No, Science Actually Doesn’t Answer All Questions in Equation of Life
By: Dr. Jan Dudt
God is real. He is our creator as our founding fathers state who is the source of life and of all our inalienable human rights. He is the author of science. Humans have had an increase in knowledge in recent times. Some think that mankind through science can replace God. We can not.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
We live in an age where science has provided a lot of benefits for humanity. When we think about it, few of us would rather live in a 15th century royal court than our modern world of health, nutrition, and technology. Over the centuries, life has improved, not just for the cultural elites, but for everyone. Western society has been profoundly affected by the progress. Globally, other cultures are seeing similar gains even if they lag the west in standard of living. Many cultures, such as those of certain East Asian countries, have achieved a standard of living that is the envy of much of the globe. Consequently, the global community is increasingly looking to science to solve problems. Given the success of science and technology, this is understandable.
However, for the Christian, what we know about the created world comes to us from two sources, one source is the study of nature itself (Natural Revelation) and the other is Scripture (Special Revelation). Biblical definitions make all the difference in our approach to nature. For example, we Christians believe a rational God created the world in a way that image-bearing humans can make sense of. Yet, the definitions concerning what is true, beautiful, virtuous, and right are not determined for us by science but rather by what the Scripture informs us. As a case in point, good science was key in developing a vaccine for COVID-19. However, science is less helpful in our decisions regarding who is to get the vaccine first. Christians are faced with the tension of balancing what we have discovered about the natural world and how to apply it when we are faced with biblical definitions.
A model put forth by Westminster Theological Seminary professor Vern Poythress is helpful in balancing the tensions. In his book Redeeming Science, he makes the case that God’s spoken word is responsible for the creation of the natural world (His creative word runs swiftly, Ps 147). His spoken word is also responsible for Scripture (God spoke all these words, Gen 20). Poythress goes on to make the case that scientific theories are commentaries on His created natural world. Likewise, theological commentaries are commentaries on His written word. Not all commentaries are equal. Some are better at describing God’s revelation. Modern scientific theories are better than past theories as descriptions of God’s Natural Revelation. Modern biblical commentaries continue to be mixed as comments on biblical truth. In addition, it is easy to confuse the commentary with the revelation. A scientific theory, as good as it might be, is not the definitive comment on Natural Revelation. Likewise, a theological commentary, as good as it might be, is not the definitive word on Scripture. The commentary, scientific or theological, is only as good as it represents the actual revelation.
Christians are challenged to wisely balance what we have discovered about the natural world with what we know to be true from Biblical definitions. As science has continued to be successful, it is tempting to allow that scientific commentary to arbitrate over the truthfulness of the definitions we see in Scripture. For example, there are a good number of Christians in science who favor the position that the story of Adam’s and Eve’s creation and fall into sin is a figurative allegory of human condition. Why? Because the fossil record and genetic science have revealed that there is no scientific evidence for a historic first couple. As a result, some are claiming that biblical commentaries must recast the biblical genealogies and Paul’s comments on the first Adam and the last Adam (Rom 5:12-17, 1 Cor 15:20-22). For these people, science has trumped Biblical definition.
Similarly, some Christians in the modern environmental movement have come to the position that the term “dominion” is no longer a helpful term as a principle guiding human response to the environment. This is the position of some authors in Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care (Calvin Press, 2019). Granted, there has been much human abuse of the environment due to a misapplication of the term. However, discarding the term is not helpful at all when it is part of the biblical definition of who humans are.
Science also weighs in on the matter of the immaterial human soul. Flat line and you are dead. Consciousness is gone. Some Christians, called Monists, are convinced. However, Scripture is clear. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. To say otherwise, according to Christ, is quite wrong (Mk 12:26). Likewise, miracles, such as the resurrection from the dead, have no basis in science. However, biblical definition leaves no doubt about its truth.
Returning to the COVID-19 matter, where does this leave us? We are in an interesting spot to reflect as we hopefully approach the end of the COVID-19 crisis. It is true that the science behind COVID-19 has driven much of our national, social, and even ecclesiastical policies. And, as we consider the wake of these policies, it is evident that we may well have weighted the variable of COVID-19 science wrongly at times.
If Biblical principles of care and compassion are considered, we can ask: Did we adequately protect the most vulnerable? Did we give appropriate freedom for those less at risk to make their own decisions about worship, continuing to work, or getting access to convalescing friends or relatives. Did we consider the impact of shutdowns on people’s mental health? A lot has been written on this and hopefully we will have time to process it all before the next health crisis. However, when considering the equation of life, Christians are wise when we realize there are other variables in life’s equation in addition to science. Biblical definitions and variables must also be brought to bear along with the science.
Overall, it is a tough balancing act to get the variables right. In a world where science is so successful, it is tempting to forget the other variables and definitions. Hopefully, we will avoid that mistake.
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Based on that, we should not be giving the vaccine to anyone that does not worship the correct god. Determining which one of the hundreds of christian variants of god, makes it even more difficult.
So according to the bible, billions of people should have the vaccine withheld and be allowed to die, and in fact encouraged or even helped along to that death.
Now, XXJefferson51, I'm sure you're going to make some kind of nonsense claim that what I just said is not true, but you should be aware that I can provide dozens of verses from the bible to support my claim.
It was answered easily enough.
I'm sure there's no end of verses you likely take out of context that you can present as evidence for your position. For instance, you say the Bible supports withholding the vaccine. I'd really like to see you present your evidence for that one. Should be easy for you, apparently.
Does it feel good to misquote me? Or does it make you feel silly since anyone else can read exactly what I said?
As to out of context claims, there are many verses in the bible demanding the deaths of those who do not believe in that 1 particular god. So preventing those deaths would be directly contrary to the bible.
Now go and read the bible for yourself, when you're done we can talk.
God is a patient God of love and grace. It was only after a nation had ignored His love and rejected His grace over time that their collective probation ran out. From the time Jacob took Israel out of Canaan to Egypt to be with Joseph until the Exodus the people there had 500 years to change their ways and they did not. Many of the nations that received the harshest judgements had been engaged in human sacrifices including the burning up of live children. In the post cross world we are to do what we can to alleviate human suffering around the world in addition to spreading the good news. That means going to places there are few or no Christians and building schools and hospitals, digging water wells, providing micro loans, providing relief from disasters and poverty, and living by example in places we can’t openly preach.
Once again you prove that you have never read the bible.
Post cross world? What color is the sky in your world?
Post cross = after committing human sacrifice to your god? And why would you want to relieve human suffering when it is your god causing the human suffering? Or is your god not that powerful?
Ahhh, indoctrination.
I notice that you did not even bother to answer my question, just a bunch of Sunday school gobbledegook. Once again I urge you to read the bible that you like to preach, if that is the particular god you follow.
Wouldn't know. Since the only quote I used was copied and pasted I don't know how I could have misquoted you. But perhaps you were referring to...
If so, how does this mischaracterize what you say here...
In what way is "...according to the bible, billions of people should have the vaccine withheld..." mischaracterized by "...you say the Bible supports withholding the vaccine."?
I think you're just attempting to avoid the fact you know of no verses at all that support your view and are just trying to throw out words to distract from this. If you did have "dozens provide dozens of verses from the bible to support my claim." surely you would have posted at least one of them as this would be the easiest way to show that you aren't simply making things up, which is what you seem to be doing.
Although this seems to be you moving the goal posts, this is another claim that I believe you cannot actually show evidence for. That is, I can't think of a single verse, and I've looked, that supports what you claim here. Since you can't, I expect that you'll just insist that I get back to you after I've read the Bible, as if that actually means something that legitimately lends substance to your claim.
So, you can believe the Bible says whatever you need it to say in order to validate your view, but there's not much point in coming at someone unless you're prepared to prove your claim. It just comes across as an obvious bluff based on your prejudices rather than any actual facts. You will, of course, ignore this advice and will, instead, just keep on doing what you always do. Specifically, take whatever the Bible says out of context in order to confirm it as saying what you want it to say, not what it actually says. You have to, otherwise you'd have to do something distasteful and confront your own prejudices.
You pasted 1 quote then misrepresented another. It's quite simple.
You understand that I explained this just a couple more lines down......right???
Are you saying that the bible does not support and encourage you to kill non-believers?
Okey dokey. Here are a few . There are even more that order you to kill someone you feel have sinned, including your wife and children.
Luke 19:27 ESV / 1,458 helpful votes
But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’”
2 Chronicles 15:12-13 ESV / 1,179 helpful votes
And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul, but that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman.
John 3:16 ESV / 993 helpful votes
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Deuteronomy 17:1-20 ESV / 968 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful
“You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep in which is a blemish, any defect whatever, for that is an abomination to the Lord your God. “If there is found among you, within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant, and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. ...
Pretty much. There aren't any verses I'm aware of, nor do you provide any in this post, where God commands the death of those who do not believe in Him. You yourself had to move the goal posts yet again just to use the verses you provide.
So, you go from "not believing in God" to "order you to kill someone you feel have sinned", as if that were what you were asked to provide evidence for or are even the same thing, and even then, you do so incorrectly.
The reality is that you keep claiming others don't know what the Bible says but it's you who does not. All you're really doing is claiming verses out of context and claiming it's the other guy that doesn't understand.
The verses you quote have nothing to do with non-belief in God or how one feels about another concerning their sinfulness. They have to do with breaking covenant commitments between the Israelites and God and stipulate not only what constitutes the breaking of the covenant but why it is bad to do so and what needs to be done about it. Just like any contract that goes to court today for violation of that contract.
No. That would be because you didn't address it, let alone explain it. And you still haven't.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
2 Chronicles 15:12-13 ESV / 1,179 helpful votes
And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul, but that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman.
Your bitterness directed at God and desire to blame Him for Satan’s rebellion and the natural consequences of sin are duly noted.
This does not say what you think it does. I know what you did. You just typed "killing Non Believers" into the search engine on the link you gave above and assumed that what popped up supported your claim. It doesn't work that way, which should be obvious when you look at all the verses that came up that had nothing to do with your query. It just returned possible hits based on keywords. It is not literally giving you verses that specifically address your query. Why not try doing a little real research?
What is the definitive interpretation of that passage? Rather than be vague, you could offer Ozzwald your position so that he has an option to rebut.
One interpretation is that the death penalty is for Asa's group breaking their covenant with God.
Which proves the point. The bible is so full of ambiguity that it almost literally says nothing at all. That's why the right constantly claims that anything they don't like is in the Bible. It's not, but with all the ambiguity, they can sure as hell spin it to look like it denounces damn near anything.
You can't even prove god exists and now you're moving on to the existence of Satan? Really?
Yeah, been there, done that. It's a waste of time as it isn't likely Ozzwald actually cares beyond that it sounds like something that supports his claim. Much better that, if he does actually care what it says, he finds it out on his own. Do a little research. If he won't, then my explaining anything isn't going to make any difference.
Actually, the Bible has an explanation as to why you personally see so much ambiguity in it and that it doesn't seem to say anything to you. Basically, because you reject God, God gives you over to your delusions, so it all seems foolishness to you.
OR... what we claim to not like is because it's in the Bible. You know, kinda that whole rejecting the world's ways and instead learn God's? I mean, that is kinda the whole point, isn't it? One of the things attached to being saved is to no longer think the way the world does and, instead, learn how God thinks.
Of course, there are those who do actually claim to follow God but do exactly what you state. Prosperity gospel types come to mind. Also a lot of progressive "Christian" preachers who put their own interpretation on Biblical texts rather than go with what it actually says.
There's not nearly the level of ambiguity in the Bible you seem to be claiming. In one sense, it has the same difficulties any old document from those times or before have with translating or understanding. They were written by people who were definitely not us, didn't think the way we did, had their own idioms, customs and culture. Part of the trick to understanding what the Bible says is to know the people who wrote it and to whom they were writing it so that we can understand it as they did. Understand it in context.
