Oops, never mind. Just saw her post above and now know it’s the same Ark, not a different one.
I bet that you’re wrong. I’m an atheist but I at least have a adolescent’s understanding of the Bible. Most people believe that parts of it are true, parts of it are myth and parts of it are based on true events that have changed in the retelling. That’s reasonable. Only the willfully ignorant believe that all of it is literal or every bit of it is bullshit.
Everybody who I have quoted either is not familiar with the Bible, or else doesn’t believe that what it says is important.
II Timothy 3:16–
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
Now, we have only three choices. (1), The Bible was inspired by God, just like it says. (2), It was written by good men, on their own, to try to instruct people. (3), It was written by bad men, for reasons unknown.
Now why would bad men write it? The Bible is chock-full of reproof of wickedness. Why would an unknown number of bad men, across several centuries, consistently condemn in strong terms the very things that they themselves were doing? It makes no sense. Nor does it make sense for good men to write it on their own. Because the Bible writers explicitly claimed that they were doing so under Divine inspiration. Now if they were writing it on their own, instead, they would have been lying. And good men, by definition, do not lie. That leaves only the first possibility.
Matthew 18:2-4–
“And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Mark 10:14, 15–
“But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”
Here we see that it takes child-like simplicity and trust to get into Heaven. If you read the Creation story to a child, would he take a “day” to mean 24 hours, or would he take it to mean a period of millions of years? We must take God at His word, and believe that He means exactly what He says, if we want to get into Heaven. When the Bible says that the Flood covered the whole earth, that’s exactly what happened.
Titus 1:2–
“In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.”
God’s very nature is absolute, perfect truth. He cannot lie. If by some unimaginable reason, this verse is incorrect, then NOTHING in the Bible is correct.
Matthew 7:21-23–
“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
There are sadly a great many people who are deceived. They think that they are Christians, when they’re not. They will find out the truth when it is too late to do anything about it.
(4), It’s just a bunch of stories, some more factual than others.
What do you mean by “too late to do anything about it”?
Wow. This sounds like such a great, straight-forward, compelling argument… until you give it just a moment’s thought.
I’ll bet that books have been written on just this pivot point. There’s so much to be said here… Shortest answer - power. It’s all about power.
Imagine instead of religion that we are speaking about politics. Why would a politician deny climate change or demand to see Obama’s birth certificate or demand that Britain leave the EU or demand to regulate which bathrooms people can use? All of these issues are, as we used to say, “no-brainers”. The answer is the same - power. If the politician says the stupid thing, the politician stays in power.
Sorry for the hijack. I now return you to your thread about large ships.
The Bible is not an instruction manual for Christianity; Christianity existed before your quotes were written. Most religions aren’t defined by a rulebook.
I guess we should be perfecting our skills in carpentry and animal husbandry.
(5) It’s not all literally true, even though inspired by god, because god understands the use of parable, metaphor, and allegory (6) Paul thought it was true, but it wasn’t, (7) Parts were inspired by god, but other parts including II Tim weren’t…
One could go on all day like this…
just so I’m understanding you correctly, you are using a quote from the bible to bolster a claim for the truth of the bible?
You do realise that isn’t really valid don’t you?
Where is Christ mentioned in Genesis?
But this distinctly doesn’t say that all scripture consists of factual history.
Should belong in a separate thread, but I’d be interested in how Flyer tries to weasel his way out of the fact that the Bible contradicts itself in multiple places. Does that mean God has multiple-personality disorder? 
Apparently, the whole damn book is about Jesus: From Genesis to the Gospel | Answers in Genesis
well the Trinity and all 
Well shoot, you’ve just debased my entire argument. It’s clear now that God exists and the bible is a true accounting.
:rolleyes:
I know very nice caring people on both sides of the religious fence. I know some complete asses too.
Whatever you want for your beliefs (or not) is fine with me as long as it does not impose on me. Your ‘god’ has his own tax I suppose, don’t try to inflict it on me, in dollars or judgement.
What scares me are the folks that claim religion (of any stripe) prevents them from being a bad person. And it goes beyond that. That they can be bad as long as they are somehow ‘forgiven’ because they are religious. That’s a problem.
If you beat your wife or husband or dog, and think it’s ok because you go to church, well if your god does not talk to you, I might. Otherwise, whatever floats your boat.
No, they aren’t. I believe it was a flood of the whole world as they knew it at the time, which is possible, depending on exactly where it was.
We’ve got a lot more than three choices, there. (4) It was written by good men, who genuinely thought they were inspired by God, but were mistaken. (5) It was written by good men who really were inspired by God, which was subsequently edited and translated by normal men who changed the text to suit their own purposes. (6) It was written by some combination of good men inspired by God, good men not inspired by God, and bad men. (7) It was written by men who were, themselves, some combination of good, bad, inspired, and uninspired. “Good men do not lie” is not true, because no man is all good. If I’m not much mistaken, that idea is somewhat central to your religious beliefs, is it not?
This is a good example of what I was talking about. In this context the story makes no sense biblically.
Question NearWildHeaven, Genisis informs us that God, Himself, brought the flood because he judged humankind to be evil. His plan was to destroy what he had created earlier and start over. So what is it, God isn’t powerful enough to create a worldwide flood or is it that it really wasn’t created by God at all but was just some local overflow that a human spun into a creation myth?
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