Will Obama say "So help me God" ?

[Kulindahr]

You don't find any historical or archaeological evidence of any boats like that back then, including the ark, which, itself, appears in only one text.

I am actually rather interested to see a copy of the original, unabridged bible written in the original language (with proof that it is, in fact the original bible in the original language, and not just the earliest known translation, or something, you get the idea). Even just a picture of a couple lines of text, just to see what the language and writing looked like would be very interesting to me.

Whoa -- you're talking old semitic, which is a lot like chicken scratchings. The Hebrews did the world a favor by making letters elegant (okay, they stole it from the Egyptians, but it beats lines of animals and stuff any day).

I should try to find a sample. There are sites out there which show the older Hebrew letters (bad enough!), but I've never seen one with the even older stuff.

 

[hotatlboi]

I think the problem here is that Kuli is just such a damn redneck. If only he weren't so invested in clinging to his guns and religion.

 

[Kulindahr]

Kuli, you asserted all those things you said you showed, but asserting is not the same as excluding the alternative. I certainly consider the interpretation of "generation" that hotatlboi proposed as a plausible interpretation. In fact, I think it is the most plausible interpretation. So I disagree with your understanding of these passages. I may also disagree with his interpretation of some of those passages, but I don't say that they are impossible readings.

Of course it's plausible, at first glance. But you can only end with that interpretation of 'genea' for that passage by ignoring standard rules of literary interpretation -- and I did show that the Matthew passages are predominantly "type" rather than "temporal".

Although I disagree with some of his arguments, I certainly agree with his underlying thesis, that the Bible does not capture absolute truth about objective reality.

The problem is that in order to establish "errors", he's arguing the opposite -- that it means to capture, in this case, scientific truth. That's the problem!
Genesis doesn't claim to establish absolute truth about objective reality, which is what I've been trying to get across. It doesn't claim to establish even limited truth about scientific reality; it isn't even interested in scientific reality. What it's interested in is recounting the story of God's efforts at communicating with this people, and anything else (like the precise value of pi) can fall to the wayside.

Of course I also rejected his dissing of other cultures' understanding of the world, as exemplified by his thing with insects -- regarding them as creatures with four feet and two arms is certainly plausible (just watch a fly sometimes as it stands on four feet and rubs the front limbs together). BTW, I read an item in anthropology class about a tribe in Africa which, watching a certain type of monkey which never walks on two legs, and uses all four limbs as arms/hands, classed them as having four arms and no legs, which is why I introduced that bit. It was one of those things I started out thinking, "This is so stupid", but ended up realizing that it was a different way of looking at the world (and also came to understand something of what my fave philosophy professor meant when he said, "To name something, is to stop knowing it").

 

[Kulindahr]

You seem to be well versed in philosophy, I've enjoyed your posts in this thread.

That he is. Friends here think I know about philosophy just because I know the difference between Kant and Kierkegaard, but construct regularly tosses out things I'm clueless on.

Sometimes I even look some up.

 

[construct]

I am actually rather interested to see a copy of the original, unabridged bible written in the original language (with proof that it is, in fact the original bible in the original language, and not just the earliest known translation, or something, you get the idea). Even just a picture of a couple lines of text, just to see what the language and writing looked like would be very interesting to me.

No original autographs exist. All we have are copies of copies, but we've got hundreds of them. So the text is quite certain for a book from that period.

The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, but a few passages are in Aramaic. The New Testament and some of the intertestamental books are in Greek. The script for modern editions in the original languages is the modern script for those languages. The Old Testament is printed with vowel pointing.

Here is a link to Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis 1:1&version=81

Here is a link to Daniel 4:1 so that you can see what Aramaic looks like:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel 4:1&version=81

Here is a link to the Greek text of John 1:1

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John 1:1;&version=68;

I'm not sure why the accent and breath marks are not in the Greek text here, but they weren't in use in the first century anyway.

 

[Kulindahr]

I think the problem here is that Kuli is just such a damn redneck. If only he weren't so invested in clinging to his guns and religion.

I'm not "invested in clinging to... religion"; I frequently want to ditch it. But the case is too compelling.

My guns, OTOH, are the foundation for liberty, and THAT I'm invested in clinging to.






Hey -- having written that, I'll take what I almost put at the end, and recommend it for Obama instead of "So help me God":

"You betcha!"