When an author of a particular book of the Bible wrote it he had a specific thing he was trying to communicate. It certainly wasn't ambiguous to him and probably wasn't nearly as ambiguous to his audience as it sometimes seems to us. That would be because they were part of the same culture, more or less, although that changed with the spread of Christianity. It is possible that we can understand it as well, if we put in the work.
But what you refer to as ambiguity just describes people who just pick up a Bible and read it casually. Either they are enemies of what it says and just see in it what they think confirms their enmity or they are believers, but shallow ones, who just pick it up occasionally, just read the easy stuff and don't bother with the stuff they don't understand. But the Bible can be understood in the manner it was intended if one wants to, especially if they have the Holy Spirit to help them.
Then why did you even bother to reply to him? Your comment, at this point, is simply that he is wrong but you offer nothing other than your disapproval.
So people who find problems with the Bible (and that includes many biblical scholars) are simply delusional because they reject God (i.e. are not convinced that God as defined by the Bible exists)? It is not possible that Bible itself is errant because it was written by many ancient men over many years and done so without the aid of modern scholarship (which would have been extremely valuable during the editing process)?
It is quite a feat to leap from the Bible being yet another series of recorded tales by human beings (as was true with the Greek and Roman gods) into the word of a perfect God. It is curious that one must first accept God (to me this means to give up critical thinking in this regard) in order for it to make coherent sense.
IMO.
Or their own personal interpretation designed to fill in the cracks and resolve the contradictions. Anyone can weave an incoherent mess into something coherent given the liberties typically taken when interpreting the Bible. But it is much more difficult to do that with solid justification. And 'the Holy Spirit guided me' is not what I mean by solid justification. Think of scholars sitting together trying to agree on THE correct interpretation based on disciplined exegesis. Will they argue their personal interpretations based on 'I got this from the Holy Spirit' or will they put forth a well founded argument based on the meaning of ancient words in context and the balance of the Bible (as well as history and contemporary knowledge such as science and engineering)? And will they ignore certain passages (such as the beating of slaves to the point where they could die from their injuries) and deem them to mean something else because God (as they envision Him) would simply not condone such brutality? And, finally, will they agree? (The answer is 'not yet'.)
Addendum:
People read pretty much what they wish to read from the Bible. Some people claim that their reading is THE correct interpretation because the Holy Spirit helped them with the interpretation.
I wonder what would take place if those who interpreted the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit got together and consolidated their interpretations. Would this finally be a cohesive, solid interpretation of the Bible? Would they actually come to the table unified by the Holy Spirit? They show up, confirm their agreement, document their unified, consistent views and provide something truly remarkable that has never existed?
Actually, I invited him to do some research. Whether he does so or not is up to him.
Which pretty much sums up all that you said in your last two posts. Doesn't sound like there's much to discuss, then.
Those who think they hold the definitive interpretation of the Bible are likely to not even consider that their interpretation might be wrong.
Those who cannot back up why their interpretation is correct (and thus all the other countless interpretations are wrong) are likely kidding themselves. Why are they correct and all the countless others wrong?
My position is that the correct interpretation would require understanding the exact intent of the individual authors. Given the words of these authors were combined by others and their words modified by others, the success of recovering the original intent of the individual authors seems next to impossible. This has yet to be accomplished.
And that is simply trying to get the intent of ancient human authors. It does not even factor in the notion of these necessarily being divine words from a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, supreme entity and the resulting logical contradictions which result.
Okay, fine. What about those who can back up why their interpretations are correct?
Yeah, but it's not given. That's the problem with what you're saying. The reality is that the vast majority of scholars believe that even though the original manuscript of each book of the Bible is long gone, what we have now is pretty accurate, even though some errors have crept in, mostly concerning numbers or name spelling. The fact is, the Bible blows away every other historical texts concerning accuracy. Nothing else even comes close, forensically. There are over 60,000 texts and copies of texts available with which to reference in order to trace where errors crept in. The next closest ancient manuscript is the Iliad, with around 1,600. It's not guess work. It's forensics. The truth is, there's no document for which we no longer have the original writing for that we can be confident we have an accurate understanding of as we do for the Bible.
The actual difficulty is one that we have even today. If someone wrote something today and ten people read it tomorrow, you'd get ten slightly different versions of what the writer wrote. Some things would stand out more to some than to others. Some would read with preconceptions. Some may not like what was written and so, create strawmen. That's because we aren't all identical in thought and experience and so we all see things slightly differently. So, the problem isn't Biblical accuracy. We can be pretty confident it's highly accurate. The problem is what it's always been. Letting go of preconceptions, prejudices, preferences and all the rest and just try to understand what was written as best we can.
But, for the Christian, the concern isn't whether or not the Bible is as accurate as it can be as we think that's pretty much settled. We also understand the difficulties in translating something separated from us by time, culture and language. That's why serious Christians don't just pick up the Bible and just read it. We learn how to actually study it. We learn to find out what the original word was in the original language and study what that word meant. We read books that others have produced, people with credentials and the education which explain a particular subject and we check that against others who may or may not agree. We consider whether what we think about a particular passage means against the rest of what's written and, if it doesn't agree, we study more until we understand.
And, we have the Holy Spirit to help us understand what we are reading. The Holy Spirit's goal isn't that we understand the Bible for the sake of understanding the Bible. It is so that we can understand what God has revealed about Himself and what He wants from us and, further, helps us to actually do it. As important as the Bible is (it's God's Word, after all), the Bible isn't the point itself. God and our relationship with Him is.
Yes, there are disagreements about what the Bible says, but they are nowhere near as great as people in here like to claim. Not even close. Most mainline Protestant denominations believe the same things when it comes to core issues, such as what is salvation and how does it work. The farther from that issue you get, the more disagreement there is but even then, most of the issues are really not that important. Take old and young Earth creationists. I seriously doubt it matters to God which we believe as it doesn't really have any practical effect on our relationship with God. For myself, I could believe either one and God would still seem just as great to me. Taking six literal days seems just as amazing to me as having the patience to take billions of years to create it and I consider it a silly thing to get bogged down in. I can't imagine a way either position changes what God expects me to do today in order to serve Him. Point being, even though there isn't universal agreement on every subject, what is disagreed on is, mostly, trivial.
Lastly, it's often commented that the Bible is something like an incomprehensible mishmash of writings by ancient and ignorant men and that those who think otherwise are deluding themselves, ignoring contradictions and whatever else. Believers such as myself claim it only appears that way to such commenters because they don't have the Holy Spirit helping them to understand it. For us, the evidence for this is that we understand it rather than seeing something incomprehensible and contradictory. Sort of like those posters where there were a bunch of dots or whatever that just looked like a bunch of dots but if you looked at it just right, a dinosaur pops out. Some never see the dinosaur. Doesn't mean it isn't there. There should be nothing surprising about needing the Holy Spirit to really understand the Bible. It's literally the Word of God and who else could explain it except God?
Those people would then be making the claim that only their interpretations are correct, in contrast with countless alternate (and wrong) interpretations. They would be claiming that they have found a way to get the true intent of the author. Not just recover the actual words as written by the original author (which in many cases is a feat in and of itself) but can actually get to the intended meaning. This feat is impressive when the intended meaning is something different than a plain reading of the words.
So what about those who can do this? They would be rock stars!
Parts are considered accurate others are not. The NT and OT are commonly deemed fundamentally accurate to the time of Jesus. But that is hundreds of years from the most conservative original writing of the OT and even more from the oral tradition. On top of that we only have the sources that survived to be copied. There exists evidence of biblical authorship that predates the earliest of Hebrew records (i.e. prior to 6th century BCE). Biblical scholars have no knowledge of who originally wrote much of the OT (and NT). They assign abstract sources based on writing style, etc. But gaps of hundreds of years between fragments are impossible to fill. There are no copies to compare. They have to go with what they have.
In short, biblical scholars are pretty confident that they have a good understanding of text going back two thousand years. The problem is that the OT predates that and appears to go back as far as 10th century BCE. And, as I pointed out, even if we had the actual original text we still would be trying to infer original intent. Look at our CotUS. There we absolutely have every original word, accurate history, clear understanding of culture, etc. Even so, we still debate the original intent of the words. We are in murky water trying to infer original intent the further we wade from the literal translation of the words.
People are not trying to declare divine intent from the Iliad and the Odyssey. They do from the Bible; that is the difference. And given the nuanced splitting of semantics that apologists engage in to support their theory of meaning, even tiny omissions can make a huge difference.
So now that we have discussed the varied accuracy of biblical sources, we turn again to the problem of interpretation. Take any version of the Bible and assume it is 100% accurate with the original source (just for the sake of argument). How do you determine that your interpretation of this version is correct when countless other interpretations exist in disagreement of yours? Your answer is that God guides you (the Holy Spirit) ... Not much of an answer given the result (a single definitive interpretation of the Bible) does not exist.
Yet the conflicting interpretations persist. Sure, general interpretations such as God is the supreme entity are consistent, but fundamentals such as the nature of Jesus (is He divine?) are not. And much worse are the interpretations of individual passages. Here the semantics games are in abundance. It still amazes me that someone can read a passage such as this (and this is but one of many on this point):
And deny that this means God condoned the owning of another human being as property (one of several points here) because it is (to them) inconsistent with their aggregate view of God based on other portions of the Bible.
As I noted, the Holy Spirit is then a prankster who causes different interpretations among the people it helps.
At the fundamental level sure. But when people read the Bible they are focused on items that are more detailed than fundamental. And it does make a difference in society if we have millions of people who actually believe science is profoundly wrong about some of its fundamentals such as the age of the planet / universe, the nature of biology (evolution), the origin of human beings, the climate, diseases, etc.
(Also note that the key difference between YEC and OEC is that the former are strict literalists whereas the latter are very liberal in their interpretations. They have quite different Gods.)
Again with the Holy Spirit who seems to not solve the problem of conflicting interpretations.
I agree that only God can truly deliver His intended meaning. I just find it remarkable that some people believe that God is actually directly guiding their minds to properly interpret His meaning from words that at times literally state the opposite. And, repeating, I find it even more remarkable that these same people do not find it at all odd that God (the Holy Spirit) does not deliver a single, consistent interpretation of His words. Almost as if the individual human beings just think God is guiding them when in reality they are simply interpreting based on their own knowledge and beliefs.
You should keep something in mind about all of this. Even though you don't believe in any of this, conceptually you should be able to understand that what it is all about is God communicating with a finite and fallen mankind. The Bible, and what it says is God's half of the equation. We're the other half. Finite, imperfect and fallen mankind. While handling the Word of God is important, vitally so, it is more important that its study should result in the relationship with God that God desires of us. It would be nice if we could all come up agreeing with every single thing in the Bible but that's not going to be possible, even with the Holy Spirit's help because we are still sinners and will be to the day we die. After that, what we will be will be fundamentally different from what we are. Until then, I'm confident that God no more gets upset with us for making honest mistakes than a parent would with their child. I'm certain God knows the difference between a Kenneth Copeland and someone who is honestly trying to understand and obey God's word.
I'm sure that some things I believe the Bible says may be wrong or not entirely accurate. God arranged things in my life in such a way that, recently, I learned what I thought about the Third Commandment, not taking the Lord's name in vain, was so inaccurate, or incomplete, that what I thought I understood was almost uselessly wrong. It had a grain of truth to it but the whole truth is so much bigger than I ever imagined and applies in ways I had never considered.
That sort of thing is going to keep happening to me throughout my life. The Holy Spirit will ensure it for as long as I seek God's face. When we are born again, it's speaking spiritually, but we are no less infants for all that, spiritually. Other people who are not as spiritually immature over the centuries have broken ground for us concerning the understanding of the Bible, but even they are little more than children in the grand scheme of things. Think about it. We are trying to understand, as best our abilities allow us to, an infinite and incomprehensible God. One we could not know anything about if it were not for His effort to communicate. That gets compounded when one considers that we all have depraved minds and hearts, from God's perspective.
