Yeah, I was lurking steady at first and then it just went to hell. With no defined variables an argument usually turns into a rant.
So, if y’all can clear up the free will issue vs. the God does NOT tempt that’ll be good enough for me. Otherwise I think I’ll leave it w/ya’…later 
Fuel’s cherry-picking of arguments is one reason why I begin to doubt that he’s really here to learn.
If I wanted to know the extent to which the Bible was inerrant, I’d focus on the biggest, most difficult questions. It seems to me that nitpicking over eight vs. eighteen, or even “was there a census, or wasn’t there” pales by comparison to the question of whether Jeremiah was a false prophet. If you deal with Jeremiah first, and find Jeremiah to be wanting, then you’ve raised the bar high enough that you no longer have to worry about niggling details that could be explained away as translator error, because you already know that it’s possible that an entire book of the Bible might need to be dumped.
But it seems to me that Fuel’s strategy is to work on tiny differences that could be explained away as translator error or a misunderstanding of cultural quirks, and then (glacially) slowly work his way up. If he’s going to do that, then he has to take every step one at a time. OTOH, if we believe his “messenger from God” story (as opposed to his “humble and open-minded student” story) then it makes sense that he’d tackle the easiest problems at the expense of the difficult ones, because that would be the approach that would make his pro-inerrancy position look better.
Fuel, when are you going to apologize for your immature behavior and false accusations? Ever?
damned hamster’s [insert irate smiley here]
Ben I agree with you on the nitpicking. It’s simply a diversion from dealing with real issues.
ie: Thou shalt make NO GRAVEN IMAGES followed by a detailed instruction regarding the golden images atop the ark of the covenant. No mistranslation or different authors there.
and that is not even what I would consider top billing on the hit/miss parade.
The Hebrew word in Genesis 22:1 for tempt is “nacah”. The root of this word, according to Key Word study Bible, is “to test”. Adventure, assay (examine by test or trail, attempt, analyze to find out quantity; Thorndike Barnhardt dictionary), prove, tempt, try.
The majority of those translated words imply that God wanted to test Abraham, to try him, to prove him a solid believer by seeing if he will sacrifice his son for God. The whole story is about God testing Abraham. It is safe to say this translation of tempt is not the best in this case.
The Greek word for temptation in Matthew 6:13 is peirasmos, from the word peirazo, which is from the word peira.
Peira comes from the idea of piercing (peran). It means “a test, assaying, trial.”
Peirazo means “to test, assay, examine, go about, prove, tempt, try.”
Peirasmos means "a putting to proof by experiment [of good], experience [of evil], solicitation, discipline of provocation, by impl. adversity: temptation, try.
Again, translation seems a little sketchy. There seems to be a fine line between tempt and try.
However, the word used in James is the same as that used in MAtthew. So any translation error that there may be, it’s the same word.
Further, 1 Corinthians 10:13 says that God will never tempt (Peirazo) anyone beyond what they are able to resist (paraphrased).
So, another (second) verse that contradicts James.
My answer is: God did not tempt Abraham, he tried him.
However, Jesus did say temptation in the literal sense, and in the same sense that James said God would not tempt believers. Being objective, I cannot fathom an answer to this contention of why Jesus would say this or why Paul would write that God would tempt, just not beyond resistance. Anyone want to try and explain this? (We may have found a contradiction here! Can you believe I am actually kind of excited?)
I can try and say that God tries, not tempts, but being objective, I cannot do this.
As you see by my last post, I am moving on from this wild and bazzar situation you have created.
No. You made a conditional statement that would be most likely read in a way different than you intended. You then chided us on the fact that we did not spend the extra effort to see that you had really meant something entirely different than you had actually posted.
You are still not paying attention. Your statement was poorly constructed and your accusation toward Apos was false. You continue to claim that we are the ones at fault for your poor composition. There is a reason I made the English to COBOL comparison. Between the 1968 and 1974 releases of ANSI COBOL, the standards group wrestled with exactly the construction you used, eventually deciding to change the way COBOL worked because it led to too many errors. Yet you have claimed that we should have spent the extra energy and time to come to a conclusion different than the normal reading of your construction:
That was not “straight from [his] head” but straight from your keyboard.
