don’t believe in Biblical Inerrancy. Raised Catholic here in the Bible Belt, I know the difference. From the Vatican website:
The strictly Fundamentalist Protestants believe that every word of the KJV is literally true. In practice, of course, they ignore some parts & emphasize others.
No, I wasn’t being specific enough. I was referring to the number of athiests who attack Chrisitanity (or any faith) without knowledge that goes beyond a characature of that belief system. I don’t think Atheists have an obligation to understand Christianity at all - unless they go about writing books/ making posts attacking it.
I don’t think our positions are contradictory. I didn’t say you shouldn’t believe, just that you might believe while knowing reasons not to, not in ignorance of the reasons. For instance, if someone found he had to believe that the Red Sox are the greatest team in the history of baseball, they should believe knowing the curse of the Bambino, not in ignorance of the drought.
For an excellent example in the area of romance, see She’s My Girl by Tom Lehrer.
It depends on what is being attacked. If you are attacking Christianity for getting the Messianic prophecies wrong you don’t need to understand the intricacies of transubstantiation. Johnny Carson used to say that if you buy the premise, you buy the bit. If we don’t buy the premise of Christianity we can more or less laugh off the intricacies developed over almost 2,000 years - and I don’t see anything wrong with that. But I do agree that if you talk about the details, you should understand what something like Immaculate Conception actually means.
Well someone has to answer the Christian posts Voyager… I don’t mind the athiests Posts and stay right out of them because I can’t comment on something I have no understanding of.
Why can’t we all just get along? Just like that old song, “There arn’t no good guys, there arn’t no bad guys, theres just you and me and we just disagree”.
Does anybody really claim to believe this? I’ve heard people accuse other people of being Biblical literalists, as you’ve done here, but I can’t recall seeing anybody claim that they themselves believe that everything in the Bible ought to be taken literally—that there are no metaphors or figures of speech—and I suspect it’s something of a straw man. Does anyone really claim that, as in Psalm 18:2, God is a literal rock or tower?
Or that rivers have hands to clap, as in Psalm 98:8?
Biblical inerrancy is not the same thing as Biblical literalism. What the inerrantists claim (if I understand correctly) is that there is nothing in the Bible that, when taken in the sense that it was meant to be understood, is false or mistaken—not that everything was meant to be taken in a literal sense. An inerrantist would say that everything that was intended by the original authors/Author to be taken literally is literally true.
I think that a lot of the time when people talk about the Bible being literally true, what they’re really talking about is it being historically true. That is, the issue is whether the events described in the Bible actually occured as written, as opposed to being fiction, legend, parable, allegory, or something like that. And, if I understand correctly, some Biblical inerrantists believe that all narratives in the Bible are to be taken as describing things that actually occured, but others have no problem believing that some of them were never meant as historical.
I find it interesting that even “every word is literally true” is a figure of speech that shouldn’t be understood literally, since the truth or meaning doesn’t reside at the level of individual words.
I think we’re in agreement. I had in mind athiests who mock, say, the Atonement or the concept of Hell when what they’re really attacking are popular (mis-)understandings of those concepts and not the real theological doctrines, which are usually quite complex.
From your statement to EinsteinsHund I assumed you believed in a god, if you do surely you don’t believe in the millions worshiped now and in the past.
The proof is in the pudding! Humans wrote the Bible, said it was inspired,called it the word of God. Prove to me that the person’s who wrote it talked to God! That is a fact. People believed the person or persons who told them it was so. There is no Proof of a historical Moses and many things are contradictory. Now if human’s are God as the psalmist says, then that is God speaking, but not a supreme being. Why would a supreme being inspire things that are not true and couldn’t or didn’t happen, such as: Jesus saying he would return in glory with his angels while some of them standing there were still alive? Why would this same supreme bieng inspire contradictory translations. How do you know if Muhammed wasn’t inspired and the Koran is not the word of God?
The New Testement was called inspired by the Bishops of the Catholic and Orthodox church at the council called by Constantine to have a unified Christian doctrine. They decided what was inspired and what wasn’t. Just read History and you will find the proof you are looking for.
monavis, you’re an example of what I was talking about before. You’re greatly oversimplifying and I don’t think you really have a deep enough understanding of what you’re talking about.
Obviously we can’t prove it. What are you calling “a fact”? The part about humans writing it? Sure. Is it a fact that they weren’t divinely inspired? There’s no way to prove that either way.
Okay, let’s go with that. Moses is mythological and there are contradictions in the Bible. So what? What exactly does that invalidate?
What Psalm are you talking about? I don’t recall one that says humans are God.
Please cite where Jesus said that.
Most Christians don’t consider translations to be inspired; only the original manuscripts. There are small fringe groups who consier the KJV to be the “inspired” English translation, but they’re… small and fringe.
I don’t know that. Maybe they were/are inspired, in whole or in part.
It sound like you are the one who needs to read up on the Council of Nicea. First, the Catholic/Orthodox split hadn’t occurred yet. Second, most of the NT texts were considered “inspired” long before that council met – what the Council did was agree on which texts would be included in the canonical New Testament. They also agreed on a shared creed (the Nicene Creed) as a response to common heresies that were floating about. What do you find so insidious about this council?
Why should he have to? You said you had proof (of what, I’m not sure) but you haven’t demonstrated it here.
Just like that old song, “There arn’t no good guys, there arn’t no bad guys, theres just you and me and we just disagree”.