So, you can think what you will about the Holy Spirit. Apparently you think something like if the Holy Spirit was real, there'd be no disagreements but that isn't realistic. That's expecting something like the Holy Spirit reprogramming us as if we were machines or that there's some audible internal voice telling us things. Not how it works. We humans have to put in the effort. We have to work at it, just like anything else. And even with the Holy Spirit's help, it doesn't mean we always listen to Him. We have our own preferences and prejudices. I really, intensely dislike people in gangs. My attitude toward them isn't very Christlike and it's a struggle to submit to God's will concerning them in my heart. Yet the Holy Spirit keeps reminding me why it's important to have God's heart for them rather than my own.
In the end, regardless of what are mostly minor disagreements, I think the Bible accomplishes it's purpose for those who seek the Lord with all they have.
Understood. Now, conceptually, you should understand that my comments regarding interpretation deal with the fact that many human beings interpret the words of the Bible as divine and then act upon this. I have no concern with people believing that there is a god or a force or ...something... great behind reality. My concern is the belief that specific expectations / demands are made by the supreme entity and that people actually act on these beliefs.
To wit, those who believe in supernatural things (gods, spirits, creatures, etc.) are doing no harm unless they act on these beliefs. In this case of religions, we know that people act on their beliefs and the results often dumb down and exploit the public (take the YECs, assholes like Copeland, etc. as examples) and at the extreme (e.g. Islamic terrorists) we have torture and tragic loss of life. This is all because people believe that God (by any name) wants them to act a certain way.
In contrast we have deists who believe in a sentient supreme creator entity but do not presume to know anything else. To me, that is healthy (if one is to believe sans evidence) and rational.
Well said. Our difference here is that you accept a specific definition for God along with a personality, commands, intent, promises, historical exploits, etc. based simply on what other human beings wrote in books. I hold that if there is a god (a supreme entity) that it is well beyond our grasp and we truly have no information about this entity; we do not even know if it exists. Thus, IMO, the very best we can do to know this hypothetical god is to study our reality and learn about that which we deem god to have enabled.
You have stated that the Holy Spirit is what gives you the correct interpretation (even though you have backed off on that a bit). I am just going by what you wrote. That is, if the Holy Spirit (God) is truly guiding the interpretation of select believers then those believers naturally will have a consistent interpretation. If not, then the Holy Spirit is intentionally tricking people. I am simply applying logic to what you have offered.
That is not what I wrote nor is it what I meant. If the Holy Spirit is your answer for why your interpretation is correct then naturally we must hold that the Holy Spirit actually helps you achieve a correct interpretation. Right? What else would it mean? Thus, unless you believe you are the only person on the planet receiving this guidance from God, everyone who has the Holy Spirit guidance should interpret the Bible the same way.
Then back to the start, why do you think your interpretation of the Bible is correct? How can you be sure that your biases, etc. have not greatly distorted your interpretations? We all know the reason people can read something and walk away with different interpretations — it is precisely because interpretation is fuzzy and we all have different experiences, biases, knowledge, etc.
Thus, how can anyone claim their interpretation of the Bible is closer to the 'true meaning' than anyone else's? Ken Ham can argue that his interpretation is closest to the truth because he 'takes God's word for it'. That is, Ham literally interprets the words to mitigate biasing the meaning. This is one time where his logic makes sense.
That statement disregards all the bad that comes from interpreting the Bible (in various ways) and then acting upon that interpretation. It disregards the problems with acting on the words of ancient human beings as if the words came directly from the supreme entity.
Yep. That's a valid concern alright. A lot of terrible things have been done in God's name by various religions. Heck, even the Buddhists are getting violent in some places. Unfortunately, there's not much that can really be done about it without turning the world into a police state and forcing sanctioned ideologies on everyone, and even then it wouldn't solve the problem. People would still act in the name of God. I know I would.
A lot of good things have been done in God's name as well, though. You probably won't agree but Christianity is responsible for much of how the West turned out. We were the one's who began science, modern education, advanced philosophy, equal rights and the rest. And there are millions upon millions of personal stories about how Christians made a difference.
But mostly, how are you going to convince someone like me that the world would be better off with a deist approach when it's clear to me that the world's problems primarily stem from not obeying God?
No, that isn't the difference between us here and this is inaccurate anyway. I don't accept a specific definition for God... based simply on what other human beings wrote in books. That's your view of what I do, not the basis of why I believe the Bible is God's word or in God Himself.
No, the real difference between us, in my opinion, is that I have no problem with that thing inside that tells me there must be something more than just this material world. Studies have shown that people everywhere and everywhen were basically born knowing there is something more. Even children raised by atheists (not that these children believed in God specifically, but that there was something more than the material world). I find it natural and just common sense to believe that there must be a God.
You, in my view, reject whatever of that you may feel as perhaps some evolutionary holdover that once may have been of some benefit to our ancestors but to the informed mind, should be ignored unless empirical proof says otherwise. God is not necessary and all that is needed is a rational, critical thinking mindset that relies heavily on the scientific method.
In other words, my world is primarily spiritual whereas yours is material. I believe this is why we end up where we usually do. We are trying to argue some point from different realities.
I looked back over what I said and can't seem to find this. I did find where I said the Holy Spirt helps us to interpret. If I did actually say it the way you put it, or that was the impression you got from what I said I apologize for not being clearer. The Holy Spirit, as far as I know, doesn't just give us the interpretation. He helps us to interpret and understand.
Even so, that He helps us is no guarantee that we will interpret or understand correctly. Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. I imagine that Alexander was a fairly strong willed individual and that's probably putting it mildly. I would think it safe to assume that, when Aristotle was teaching Alexander something, there were occasions where Alexander took what was offered but changed it to suit his own ideas. Likewise, I'm certain that the Holy Spirit was speaking to Copeland at some point, and perhaps still is, but it doesn't guarantee that Copeland will listen. It isn't that kind of voice.
The point is that it isn't the case that the Holy Spirit just sticks the interpretation and meaning into our minds and hearts and we don't have to listen. Often, our personal desires get in the way. We go after what we want to be true rather than what the Spirit tells us is true. Although we are saved and God considers us in the legal sense as fully adopted children, we are still broken. We can still disobey and often do.
Well, really, you're not considering the entirety of what I offered. Just the parts you want to address, which seems to put the entire burden on the Holy Spirit. Your logic leaves out that human beings are the recipients of what the Holy Spirit says. If you include them then it's more logical that the problem is with people rather than suggesting the Holy Spirit is tricking anyone. This is easily proven. Put 100 people into a room where someone gives a speech on some difficult to understand subject and then, after, interview the 100 and ask them what the speech was about. Then, give all 100 an hour with the speech giver. After that, ask all 100 what the speech was about and you'll still get variations.
I believe it's correct that we can't achieve a correct interpretation or understanding without the Holy Spirit but I don't recall saying anything like the Holy Spirit being my answer for why my interpretation is correct. That is, I'd never say the words "This verse means x because the Holy Spirit tells me so". I don't think there's any honest Christian scholar or preacher out there who'd make that claim. The ones that do, the ones that say, "I had a word from the Holy Spirit (or God) last night and He said Trump will be President in 2024" should probably be run from as fast as possible.
No, what any honest Christian would do in explaining why they feel their interpretation is correct is to use the rest of the Bible as evidence. Is what he is claiming of a verse supported by the rest of the Bible? If not, you can be sure it isn't correct, or at least, incomplete. What the Holy Spirit does, among other things, is help us in that process. Helps us to see how it all connects and through that, understanding of what verses mean.
If you think I'm backpedaling here then about all I can do is ask you to consider how difficult it is to explain how some spiritual process works that you don't believe even exists. On top of that, nobody except God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit Himself know how the Holy Spirit works. We are talking about an unfathomable God operating in our lives. He operates as He wills.
Well, I'll state right off that I can't be sure in the sense we can be sure the Earth orbits the Sun. Second, I'm not sure all my interpretations are correct. That's why I will be studying the Bible for the rest of my life. I have confidence that God will get me to the understanding He desires me to have. If He promises to be found by those who seek Him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, how could I not? As for biases, I can be sure because I've lost track of how many biases God's word made me confront. That isn't to say I still don't have them but I'm sure God will deal with them in His good time.
Because, there's a true saying. "The Bible interprets itself". It means that if the interpretation for a verse disagrees with other parts of the Bible then you can be sure it isn't correct. If someone forces an incorrect interpretation it would be readily apparent to those with sufficient knowledge of what the Bible says. That is why I can be sure that your interpretation of Exodus 21:20-21 is wrong. You essentially have to print a new Bible with only those verses in it to get it to stand as you read it. And even then, your interpretation would be difficult to swallow.
Does it make sense to you because taking the literal meaning is something you believe should be done throughout the Bible or because by him doing so it makes him appear backward?
First, I think Ken Ham is creating a needless and probably harmful distraction. Our task as Christians are to make disciples of Christ, not to get people to believe dinosaurs were on the Ark. I don't see the point behind what he is doing except to justify his own beliefs through an ad populum fallacy. But that's just my opinion.
Beyond that, the Bible is stuffed full of things not meant to be taken literally. It's full of hyperbole, metaphor or allegory or things geared toward what a listener of that time could understand. The Bible describes Jesus as the door through which we all must go but Jesus is not literally a door. The Bible speaks of the corners of the Earth but it doesn't have corners. God is described in terms of a volcano or storm but it's understood He is neither.
One last thing on Ham. The Bible says what has been created testifies about God. Everyone loves to be appreciated, even God. I think God loves to show us His handiwork. If we examine that evidence with our God given intellects, assuming we have done the science correctly and the evidence says the universe is a lot older than 6,000 years then it must be considered that Genesis 1 may not have been intended to be taken literally.
Well, that would be because this wasn't the subject of the conversation.
I am not against Christianity or Christians. I have been and am surrounded by mostly Christians my entire life. My concern is with acting on the words of ordinary human beings who pretend to speak for God or pretend to have special influence / communication with God.
Don't leave out ancient Egypt, Greece, the various nations of the Islamic Golden Age, etc. Nations predominantly Christian certainly have carried the baton for hundreds of years but they do so on the shoulders of ancient brothers in Europe. And do not overlook the accomplishments of ancient Athens.
But, again, a lot of good (IMO) has been accomplished by nations predominantly Christian. Repeating, I am not arguing against Christians.
I have no expectation of you ever changing your viewpoint on religion. Further, I am not arguing that the world would be better with no religion (although I think it would be). My point is that it is bad when people simply accept what other humans claim as divine and then act upon same. One could easily carve out a Christian religion that simply adopted what is accepted as the teachings of Jesus without claiming Jesus was divine, engaged in miracles, etc. The entire OT could be considered historical fiction and poetry. Christians could focus on loving one another and trying to understand the creator by understanding the creation itself.
You of course would not call that Christianity but it could have many very good qualities without unfounded commands, grand promises and the obligation to support organizations based on power through perceived knowledge and influence.
If you consider the Bible or any part divine then you are doing exactly what I wrote.
As I noted earlier, this is what drives deism. It is one thing to hold that there must be a grander power. It is quite different to form that into specific deities with personality, intent, expectations, actions, history, powers and promises.
Culture. Most everyone is brought up in a culture that stems from ancient civilizations where gods were the explanation for that which they could not explain (which originally was considerable).
Culture. Children interact with their environments which are infused with religious notions. Further, when someone looks up at the night sky and imagines the awesomeness of the cosmos, would it not be natural to feel that there is something behind it all? After all, our everyday life shows us that great things have a designer. We naturally will carry that intuition forward.
I understand why people think there must be something more. What is not so easy to understand are those that take that much, much further and absolutely believe in the highly attributed gods such as the Christian God. As specifics are added to the definition of God the need for evidence rises. If God were simply viewed as 'sentient creator' then that is easily understandable per what you and I have both been saying. But going beyond that — such as the level of details for the Christian God — and then have zero supporting evidence and the need to explain away the logical contradictions of the definition is not common sense and natural. It defies common sense (and logic).
