Raf

"You're not gonna fall for a banana in the tailpipe?"

I'll add there's no evidence of a historical Abraham and plenty of reason to suspect he is just as mythical as Adam. But whatever. I agree that Jesus the rabbi probably existed, but so much of what has been passed down about him is legend, midrash and nonsense that it's tough to discern what really happened in his life and what was made up to suit an agenda. The Virgin birth was made up to suit an agenda. There was no Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. And maybe he was born in Bethlehem, but how did he get there? The accounts in Matthew and Luke are mutually exclusive. One cannot have happened if the other did. When did the wedding at Cana take place? Read John. It's a couple of days after Jesus' baptism, right? JOHN HAD ACCESS TO THE PREVIOUS GOSPELS. He should have known full well that Jesus was fasting in the wilderness at that time. So either he wasn't, in which case Matthew, Mark and Luke are wrong, or he was, in which case John is wrong. I know! John time jumps! No he doesn't. That's an excuse on par with dispensationalism designed to explain away blatant contradictions in the text. The notion that Luke interviewed eyewitnesses to the events in question assumes two things that are not true. 1. It assumes Luke made this claim. Read the verses. He does not make this claim. 2. It assumes "Luke" wrote the gospel. No serious, unbiased scholar believes that. I could go on (and on), but I'm going to stop here for the sake of time. This thread is in the wrong forum. You are not questioning faith in the same sense as the name of this form. You are not really asking WHETHER the scriptures can be God-breathed while still containing errors and contradictions. You're asking HOW the scriptures can be God-breathed and still contain errors and contradictions. And that's a perfectly fine, valid, doctrinal question.

I don't think you mean the same thing I do when we use the term "questioning faith."

So when we're dividing the historical from the figurative, where do we draw the line? Ben Carson is out there talking about how the pyramids were built by Joseph to store grain. There probably was no Joseph, and if there were, the pyramids would have predated him by 700 years or so (give or take, based on proposed dates for the Exodus, adding the required number of years in Egypt, the pyramids were still around for centuries before that). But the Bible (conveniently) doesn't give the dates or the names of the Pharoahs involved in any of these stories. So was the sojourn in Egypt figurative? Was the Exodus figurative (because it, too, is probably not history. Egypt never lost that much of its population at one time, slave or free). If the Exodus is a figurative event, what does that mean about Passover and the giving of the Law? Or are we saying that only the Genesis creation myth is figurative? There was no Adam. There was no Eve. Ok. So why do we die? And how did sin enter the world? And how is Jesus the second Adam if there was no first? Big can of worms being opened when we say Genesis was figurative.

The Aileen on that list is Wournos. And she won an Oscar for it. And you could see the movie a dozen times and not recognize her. Which totally ruins her topless scene.

My Fair Lady

Spoilers? Good warning, but nothing mentioned was major, I don't think. I did like the fact that Supergirl's adoptive parents were Helen Slater and Dean Cain.

Regarding my use of the word "probably": I do not believe I am more astute than liberal or conservative theologians. I just think I'm choosing my words carefully because I am, frankly, in a forum where words get parsed more than they would in your average conversation. As such, when I am conscious of it, I try to express thoughts carefully. I originally wrote: "That Jesus walked is history. That he walked on water is not." But then I remembered that historians don't talk that way. They speak in probabilities, and the further removed they are from an event, the more qualified their language becomes. I have no doubt there will be times when I will slip and leave the "probably" out of my comments. For example, when I say "Adam and Eve, as described in the Bible, did not exist," I'm going to leave out the "probably" because including it introduces a level of uncertainty that is missing from my opinion. There was no first man and first woman living in Mesopotamia six or seven thousand years ago who are ancestors of all humanity. That is so extablished in multiple disciplines that to say "probably" would be misleading. I would also say Moses, as described in the Bible, did not exist. Now, there may have been a Moses who was influential in the founding of the religion that eventually became Judaism. Or not. But Exodus? Probably never happened. The evidence is against it. Overwhelmingly. Israel emerged from Canaan, it didn't invade Canaan. Probably. That's what the evidence strongly suggests. It is often said among atheists that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I told you I drove to work today, you would probably accept my word for it, even though I am providing you with no proof. If I told you I teleported to work today, you would demand proof, and more than just my word. You would want to see the machine. You would want to test it. The amount of evidence required to support my extraordinary claim would be extraordinarily high. And you are under no obligation to believe my claim until I prove it. You don't have to disprove it. It is enought that you don't accept it. The burden of proof is mine. That a written work is "God-breathed" is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. But it has none. The Bible shows no indication that it was written by anyone with any extraordinary insight into anything. Sure, there's some wisdom in it, but is it extraordinary wisdom? Not really. You find similar bits of wisdom in all sorts of historical writings. Science? Nah. It botches science left and right. God's existence is in the same category. That there is a transcendent being who created all life on earth, the earth, the solar system, the rings of Saturn, the diamond rains of Jupiter, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, BILLIONS of other galaxies, each with billions of stars, black holes, nebulae, dark matter... and that this transcendent being never began to exist and will never cease to exist, and he cares, very, very deeply, about who you please with your genitals, is an extraordinary claim. I no longer believe it. It's not that I've demonstrated that such a being doesn't exist. It's that no one has demonstrated that he does exist. Claims are not evidence. The Bible is a claim. It is not evidence. And no, I don't think it's God-breathed.

