You misspelled chuckles.
I believe that would actually be …
**!!!**אאאאאאאאאגגגגגגהההה
It’s times like this when we need the Happy Orthodox Man smiley.
I think the Skeptics Annotated can be amusing, I also think it has some problems. I would suggest ErrancyWiki as an alternative. As you can probably figure out from the title, it’s in a wiki format and allows for more depth of debate.
Dio, I figure you’ve got a good chance of answering my question. Do you know anything about Lev. 11:21-23? I mentioned it upthread.
Try me.
I’ve seen that one before, and it’s one of the minor errors sometimes jumped on by critics. I don’t know Hebrew so I can’t comment on the translation but from what I’ve read about the translation it says something like "all creeping things…which go on four (or “all four”). The standard apology for this is that “going on [all] four” is a figure of speech generically applied to all animals. I don’t know enough about Hebrew to confirm the validity of that claim but I actually don’t find it to be unreasonable on its face.
There is a fairly well known internet apologist named JP Holding who asserts that the ancient Jews did not count the back legs of insects as legs. Let me see if I can find it…
Ah, yes, here it is. Holding (typically for him) cites no source for his claim, so (as always with Holding) you should take what he says with about ten pounds of salt, but I’ll offer it up simply as an example of how inerrantists at leats attempt to address the issue.
In a word, yes. Spend some time there. Try to pretend for a while that you’re a sceptic, and if weaknesses in many, if not most, of the “answers” don’t jump out at you, let me know.
And that’s the best kind.
Let me re-ask this–Link.
Wow. We’re already on page 3 and sfworker hasn’t attempted one single solitary refutation of a claim of an error in the Bible.
Apparently we are just supposed to accept the following:
- The perfection of the Bible proves God exists.
- We know the Bible is perfect because God is perfect and would not have revealed imperfect scriptures–And we proved the existence of a perfect God in step 1…
I guess it depends on what you mean by “liberal”. I myself hope that there is something like a “heaven”, but for the most part, we are agnostics when it comes to the afterlife. Salvation, and the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke so often about, for most of us is less a place we go to when we die than something we achieve here on earth. I won’t go into it here, but the Wikipedia page on the Kingdom of God touches a little on it. Our understanding of salvation, in that sense, is probably why it’s easier for us to be universalists, because we recognize that there is something holy and true in all religions and that the way to the Kingdom (or Empire or Domain or whatever) of God is certainly achievable by anyone, regardless of their faith. The NT very rarely records Jesus as talking about heaven as some kind of an afterlife, but rather as something achievable in the here and now. There are some sayings and parables that suggest heaven as an afterlife, but they’re not nearly as common.
Even so, I do hope and believe that we do go to heaven when we die, and I’m sure most of my fellow congregants agree. But I am the first to admit (and I think this is what you were getting at) that this hope and belief is based mostly on the comfort it gives me and on my understanding of God as a gracious, compassionate, and loving God. For the most part, and for most of us, it isn’t an issue, because whether there’s a heaven or not, we’re here for only a limited amount of time, and it’s up to us to help bring in the Kingdom of God in our own lives and society now. If there is indeed a heaven, then that’s up to God to bring us into that.
I’m only halfway through this thread as of yet, (I started in the comments forum)
anyway I probably should finish before butting in BUT: I gotta say it.
D/C nailed this.
Amen bro. 
and Tom~ you said something to this effect:
You may have CYA in the exception “evangelical” but AFAIK the “Primitive Baptist Church” isn’t an Evangelical Church. They teach an absolute literal translation of the Bible. Even to the point of women being silent in church. They teach predistination as well. Several other practices (ie: feet washing and no collection plate) anyway… just thought I’d mention it. I tried it for a couple of years. Quite interesting I must say.
You are probably aware of this fact but since the church is no longer considered mainstream… nevermind. 
BTW, Hell is simple. The state of the soul when denied from GOD is in Hell. This can occur in life but is temporary. If after death…then eternal. The body rots in the dirt. Not Hell.
I checked some Hebrew sources. It seems (between the lines) that this issue makes the inerrantists uncomfortable, to the point that some ignore it.
Those who do attempt to explain it go with the “4 legs are used for walking, 2 other for special purposes (digging, hopping, swimming, etc.)”. The excuse for this is the two different words used for “legs” in the Hebrew version: “Rag’laim” and “Kra’aim”.
I could give a few cites, but I doubt Hebrew cites will help much.
I wouldn’t go quite THAT far with it B/G.
A lot of people are raised in a religious culture where they don’t know any other way. Not ALL faith is wishful thinking either. Some people have actually had experiences which have convinced them there is a GOD. Even people who did NOT believe beforehand. Is it always suspect? Well, sure it’s always suspect to some people. Maybe you need to be a philosopher to see why it’s not all he’s got.
Either way, these waters are deep in which we tread and I’m afraid the OP’s in waaay over his head.
I heard Neitzche claimed that GOD was dead. If that’s the truth, then why the thread?
Yeah I know it was bad, but it’s 5:30 am and I’ve been up since…
way too long. 
~gday
Hell is a concept and a belief. Your belief, I might add, and a far from universal one.
Thus, so far as I am concerned, you’re making no point at all. I disagree that a concept called “hell” exists.
Additionally, I’m not sure why it would matter that a book written many years ago about a concept of a god - one of many concepts of many gods - should be important to the rest of us.
Cheers,
G
Sorry, circular argument, argument from authority. And you’ve backpedaled away from your OP as well. You wanted inaccuracies, they’ve been pointed out to you upthread, and you’re handwaving.
I know its true because its in the scripture and the scripture is true because god says its true and I know there is a god because it says so in the scripture and I know its true because…
Doesn’t wash, sorry.
Additionally, you make the claim that The Church is “The Whore” mentioned in Revelations, which would be an interpretation, yet you also say Revelations is not allegorical. Is that cake good? Are you going to eat it, too?
You know that your scripture is the truth because? As opposed to all the other religious texts out there?
Cheers,
G
In other words, no, no I can’t…
Cheers,
G
And don’t forget to Kiss Hank’s <cough> butt. 
And if my past experiences with attempting to logically debate religion with my fundamentalist Catholic friend (who knew there was such a thing?) are any indication, there will continue to be no refutations. My friend’s responses generally take one or more of these forms: nitpicking tangenital points; obfuscation with a blizzard of irrelevancies; straw man, ad hominem, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and slippery slope arguments; and silence. A deep and fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary biology doesn’t help matters. (None of which is meant to suggest that I’m necessarily right in those arguments, needless to say.)
What it comes down to is that my friend is a deeply religious person who believes. Faith is the core of his life. Therefore opposing positions are almost automatically taken not as arguments to be refuted, but as attacks to be denied. It can be annoying, but it does make for some entertaining email discussions between us.
Hey, you left out the One True Church!
Mohammed was not raised in a community of Catholics. (There were a few Christians in Mecca but they weren’t Catholic.) And any Muslim will tell you the Koran is perfected scripture. The Bible was the work of true profits of Allah but somehow they misunderstood what he told them or the people who wrote it down misunderstood what the profits said, resulting in all those errors you’re complaining about.
And the historical or spiritual truth of any element of Christianity does not fall under the heading of “probable.”