Actually, it is simpler than that. I am just not convinced that a god exists. I do not preclude the possibility of a sentient creator, but I cannot believe something exists without supporting reasons to believe. However, when it comes to the Christian God, I do reject the existence of that god as defined. The reason is because the Christian God as defined by the Bible is a contradiction. A contradiction does not exist. Again, I am talking about the character as defined. I am not rejecting the notion that a god exists.
My world is logical and factual. Your definition of spiritual considers logic optional. You will take leaps of faith. I will not. That is one key difference. Another difference is that I generally favor parsimony. The more complex the answer the less likely, IMO, that it is true. You, in contrast, are willing to walk a rather contorted path to support your beliefs.
I understand. The key here is that you see the Holy Spirit as the explanation for why you have the correct interpretation of the Bible. My point is that everyone then should have the Holy Spirit helping them interpret and understand and that the resulting understanding would be consistent on the facts. And if not everyone, for whatever reason, then at least a substantial group that could ensure the Bible (or a new incarnation of same) could be written with clarity. One should not read the Bible and walk away with 'God hates fags' or 'God has never condemned slavery as immoral' or 'God has been okay at times with the rape of virgins from defeated tribes' or ...
Then, as I noted, you cannot be confident that your interpretation of the Bible is correct.
As I have noted, I am okay with the idea that the human beings have biases, etc. and that messes up the interpretation process (even with the Holy Spirit engaged). The end result is that we are back to no real good explanation for how one person can believe they hold the correct interpretation of the Bible.
In the end we have a person, such as yourself, filled with what they believe is the Holy Spirit, analyzing the words of ancient men and trying to figure out what rings true to them. The sentence I just wrote explains what results: many, varied and incompatible interpretations. The question on the table, as a reminder, is why anyone thinks that their interpretation is correct (or even mostly correct).
But nowhere in your answer do you offer any means by which you can measure the correctness of your evolving interpretation. That really is the key here (to me). Your answer seems to be that you have confidence that God will ensure you are on the right path. In short, in my view, you just stated that you believe your interpretation is correct on faith.
First, a saying is just a saying. Someone claiming that the Bible is self-correcting means nothing without a supporting argument. Second, I agree that contradictions serve as proof of something being wrong. However, the absence of contradiction does not mean that the verses are true.
There are other verses in the Bible that speak of slaves as property. Common sense explains this too. Of course the Bible speaks of slavery ... slavery was the foundation of the economic systems in biblical times. To them, slavery was perfectly natural. Of course their God would be presented as one that does not condemn the basis of their economy.
Why is the direct literal interpretation difficult to swallow ... ? Why would God say something that is not true ... and say it in such a misleading fashion?
Ham is being very logical and consistent. He believes that every word in the Bible was crafted directly or indirectly by God. With that as his premise, he proceeds quite logically. I disagree with his premise ... I find it unfounded. But after that, his logic is sound. The results become laughably irrational (e.g. dinosaurs coexisting with human beings) but it is a logical consequence of his premise.
Yes, I am quite aware. I think the entire Bible should be taken as mere stories.
See the way I see it, Genesis is the natural result of ancient men trying to explain the origin of everything based on what they observe intuitively. They are little specs on a tiny planet looking into the cosmos with almost no understanding of same and speculating huge. They extrapolated as best they could. My explanation is parsimonious. Your explanation is that this is actually the word of God but is not intended to be taken literally.
By the way Drakk, this is a genuine conversation. These are rare. Thanks.
Wouldn't dream of it. Their writings were a tremendous help to early Christians in learning to think logically and critically, even though a lot of what the ancients said was wrong. It is inarguable that Christians took what others in other places and times and built upon them, beginning the formalization of the scientific method. From the many sources I have read about it, what drove it was they felt that God created a rational universe that could be understood. There's no doubt that the ancients helped them get there.
I don't think this is true. That is, whatever you carved out would not be the Christian religion. You either have to accept all of Jesus or none of him. This is because the only way Jesus matters at all is if he is who he says he is. So, really, all you're suggesting is dismiss the notion of God for all practical purposes (since to you the only version that makes sense is the deist version) and just pick the parts of Christianity you like.
Further, you keep saying things like "people simply accept what other humans claim as divine" as if we both mutually agree on this point. Emphatically, we don't. I do not in any way simply accept what other humans claim as divine. For instance, the Bible says humans have a depraved mind and pursue evil in their hearts. That, in and of ourselves, there is no good thing in us and we are altogether worthless. I don't believe that simply because the Bible says that. I don't believe it because it's what I'm supposed to believe as a Christian. I believe it because observational experience proves it, both in myself and in everyone I've ever met. I have evidenced based reason for that belief.
I don't think God just wants us to slavishly just do what we think the Bible tells us to do or try to have the attitudes and beliefs it says we're supposed to do. In fact, I'm not even sure that's possible for any length of time. God wants us to understand why we are to do them. Why the attitudes and beliefs are important. He wants us to see things as He sees them. That isn't going to happen if "people simply accept what other humans claim as divine". That's just mindless slavery with no understanding. You have no basis for understanding this, but if one truly seeks God in the manner He has decreed, one doesn't need the word of anyone to see that the Bible is true and is indeed His Word. God shows you. It's that simple.
No, I wouldn't call that Christianity. Nor would I call what you imply with the rest of your statement Christianity, either. That is, unfounded, grand promises (which I assume you also consider unfounded) and that it's just a power thing.
This is about as far as I can go with this. Not mad or anything, but it gets tiring trying to discuss something with someone who looks at my faith the way that you do. There's not really any point in it. You're thoroughly convinced of your position, as am I, so what is it we're really doing here?
Yes, they are. I just would prefer we're accomplishing something here.
As I noted, I figured you would not consider this Christianity.
Is there anything in the Bible attributed to God (the word of God) that you do not accept as truth?
My point is not that people take everything in the Bible as the divine word of God but that they do indeed accept as divine truth parts of the Bible simply because the Bible claims these parts are the words of God.
My position is that I see nothing to persuade me that the Bible is divine. Thus it is to me what one would expect — a collection of books written by many ancient men for the purpose of controlling the masses. The Bible is an enormously significant literary and historical work, but I see no evidence that it is divine (in any way) and substantial evidence that it is not.
We are comparing and contrasting our different views. I have never had any intention of persuading you. That is never what this is about for me. I am more interested in how you (and others who have the balls to directly respond) answer questions that to me reveal the Bible as merely the work of ancient men pretending to speak for God. To me it is obvious that the Bible is not divine so I remain curious how others can be so convinced otherwise.
I guess this is why I feel this is pointless. To me, we aren't really comparing differing views and you do not appear to be curious as to why others can be so convinced but, rather, looking for ways to show why they shouldn't be convinced. You don't seem to actually consider much of what I say as something real, that is. Instead, you look for ways to conform what I say to your closely held views.
My purpose is not to persuade you to God, either. It's actually to convince you that serious Christians don't believe "simply because the Bible says it's true" or "the Bible says it's divine," or some version of that. People with IQ's higher than either of us believe what I do. They find what the Bible says eminently logical. University professors, scientists philosophers and many others. Brilliant people in their fields. It simply doesn't make sense that such people believe "merely the work of ancient men pretending to speak for God." What? They just leave their critical thinking skills on the counter with the car keys when it comes to religion?
It just doesn't make sense to make such claims. Nor does it make sense to make such claims when what we are talking about is primarily a spiritual phenomena and a way of seeing reality. It doesn't make sense that all of the worlds estimated 2.5 billion Christians believe "simply because the Bible says it's true." It would seem to me that anyone who claimed critical thinking would find the idea rather unlikely, statistically, if nothing else. And yet, you seem to insist on it.
Point being, it's difficult to find enthusiasm for a conversation where the sum total of reason for my faith continually claime to be that "I just believe" or some version of that.
All earthly religions are human creations. All of them.
Was something "inspired by God" ? That depends on what one considers divine inspiration to be , and to what detail.
In my opinion far too many atheists base their main objections to religious belief on specific items in the different scriptures. This is not really a good way to disprove the existence of God as all scriptures are man made.
I think the answer is 'yes' and that they do not even realize they are doing so.
It does to me. Religion (all the various sorts) has been part of the fabric of societies for all of recorded history. People are brought up to accept religious beliefs. Religious beliefs are constantly being expressed. There is no mystery to me as to why people simply believe the Bible to be the divine word of God (or the Qur'an or the Vedic scriptures, ...). All one need do is follow one's culture and one will be religious. Hindus believe in their gods as much as you believe in the Christian God and they no doubt have extraordinarily intelligent people among their ranks too.
The fact that the super majority of people on the planet are religious does not mean their holy books are truth. The fact that there are so many religions with different views should, rather, argue that religions are simply emergent properties of society. As time marches on, you probably cannot even entertain the possibility that Christianity and its God will be viewed by future human beings the same way you personally view the Greek and Roman gods. You dismiss them as mere myths, but ancient civilizations structured their societies around these gods just as we do today. An ancient Greek would no doubt wonder how you could possibly not believe in Athena given everyone else knows she exists (and protects them).
You still presume that atheists are out to disprove god. That is true of only a sliver minority of atheists. Most atheists simply are not convinced any god exists and challenge the claims of certainty that a particular god exists.
Yeah, that's the way I read you. So, what's left?
I doubt I agree but perhaps I am missing something in your statement.
Can't agree with this one, either. Whether or not something is inspired by God depends first on whether or not He exists and second, did God inspire something. An individual may hold opinions on it but it is not dependent on people's view of it.
And, if you know anything about me, I of course disagree that scripture contained within the Bible is the inspired word of God. As for atheists who bother with the subject, most attempt to discredit the Christian God through attacking what they perceive as contradictions, when in fact they simply do not understand what they are objecting to. They create some sort of strawman and argue from there.
Some of us understand the material far better than most Christians. In the USA, most atheists are ex-theists.
I certainly do not do that and offhand cannot think of which atheist(s) here do that.
A perfect omniscient God who is surprised, persuaded to change His mind, disappointed. That omniscience quality is brutal. Of course one can always equivocate from the Bible and define omniscience as limited. Others have attempted to argue that God temporarily refrains from His knowing all.
From my perspective, this as proven to be untrue as far as understanding the material. Even the ex-theists. Just because they went to church or were raised in it doesn't mean they understand it. Sure, they know what it says, but that isn't the same as knowing what it means. I don't know how many YouTube vids I've watched of atheists who thought they had it nailed but were simply arguing a strawman. Not that they did so intentionally. They just didn't understand the subject they were addressing. So far, no atheist has brought up anything I'm currently aware of that was able to stand. This isn't because I choose to ignore what they think is a contradiction. It's because, so far, there's a perfectly logical and reasonable answer to their objections.
I know of verses where Jesus was surprised but not where God was. There's nothing about God "changing His mind" that disproves omniscience. And what qualifies as equivocation? Disagreement? As far as God temporarily refraining from accessing what He knows, I can't think of why that would void omniscience. One possible example of God limiting His knowledge was when God showed Adam all the animals He had made to see what Adam would name them. I believe God might do such a thing in order to delight in the moment.
You were going along just fine (as far as your 'lane') but then you decided to start throwing 'stones' at passerbys. Well, Drakkonis what if I say to you that the Bible makes no 'effort' to answer all questions or be plain about what it "actually says"?
What would your church attempt to do: Speak into the silence? Or would you "suddenly" have a rush of understanding about liberty in Christ without constraints of the Law?
Incidentally, just how 'conservative' do you reckon God wants the Church (of the present) to appear? Keep up with the times? That is, be relevant. Or, and this is no offense to Quakers - just live "the simple life" in a hectic, dangerously-chaotic and changing world? (Which some conservative Christians are definitely not doing anyway.)
