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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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"I'll start my own thread - I think I just discovered a contradiction in the bible so I will start a thread on that."
Let's not jump all over Larry, but help him discover things like this. It's hard to be in his position on this forum and I give him major props. Many of us can post a massive amount of contradictions in the Bible. I think the hardest thing when leaving your faith is trusting yourself so let's encourage him do that.
From the peaceful hippy:) coexsist
Well if you are going to be a member here you better get accustom to that. If you think:
Then you are a loon.
Jamie,
I refer here to Matthew 1-18
I appreciate the defense but the contradiction I have in mind is between grace and truth. It doesn't harm my faith at all. Rather - to my mind - is cause for celebration. It goes like this:
“The genealogy mentions four women other than Mary—an unusual feature in genealogies of that day. While many of Christ's male ancestors were far less than noble, the inclusion of these four women especially shows God's grace and sovereignty in choosing through whom he will work:
Tamar (see Genesis 38:13-30), Rahab (see Joshua 2:1), and Bathsheba (see 2 Samuel 11:1-5) had either committed sexual sin or been victims of it.
Ruth was a Gentile (see Ruth 1:4).”
Willmington's Bible Handbook.
A lot of this contradicts Old Testament teaching. Yet here we are with God working through the contradictions to give us the Sinless saviour. Think about this.
God is a God of absolute truth and the Bible claims He inspired the writers of that book. Yet here God embraces and uses these sinful people – women no less. And the Savior embraces them as a part of His genetic line. Honors them as His foremothers.
This really is a contradiction between grace and truth. God is Absolute truth – yet Grace is greater. I don't understand this. I truly do not understand this. How great is the Love of God!
Larry.
I am an evangelical Christian.
Larry
I am a believer in the Trinity Doctrine, authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and salvation by grace through faith alone? Yes.
inerrancy- that is a separate issue for me. I think that might be more of an American thing. II believe that something like evolution probably took place and that it would have been a messy process. Everyone's life seems to have some mess it in somewhere .History is a messy process. yet I believe God works through all of these. So I believe the bible to be written by man as well as given by God. So I think it - in the Old Testament especially the brutal times of its historical setting. It is suffiecent enough of a revelation to bring us to Christ and call us to faithfulness to Him. I think the New Testament is historical reliable - is used as reliable sources for historical inquiry into the life death and resurrection of Christ. But I would not go so far as to claim the Bible is inerrant.
I don't say I believe that.
You seem have some background in this area - where you brought up in a church ? If so, which one.
Larry
Larry.
"I think the New Testament is historical reliable - is used as reliable sources for historical inquiry into the life death and resurrection of Christ."
What reliable sources if it's full of contradictions and errors?
In a post in this thread I referred to John Dickson and his book and DVD entitled "The Christ Files". Dickson has a PHD in ancient history and in the book and DVD he explains how ancient historians and biblical historians use the Gospels as a source for data for their research.
They critically evaluate the text - each forming their own judgements as to what is reliable and why. They have criteria for this. principles that they have been trained to use in their thinking and handling of the text. They do not accept the Gospels as inspired or "Word of God" for this purpose - that would be a faith position.
Rather they accept he texts as ancient documents and apply these critical tests to them.. Depending on where they start - their own philosophical assumptions - they will, of course evaluate and make different judgements as to what probably happened. History deals with probabilities not certainties.
One of the things historians like to have are multiple sources. The gospels contain multiple sources and are considered by many - perhaps by most - to be reliable sources, Of course, there are scholarly controversies - lots of books have been and continue to be written on this.
The DVD is great on this because the various clips take place as Dickson visits various museums and libraries and interviews scholars. He goes all over the world on this. The scholars are real scholars who write for peer reviewed journals. Not necessarily Christians. But I think most of them on this video are. But they are speaking in their professional capacity on the issues that are involved in their professions.
I watched the DVD and learned a lot and have the book. I've read some other stuff on this - enough to meet my personal needs but
I don't know this stuff well enough do a decent job of explaining it.
If you - or anyone else is interested - go to Amazon.com and access the page where they try to sell the DVD or book and read the reviews.
Larry
You can recommend all the bible reading, dvds, and amazon reviews (lol) you want; but there isn't a single contemporary source for the character known as Jesus.
You probably already know this MiltonAsh, but:
Larry's definition of reliable sources of fact, (historical inquiry,) is different then most of ours. Where we view as fact as: verifiable testable repeatable results that builds into a consensus with other pieces of similarly acquired data, he believes that stuff written in a book 100's of years ago that mentions a few cities like Rome as fact.
I guess each is entitled to their own opinion of what fact is...
Larry A.,
Here's some background on Christ = http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=christ
Noah did not exist, the flood only did in the Epic of Gilgamesh so to postulate an argument refuting the event would be the work of a dancing fool...wait...
Seriously, why all the mental athletics to establish certain physics, necessary to do battle with those who operate only on faith, so you can be dismissed by them with your first breath? Unless you're intimately in touch with and need to stroke your theological S&M side, the ROI is fruitless.
After tallying all the numbers your are still weaponless.
Pitar, I think my line now should be "hey, I resemble that remark."
Wait, you came to an atheist forum, then "lost it" when an atheist told you that your belief in Moses was unreasonable? What did you think we were going to say? Are you serious?
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