quote:That's an awfully presumptuous allegation - that you can see the deepest desires of the hearts of millions of people.
I don't suppose to see into their deepest parts. The readily available surface hypocrisy and ignorance is enough to justify what I've said.
edit: Here's an interesting situation. That statement is largely the same one I believed when I was a devout Catholic who took the Bible very seriously and was offended that many Christians really didn't seem to. I'm no longer a Catholic or Christian in a way that any major sect would recognize, but I still hold this to be true. Did I lose the legitimacy to hold this belief somewhere along the way or does it still have the same legitimacy as it did then?
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Have you considered the possibility that your own prejudices and lack of empathy are interfering with a fair judgment?
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Yes, but if I'm making a mistake in being too charitable, that's a mistake I'm willing and would prefer to make.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Literal Biblical creationism is untenable. There are two creation stories that are mutually exclusive.
I see it as exceedingly unlikely (though technically still possible) to read it without bringing what you want to see there as more important than what it says and coming away with a belief that it was meant to be treated as literal.
And you know, I'd probably be more respectful if the vast majority of creationists I've ever discussed this with even realized that there was this enormous contradiction, but, as with other matters, I've found that that's not consistent with how they use the Bible.
Wait-- it sounds an awful lot like you're ameliorating your first statement
quote: Literal Biblical Creationists [...] worship themselves and what they want to believe over what they consider God's word.
to intend to say:
quote: Literal Biblical Creationists [...] worship themselves and what they want to believe over what *I* consider God's word.
Your intial statement seemed to indicate a certain level of personal hypocrisy on the part of the Literal Biblical Creationists.
So...are they liars, or just stupid? I'm not sure which way you're judging them.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: So do I. That is not at all what I said. I decried a very specific situation - I am not interested in expanding it to a generality, and attempts to characterize my statements as such are mistaken.
Well then perhaps an example would be helpful? Or were Dagonee's examples the kind of thing you were speaking of?
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quote:Originally posted by Sid Meier: Explain how the original post was not important?
Why should a Jew particularly care what Christians think about how Jews will be treated *after* they die? Certainly Lisa doesn't care.
Its not like Christians actually have any power to affect what actually happens, either way.
quote:Originally posted by Occasional: How many scientists scorn Creationists when they clearly use scientific papers to prove their points?
I think I can quote myself
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: ... At least when the situations are reversed and say, Ron Lambert is attempting to participate in a discussion about evolution. I appreciate his attempts (to whatever small extent) to at least try to debate using proper science even if he doesn't necessarily believe in many of the base concepts behind the scientific method. At least its better than if the two sides stayed on completely different fields, with one side quoting scripture and the other explaining science, with no connection at all.
quote:Literal Biblical creationism is untenable. There are two creation stories that are mutually exclusive.
Are they? I knew that there were two different creation stories, but not that they were mutually exclusive. Can you show how they are mutually exclusive?
quote:I see it as exceedingly unlikely (though technically still possible) to read it without bringing what you want to see there as more important than what it says and coming away with a belief that it was meant to be treated as literal.
Can you explain this a bit more? I'm having trouble parsing what you're saying.
quote: And you know, I'd probably be more respectful if the vast majority of creationists I've ever discussed this with even realized that there was this enormous contradiction, but, as with other matters, I've found that that's not consistent with how they use the Bible.
I'm having a hard time understanding what you've written here, too. Let me give you my translation:
And you know, I'd probably be more respectful if the vast majority of creationists I've ever discussed this with [would recognize that there are two mutually exclusive accounts of the creation], but as with other matters, I've found that [recognizing an inconsistency in their own holy text is] not consistent with how they use the Bible.
Is that what you're trying to say?
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quote:GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Man is formed after the beasts.
quote:GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
The beasts are formed after man (though before Eve, and incidentally, why is an omnipotent God not foreseeing that the beasts won't be good helpmeets for Adam? For everything else he seems to have grasped the concept of two sexes.) and Adam names them as they are made.
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Both stories give an order in which things are created. These orders contradict each other.
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When you read two accounts that contradict each other in the details they contain, I think you'd need to already have decided that they must be literally true in order to come to that conclusion.