One more thing: A supporter of an demonstrative unrepentant man like Donald Trump should be careful of trying to cast dispersion on the religiosity of those who live out their calling in Jesus Christ - even though it is different from your own. Liberty in Christ, it turns out, has a spiritual meaning to be lived out in life.
God was surprised by Adam and Eve's disobedience (either that or he knowingly set them up to fail). God changed his mind per Moses' intercession (Exodus 32). God was disappointed with the entirety of humanity and decided to wipe out all life and restart with select pairs (Noah's ark). These are not the only examples (by a long shot).
No, I gave an example in my comment that was intended to ensure my meaning was clear:
Detailing my example even more: redefining God's omniscience so that He does not have perfect knowledge of the future.
Do you not recognize the logical contortions you have just engaged in? God limits His knowledge??? Seems like a desperate way to explain this away. As I noted, one can make the Bible mean whatever one wants given the liberal interpretations people have historically used.
We've had that particular discussion before. Although my explanation was perfectly reasonable, you rejected it without any counter explanation.
That God "changed His mind" is not evidence for not being omniscient since there are other explanations that explain Exodus 32. An equally plausible explanation is that God was demonstrating something about the nature of His relationship with us. In this case, God's justice demanded that the Israelites pay for their evil but God's mercy demanded that He respond mercifully on behalf of His righteous servant, Moses.
In another case, God's anger burns against Judah because of their unfaithfulness, but because King Asa is mortified by Israel's abandonment of God and enacts reform, God declares that His wrath will be delayed so that King Asa's reign will be a peaceful one.
In both cases there is nothing that suggests that God was surprised in any way but, rather, simply responds according to His nature.
An oldy but a goody. And totally without merit. First of all, as always, the Bible does its best to describe an infinite, incomprehensible God in terms we can relate to, but can never encapsulate the entirety of God. For instance, God's acts are described as acts of His mighty hand, or arm, even though it is understood God has no hands or arms, as humans do. God's eye is upon us, even though He has no eyes. God shoots His arrows from His mighty bow, even though He doesn't literally have bow and arrows. In the same way, regret/being sorry/disappointment falls in the same category. One can regret how something turned out, even though one knew it would. One can be disappointed or sorry for the same reason. But even so, it's almost certain that such concepts only brush the edges of what God felt over the issue.
As for God's disappointment/being sorry/regret doesn't indicate error or a lack of omniscient. I would bet you could ask any commander that, had to send his troops into a situation that he knew was hopeless but had to do it anyway, if he understood how God felt, I bet they would say the same thing. That they regretted the necessity but wouldn't deny it was necessary or that it was a mistake. That they were sorry it had to be the way it was.
Yes, but it doesn't answer the question. I think your example is invalid. Is that equivocating because I think it is invalid?
Omniscience Paradox Debunked - YouTube
Do you recognize you don't actually give an argument as to why this is a contortion? You just claim that it is. You just say it seems desperate. Is not your objection simply based on the fact that since you can't wall off what you know, therefore God can't?
Um, yeah. That's true of anything. Just look at our society today! We're supposed to pretend Bruce Jenner is a woman, for goodness sake! We're supposed to believe that the least racist country on earth is the epitome of racism. That doesn't mean they're true and it doesn't mean there isn't a true and correct interpretation of the Bible. This is elementary stuff, TiG. That some interpret the Bible any way they want to is not evidence that the Bible means whatever anyone wants it to mean. It's simply evidence that some interpret it the way they want to.
I think you should take this issue up with the Apostle Paul. He certainly had something to say about those who used the Gospel to their own ends.
As usual, I have little idea of what you're talking about.
It's questions like this that makes me skeptical of considering you a brother in Christ. God is the epitome of conservatism. God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. God is supremely unconcerned, as I understand God, with what modern society considers relevant. God doesn't call us to be relevant to modern society. God is concerned with us being the light of the world, pointing others to what He thinks is relevant.
No, we aren't to do that. What we are to do is find ways to point to the same conservative God that has, does and always will exist in a manner that will register. That means finding ways for the lost to reject what the world considers relevant for what God thinks is relevant.
That's great. Maybe you should share that with someone who supports Trump.
Brother in Christ, I really don't know what to do with your 'concern' and skepticism. Because God in Jesus Christ is the judge and knows the heart(s). That is, you, me, and the Church do not. Maybe we would be less of a mystery to each other if we interacted in faith and religion discussions more. It is your 'call' to stand afar off. I meet with you where I can 'find' you.
Clearly, 'the model conservative God' seems trapped by an ever-changing and evolving world of humanity. Do you know how silly it sounds to quote the phrase, Jesus Christ: the same yesterday, today, and forever - without allowing for its spiritual connotation? Surely the literal meaning of the words: the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow -can't mean that we, mere believers, ever fully comprehended the vastness and scope of God's character to 'contain' it and effectively 'capture' God with words. Nor, could it mean that all the wisdom of Jesus (the man) manifested in a short life ending in crucifixion. If Jesus shared all that was necessary to obtain about spiritual matters, Paul and the Church, would be superfluous.
Please, think about the implications of believers who are faith-walkers and faith talkers being able to know all there is to know about God (the utmost Spirit). Please, Drakkonis. Ponder that.
Moreover, the conservative God as you frame it, was it so, would have no practical use for anything other than conservatism. Therefore, you "dumb-down" God?
God is not above mere carnal politics?
Why does allow a modern society? Surely, since you believe God is creator of all inclusive of everything - how is it possible that modern society has all these 'unpleasant' dynamics? And if the Christian does not 'speak' to the issues of the times - how can Christians reach and empathize with others enough to transmit any message of truth (of the times)?
Of course, believers are to be sanctified (set apart). However, not doing what others necessarily do is not the same as cutting oneself off from the world. Which Paul warned was impossible.
Firstly, a conservative God, by definition, would not have any patience with a "progressive" (modern) world. Why allow humanity to 'undertake' what is inefficient, and inefficacious? A "progressive" world can allow for conservativism; a conservative world would not tolerate progressivism.
Yet, here we all are existing in a world with all the dynamics of a 'rainbow.'
Secondly, our individual example and collective examples of Christ-like living will be its own 'attractant' (hope) for people to want to know about God in Christ. Remember, Paul planted, Apollo watered, and God (alone) gives the increase. We do not have to 'worry' over God's conclusion of anybody's salvation. (God can not lose--right.You do believe that?)
Maybe somebody could cease being lukewarm regarding an unrepentant man like Donald Trump or risk being 'spewed out' for being ambiguous (neither cold or hot)!
There is no issue to take up; Paul says we 'see as through a mirror darkly.' That is, all things were not clear to Paul, and by extrapolation-not clear to us either.
And I have not what you're talking about with that "Gospel to their own ends" statement.
Maybe someone can cease trying to make this about Trump or imply what they think I think of him? He has no relevance to what's being talked about.
As stated before, some people SAY they want to talk about 'light vs. darkness,' but get tangled up in their words and emotions alot! Donald Trump is a 'high water mark' in the Evangelical (conservative) community, is he not meshed into some conservatives' churches religion-politics?
Someone here is skeptical of my calling in Christ Jesus (and didn't take it back when given a chance) and state this:
You made it about politics and the Church (social gospel) first. I simply called you out on conservative Christians (without the quote marks around it) cuddling Trumpism in the public marketplace. Recognize your handiwork!
That would be entirely counter to how I operate. I never reject without counter explanation. I may have already addressed the point and stopped repeating myself, but I never leave a new rebuttal hanging; not my style. Most commonly I find myself addressing the same point multiple times.
Sure it is. A perfect omniscient sentient entity already has perfect knowledge. There is no way to improve upon that knowledge and thus no basis for changing a perfect mind from making a perfect decision based on perfect knowledge.
And of course there are 'other' explanations. There are always 'other' explanations. Apologists have been working for thousands of years constructing 'other' explanations. The quality of those explanations is what matters.
This does not escape the fact that God would have known about all of this prior to it happening. So either God changed his mind —a contradiction with omniscience— or God misled Moses to give him the illusion that God is willing to reconsider.
Again, God would have known about all the conditions prior to them happening. If He changed His mind (because Asa was mortified) that is a contradiction; He knew Asa would be mortified.
And why would God be angry?? God would have known exactly what would take place in Judah well before it happened. Anger suggests that God learned something new. It also suggests that God is emotional.
In both cases I sense that you cannot put yourself into a situation where you can objectively analyze what is taking place. For details, see my remarks.
So your answer is that God can know exactly what will happen, have the power to change it (since God set up all the rules in the first place) but still regret or be disappointed that what He knew would happen actually happened. Remember when I mentioned how apologists can come up with all sorts of contortions in logic? This is one of them.
As a software engineer I can create my own little reality with little sentient entities doing their thing. But since I created all the rules of this nature, I am ultimately able to predict what will happen and I could make it not happen. If I choose to allow it to happen I would not regret it; I would have made a choice and my choice would simply play out. I would not regret making a choice given mutually exclusive conditions; hard to imagine that I am more mature than God.
Are those commanders omnipotent? Are they omniscient? Did they set up all the circumstances of reality or do they deal with conditions entirely out of their control (e.g. what the enemy could do)? An omnipotent / omniscient God should not be compared to a human being.
I think merely deeming my example invalid is not a rebuttal.
I have to explain to you why God suppressing His own knowledge is a contortion?
No. It is an observation that to explain a fundamental contradiction you claim that God intentionally suppresses his own knowledge. I am not saying God would not be able to do that, I am saying that the notion is silly. I think you are pretending that you do not see why anyone would find that to be a silly, desperate notion. Kind of reminds me of this scene from "My Cousin Vinny" ("I don't know, I'm a fast cook I guess"):
True, but that was not my point. My point was that most people think their interpretation of the Bible is correct. And because of the precedent of apologists, one can liberally interpret the Bible to argue that their interpretation really is correct. The fact that someone claims their interpretation is correct because they have studied and can explain themselves is not in itself very impressive.
What would be impressive is a persuasive explanation. Not explanations that rely upon 'God works in mysterious ways' or 'Maybe God temporarily made Himself forget so that he could enjoy the moment' kind of explanations.
I will watch and respond to your video in another comment.
Drakk, where do you see me making the argument that this video presents?
Even the free will portion of this video is not the argument I make regarding free will. My point on omniscience and free will is that if the future is knowable then we do not have free will. My point does not even include the notion of God. But if one speaks of God's omniscience then my point is this: if God is omniscient then that means the future is knowable. It is the knowability of the future (even if no entity has the knowledge) that translates into determinism (free will being an illusion).
The middle knowledge portion is a way of limiting God's knowledge. It is what you have argued in the past — that God knows of the possibilities but does not know of the specific choices one would make (carving out free will). How you can see that as not limiting omniscience is interesting.
The video then gets into why evil exists ... basically God makes choices on what is doable and picks (designs) reality to get as close to what He wants as possible. I have always agreed with the notion that omnipotence does not mean that God can do what is impossible. So this does not rebut any argument I have made either.
Did you not watch the video or do you truly think that the arguments they debunk are the ones I have been making?
Yeah. You go with that, CB.
As usual, you isolate God from humanity. That is, you don't consider the problem in context. What appears to be God changing His mind only seems that way because He is dealing with humans. It's as simple as portraying what happens between human parents and their children. If a parent tells their child they are not going to take them to the park because the child didn't first clean their room but the child subsequently cleans the room and the parent subsequently takes them to the park, the parent hasn't really changed their mind. Going to the park was always contingent on the room being clean. Condition met. To the park they go. It is God relating to us in terms we can understand.
I would put it in terms of reasonable plausibility.
Agreed.
What illusion? God does "reconsider" when Moses asks Him to. God doesn't destroy Israel. It was contingent upon Moses making the request, the point of which was the importance of intercession in which Moses acts as a "type", or foreshadowing, of Jesus. When God speaks directly to the Israelites, they plead with Moses to intercede with God, that God would stop speaking directly to them for fear that they would die. In the whole account of Moses, Moses intercedes with God on behalf of the Israelites. Just as Jesus does more perfectly for us now. It wasn't illusion or lack of knowledge on God's part. It was God demonstrating how things work. It was a lesson, not illusion.
