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Originally Posted by Matthew
Sure. But your repeated "two way political decision" statements don't help us decide which way to go, or which side's teachings are false.
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But it can weed out the fuzzy middle ground, something that both sides often try to appeal to.
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No, Marc, you are making a decision about what you believe God and Christ to have said on the matter, and about why you believe it, and about what the importance of that belief is.
As you yourself say, you're "analyzing" what has been said. So acknowledge what your analysis brings to the table.
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When something is being analzyed/interpreted, the
actual text of what is being analyzed is very important. If two people are analyzing the statement “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”, person A can go into detail about how much effort he believes the fox put into it’s leg muscles to accomplish this. If person B then says “There was no fox involved”, then that person’s interpretation skill or honesty has to be questioned. Those who actually know Christianity tend to wonder about theistic evolutionists just like they would wonder about person B above. I’m not trying to be offensive, but someone very similar to person B was who I saw in the author of “Finding Darwin’s God”.
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And I repeat: Why? Why is it a problem to construe the Bible as expressing spiritual rather than worldly truths?
I mean, come on: Our country's so-called "culture war" is a matter of politics, pure and simple. It's about a worldly kingdom, not the kingdom of heaven. And the greatest problem with the culture-war version of Christianity is that its tactics and even its goals are all-too worldy.
Nietzsche is famous for having proclaimed "God is dead!" Less well-known is his characterization of God's death as a murder -- and of believers themselves as the murderers.
Think about it.
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So you’re saying Christianity shouldn’t be involved in worldliness? Traditional Christian morals are already involved in a lot of political issues, and if they’re taken away, we’ll have a radically different society than what we have now.
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Two points need to be addressed here.
First, the Gospels were simply not written by eyewitnesses to the life of Christ. Mark and Luke certainly don't number themselves among the Twelve, and neither these Gospels nor even Matthew ever claims to have been written by an eyewitness. Mark was written in the late 60's AD, Matthew in the early 80's, and Luke in the late 80's (by a Gentile proselyte, to boot). John, the only Gospel to make a claim of authorship by an eyewitness, was also the last Gospel to be written, around 100 give or take a couple years -- rather to late to have been written by an eyewitness.
Second, even if they were recorded by eyewitnesses, "as best they could" is utterly incompatible with the notion that the divine inspiration of scripture is guarantee that what the authors wrote is inerrant, which you defend below. When the chips are down, even you aren't interpreting things literally!
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I was a little too brief and careless in making my point. The Gospels were the result of eyewitness accounts, as compiled by the authors. So there were many more than 4 eyewitnessis, with a lot of different times and circumstances involved in compiling it all.
If a “myth” is being put forward, it only makes sense that the person or persons doing it are going to try to make every detail match perfectly, or to make the story as complete as possible. If the gospels all matched perfectly, if every year of Jesus’ life was detailed thoroughly, to me it would make Christianity less believable. (there are practically no records of Jesus’ life from age 12 to age 30) If there were no gaps or questions, it would appear that a person or persons had one organized attempt to put forward a myth. Christianity clearly has no defined earthly organization. The 66 book Bible didn’t come together by any
defined organization, except God’s.
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"Two way political decisions" again! -sigh-
In any event, here you use the phrase in a "slippery slope" argument. And it suffers from the same problem as all slippery slopes: There is no reason why one must take what is here presented as just one more simple step.
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Slippery slopes never
have to occur, but the
likelihood of their occurance is often strong enough that the “have too” occurance is practically a given. History clearly shows us that.
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But again, I thought we were talking about science and religion. You are relentlessly politicizing, my friend!
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Politics is all there is to it!
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In any event, here's a hunch. Total up the number of books sold since 1950 that explain evolution to a lay scientific audience, and those that promote atheism. Then total up books sold since 1950 that explain Christian ideas to non-clergy, and those that criticize evolution and/or atheism. My guess is that while some of the individual books in the first group might outsell most individual books in the second, the overall figures for the second group will be greater than those in the first. And it won't even be close.
Just a hunch. I dont have clue one about where I'd find some reliable figures. Any ideas? And what do you think of the hunch?
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I don’t know where to find figures on it either. I’m sure you’d be right if the years were 1950 to 1970, or 1950 to 1985. After that, I’d say there’d be a pretty drastic shift. The logical emergence of ID (a search for design, not a designer) coupled with the continuing inability of the scientific community to explain the origin of the simplest forms of life, has caused the evolution/atheist books/promotion to drastically increase. The most recent promotions are the ones most relevent to current thinking. (politics
)
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And that's exactly what I don't think is at all plausible. Divine inspiration doesn't eliminate the possibility of human error. After all, if it did, the inconsistencies in detail that you yourself acknowledged above wouldn't happen in the first place.
You can't have it both ways, Marc. You can't say that divine inspiration is so strong it makes human prejudices and fallibility non-existent on the one hand, but then dismiss contradictions between the Gospel accounts as people doing "the best they could" on the other.
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I don’t claim to completely understand it - I don't think anyone can. There are measures of faith in all beliefs. Mine, yours, and atheists too.
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I can speak only for myself, but it's true, I generally have not been subjected to ridicule or attack by atheists. At least not personally, in the overwhelming majority of cases. On the other hand, my ideas have certainly been criticized by atheists many times (admittedly not much on this board). Perhaps they don't personally attack me because I don't personally attack them?...
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You don’t have to personally attack
some atheists to be personally attacked by them at 4forums, trust me.
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I have, however, received some blisteringly personal attacks from fellow "Christians." I've been called an atheist, and that's a rather kind name for it. On this very board, I've had people inform me that I have no relationship with God or Christ.
By our deeds are we known. Many of the atheists I know are more Christian than all-too many of the Christians....
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It is a confusing world – some Christians I want nothing to do with, and I know some atheists who are very nice people. Too many people make the mistake of judging Christianity on that, or I should say, making it (actions of people) a central issue of Christianity. It’s not central, Christ
and his word are central.
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In terms of the linguistics? Nope. In terms of "literalists" misinterpreting one of their own favorite verses? Nope.
But in terms of his goals? Yes, I find something to disagree with, since I'm not an atheist.
And like it or not, the majority of Christian Bible scholars do think that the letters to Timothy were not written by Paul. In the case of 2nd Timothy, you can at least make a case that the author knew Paul. But in the case of 1st Timothy, the church structure described simply didn't exist during Paul's lifetime.
Perhaps not the majority of scholars at schools and seminaries run by "religious conservatives" or "Biblical literalists," I suppose. But this view of the letters is hardly new, and you can find it being taught to future clergymen and future scholars all across the country and all across the world, every day. They generally find that their faith is not shattered by the information.
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I’m a religious conservative, and I think liberal interpretations and ideas are dangerous. Why that is, should be clear in my opinions about politics, slippery slopes, etc.