You are now spending an inordinate amount of time playing “gotcha” with Ben’s posts, and very little effort recognizing that you are the one responsible for the confusion regarding your posts.
You have also begun to introduce a new element. You have begun proclaiming what (you believe) God is like as though that answers the issues that are raised. However, there is no reason for a skeptic or an unbeliever to accept your word about the nature of God. Attacking other posts based on your faith is an indication that you are not sufficiently convinced of the truth of your evidence to make a point. (Not to mention that while most Christians would agree with many of your claims regarding the nature of God, there are Christians who do not accept all of your claims, so why should a skeptic accept any of them?)
Pick a point. Edit and review your posts to ensure that they are not ambiguous. Leave the witnessing out of the discussion. (It is appropriate in this Forum, but it is counterproductive in this thread.) Then pay attention to what is actually said. Otherwise, this train wreck is simply going to splatter across the countryside in flames.
So, Fuel can we agree on at least one error found thus far?
By stating that our (you used ‘we’, to include yourself) perception of change in relation to God is irrelevant, it certainly doesn’t support your arguments in defense of that same God. Why? Because you are stating that your perception of God is irrelevant.
In fact, it suggests that your perception of whether God exists or not is equally irrelevant.
So, I brought it down to earth a bit…
Should I eat food and drink water? By asking this, I was asking “How, in sorting through all of this ‘irrelevance’, are you able to make a positive claim about whether not not people should eat food or not?”
I find this question to be much more to the point. I also don’t see where you’re going to find a quote in the Bible directly from Gods mouth decreeing that we actually eat food or drink water. Even supposing that you could, why should I consider that ‘law’ more compelling than many of the 100’s of laws that humans don’t observe in the Bible because they are totally absurd?
Does God PUNISH me if I stop eating food and drinking water?
Do I enter eternal damnation for intentionally deciding not to eat food or drink water? It sounds like a short-cut to God if you ask me. How can abstinence ‘technically’ be suicide, if the abstenence from logic into faith is the driving mechanism that determines ones entry into heaven? On a scale of 1-10, I consider intentional self-starvation to death an 11, with regards to a commitment to the concept of faith. How many people can truly do such a thing, how many are truly scared? You may want to jump the gun and call it suicide, but really, it’s just abstinence.
How are we to know that God won’t swoop down and ‘miracle’ on us if we abstain from food? If God wants us to live, God will intervene inspite of our lack of expectation with regards to such an abstinence.
This is one of the most critical questions IMO, that emerges from attempting to reconcile some degree of rationality from the Bible, such that one can make some sort of informed decision on whether to discard it (the Bible) or accept it based on soundness.
With the information I have, I do not believe that the Bible addresses these issues in a manner that causes me to consider it as a document that addresses tangible human issues and realities. The book cannot compell a human being to eat food based upon its logical structure. That’s a serious issue IMO!
You may consider it to be common sense, however, the Bible doesn’t seem to command common sense in the first place. The Bible practically begs to be examined in this degree of detail, considering what it promises as a negative effect (eternal damnation).
Fuel,
If there is one sentence in the Bible that states, “Eating and drinking is good.”
Does this mean that if the Bible states, “North is good.”, that south is bad?
People DO eat in the Bible, and some of the miracles in the Bible involve procuring food. None of this delves into the genuine complexity of whether the refusal to eat food is a BAD act.
Why? Because the refusal to eat food, makes no necessary presumption upon ‘testing’ God or committing suicide.
How can you be testing God, if you’re not DOING anything?
To assume that not DOING anything, will cause your death, is to desregard the perspective that God has the capacity to interfere with natural law (and is thus, heretical).
Basically, the Bible makes no compelling argumant for eating food or drinking water with respect to rewards, or lack thereof in heaven.
Bring this down to earth now. What benefit does the Bible provide to someone who is asking this most BASIC question?
To do or not to do anything at all.
[another cheap shot]
Not as old as your material. 
[/another cheap shot]
An interesting admission.
