Pen,
I’m referring to the other Christian poster, you know, “John 3:16”. Talk about being oblivious.
You wish to cite linguists and scholars. What is funny is that you ignore any linguists and scholars that don’t agree with you that use the same techniques. We have tens (hundreds? millons if you include all of the Christians who are sure that they and they alone know wht God “really”meant) of “interpretations” of the Bible. We have one going on that has taken 58 years to do *four* books. Why can’t your god make things clear so we don’t have to do this, Pen? You have yet to answer that. Your attempt to claim that trusting these people is like trusting a physician fails since we have evidence that the doctor knows what he’s doing. We have none when it come to the ridiculous numbers of claims of “truth” from Christians and their interpretations.
You wish to claim that the problem with determining what is literal and what is other is “they are minimal when compared to the amount of writing as a whole”. That is simply untrue, and making more baseless claims helps you not at all. There are not “hundreds (if not thousands) scholars in “harmony”. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of Christian apologists who disagree constantly on what is “really” meant in the bible. Yes, the verse about the vine is likely meant to be metaphor. However, is the cruxifiction a metaphor? It could be. It could be hyperbole. It could be an outright lie. But you have the presupposition that it *has* to be true. And there is no evidence to support that.
No, I don’t need to re-read anything you’ve written at all. You have claimed that the bible “really” means that a circle is a sphere.
Why would any of you assume that each word here is to be taken literally and that Isaiah truly thought the earth was a flat circle? If we, from earth, look at the moon, it appears to be a circle (at least when it's full). I recall a song about the moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie. Pizza is flat. Should we assume the writer of that song understood the moon to be flat as well? Just as Isaiah was giving a literary picture of God being above the earth and its rulers/other gods, so was the writer of the song giving a literary picture of what the moon appeared to look like to him. Neither of these writers were attempting to make factually descriptive statements about the objects.
You have yet to show that to be the case. The author of Isaiah said that the earth is a circle. Not a sphere. There is nothing here to show that anyone thought that the earth was a sphere. Yes, the moon looks like a circle. And again how does this show that the author knew that the earth was a sphere? You have yet to show that at all. You want to say the author *knew* the earth was a sphere and was *just* using a faulty descriptor. But you have yet to show he knew it was spherical at all. And no scholars don’t all agree with you. More vague appeals to authority with again no evidence.
Again, you have yet to show your interpretation is the right one. I’m still waiting for you to do those miracles that your savoir claimed you could do. Or was that just metaphor or hyperbole too?
Let me ask you, Pen, did the ancient Greeks think that their gods lived on Mt. Olympus or not? If they did, why disbelieve that the ancient Israelites also had mistaken beliefs?
And I am not objecting to the use of any literary technique in the bible. Nice strawman but again it’s nonsense. I am objecting to Christians trying to claim that they know which parts are what with no evidence to support them. You have very little to demonstrate that what you pick and choose is what is “really” meant.
Oh, I didn’t just try to catch you in your ignorance. I did. I do read the verses “carefully” and that word doesn’t mean “read it like me and believe like me”. It does get so tedious when Christians want to that the only way to “correctly” read scripture is their way and *only* their way. They always use words like “correctly”, “carefully”, “properly”, etc and it always means the same thing to them, “my way or the highway”. Sorry, if I disappoint you and don’t automatically believe your baseless claims. I am sure you do pray and pray that people do but amazing how that fails, isn’t it?
I asserted that the verses state that the earth has edges. I never said that “it” in the verse meant the earth. Nice attacking of something that never happened. I guess it’s easier than actually addressing the problem.
Job 3812 “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, 13 that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? 14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment.
Now we have you trying to claim, well, I’m not quite sure what.
I'm not sure what's more amusing here; you trying to catch me in a "got'cha!" moment by stating I ignored the first part of the verse in the Job example (which I didn't, if you actually read my entire breakdown of that verse), or your futile attempt to assert that the earth was the topic in verses 12-15. If you read carefully, you'll understand that the "it" referred to is the MORNING/DAWN, and NOT the earth. That is why "it (the sunlight from morning/dawn)" may seize the edges of the earth and shake the wicked out of it. It is the sunlight from morning/dawn that changes the earth as clay by a seal and causes the hills to stand out like folds of a garment.
Pen, how does this excuse the nonsense that the earth has edges. What difference does it make what shakes it? And no, it doesn’t say that the sunlight changes the earth. For all of your accusing me of not understanding English properly, you sure indulge in that yourself when convenient. Where is the dawn or sun acting on the earth in the sentence?
Your attempts to invoke a scene makes no difference, Pen. You are again making assumption after assumption with no basis. You still cannot show me the “edges” of the earth. Again, you want to claim “vivid imagery” but what prevents that from being used for all of the dramatic events in the bible tht supposedly have happened per your claims? And gee, more appeals to authority but no citations from that authority. Not impressed.
Again you are wrong about Leviticus 14. You should read Leviticus 13 to see why. Leviticus 13 has all about skin diseases and mold and how to recognize them and determine what to do. Then we have Leviticus 14 which has what to do. If someone is not cured of a disease, they are not clean. They mean one and the same in this context. It also seems that though you like to claim context, you ignore it when convenient. As for 2 Chronicles, I’d suggest you look at context.
You are correct, Laban removed Jacob's animals and sent them ahead with his sons while Jacob continued to tend to the flock. It was late and I must have misread that, my apologies. However, the verse indicates that it was the offspring of Laban's flock who were born DSS and not the original, left-behind flock of Laban's suddenly changing.
No one has said that the original left behind flock “suddenly changed”. They were shown the sticks, they had babies. Laban had goats of both types and split them so Jacob could not get his wages since the DSS goats were taken away.
I see no problem with an animal of one color giving birth to offspring of a different color, do you? Verse 39 says, "The flocks bred in front of the branches and bore streaked, speckled, and spotted young." It would appear that Jacob put some sort of hope into the breeding process that by placing branches near them while they mated that this would somehow cause them to look a certain way. Still, the outcome was that the flock gave birth to colored animals. Not a stretch here.
No, dear, I don’t since I know genetics. Your attempts at apologetics are so pitiful. You now want to say that Jacob just “hoped”. Is this all you have, trying to now claim that they really didn’t believe in magic and prayer to their god? Hilarious. I’d suggest you read the next chapter where Jacob is assigning this magic to God and God’s protection of him. I do have to ask, you are so pleased with atheists reading the bible, but you sure don’t seem to have yourself.
And ah, one more return to the dog’s vomit of
With that being said, as evidenced from some of the discussion so far, many do not comprehend what is written.
And even better, insults about how educated I am and I’m guessing, anyone who dares to disagree with you is.
I can read a manual on carpentry or how to assemble a nuclear reactor, but I would comprehend very little of what is being said without a solid educational background (or at least some sincere self-study on the subjects).
You are quite a liar, Pen. Oh and I even see generalizations with no evidence being given.
Many atheists (this is a generalization, I know) cherry pick verses, pull them out of context, form an argument around them, yet ignore every other discipline involved in understanding scripture. Heck, Christians do this too! It's a learning process for us all and I am always up for that.
Ah, but you think you don’t. And that’s the sad part since you do.