 

[hotatlboi]

Of course I also rejected his dissing of other cultures' understanding of the world

But seriously I think one of the main problems you are having is that you are completely misunderstanding a lot of what i am saying. I didn't "dis other cultures". What I was saying is that the knowledge we have today is the best most complete set that we've ever had, and that he knowledge man had when the Bible was written was substantially less, which I think is reflected in the text. I was comparing times, not places.

as exemplified by his thing with insects -- regarding them as creatures with four feet and two arms is certainly plausible (just watch a fly sometimes as it stands on four feet and rubs the front limbs together). BTW, I read an item in anthropology class about a tribe in Africa which, watching a certain type of monkey which never walks on two legs, and uses all four limbs as arms/hands, classed them as having four arms and no legs, which is why I introduced that bit. It was one of those things I started out thinking, "This is so stupid", but ended up realizing that it was a different way of looking at the world (and also came to understand something of what my fave philosophy professor meant when he said, "To name something, is to stop knowing it").

LOL, but that's totally changing the argument. Of course it's possible for MAN to make misinterpretations like that. I'm talking about when GOD supposedly makes mistakes like that in the Bible. God would not be wrong about his descriptions of animals if he created them.

 

[Kulindahr]

No original autographs exist. All we have are copies of copies, but we've got hundreds of them. So the text is quite certain for a book from that period.

The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, but a few passages are in Aramaic. The New Testament and some of the intertestamental books are in Greek. The script for modern editions in the original languages is the modern script for those languages. The Old Testament is printed with vowel pointing.

Here is a link to Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis 1:1&version=81

Here is a link to Daniel 4:1 so that you can see what Aramaic looks like:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel 4:1&version=81

Here is a link to the Greek text of John 1:1

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John 1:1;&version=68;

I'm not sure why the accent and breath marks are not in the Greek text here, but they weren't in use in the first century anyway.

Nice references!

BTW, in OT Hebrew class, we used to joke that parts of the OT were written in Gibberish, since the Masoretic text is so garbled in places (Hosea being an outstanding example).

I'm so used to just reading the Greek, I never even noticed the missing marks at Bible Gateway -- whoa!

I'm wondering what happened to the Hebrew text -- those little boxes aren't what they're supposed to be.

And BTW, your Aramaic link seems to be a duplicate of the Hebrew link.

 

[Kulindahr]

LOL, but that's totally changing the argument. Of course it's possible for MAN to make misinterpretations like that. I'm talking about when GOD supposedly makes mistakes like that in the Bible. God would not be wrong about his descriptions of animals if he created them.

No, that's not changing the argument, it's freeing it from the misconception that God can just talk in any way He wishes and magically we'll somehow understand.

The point is that He doesn't care about the descriptions of animals, He cares about getting his point across -- something you keep rejecting, in spite of illustrations of why that's the way to go.

 

[hotatlboi]

No, that's not changing the argument, it's freeing it from the misconception that God can just talk in any way He wishes and magically we'll somehow understand.

The point is that He doesn't care about the descriptions of animals, He cares about getting his point across -- something you keep rejecting, in spite of illustrations of why that's the way to go.

I reject that because I find it totally ridiculous.

That's basically another a priori argument (you made another one earlier that someone pointed out).

What you are concluding is that first and foremost the Bible is God's word. Since God is perfect obviously anything he says has to be correct. So if he says something in the Bible that we would consider incorrect it's really our fault for not understanding him correctly. That's a cop out of the highest order and yet another example of your (and other religious apologists) absolute rejection of logic when it comes to this topic.

Again, using Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation (without starting by assuming anything about the Bible) is that a book containing such errors did not come from a perfect all knowing God. But that's unacceptable to you, so you tarry on with the multitude of modified interpretations you have to make to convince yourself of biblical inerrancy.

 

[construct]

That he is. Friends here think I know about philosophy just because I know the difference between Kant and Kierkegaard, but construct regularly tosses out things I'm clueless on.

Sometimes I even look some up.

You're right that there is a difference between Kant and Kierkegaard, but the Neo-Orthodox theologians were using them to get to the same place--the infinite qualitative distinction between God and Man. How they bridged that gap was quite different.

Kant tried it by smuggling in something like a natural theology in The Critique of Practical Reason and The Critique of Judgment. He referred to the starry sky above and the moral law within as a basis for a deontological ethic to occupy the space created by the categorical imperative.

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, taught that faith was a leap into an apparently absurd unknowable and finding salvation waiting. So there really isn't a bridge per se for Kierkegaard. Instead there is the leap.

 

[Kulindahr]

I reject that because I find it totally ridiculous.

That's basically another a priori argument (you made another one earlier that someone pointed out).

What you are concluding is that first and foremost the Bible is God's word. Since God is perfect obviously anything he says has to be correct. So if he says something in the Bible that we would consider incorrect it's really our fault for not understanding him correctly. That's a cop out of the highest order and yet another example of your (and other religious apologists) absolute rejection of logic when it comes to this topic.