You're going to see it as a contradiction no matter what, but it isn't, really. All one has to do is keep in mind that God is dealing with teaching humans about Himself and giving evidence that He is indeed God. Bible simply puts things in terms that we can understand. From the Israelite's perspective, it does seem God changes His mind. In reality, God simply does what He has always said He would do for those who repent. He always forgives and blesses. Because Asa responded to God's message given through the Prophet Azariah, God did what He always does, but it's put in terms of "changing His mind." This isn't a warped version of what is plainly seen in the Bible. This isn't "rationalizing". It's just one more example of many of how God responds to the repentant.
I must be missing something about what you intend with this. I'm going to play some World of Warships while I ponder this.
Hmm. Nope. Still stumped. Why would God be angry? Like asking why I would be angry if someone kidnapped my five year old daughter (had I one), raped and tortured her and then killed her. God created what He describes as "very good" but now they are sacrificing their children in fires to gods of metal and wood. Because people don't obey God, suffering increases. Why wouldn't God be angry?
Or that He didn't and knew it would happen. Does that somehow mean He shouldn't be angry?
I would think it more than a "suggestion". The Bible makes it pretty clear that God has emotions. And?
Um, yeah. Okay...
Nice. Contortion of logic. Right.
Gotta go to work tomorrow and I really don't want to spend what time I have left on responding any further. You simply argue from what you think God, should He exist, would do in your opinion, rather than examine what the Bible says He actually does and consider the reason for it. Seriously. Your argument is based on nothing else than what you imagine God would be like if He exists. That's totally fine with me, but I have no interest in arguing that God.
Peace.
Nice dumbing down and dodge of the several comments, fellow believer. /sarc. Yeah, you go with that.
That is simply a verbose way to say: "God works in mysterious ways" which is in turn part of your argument that logic is unreliable in matters of God. It is a nice way of stating that you do not care if there are logical contradictions because they may not be contradictions if one had the extraordinary mental powers of God.
"Believe in spite of the (apparent) contradictions because we are not smart enough to see the logic"
Thing is, you presume the Bible is true. I do not. I evaluate the Bible on its own merit. I am persuaded against the notion that the God defined by the Bible is real because I am convinced that the Bible itself is simply the writings of ancient men and not the divine word of a perfect God. And my starting position is based on the facts and evidence. Your starting position is based on faith and then you apparently back into justifying your faith and, along the way, engage in liberal apologetics to force the Bible to conform. This is confirmation bias.
Now, I am just responding to your 'as usual' opening and the tone it brought.
Then clear this up:
I thought this was your rebuttal to my noting that here God changed his mind. Are you not saying that God decided to be merciful due to Moses? If this decision was done in consideration of Moses' input then God reconsidered. If not, then God knew that he would respond mercifully regardless of what Moses said. Thus God never really intended to go on a killing spree so his words were misleading. He would be, in this case, putting forth an illusion of intent that he never really had.
Let's turn to the words of the Bible (if the Bible means anything you need to actually consider the words used, you cannot always dismiss problems as out of context):
The approach you use when the words of scripture do not match your desired meaning is to dismiss the words and claim that this is not really the meaning. Why you think that is persuasive is beyond me. But I will tell you that it is not persuasive.
Anger is a primitive emotion (for one) that seems odd for the grandest possible entity. But largely I am referring to the fact that God knew what was going to happen. Why would God get angry about something that he knew would happen? Especially since God is not without power to shape events as He sees fit. If he put forth a particular reality and that reality has results that God would prefer not exist but knows about well before they occur, why would he get angry when these results finally occur??
In human beings, emotions muddy rational thought. I just find it odd that the perfect supreme entity, the omniscient, omnipotent creator of everything would have emotions. I am not surprised that the ancient men wrote emotions into their God character (of course they would). But the anthropomorphic God is lessened by possessing these inherently human qualities (and weaknesses).
My finding God having emotions is just a note in passing, it is not my argument and you know it. My argument has been about omniscience and contradictions and anyone reading my comments will know this.
The irony is that your argument is precisely based on you imagining what God would be like. Your interpretations are based heavily on the premise that anything that seems to not make sense to us does indeed make sense to God so there are no contradictions. Further, you reject actual scripture by claiming it is inconsistent with the big picture conception of God and thus the scripture, read directly, is necessarily out of context. You then ignore it.
And after all the 'fat' was cooked away, there was nothing left to speak of. 'Disturbingly' BORING.
I'm glad you brought this up. Although you're completely wrong in applying this to what I said, I've watched you make this complaint for a while now. I keep thinking that, somehow, you'd eventually realize how ridiculous it actually is as an argument, but apparently not. Essentially, what you are saying is that God could not, or would not, act in a capacity beyond your ability to understand. And, apparently, you don't find this a ridiculous notion.
Or, possibly, you think your intellect is so great that there is no action God could take that you could not understand. Therefore, if it is purported by Christians that God did such and such and it doesn't make sense to you, it couldn't be true. The evidence for it being untrue is that God could not act in a manner beyond your intellect's ability to understand.
To be honest, it wasn't a dodge. I simply don't feel responding to you to be worth my time in this place. I tried to speak to you privately but you rejected the effort. This is the result.
That is not my argument. My argument concerns the veracity of the Bible. In the abstract, if a character is defined with contradictions then that character, as defined, cannot exist. Also, if a book contains contradictions, then it should not be trusted.
Further, I am noting that your arguments often end up with "just because it seems like a contradiction to you does not mean it is a contradiction to God". Sure, of course. But, as I described to you, I do not presume the Bible divine. By default, it is the words of ancient men. To be more than that requires evidence; the Bible must demonstrate its divinity before I am convinced of it. Thus a contradiction in the Bible goes to its veracity. You, in contrast, leap to the belief that God does exist and that the Bible is divine. You are not concerned with critically analyzing the Bible before believing what it claims; you believe in spite of its flaws. And with that, any contradiction or error in the Bible is not allowed by you to be a criticism of that which ostensibly defines God but rather a criticism of God as if He actually exists.
In short, you hand-wave-away all problems with the Bible as simply our inability to understand the mind of God whereas I see the Bible as that which is supposed to guide people to God. If the guide (and the God it defines) is flawed, I am not persuaded that the guide is true. In contrast, you leap past the Bible to God (as you have conceived God) and hand-wave away all the problems with the Bible with "we just are not smart enough to properly understand the words".
Why must you always ultimately make things negative and personal? Here you insult me based on your completely wrong conception of my argument.
I find that I spend the super majority of my time with you correcting misinterpretations of my words. It is akin to pushing a magnet across a table using another magnet of like polarity. Every move requires adjustment because the straight line (the obvious, direct interpretation of my words) rarely is the one that you take.
You don't GET to talk to Christians in private notes only. I know what the Bible says about it. But, your POSITIONs you are putting out here in politics and religion to the world. Consequently, I will not be 'backroomed' and 'cuppy-holed' with you (when discussing religion).
Yes, it is a dodge. And honestly, you could use the "investment" of time with other believers alot better for your emotional health than with unbelievers who won't even entertain a loose spiritual outlook! No insult to unbelievers.
Since you clearly have a desire to address the larger subject of religion, that is: Why not with me (too)?!
It wasn't intended to be either negative or personal but, rather, a possibility on your part. Besides, if what I said was in fact negative and personal, how is what I said materially different from your saying...
This doesn't seem negative and personal to you?
Whenever you stick the "God works in mysterious ways" complaint in there that's exactly what you're arguing. Further, it wasn't even an appropriate charge to make concerning what I said. I gave an explanation with no vagueness in it and you returned with that. Somehow, what I said was "mysterious' to you. I don't get it.
Complete BS. I always have an explanation for why I believe what I'm saying. It is hardly my fault you ignore what I write and just put everything I say down to "God works in mysterious ways". Let me give you an example.
That is a general example from our own, every day, human experience. There's nothing 'Mysterious' about this explanation, which does not stretch plausibility at all. You also ignore the even more specific explanation that followed.
But you answer all of that with...
What logical contradictions??? Considering God's goals, which even you can understand even though you don't believe, and who God is dealing with, what I have explained about this isn't actually a case dealing with omniscience at all. The only logical contradiction I see is your refusal to actually look at what's going on in these examples and insist that because "God changed His mind", which is just a literary device to begin with, we don't need to look any further and therefore we have a contradiction.
You then make it worse by saying totally irrelevant things like...
Total non-sequitur. We aren't talking about whether or not the Bible is divine and it isn't something I'd ever waste my efforts on trying to convince you of. The subject is what you think demonstrates an apparent contradiction in God's omniscience. It totally doesn't require that you believe the Bible is divine. All one has to do is understand that the writer intended to convey something about something. It isn't a book of random words strung together into sentences. And you don't even have to agree with what the author was trying to communicate. You just have to understand what he was saying.
Illogic, in this case, seems to me the inexplicable paring away of context to focus on four words "God changed His mind" in order to make a case that God could not therefore be omniscient. That is the real mystery here.
Yeah, why didn't I think of this? Instead of the years of carefully explaining my position, crafting arguments as to why I disagree, putting in so much time trying to present my side as logically as I can, I could have just been waiving it all away with my hand, so to speak. I mean, think of all the wasted effort on my part when I could have just said "God works in mysterious ways" all along. Apparently, that's all anything I say gets translated to on your end.
That's correct.
Last time I'm going to hand waive this away for you. Exodus 32 isn't about God's omniscience. It isn't trying to say anything about it at all. It is one person, God, speaking to another person, Moses. What is recorded is from a human perspective. There is nothing in the passage that necessarily requires that God must not have had total omniscience or He wouldn't have changed His mind. Nor was God's plan to destroy the Israelites an illusion. The only reason He did not do what He fully intended to do was that Moses interceded. There is nothing to indicate that God did not know Moses would do this. It is entirely wrong, your saying that God would have responded mercifully regardless of what Moses said. He had to say what he did or Moses would have been a new Abraham as all the other Israelites would have been dead.
Considering the entirety of the Bible, it's apparent God wants interaction with us and He wants us to interact with Him. God hardly needed to inform Moses that He was going to kill all the Israelites. He didn't need Moses' permission. So why does God inform him what He is about to do? Because He is relating to Moses (and us) on our level. He is doing something that reveals something about Himself that will be recorded in the Bible for later generations to ponder. Even if you personally think the Bible is nothing more than a collection of stories, it's still a record of what these storytellers had to say about the god they wrote about.
Or, you can just pretend I'm saying "God works in mysterious ways".
Oh and for the record, you don't consider me enough of a Christian anyway! (You brought out the " " scare quote markings.)
Therefore, you might as well address me alongside the unbelievers you are address at-length. (And no, I ain't desperate for conversation, I am just pointing out inconsistency.)
Show me one, even just one, place where you can prove I do this. Presumably, you quote Exodus 32:9-14 because you think this an example of me dismissing what it says in favor of my own desired meaning. So, what have I dismissed in these verses? Presumably, considered what you highlighted, you apparently think I am dismissing that God changed His mind. I haven't. God obviously states He's going to do one thing but then does another. What I am dismissing is your notion that this is evidence God doesn't have omniscience. That is what my argument has been about, by reading the verses in context. That I do this is not evidence of my dismissing
The argument to which I was referring was this...
You are putting forth the argument that if God has foreknowledge of an event He would not have reason to be angry about it when it actually happened. And, apparently, being angry means a lack of foreknowledge. I don't see how either of these things follow, especially the second.
This is nothing but a pure lie, from one end to the other. There isn't a shred of truth to it at all. The only things I ever make an argument for in this place are the one's that I believe I understand. There are things I do not understand and trust that God is in control, in spite of my lack of understanding but I never, ever speak of these things in this place. Ever. The things I do speak of in here I give explanations and reasons for what I say and not once has it ever been "God works in mysterious ways". Not one single time. Anyone who has followed my posts over the years can attest to this, except liars, apparently.
