Raf

Looking for the role: Sean Patrick Flannery Corey Carrier George Hall

Yes, I think religion stifles the development of morality by taking a snapshot of morality at a particular time and asserting that it is objectively moral (which in my view is an oxymoron). Thus, religion teaches us that stoning a non virgin is ordained of God, and God is always right, so stoning a non virgin is right. Suddenly, I cannot argue that stoning a non virgin is wrong unless I question the second premise, that God is always right. If you're unwilling to entertain the thought that God can be wrong, you have no basis for saying it's wrong to stone a woman to death for the crime of not being a virgin on her wedding night. But you KNOW it's wrong because you're reasonable. The morality thread I started tackles that issue head on. Our morality IS more developed than Yahweh's. So yes, you can be moral without believing in a god. In fact, believing in a god gives you a firm foundation for condoning actions and laws that reason would lead you to believe are IMMORAL. The other thread proves that point. (I'm expressing an opinion, not declaring victory).

The question of whether we are more moral than an earlier culture is interesting, but not the thread topic. I apologize for the derail. I think we ultimately derive morals from reason, which need not be an overly sophisticated concept. Seeing morality in the animal kingdom indicates that animals have some capacity to reason. Less sophisticated than our capacity, but present nonetheless. The more reasonable we become as a people, the more our morals develop.

Married with Children of the Corn?

Peter Cushing?

that is an awesome clue TAXI

I disagree. I think we are absolutely more moral than anyone who thinks stoning is an appropriate punishment for Sabbath breaking. However, I understand your point a little better now. Thank you.

I don't mean to be a pain, but we are absolutely more moral than anyone who would stone a sabbath breaker to death in any era. That shouldn't even have to be argued. Different time? Yes! But if God is moral, the morality of his law should transcend time, not surrender to it!

So their survival depended on God ordering sabbath breakers to be stoned to death?

So because they lived in a different world, we're supposed to gloss over the fact that God ordered a BRUTAL death sentence for sabbath breaking? if that's not what you're trying to say, what is?

Oh yeah.

Click around that site, WW. It does indeed have John 1 in it. I think it has the whole NT. And yes, it was NASB I was thinking of. Thank you. I seem to recall being the first to bring it to your attention, but I could easily be wrong about that.

I don't think there's a Biblical promise that would support that test, Tzaia, though you can't rule it out. That is, if it worked, it would establish pretty clearly that the speaking is from God. But then, the others present would have to know enough English to convey the verification to the speaker, who does not know their language. However, if it did NOT work, it wouldn't tell us anything. Drop me in a group of Russians, I speak in tongues and produce ancient Peruvian, and it would look like your test failed even though it was genuine SIT. (When I say genuine SIT, I mean it produces a language. Not tongues of angels, which is nothing but an excuse for why language is not detected. Not computer code, which would be remarkably easy to verify. An actual language). My challenge still stands: Show me A PERSON who speaks in a language he's never learned. And not just an anecdote from my best friend's cousins sister who spoke in tongues before a delegation of indigenous Phillipinos who understood it all and went back home, never to be seen again. With the vast number of samples available of people performing so-called genuine SIT, getting someone to verify that a language was produced should be easy. Why doesn't it happen? I have a suggestion.

Now, now. We spend all this time telling him it can get rough in here, so he probably just overcompensated. Cut the new guy a break.

Mark, I think you misunderstood me. I wrote: "I actually agree with Mark there. We're talking about what the Bible says, not anyone's unsubstantiated claims to have reproduced it." You apparently thought I meant "not anyone's unsubstantiated claims to have reproduced what the Bible says." Your post makes sense if that was your understanding of my comment. But what I intended to convey was, "not anyone's unsubstantiated claims to have reproduced the practice of speaking in tongues as described in the Bible." I was agreeing with you (at least, I think I was) that questioning your practice of SIT, indeed questioning ANYone's practice of SIT, is off-topic on this thread. It is on topic for me to ask you whether you believe Biblical SIT produces a language. It is off-topic for me to challenge YOUR practice of SIT. You say you do it. That's fine. In doing so, you are saying that you produce a language when you SIT. (That is a logical extension: "The Bible says SIT produces a language. My practice of SIT is consistent with the Bible. Therefore, when I SIT, I'm producing a language.") If anyone wants to challenge that assertion, this thread by design is not the place to do it. My point is, I wasn't trying to comment on the accuracy of the modern translations of the Bible. I was merely agreeing with you concerning drawing the on-topic/off-topic line.

MRAP: Over the years I grew particularly fond of the American Standard Version (I think), which I found accessible to modern readers. I was grateful that it largely retained the use of italics to signify when words were added that were not part of the original text. Most of the time, the inclusion of such words was an innocent attempt to clarify what the verses meant to say. Are they biased? Sure. They assume the inclusion of the added words provides greater clarity, which is a judgment call. All judgment calls are subjective by definition. Having said that, I'm curious to know what you think of the REV. Perhaps if we start looking at particular verses and translations, we'll get a better conversation going. For example, do we really think the writer of John 1 intended to use the pronoun "it" throughout the chapter rather than "he"? There are multiple ways to approach that question. First and foremost, we need to analyze the language itself. What word is used? Is there room to make that change (from "he" to "it") while being faithful to the text and not reading into it? Is it fair to impose the Biblical Unitarian Christology on a text that was written nearly 2,000 years ago? What is John really meant "he"? Does that signify that non-Trinitarians are wrong? Or does it open the door to the Jehovah's Witness interpretation (that Jesus existed as an angel before his birth, but was never God)? The REV makes no apologies for the fact that the bias of the "translators" played a role in the translation. In that, I think they're just being honest where previous translators have feigned objectivity. But what would an unbiased translation look like? Please share some of your thoughts? And I'm certain others would love to chime in. P.S. There's a fine line between seeking to understand the original intent of the writers of the Bible and calling its divine inspiration into question. I am deliberately not addressing the matter of divine inspiration. Getting at what the writers originally intended to convey is one thing. Getting to whether they were correct in the grand scheme of things is quite another.

This came up in the SIT confession thread. The way I see it, Biblical SIT makes a testable claim. But practitioners bend over backwards to make it untestable. They get emphatic that the Bible says NO ONE understands. But at the same time they want you to believe their brother's third cousin did it in front of some people visiting from the Congo, and they understood it. That's PROOF! Suddenly the No Man Understands requirement doesn't apply. It only applies when the Man seeking to understand is a linguist.

Brian Cox XMEN 2 Ian McKellan

Yes. And the misspelling of Nitti was an autocorrect Expendables, Cliffhanger, over the top, Capone, Demolition Man.

Nope. Frank Nitty John Spartan

Except snipes wasn't in major league 2.

Just an observation from another thread: am I the only one who finds it amusing that we're not supposed to draw any conclusions from the 100 percent failure rate of linguists to detect a language in SIT, but we are supposed to trust that there's value in a friend of the speaker with no training in linguistics who says "sounds like a language to me!"?

Mark has already said that Biblical SIT produces languages. I agree with him. Steve clearly intended for this thread not to question the validity of modern claims of SIT. I would love to honor that.

I actually agree with Mark there. We're talking about what the Bible says, not anyone's unsubstantiated claims to have reproduced it.

With that big fat clue dropped in front of your face?