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The first part of yoru restatement would be correct. The second, not.
I'm not talking about being unable to recognize an inconsistency in their holy text, except as a side issue. I don't actually think that there is an inconsistency in the two creation stories, unless you try to force them to be literally true.
It's the forcing them to be literally true despite the fact that they cannot be that I'm talking about. It's the approachign the Bible primarily as something to back up what you already believe instead of something you are supposed to humbly learn from.
Earlier, Dag brought up the Council of Jerusalem, which is one of the central things that should inform how believers in the Bible should interpret much of the stuff that comes from the Old Testament. For example, keeping kosher. But we hear that challenge made over and over and it is very rare (especially when someone isn't primed to jump in with the explanation to cover up that other people don't know it) to hear the obvious response to this challenge.
When people don't respond that way, but instead come up with their own explanations, it signals to me that they don't know about one of the central things about how rules from the Bible should be applied. This leads to me believe that they don't actually take what the Bible says about these rules seriously.
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quote:Originally posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer: Sounds to me like "formed" means more like "summon" than "sculpt" in that context.
If you read the whole of the Gen 2 account, there is no other place that could be interpreted as making the beasts. What's more, the Gen 1 account has plants on day 3, then the sun and moon and other heavenly objects on day 4, and animals on day 5. Gen 2 makes no mention of days, but makes the order Earth and heavens, Adam, plants and animals, Eve.
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quote:For example, keeping kosher. But we hear that challenge made over and over and it is very rare (especially when someone isn't primed to jump in with the explanation to cover up that other people don't know it) to hear the obvious response to this challenge.
I've not found it to be rare, let alone very rare. I've found it to be common - more common, in fact, among fundamentalists than others.
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quote: Earlier, Dag brought up the Council of Jerusalem, which is one of the central things that should inform how believers in the Bible should interpret much of the stuff that comes from the Old Testament. For example, keeping kosher. But we hear that challenge made over and over and it is very rare (especially when someone isn't primed to jump in with the explanation to cover up that other people don't know it) to hear the obvious response to this challenge.
What challenge?
quote:When people don't respond that way
Which way?
quote:... but instead come up with their own explanations, it signals to me that they don't know about one of the central things about how rules from the Bible should be applied.
What central thing?
quote: This leads to me believe that they don't actually take what the Bible says about these rules seriously.
posted
One way that Gen 2 can be interpreted so it fits into a literalistic creation story:
Gen 1 is the overall creation of the earth; Gen 2 is an elaboration on that creation. Note that Adam, Eve, and the land animals were all created on the same day in Gen 1 -- nothing in Genesis 2 contradicts that.
Furthermore, in Gen 2:5, it talks about the plants already being created; in verse 9, it says that God created them again for the Garden of Eden. Is it possible that He was doing the same thing with the animals? (There's no evidence in the text for this view, but it's not hard to imagine it happening.)
The beginning of chapter two start out as if it IS an elaboration of chapter 1; one that pays particular attention to the creation of mankind. (It starts off with the word THUS, for example...)
Mormons have a completely different way to mesh the two accounts together. (One creation was a spiritual creation; one was the physical creation) I'm not a biblically literal creationist, though, so maybe I'm doing their defense a poor service.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Both stories give an order in which things are created. These orders contradict each other.
No. That's your personal interpretation. There's nothing there that says anything about what order things happened in. You might want to bone up on the use of tenses in Hebrew, also. It's only a little silly for someone who doesn't know Hebrew to be making such categorical claims.
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quote:It's only a little silly for someone who doesn't know Hebrew to be making such categorical claims.
Unless you are arguing a person who accepts the literalism of an arbitrary English translation which is usually the case with fundamentalist Christians.
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Lisa: Actually, I read your first post before noting that and thats why I specifically said "after". Obviously, you care about how Christians think Jews should be treated *before* they die. But after? Not nearly as much.
That the one commonly leads to the other is a very related, but different problem.
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I don't know any Hebrew, but then, neither do 99.5% of Christians in America. We're only using the Bible that God gave us.
Clearly, God wouldn't allow us to read a Bible which was translated so poorly that we were unable to get a true understanding of what it is supposed to mean!