Again, using Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation (without starting by assuming anything about the Bible) is that a book containing such errors did not come from a perfect all knowing God. But that's unacceptable to you, so you tarry on with the multitude of modified interpretations you have to make to convince yourself of biblical inerrancy.

You're arguing in a circle -- another fallacy.

I'm not making any assumptions at all: I'm looking at language, sociology, and anthropology, and realizing that if you want to communicate with someone, you do it on their terms -- as I've illustrated. That's a human phenomenon, and there's no reason to invoke some sort of magic to maintain that God didn't have to do it that way. You're just introducing something extra into the equation when you do that.

I see you're tossing out another standard accusation; it's not an original thought, and it doesn't apply here. For one who claims to love logic, you abandon it quickly!

Logic says that you take a document for what it is. Instead, you're interpreting it with an alien framework, using that mangling of it to establish "errors", then asserting that those "errors" prove something, when all you've proven is that you're not willing to study the document on its own terms.

So your claim about Occam's Raxor is mendacious: you are in fact assuming things about the Bible, and until you're willing to face the reality of its language, culture, and literary types, you'll never get beyond your circular reasoning. So this applies to you -- "tarry on with the multitude of modified interpretations you have to make to convince yourself" -- more than to me. All I'm introducing is the truth, while you're trying to force the text into being something it isn't, so you can make your case.

Find me a copy of the Bible, in Hebrew, from before 100 A.D., that says, "An Accurate Guide to the Objective Reality of the Cosmos", and I'll think differently. Until then, the only conclusion is that you're just blind to what you;re doing, because it isn't about objective reality, and a reading of it shows that it doesn't care about scientific reality -- however much you want to make it do that.

 

[Kulindahr]

You're right that there is a difference between Kant and Kierkegaard, but the Neo-Orthodox theologians were using them to get to the same place--the infinite qualitative distinction between God and Man. How they bridged that gap was quite different.

Kant tried it by smuggling in something like a natural theology in The Critique of Practical Reason and The Critique of Judgment. He referred to the starry sky above and the moral law within as a basis for a deontological ethic to occupy the space created by the categorical imperative.

Kierkegaard, on the other hand, taught that faith was a leap into an apparently absurd unknowable and finding salvation waiting. So there really isn't a bridge per se for Kierkegaard. Instead there is the leap.

Given that description, I have to say I find them both lacking. I'll go with the way C.S. Lewis distilled from others, that there's enough evidence to give us a nudge, but not enough to overwhelmingly convince us or "prove" anything. Quite roughly, Kant tries to say that human reason can lead us to the right bridge, while Kierkegaard says there's no bridge, and neither is correct. The Bible's picture is that God gives what Lewis calls "hints", but that to make the crossing, you have to, as the 'evangelicals' say, "take His hand".


BTW, I wonder who else here has a clue about that word "deontological"?



Dang -- this almost makes me want to get out my Western Philosophy texts again!

^ always my problem in college: all areas of knowledge fascinate me.

 

[hotatlboi]

You're arguing in a circle -- another fallacy.

No that's what your doing. It's comical that you can't see it.

I'm not making any assumptions at all: I'm looking at language, sociology, and anthropology, and realizing that if you want to communicate with someone, you do it on their terms -- as I've illustrated. That's a human phenomenon, and there's no reason to invoke some sort of magic to maintain that God didn't have to do it that way. You're just introducing something extra into the equation when you do that.

Of course that's a human phenomenon, LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!!!!!

God isn't fucking human!!! He would not have that limitation (as I've already said and as the Bible also says). If an all powerful being of infinite intelligence wanted to communicate with mankind, he could probably do it in many ways that we haven't even fathomed yet. You are downplaying the significance of what the Bible claims God is to a huge degree and boxing him into human limitations. Humans have to communicate with others on their terms because that's the only way they will understand. If I was all powerful and all knowing, I could know exactly what you are thinking, and could convey effortlessly what I wanted you to know or think. I would need to use this computer at all, I could just reach out and put the information directly into your mind, lol.

Logic says that you take a document for what it is.

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately you seem unwilling to do this.

Instead, you're interpreting it with an alien framework, using that mangling of it to establish "errors", then asserting that those "errors" prove something, when all you've proven is that you're not willing to study the document on its own terms.

I'm not mangling anything to produce errors. You have to mangle it to explain away the errors. You're saying that the errors aren't really errors because I'm not interpreting them in the proper context. But simply "taking the document for what it is" they are clearly errors as we understand the facts today.