“I don’t know if it’s right, but it feels good so I believe in it anyway”.
Why do you need to believe? To paraphrase others, the natural world is packed with infinite wonders and amazing things, without making up some supreme being/creator to attribute it all to.
Why do you feel you need to have some being to whom you can feel submissive, to whom you must feel obligated to thank for sunny days and puppy dogs, but whom you daren’t blame for prostrate cancer and death by anurysm?
(“I’m sure he had a reason for it. No, I don’t know what the reason is, but hey, he’s God, I’m sure it’s a damned good reason He caused- or was it allowed?- those balconies to collapse.”)
And the devout Hindu believes equally fervently in Brahma and Vishnu. The Shintoist believes fervently in Amaterasu. All you’re saying is “I know I’m right 'cause it feels right.”
Would you have come to the same equally inescapable conclusion had you never read the Bible? Or did your belief, as is often the case, only solidify after you’d read the work?
Why do people convert from one religion to another? The only reason I can think of is because one priest or rabbi is simply a better salesman then the other…
I’d be surprised if you could. No one I’ve ever asked, in real life or online, has come up with anything more than an artful evasion of the question…
… Yes, exactly. Just like that.
Isn’t that awfully convenient. We can’t understand what’s happening, or why some things happen. Could it be it’s simply chaotic nature, events happening in random order, varied only by the whims of wind, water and blind luck?
No, of course not. There must be a logical reason for the platypus, the appendix and AIDS. It’s just that God’s reasoning is so vast, so complex, so Divine, that we as mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend it. (Even though we wrote a whole book about it all of ten minutes after we invented the wheel.)
A convenient dodge, and sadly used all to often. We can’t explain it, but God doesn’t do things frivolously, badly or incorrectly- see, it says so right here in the Bible- so therefore God must have a reason for doing what he did.
Again, how do we know that? Because the Bible said so. How do we know the Bible is right? Because it was dictated by God. How do we know that? It says so in the Bible.
Argue the logical minutiae of eights and eighteens if you must, but I simply cannot fathom the more monstrous contradictions in the underlying theme, the very concept we understand today as Christianity.
God made the Earth about 5,000 years ago. So what about those fossils that can be dated to a hundred milllion years prior to that? Those are false, planted by God to give the illusion of age. So you’re saying God is deliberately tricking us, actively decieving us, and our eternal lives are forfeit for the sin of falling for his trick?
If I was made by God, he made me unable to accept his existence without rational proof. He will not reveal himself, as such a revelation would remove the need for faith- an excellent dodge, by the way! If I do not believe and do not worship him, I am thus damned for eternity. Thus, God made me predestined to be condemned.
No, fancy and/or liberal interpretation is the hiding tool.
Why doesn’t God show himself? Ah, to do so would remove the need for his flock to have faith in his existence.
Odd, last I looked it didn’t say anything about that in the Bible itself, so I’ll assume it’s a later interpretation, a way to try and answer the ages-old unanswerable question?
That’s not logic.
Why? Aren’t the scholars the very ones that God should try and convince? Think of what a marketing coup it would have been if God had appeared to Carl Sagan or James Randi and proved his existence?
Why babies? What use is the information to them? Obviously they must shortly forget it, and they cannot pray or worship, they cannot “help spread the word” so this strikes me as one of those “feel good” things at which the Church is so practiced.
What an artful evasion. I’d ask you to explain it, but I suspect I’d get more of the same, and I actually understand your point- we’re back to the whole “I don’t understand it, but God must have a reason for it” argument.
The personal conundrum and the age-of-the-earth-deception paradox previously mentioned are difficult or impossible to answer logically from a theology standpoint, so one has to come up with little more than an artful way of repeating yet again the old “God works in mysterious ways” axiom.
I see perfectly. Scientists who think they have all the answers are punished by God for being prideful, yet theologists who feel they have all the answers, can riddle their way out of any logical paradox, are simply doing the Lord’s Good Work.
In other words, witnessing. Yes, I’d gathered that already. Thanks for the heads up.
[last cheap shot]
Oh, so it’s Presumption now, is it?