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I don't know any Hebrew, but then, neither do 99.5% of Christians in America. We're only using the Bible that God gave us.
Clearly, God wouldn't allow us to read a Bible which was translated so poorly that we were unable to get a true understanding of what it is supposed to mean!
God didn't give the Hebrew Bible in English. Sorry.
Anyway, it's one thing that Christians have a bad translation. Quite another that atheists want to use a bad translation to dismiss the Bible. I mean, they're supposedly coming from a rational POV, so they should know better.
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Lisa: God gave Christians the Bible, and from everything I was taught in Church and from what most Christians tell me, God would not allow any errors to appear in the holy text. We have to trust that it is accurate, because God wouldn't let it be otherwise.
So if we have an English translation, it's clearly Right. God wouldn't let any errors in, he directed the hand of the translators, just like he directed the hand of the people who wrote down the Hebrew version.
In fact, since the English translation was later, God might have actually clarified the original. Maybe the English version of the OT is more accurate than the Hebrew!
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So the obvious translation errors that have cropped up periodically in English translations of the Bible are figments of the imagination . . . ?
And doesn't your last sentence presume a remarkable changeability and lack of foresight for god?
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Lisa: So it's perfectly logical that God dictated the original Hebrew documents, without error, but it's an absurd stretch that he also dictated the English translations? I don't follow the logic there.
fugu13: I'm just relating what I've been told by many Christians, particularly those who believe the Bible to be inerrant. None of them ever made the distinction to me that it was only the original Greek and Hebrew documents that were without error, but that the English Bible they were quoting from was without error, and the Holy Word of God.
I don't get it either, but then again, I don't get a lot of the mysterious and illogical ways which God works.
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Lisa: Would you agree that while dismissing the Bible based on an inaccurate translation is not correct, attacking the beliefs of Literalists who base their literalism on an inaccurate translation is a useful thing?
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Blayne, I think that people are throwing around the "anti-semantist" remark because there is no such thing as anti-semantism.
My Jewish aunt often refers to herself as "anti-semantic" when I try to wear her down on a point by hypertechnically lawyering her.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Lisa: So it's perfectly logical that God dictated the original Hebrew documents, without error, but it's an absurd stretch that he also dictated the English translations? I don't follow the logic there.
He dictated the first five books. He didn't even dictate the other 19. And since no one claims that the various translations were anything but translations done by people, then yes, it's an absurd stretch to say that God dictated them.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: Lisa: Would you agree that while dismissing the Bible based on an inaccurate translation is not correct, attacking the beliefs of Literalists who base their literalism on an inaccurate translation is a useful thing?
posted
"Obviously, you care about how Christians think Jews should be treated *before* they die. But after? Not nearly as much."
I find this strange considering all the uproar over a particular practice by the Mormons. I mean, by that standard just think what is happening by condemning all Jews to Hell. Unless you need some kind of ritual for this to be of any spiritual concern. Now, there are rituals that do this, but they aren't as personal.
Also, as to the English KJV, those who believe in the perfect translation of the Bible will also tell you believing there are any errors makes you a Non-Christian or an atheist. I have been told that when discussing the problems with the Bible as text.
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quote:I find this strange considering all the uproar over a particular practice by the Mormons. I mean, by that standard just think what is happening by condemning all Jews to Hell.
The difference between these two situations has been explained to you repeatedly. Do you not understand it yet?
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I chose my words carefully. "how Christians think Jews should be treated" vs. "how Christians treat Jews." Think what you like, actions are often seen differently (even ineffectual actions).
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: And since no one claims that the various translations were anything but translations done by people . . .
Wow. What planet have you been living on?
This topic has always facinated me. As for myself I think God had a very direct hand in influencing the Apostles as they wrote the gospels and their epistles. 2Peter 1:21 says, "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And so I think it's quite likely that apostles could accurately wright about the acts of Jesus many years after the fact.
Jesus himself even promised in John 14:26 "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
So I fully understand how it is that apostles and prophets can write with accuracy things that would normally be slanted at best and spurious at worst.
So what do folks believed happened after the apostles all died? Were there men wrought upon by the Holy Ghost when they translated or copied the text? Or was scholarly integrity sufficient to preserve the meanings?
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