Regarding The World having TWO heroes now, I would argue that this does not necessarily exclude Flash and Arrow, each of whom is very much identified all but exclusively with his city. They are not The World's heroes. Superman is, and Supergirl, by using that expression, clearly intends to be. Just a thought. I'm going to see if I can merge the two threads.

Okaaaaaay

You can always see it online

Wow. This show rocks.

Enjoy your celebration! I actually agree with you on that point. If you isolate my comment from other comments I've made on the same subject, it would cause confusion, but I agree: "Paul" was not writing about the very letter he was writing when he said "all scripture is given by inspiration of God" (and, it is important to note, I do not believe Paul wrote the epistles to Timothy). Unlike other holy books, the Bible is not aware of itself as ONE book. It has no statements about itself as a book. When the writers of the Bible speak of "His Word," they are not talking about the Bible. They are not talking about Psalms. They are being very literal: HIS WORD. Insofar as any scripture contains His Word, it is His Word that is exalted. My problem, of course, is that "His Word," as communicated in those books, doesn't strike me as anything all that enlightened (see the "Are you more moral than Yahweh" thread for exploration of this position). But in this, we are coming to the material from very different positions. Steve, I appreciate you placing this thread in "Questioning Faith," and I see your reasons for doing so, but I'm feeling strengthened in the position that this is a more general doctrinal question: What does "God-breathed" really mean? By placing it here, you're explicitly inviting atheist input and/or views that might challenge your faith in God (as opposed to the nature of the Bible). I don't think you're questioning faith here. I think you're challenging a doctrinal position. I'm inclined to leave the thread right here where you put it, but it might not be seen by people who avoid this particular subforum. Your call.

I think the bottom line, in my opinion, is that if you believe the Bible's testimony of itself that all scripture is God-breathed, then you must conclude that it can contain errors and contradictions and still be God-breathed. Because it DOES contain errors and contradictions. If you look at the stories myths and legends as LESSONS, you can glean something from them. But the moment you call those stories HISTORY, you run into trouble. Some of the stories are history. Many, many, many are not. That Jesus walked is probably history. That he walked on water is probably not. If you are going to tie your faith in the inspiration of the Bible to a belief that this book is an accurate telling of events that took place in history, without error or contradiction, then you are going to be walking on a very fragile faith. In my opinion.

I raised those two points to demonstrate that the contradictions are not matters of failing to recognize figurative language, nor can they be dismissed with passive accusations of demonic influence.

In Matthew, Jesus and his family don't come to live in Nazareth until after he is born, after the Magi visit (he's a toddler by then), after the flight to Egypt, Matthew 2:22. In Luke, Jesus' parents lived in Nazareth before he was born (unmentioned in Matthew). Jesus comes to Nazareth eight days after he's born. Now, it would make some sense if Matthew 2 wasn't so clear about the reason Joseph went to Nazareth. It wasn't a return to his hometown. It's a flat-out contradiction. But ok.

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born during the Quirinian Census. According to both Matthew and Luke, Herod was alive when Jesus was born. Herod was dead for a decade at the time of the Quirinian census. There was no overlap. There is no figurative language that will fix this error/contradiction. The Bible contradicts itself. A lot.