[/last cheap shot]
In case some haven’t realized, I have realized my COBOL error about 50 friggin’ posts back. I have admitted several times to that error, why does everyone still say that I am arguing that? I just said that Ben’s psuedo COBOL error was in fact an actual insult. He messed up the wording and made it so it was an actual statement of fact that I used profanity. SOme of you are missing these points alltogether, and your not seeing this is making you think very lowly of me right now. If you care enough to know the truth of this very odd and confusing situation, you wil read back and realize that I:
I actually think at this point, that you two are still wooshing me or whatever. You are not responding to my very detailed, and very technically sound posts telling you why I am acting like I am. I simply don’t understand this confusion. My posts make perfect sense yet you do not think they do. So, I will not indulge in this anymore.
Perhaps because your last three comments regarding your statements were:
In the first, you deny responsibility for the confusion (the point I recently addressed).
In the second you do not indicate any error on your part, but do impugn the abilities of another poster (a position for which you can provide no support beyond your personal feelings).
In the third, you dismiss your error by continuing to hold that the other readers “misinterpreted” it.
Sorry. I do not see where you have “admitted several times to that error.” I see where you have recognized that there was miscommunication, but you have steadfastly refused to accept responsibility for that error (except to claim that you “already” did).
My point was not that you have to post some abject apology. I’m quite willing to let the matter drop. (At the time that I posted, however, the matter was still fairly fresh, and not “50 friggin’ posts back.”)
My point was that you are not being very careful in your presentation and that you were trying to spread the blame for the miscommunication to other people.
If you want to drop it, fine. Don’t respond (especially since you have aready “moved on”).
I would, however, suggest (again) that you are not going to get very far using the approach of declaring what God is “really” like. You are formulating that belief of the nature of God based on particular theologies that exist within the Christian tradition (with some similarities to some Jewish and Muslim traditions) but that are not even held as absolutely true among all Christians, Jews, or Muslims. Trying to discuss what God has said or meant, based on your own belief in the nature of God will simply fall flat when addressed to people (Christian, Jewish, or Muslim) who do not follow your tradition of belief or people (skeptic, atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) who do not share any of those beliefs. (You may want to do some research on the Invisible Pink Unicorn.)
.
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By the way, whoosh must be spelled with the h following the w in order to get the aspirated effect of hearing the wind whistling over your head as the point sails by. 
A couple of points:
First, I defined the Synoptic Problem (which is actually a group of problems, taken together as “Why are these three gospels so much alike in some ways yet so different in others?”) a bit earlier in this thread. The “Q Hypothesis” is advanced essentially as a reasonable solution, making one minimum assumption, to resolve the question. (That “minimum assumption” is, somebody made a collection of stuff Jesus taught, either as a single document or as a tradition; Matthew and Luke, or early redactors working with their writings, used Mark for a frame story and Q as a shared source for much of Jesus’s teachings, along with material specific to each.)
I would like to know how folks who reject Q (as far as I can tell, that would include Fuel, Actuary, and Rodrigo here; anyone else holding or understanding a non-Q position is welcome to chime in) resolve the Synoptic Problem. I’m assuming nobody involved in this thread holds to a doctrine of inspiration that amounts to God literally dictating the words of the three Synoptic Gospels to the authors. My original question seems to have gotten lost in the furore about who accused whom of what, so I’m resurrecting the issue.
My second point has to do with the credence of the Bible. Obviously on a board where stances range from thoroughgoing skepticism to deeply held convictions regarding divine inspiration, there can be no consensus. But at a minimum we can send the strawmen back to Oz to go look for the Cowardly Thylacine!
Let’s do an analogy. There seems to be some strong evidence that an amphictyony of Greek cities went to war with a group of cities on the northern Aegean littoral of Asia Minor in a dispute centered on trade routes in the later Bronze Age. Now the Iliad was one of the central works of the ancient Greek polytheism, telling the story of this war in terms of a proximate cause of the abduction of Helen, Queen of Sparta, by Prince Paris of Troy, and how legendary heroes and deities fought on each side in the ensuing conflict. I am as certain as I am of almost anything that Ares, Aphrodite, Athena, et al. had no part in that conflict; I have strong doubts about the historicity of Hector, Helen, Aeneas, Memnon, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and the rest of the cast, at least as Homer represents them as having behaved. Nonetheless, I’m fairly certain that the Iliad recounts a legendarization of a real historical event described in the second sentence of this paragraph.