The same holds true for what I say about God in this place. They aren't my "imaginings" but what can be plainly seen in the Bible. The things I don't understand about God I don't speak of in this place. I'm not about to say something I don't know is true about God to a non-believer, for fear of misrepresenting what God has to say about Himself in the Bible. Misrepresenting God is one of the worst things a person can do. It is worse than any crime or sin you could think of.
More total crap. What actually happens is I reject your interpretation precisely because it almost always inconsistent with the rest of scripture. In other words, I actually do the opposite of what you claim I'm doing.
There is a concept, a true one I mentioned earlier, that says the Bible interprets itself. Meaning if an interpretation of a particular verse disagrees with verses in the rest of the Bible, the interpretation is wrong. That's why, if you've ever seen a study Bible, it usually has cross references on the same page one is currently reading, linking the verse to other verses in the Bible that speak to the subject under consideration. This is how I can know with certainty that your interpretation of Exodus 21:20-21 is wrong. It doesn't agree with anything else anywhere in the Bible.
You, on the other hand, always read scripture in isolation, so all you can do is say what it means to you. The effect is that what you accuse me of doing is actually what you yourself are doing.
Actually, I was thinking of pastors like this guy here and what I think is or was his mentor in this video (3:20). I'm also thinking of Christians who are replacing the gospel with woke social justice ideology such as Critical Race Theory, the goals and views of BLM and all the rest of the woke ideologies. If this describes you then, yeah, you're missing the bus.
No it is not. That is not an argument of: "... God could not, or would not, act in a capacity beyond your ability to understand.". It is pointing out a cliche excuse when logic fails on the theistic side. When unable to answer a challenge one can always claim that the challenge is resolved by God but we just are not smart enough to understand it. It is a non-answer. The challenge has not been addressed. The answer, in effect, is 'I cannot answer that question'.
Do you truly not see that you posed a strawman argument here? You inserted your own meaning for my words and then (in spite of my comments) insist that is what I meant.
With this: (which is quite a bit more than the credit you give to me)
Now you think I ignored your comment. I did not, I read it and responded accordingly. So let's break down your first quote:
Here we go with the out of context line again.
Here is the "we are not smart enough to see God's logic"
You think this is what God did with Moses? What was the condition that God expected Moses to fulfill? To stand up for his people? God said he was going to kill Moses' people, Moses spoke up and God relented. Did God intend to kill Moses' people or not? Did God lie to Moses or did he change His mind? (see below for more on this)
Here you are speaking of what I have already stated would be God tricking Moses. I have already explained multiple times that if this is NOT a contradiction then God basically lied to Moses (just as the parents in your example lied to their child). So you offer nothing new and continue with the notion of God knows and we do not so no contradiction.
So when I net the above (and other comments) down to "... you are just falling back on God works in mysterious ways" I am not ignoring anything. That is all that you said. You offered no explanation for the contradiction other than denying that it is a contradiction due to our inability to understand.
And I yet again am asked to repeat what I have already explained. Most recently:
Read the above, focus on the blue.
The problem throughout is that you refuse (or are unable) to even temporarily suppress your belief in order to understand my point. You always have God factored in. I have carefully and repeatedly explained that I am challenging the veracity of the Bible. The Bible is by default simply the work of ancient men. No God by default. To determine if the Bible can be trusted to be divine (as it claims) one would naturally test its claims against its content. Again, there is no God here, just the Bible and the God character it defines. If you read my requoting of myself above (with the blue) you will see direct contradictions. Again, no established God yet, just the words of ancient men defining a God character. Most people, being honest, would read this and see the obvious contradiction. The contradiction is that the God character, who knows everything before it happens, was convinced by Moses to relent and not kill his people.
You claim that the God character did not really change His mind; that He knew that Moses would argue against the destruction; that the God character only told Moses that he was going to kill his people. And to that I told you that this then means that the perfect God character lied to Moses. He tricked Moses. So pick your narrative. The God character either changed His mind in response to Moses' pleading (the direct reading of the scripture) or the God character lied to Moses and never had any intention of killing his people.
This ⇡ I have already detailed to you. Yet here I am again repeating myself.
Now, again, you can either deal with the problems inherent in this scripture or you can ignore the words and simply claim that this all makes good sense and that God did not lie nor did God change His mind. And you will tell me that this is the case but that we are not smart enough to understand how this is possible. And I will remain unpersuaded by same.
The divinity of the Bible is the core of this. It is from the Bible we get the definition of omniscience and from the Bible we get the contradictions. If the Bible is not considered divine then what is the point of this discussion?
I have provided three (of many) examples of contradictions in the Bible. Your response ultimately is not to show how the scripture shown is consistent but rather to talk around it with explanations that are all founded on: "we cannot understand as God does".
That's right. And I watch you deny the words of scripture as written and offer your own alternative interpretation that flies in the face of the words. And you get angry because I do not accept your alternate interpretation based on your understanding of the mind of God that you claim human beings cannot understand.
You do not understand why omniscience of a perfect God makes it logically impossible for the perfect God to change His mind? I explained this already but here I go again. God is perfect and makes perfect decisions based on perfect information (that omniscience thing). What would trigger a change of God's mind given He already knows everything? What is the new information that He did not consider before?
I am sure you understand this; not sure why you indicate otherwise.
Not everything you say (no need to get dramatic). But when you hand-wave it is appropriate for me to call it out. I did.
Correct. But God's omniscience is at play here because God changed His mind per the scripture. And if you want to interpret this as God never intending to kill Moses' people then the contradiction is that a perfect God lied to Moses.
I presented this passage because it explicitly describes God changing His mind. The fact that the passage itself does not talk of omniscience is irrelevant.
But Drakk, if God changed his intent he changed His mind. How can you not see this??
Again, and again, and again (good grief this is old), if God is omniscient and never intended to kill Moses' people then perfect God lied to Moses. (see above)
I did not say that. Again, again, I acknowledged your alternate interpretation (which flat out goes against the scripture as written) that God never intended to kill but said He would for Moses' benefit. Perfect God lying. Pick your scenario. It is a contradiction either way.
Did perfect, pure, honest God lie to Moses?
Okay, so you hold the position that God did indeed change His mind. I wish I had read this first.
That is the contradiction that I raised. From my prior comment, here is why this is a contradiction:
God knew what Moses was going to say. Yet he decided to kill his people anyway. But when Moses said what God knew he would say, God changed His mind. Based on what? God received no new information. He totally understand what was going on and what would happen before it happened. He made his perfect decision based on perfect information and then later changed His mind??
Good grief, here we go.
You have your own perception of God. You for years have denied particular versus in scripture because they are inconsistent with your holistic understanding of God —your own personal interpretation of how God thinks, what He cares about, etc.
You deny this and claim I am lying.
Skipping the rest since I again would have to repeat what I have already addressed and (worse) veers off into more meta. My prior comment @1.1.70 is far more relevant since it cuts through all this noise and brings us to a point where we both consider my Golden Calf example to be a case where perfect, omniscient God changed His mind.
Oh, for goodness sake! Do you honestly believe I can't see what you think is a contradiction? That I can't take the assumptions you look at this with and see what you see? I can. Your position isn't that hard to understand. I can see why you think it is a contradiction, and thus denies God's omniscience.
Now what? What's supposed to happen now?
Before I respond to anything else, I need the answer to this question.
Let me fix this statement for you.
That, TiG, more accurately reflects what has actually happened for years.
What you call my interpretation is always the literal words of the scripture. I do not modify them in any way. You object to the plain reading and offer your sometimes exotic interpretations.
You have your own perception of God and your objection to the literal scripture I cite is always based on your holistic view and the interpretations it yields.
TiG @1.1.70
I assume this is what you are referring to. If so, it doesn't answer my question. I understand what you are saying here. It isn't complicated. The question is, having read and understanding your argument, what am I supposed to do now? What do you think my reaction should be, in your view? What do you think my response should be?
Because someone says "I could eat a horse" doesn't mean that the speaker literally intends that they could eat an entire horse. To understand, one has to consider context. Jesus said that if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. That doesn't mean he intended that there are situations where morality would demand one cut off their hand.
Yes, actually, you do, if what you are referring to isn't meant to be taken literally or doesn't fit the contextual meaning. Especially to extremes, like you do with Exodus 21:20-21. The entire chapter speaks of personal responsibility toward others but on those verses you do a Monty Python "And now for something completely different." and don't bother you with context.
And what would define "exotic"? Or is it a case of who defines exotic?
Um, yeah? Why would anyone who wanted to understand the Bible do anything different? If you are going to study Marxism, for instance, are you going to claim Marxism is x based off of one or two sentences or are you going to explain it in terms of the entire theory? The only reason for not treating either the Bible or Marxism holistically that I can think of is to attempt to force an interpretation of some particular that doesn't actually hold water when taken in context of the whole.
I am okay with no reaction. That is what you just gave. I asked questions and you chose to not answer.
Well of course not. But we are not talking about colloquial expressions. We are talking about what is professed as the word of God. In this case, we are talking about what God supposedly said:
We are not talking about raining cats and dogs, horsefeathers, cold as hell, etc. This is scripture intended to guide believers. It uses natural language. It is not a parable. This is God speaking with Moses.
In this passage, short of persuasive context (not mere speculation) to the contrary, God is said to have changed His mind after hearing Moses. Why is this a problem with omniscience?
Well, again, we have a perfect God with perfect knowledge who knew exactly what would happen to lead to his discussion with Moses. He knew what Moses would say well before Moses said it. God made a perfect decision based on His perfect knowledge. After all, that is how the God character is defined by the Bible.
What then would cause a perfect decision to be altered? What causes a perfect God to change His mind?
This is the omniscience contradiction here. If one knows everything and is perfect then there is nothing that would cause a perfect decision to be altered.
The one or two sentences would be qualified by the greater context or they would not.
It is one thing to actually deliver the specific greater context from the text.
It is an entirely different thing to simply claim an alternate interpretation or to speculate as to how this might be interpreted differently.
That is, there is a fundamental difference between disciplined, explicitly supported exegesis and speculation.
Well, like you and nearly all of the practicing church world, I was so-called, "scandalized" by Jesus' use of the word, "dog," recorded in the text. Of course, context takes precedence. That is, the woman in the narrative understood her outside status and how Israelite society viewed her. Thus, her response to Jesus set to right form a difficult and awkward moment politically—Jesus praised her for her for responding to the moment (and so her need was granted).
Jesus was 'woke' and he came to weep over Jerusalem for her 'sleep' and her failures to participate:
Currently, Liz Cheney, is WOKE. She sees through the lulling of sleep that she was being told to apply and allow to take her in accepting a strong delusion that January 6, 2021 did not happen as it evidentially did. (And she was so-called, "crucified" accordingly.)
How could any functioning mind not see through Trump's con-job after losing the election? Seriously, what is taking place in such a mind? Does the individual really, honestly believe that Trump won?? Or is this individual simply claiming he won as part of a partisan lie?
Either way it is a sad reflection on the portion of the electorate claiming that Trump is the legitimate PotUS.
I was not scandalized. I was confused, because I thought of it in human terms of the day. Why would Jesus describe her and her children as dogs? He wasn't, of course.
Agreed, except for the "politically" part. Politics is a human construct and had nothing to do with what Jesus was talking about.
I don't have a clue why you think this is relevant.
Of course, Jesus is referring to 'tribe' and this Canaanite woman's lack of being of the tribe of Israel. This incident was before the sign of Jesus' "hour to come." When he would be 'sent' to the world.
Because it isn't a problem of omniscience. It's simply about God's response to an unfolding situation involving humanity. It really is just that simple.
But let's look at it your way, anyway.