Like Steve, I am not sure this topic is in the right place. There are two ways to approach the central question being asked: 1. It is possible for something to be God-breathed in the first place, which raises the question: How would we know? What qualities would a "God-breathed" writing have that distinguishes it from other writing? I'll give Wierwille credit for answering the question with qualities that are unequivocal and testable. But that doesn't make it Biblically accurate, because the Bible itself does not lay down any such qualities. The Bible never says that it is without error or contradiction. In fact, the Bible lacks the self-awareness it would take to define itself in any way. Paul did not know when he was writing Timothy (which he didn't, but that's another story) that his letters would be part of a collection that would later be referred to as "the Bible" and analyzed and dissected nearly 2,000 years later. The writer of Mark, who apparently was not terribly familiar with Palestinian geography, had no idea that three gospels would be written after his (in fact, many more were written, but only three others made the canon). Luke was aware that other accounts existed, and it's clear he had a copy of Mark's gospel with him when he plagiarized composed his account of the life of Jesus. But he had no idea the gospel of John was on its way. So it strikes me as unfair to hold the Bible to Wierwille's standard of what it means to be God-breathed. However, since Wierwille does offer us a definition of the qualities that a God-breathed work will exhibit, it is perfectly fair to hold his own writings to that standard. Thus, Actual Errors in PFAL is fair. Actual Errors in the Bible is fair only insofar as determining the accuracy of its claims. However, nothing proves the Bible is or is not God-breathed because no criteria are set forth in the Bible to determine such a conclusion. The best we have is, is it useful for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness? The answer to that, of course, is yes, BUT that doesn't make it God-breathed. Any work can be useful for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. In short, there is no way, Biblically, to determine that something is God-breathed, and no way, Biblically, to determine that it isn't. The best we can do is determine that sthe Bible meets some definition of God-breathed. It doesn't meet Wierwille's by a longshot. 2. This being "questioning faith," it is fair game in this forum (in any forum really, but in this one by design) to question whether God-breathed is possible in the first place. That is, there would have to be a God for anything to be God-breathed. I see nothing in the Bible that leads me to believe it was anything other than the product of its time. Certainly, as a moral guide, we are way, way ahead of the Bible in moral advancement (as I believe we have amply demonstrated in the morality thread). You can find lots of morality in the Bible, but there's lots of immorality as well, and that, to my way of thinking, argues strongly against the Bible as the God-breathed word according to any definition. Would a God-breathed word advocate for the death penalty for petty offenses? I would think not. Is picking up sticks on the Sabbath a petty offense? I would think so. Therefore... So as a strictly doctrinal question, without undermining faith, I would answer yes, the Bible can be God-breathed even though (there's no "if" about it) it contradicts itself. And as a question posed in "Questioning Faith," I would answer no, because the Bible fails to demonstrate that this God even exists outside the imagination of the writers and readers.

Technically, Ehrman prefers the term agnostic to atheist. But yeah.

I guess no one can accuse me of artificially keeping this thread moving. Questions I raised that were never answered: How was it ever moral to have a verse like Exodus 21: 2-6? This is not an employer-employee relationship. This is a hostage situation. It's extortion. You can gain your freedom, but I OWN YOUR WIFE AND CHILDREN. How is that moral? How was it ever moral to penalize a rapist by making him marry the woman he raped? Deuteronomy 22:28-29 Why does the girl's father get 50 pieces of silver. Isn't the victim the one who gets compensated for a crime? Of course it is. And that is what is happening here: The victim is being compensated. The victim of a rape is the woman's father. The girl who was raped is damaged property, so her dad, the victim, gets compensated. How is this moral? Wouldn't it have been more moral to say "If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father and become his servant for seven years. Then he must never touch or be alone with the young woman because he violated her. She is to be treated the same as any virgin. Her value as a daughter and a wife shall not be diminished." I mean, let's quibble about the first part of that, but the second: How is it less moral to demand the rapist keep his filthy paws off the girl than it is to order her to marry him! These are not Israel's laws. These are, as presented in the Bible, God's laws to Israel. That makes Him responsible for them. Romans 7:12 calls teh Old Testament Law "Holy, righteous and good." Is it? Can you honestly say these laws are holy, righteous and good?

If you realize the epistles were written first, some interesting patterns appear. I will not discuss them here, because it's doctrinal and off-topic. (That's a warning). What's interesting is that as an educated man (doctorate or no) with a background in theology, Wierwille knew or should have known a lot about "how we got the Bible," and it's nothing like what he shared in PFAL. But he used just enough of what he knew (manuscripts, transcription errors, etc) to undermine people's faith in the book and set himself up as the authoritative voice in restoring faith. He had to know, even in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, that the gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. But he advanced that myth because it served his purpose. Remember how he said after he got out of seminary, he got to the point where he no longer believed the words "holy bible" on the cover? Couple that admission with what we know about his methods for forcing the Bible to fit like a hand in a blender. It's clear to me that he was selling a product -- not the accuracy of the Bible, but the consistency of his re-interpretation of it. As long as he could maintain the illusion of consistency, evidence to the contrary be damned, he could justify a following of like-minded believers (and the steady stream of income they provided).

Does pronunciation matter? Ooops. I was too late with my Frahnkensteen joke.

This one's for WordWolf: Stanley Tucci Big Night Tony Shalhoub

The whole idea of being biblically "correct" on an issue assumes the writers of the Bible were in complete agreement with each other, and that any apparent disagreements are in our understanding. When you realize the opposite is the case, it all makes a whole lot more sense. Paul and James were not writing from two sides of the same coin. They were writing from different currencies altogether. They were using the same words, but not meaning the same things when they used them. Naturally, they were coming to opposite conclusions. Why wouldn't they? How about Paul and Luke, who disagreed about who Paul met with following his conversion on the road to Damascus? This isn't an apparent contradiction. This is one writer calling the account put forth by another writer a lie. Oops!

I'll say it: She looks like she's never actually had a thought. Sorry. It had to be said.