I am fairly confident that the Bible can be understood in very similar terms. Much (not all) of Old Testaement accounts is very likely to have been the product of writers reducing to prose the traditions of the Israelite people, a fair amount of it being legend. Abraham, for example, is unlikely to have had a significant effect on the Battle of Nine Kings, whatever the objective historic analog of that event may have been, but was built up in the minds of his descendants to have commanded a significant pursuit task force. I disagree with Diogenes about the falsity of David’s Empire – but I suspect strongly that land held on a very temporary basis as the result of a campaign was claimed as part of an ongoing empire, when the fact of the matter probably was that David held it about as long as Napoleonic France held Lviv and Smolensk.
I’ve made my stand on Q repeatedly and I’ll make it one FINAL time. I don’t give a (insert expletive) if Q existed or not (I’m personally inclined, tho I’m no scholar, to believe it didn’t) so long as those claiming its existance don’t deny Divine Inspiration.
OTOH, if you deny Divine Inspiration, the Q isn’t really the problem, is it? The Bible becomes an unwiledly historic/fable/morality/infomercial book about which I wouldn’t waste my time arguing, like how many soldiers were on Sennacherib’s army or if Luke was a Green Bay Packers fan. If the Bible is a super-sized Aesop Fable, it fails at that (they could’ve at least deleted all those “begats”).
One for Diogenes the Cynic : Yes, faith completely devoid of proof gets very close to stupid. Faith that trancsends, but which doesn’t deny reason, that’s me. It’s like “PI”. We know the decimals go forever but, since they go forever, we can’t actually prove by “showing” it’s never gonna stop, we just hold some math as valid ang go we it (please remember this is just a lame analogy, don’t go bananas on it).
One more thing. IMHO, the “Synoptic Problem” is more a literary porblem than THeological (no going bananas again, please). For me it’s like if Edward de Vere is the real Shakespeare, if he is, Romeo and Juliet would still die.
You have made two separate assertions regarding Q and this is only the second time that you indicated that you “could” accept Q as long is it is not used to deny Divine Inspiration. However, as long as you are no longer going to insert hijacks to deny the reality of Q, I am sure we can live with that.
The Q theory doesn’t draw any inferences about divine authorship one way or the other. No serious scholarship that I’m aware of makes any attempt to “deny” divine inspiration. That is an assertion which is beyond the purview of scholarly research. It is an unfalsafiable statement and thus cannot be subjected to scientific analysis. Anyone who wishes to assert divine inspiration has the burden to prove it. Can you suggest a test which would unequivocally prove or disprove divine inspiration?
You say faith without proof is stupid, yet you also claim to have faith. If you are not stupid you must have evidence. What is your evidence?
But we can demonstrate that any numeric representation of Pi is infinitely long…
Sure. But many Q guys deny inspiration because they deny the supernatural a priori, so why waste time. It’s, for them, like doing scholarship to deny that Paris is the capital of France.
None that will pass your scientific rules, no. You may think it is dodging the issue, but I can’t convince if you don’t want to be convinced.
I feel His presecense, I see His handiwork on me and His creation, I admire His work and believe what His son said and that His death and Resurection were all for my salvation ( sounded a bit fundamentalist for a Caholic) I know they won’t convince you because they aren’t empirical but your faith in the Empirical god is as unfalsifiable as mine (or can you unequivocally prove that empricism is right. Of course you can’t use empiricism to prove empiricism?). BTW, I wouldn’t like to believe in a god that could be reduce to a mathematical equation, some god!
TO TVAA . I know, but you can’t only tell me that the operation you make says that, you can’t show it to me (like I can show you an apple) I know it was a lame analogy, it was the first that popped up, it wasn’t intended for a post-doctorate in philosophy thesis.