So, basically, if God were perfect, more specifically perfectly omniscient, God would know what was going to happen. Since He knew what was going to happen He could make a perfect decision, in advance, on what He was going to do and there would be no need to change His mind. But He does change His mind. How could that occur unless there was new information inserted into the situation and, more importantly, how could God, being omniscient, have not considered this information prior to it being introduced? How could that information be "new" to an omniscient God?
Yeah, I know. That's what you just said. I just repeated it in my own words to show I understand your position.
Answer according to your parameters. God can't be omniscient. Now, please affix a gold star next to my name for today.
So, I had written a bunch of stuff to try to explain to you why your view isn't necessarily correct. I just erased all of it. I realized I was trying to explain why water was wet. If I have to explain something like that, beyond ways I already have, then whatever I say isn't likely to make a difference.
What it comes down to is that God, in the events of Exodus 32, and anywhere else, is unfolding His plan. He acts in a manner that accomplishes His purpose. To me, it's no more mysterious than a parent interacting with their children, other than the scale is different. If you wish to believe that it proves God is not omniscient, knock yourself out.
You started it @1.1.67 with 'wokeness' talk.
I explained to you multiple times in precise terms exactly why this example is a contradiction of omniscience.
In the general case, if a perfect sentient entity has perfect knowledge then there is no way to improve on that knowledge. Thus there is nothing that would motivate a change of mind. If you want a simple statement it would be: a change of a perfect mind is a contradiction of omniscience.
But you do not rebut it with specifics.
Here you simply imply that my parameters are wrong but do not show why.
Okay if you were just repeating what you have already said. If not, then that is a waste.
Been doing that for a while myself.
There is no belief or mystery involved here Drakk. It is straightforward logic: a change of a perfect mind with perfect knowledge is a contradiction.
That it is. Check out this at-length article here: The Great American Divorce? It's very interesting, but farthest away from this discussion. It can lend some insight into why all the bad feelings and conscience-lessness (and outright lying) is taking place between "parties."
Drilling down on it: Republicans simply are looking to end this 'union' of Red and Blue or put this country back the way it ' was .' It matters not to some conservatives that others in our nation and in the surrounding world see them as delusional while they are 'dissolving' our national 'relationship.'
And I have explained to you multiple times why omniscience has nothing to do with it. Your argument is sterile. It has no connection to God as an actual person enacting His plan for humanity. It has absolutely no context whatsoever. Sterile.
Completely false. That you ignore what I write is not evidence that I haven't rebutted with specifics.
Again, completely false and for the same reason.
Complete and total bullshit based upon an insistence that any argument must be based within the framework of your view. In other words, any objection to your view is evidence of invalidity based on nothing other than it opposes your view.
To put it another way, if you wish to believe that your view of God's omniscience constrains how God has to react to human events, knock yourself out.
And this is why I prefer not to engage with you. It's as if I am speaking of rocks being hard and you respond with something about eggs and cholesterol in some incomprehensible way.
I am talking about the content of the Bible; not your personal view of God (which you cannot possibly know is correct anyway).
The Bible describes a God character with contradictions. I offered three contradictions (of many). We have discussed one of them. I have provided the scripture multiple times and pointed out the contradiction and each time you abstract away from what is written and simply offer a meaning that defies the words. This is what always seems to happen in these discussions. No matter how obvious the words, you reject the direct, obvious meaning and declare that if one considers the greater context the meaning is quite different. This greater context interpretation is simply declared by you. You never offer disciplined exegesis showing the biblical context which changes the meaning of the sample scripture to what you wish. You simply insist it so or suggest alternate plausible interpretations that fit your beliefs but defy the scripture itself.
This passage:
... clearly shows Moses changing God's mind. Apparently you agree that Moses changed God's mind but remarkably you declare that changing God's mind is not a contradiction of omniscience. You offer that God was acting as a parent telling Moses that He would kill his people in order to encourage the behavior that he wished. Not only does this bring up a problem with free will (skipping) but it argues that God lied to Moses which is itself a contradiction with the perfect God of the Bible.
Your explanation does not accomplish what you wish. Given you hold that Moses changed God's mind, that is really all that matters. God is defined as having perfect knowledge and of perfect mind; thus God makes perfect decisions. There is no room in such a definition of God for changing His mind.
God made a perfect decision with perfect knowledge. Given no new information could possibly come, there is no basis for God changing His mind. There is no correction to make (he has all the knowledge and He has already made the perfect decision).
Finally, there might be a God that correlates with your beliefs. That is not something I ever debate unless someone lays out the specifics of their beliefs for scrutiny (never happens). My focus remains on the Bible itself and the God character it defines. The biblical definition of God has contradictions. Those contradictions mean that the God character as defined by the Bible does not exist.
Your God might exist, but if so, your God cannot be that as defined by the Bible because that character is self-refuting due to contradiction.
Okay, TiG. Good luck to you.
And to you.
An exceptionally great response! Well said!
Are these your words?
Is "woke" in the quote?
Yes and yes! "Woke social justice ideology" these several words used together has a narrow interpretation. I responded to your quote as I saw fit. You are sufficiently free to do the same.
Regarding your attempt at insult, you really have to 'try' to communicate with others and not retreat to a 'shelter' of coping. In a 'series' of comments you have denied understanding of other commenters - including me. Now, if you don't have anything to say to me, then I will have to live with that. Don't mean I won't write to your points but you can choose not to reply.
But Drakkonis, you do have to step out of that 'cocoon' surrounding you if you wish to expand and be 'approachable.' (Note: I am not asking you to become liberal, just not so limited. Faith in Jesus Christ does not require it.)
Finally, I don't like your 'tone' with me. You are not so important that I have to over-extend myself or stretch out of proportions to communicate properly with you. If you feel so strongly that I am some dumb-ass you have to 'ordeal' with, then do this: Just don't respond when I comment about something you write.
Why is it that he or we should not respond to your comments on our seeds? Did you ever think that your tone is such that you come across in the content of your posts as if us fellow believers are a bigger issue to you than non believers would ever be, as if a shared political/ ideology is more important than shared theistic/religious beliefs.
This is a conditional statement: Does (he) one consider me a dumb-ass to ordeal with? As in discussion, there is this doubling back to telling me how (he) one feels directly about discussing issues (with me). It is easily observed that multiple threads proceeds comment by comment to 'days' of comments without open frustration (and finally 'bottoming out').
When one does not consider the source of a comment; one can (again @1.95). . .
. . . reply to the questioning:
Are these your words?
Is "woke" in the quote?
Fancy you should mention this. If you have questions about my tone, you should step forward in discussion and give me some of your time (and space) to explain myself. Instead I get this at the 'threshold':
Have I been 'heard out'? Ceremonially dismissed? Incommunicable to what degree? Non-English speaking?
My fellow believers should feel comfortable and unashamed of the gospel enough to be ready to answer for their decisions and activities: spiritually, emotionally, financially, physically, socially, politically. . . .
Let's discuss these "bigger" issues. We just might get a fuller sense of where problems, dilemmas, and beliefs could/should be. Rather than making 'glancing' remarks that can 'grow' anything good.
No. They're the words of Silvia Shmecklenburgshtienmumblemumble, a house elf I set free long before Harry Potter was a thing.
Previous to this particular post, I didn't intend to insult you. Even so, this post's PRIMARY purpose still isn't to insult you. To be honest, I guess I just consider your feeling insulted a bonus at this point.
Untrue. Yes, it's your words alright. "Elf" notwithstanding! As to the rest of that. . . untrue also. Come clean. No more distractions .
Yes it does
So there is absolutely nothing in the equation of life that you don’t know and unfmderstand?
There is no question I have that the scientific method won't eventually answer.
I certainly would never search for answers in the realm of mythology and superstition.
Deflection fail
Do tell ALL!
Read my first comment, then your response you'll figure it out
So when will science tell you with 100% absolute certainty that there is no heaven out there and no God there?
Probably never, as science doesn't often deal with absolute certainties, but rather probabilities, as well as evidence. Neither does science deal with supernatural concepts like god/s. When will you provide evidence or proof of 100% absolute certainty that there is a heaven or god out there? I'll stick to science over mere belief or wishful thinking, as science has a better track record of providing evidence for its claims than religion ever has.
You might as well ask when science will prove (100% certainty) that there are no pink unicorns.
There is no excuse for being confused about this ' prove something does not exist ' nonsense given this has been explained to you repeatedly.
Your fallacy :
When someone resorts to logical fallacies, it's clear they lack any scientific acumen, to put it mildly.
Or they're just trying to get a reaction, create division and up their post count
Possibly, and/or the level of intelligence is, shall we say, questionable at best?
Exactly. The post count objective is funny in a pathetic way.
in very small doses
Yes and no actually. When the prospect of trains were on the horizon there were some ( scientist ) which furthered the possibility that if man was in motion at a speed of over forty miles per hour there was a possibility that the body would fracture. They were wrong.
Indeed. Science answers (and raises questions) about the natural world through an established ongoing process. It is the best means for doing so and provides empirical evidence to support conclusions drawn. Belief does not, nor is it science.
Belief is not knowledge.
A formal, disciplined approach based on observation that can be repeated and verified is the best approach we have for gaining reliable knowledge. Simply believing what other human beings have written (or said) is not knowledge — it is simply accepting what other human beings claim as truth sans a supporting foundation of facts and logic.
The reason there are so many conflicting beliefs about God is because none of these beliefs are grounded. They are, until shown otherwise, simply the results of human imagination.
God is real. He is our creator as our founding fathers stated who is the sole source of all life and of all our inalienable human rights. He is also the author of science. Humans have had an increase in knowledge in recent times as predicted. Some think that mankind through science can replace God in our lives. We can not.
Non sequitur. Your response is simply proselytizing and has no bearing on the point I made.
The founding fathers words are proselytizing? Oh no! I’ve been judged and found wanting. What am I ever to do?
Are you saying that is an unattributed quote?
Our founding documents are public domain and I paraphrased what they said and or wrote.
No, that blather was your own. Do not accuse our founders of expressing such nonsense!
That's nice. Prove it!
That's not so much a prediction as it is obviously inevitable. Humans have a natural curiosity and ability to learn. It's only natural a growth in knowledge would occur over time.
Speak for yourself. I have never had a need or use for any god/s or other fairy tales.
In other words, they're your words. Got it!
Cancer, AIDS, Covid, war, famine, tsunami's, hurricanes, tornados, mass shootings, etc... Seems like a God to steer clear of.
Exactly! If this was all designed and created by intelligent design then that mind is a cruel one...
All are the natural consequences of sin and it’s affects upon us and our world that will continue to the 2nd coming.
Satan is the cruel intelligent mind that designed this, the effects of his rebellion.
Nope. All of those are consequences of nature and biological systems. Sin is just a silly concept, with nothing to suggest it has any actual tangible effect on the natural world.
While your god allows it and does nothing about it. That makes god either just as cruel or just plain useless.
He didn’t do nothing about it. He’s already defeated the rebellion and it’s leader knows it. The final stages of it all are in motion now.
If it's still in it's (final) stages, then clearly the "rebellion" was not defeated, even though God (assuming he's omnipotent) could end it decisively and completely at anytime. But he either did not or cannot. So God is both incompetent and useless!
How is it that some folk are reduced to voting their own posts up?
Because that is the only way their comment will get voted up.
It's simply another way to encourage reply's (like yours amongst others) and thus keep the divisiveness and post count going
I've always wondered that myself.
I only do it to those who have complained about it because they did. I choose not to be first to upvote vote up my comments in reply to my friends here. I always immediately upvote my comments in response to so called pro science militant secularists.,,and that they complain about it makes it all the better.
When fascism comes to America it will be carrying a cross and dragging a flag.
Seems it is already here.
That 6% are in the soft sciences (not real science).
Gee CH4P, does water always seek the lower level or not?
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Pretty sure that you giving me a COC for nothing is a badge of honor vic.
That’s ok. I got 14 badges of honor in a single day this week in a seed from one of your friends groups. Not sure what else you would have expected calling me the name that you did.