So your claim about Occam's Raxor is mendacious: you are in fact assuming things about the Bible, and until you're willing to face the reality of its language, culture, and literary types, you'll never get beyond your circular reasoning. So this applies to you -- "tarry on with the multitude of modified interpretations you have to make to convince yourself" -- more than to me. All I'm introducing is the truth, while you're trying to force the text into being something it isn't, so you can make your case.

Again, labeling your opinion as the truth. You've got to break that habit. No one's interpretation of the Bible is "truth". There are hundreds of interpretations. No one (besides yourself) is capable of recognizing your interpretation as "true" any more than mine is. 1 + 1 = 2 is truth. What someone really meant when they said it thousands of years ago in an ancient text (or even who said it) is highly disputed among even professional biblical scholars. There is no established truth value one can subscribe to as there is in other disciplines.

Find me a copy of the Bible, in Hebrew, from before 100 A.D., that says, "An Accurate Guide to the Objective Reality of the Cosmos", and I'll think differently. Until then, the only conclusion is that you're just blind to what you;re doing, because it isn't about objective reality, and a reading of it shows that it doesn't care about scientific reality -- however much you want to make it do that.

For me, "Book of the Living God, an all powerful all knowing, righteous holy being" would not contradict anything which was provably correct and might appear in "An Accurate Guide to the Objective Reality of the Cosmos". For me, (notwithstanding your arguments about communicating on ancient people's terms, even if that's what God was doing) such a book would stand the test of time. It would not become outdated and inaccurate as man's knowledge advanced. But it has. That says to me that the simplest explanation is that the Bible contains man's knowledge, not God's.

 

[hotatlboi]

Why are people so hell bent on the Bible being the one true and only word of God? It is silly to think the Bible was not manipulated to reflect the agenda of the religious powers that were and the agenda of Constantine at the time Christianity was propagated through the Roman masses.

Of course it was. Yet another important point to consider.

I mean it was man who decided what even went in the Bible. Many of the other rejected books (the gospel of Thomas for instance) were not inherently any more divine or recognizably inspired than the books which were canonized.

We always have the "holy spirit directed their efforts" type of argument that often comes out. Like anything that doesn't logically make sense, "God did it" is the universal fix for biblical inerrancy.

 

[Kulindahr]

Of course that's a human phenomenon, LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!!!!!

God isn't fucking human!!! He would not have that limitation (as I've already said and as the Bible also says). If an all powerful being of infinite intelligence wanted to communicate with mankind, he could probably do it in many ways that we haven't even fathomed yet. You are downplaying the significance of what the Bible claims God is to a huge degree and boxing him into human limitations. Humans have to communicate with others on their terms because that's the only way they will understand. If I was all powerful and all knowing, I could know exactly what you are thinking, and could convey effortlessly what I wanted you to know or think.

You apparently believe in magic.

I'll try this again: it isn't a limitation on God, it's a limitation on humans.

And your last statement is false: you could only convey to me what I could grasp in my own cultural and linguistic context. Anything else would bounce off.

What you're doing is like saying that because a man can lift a Volkswagen, he can stuff it into a coffee can. The strength of the 'stuffer' is irrelevant; a Volkswagen just won't go into a coffee can.

I'm not mangling anything to produce errors. You have to mangle it to explain away the errors. You're saying that the errors aren't really errors because I'm not interpreting them in the proper context. But simply "taking the document for what it is" they are clearly errors as we understand the facts today.

You're mangling it the moment you say it's a book about objective reality, which is what you keep doing. You may have run your eyes across the words, but you've plainly never read it, because it never, ever claims to do that. It isn't labeled "A Scientifically Accurate Tome for the Convenience of Humans in the Twentieth Century and Beyond", however much you wish for it to be.
You mangle it the moment you turn a blind eye to what it is. Sticking with Genesis 1, it's a royal chronicle. It isn't a science treatise, it doesn't care about science -- there's nowhere in the text that says it does, or even hints it does. What is is, is a form of literature you don't care about, so you're forcing on it something you're familiar with, and thus arriving at "errors" that don't exist.
Let me say this again: the Bible does not claim that the world was made in six 24-hour days. You and the Kansas Museum people may believe so, but it isn't there.

Again, labeling your opinion as the truth. You've got to break that habit. No one's interpretation of the Bible is "truth". There are hundreds of interpretations. No one (besides yourself) is capable of recognizing your interpretation as "true" any more than mine is. 1 + 1 = 2 is truth. What someone really meant when they said it thousands of years ago in an ancient text (or even who said it) is highly disputed among even professional biblical scholars. There is no established truth value one can subscribe to as there is in other disciplines.

An easy defense -- label any information you don't like as "opinion", and dismiss it. You're still a fundamentalist, in thinking, still a literalist who can't see beyond his own comfy worldview.
"Professional biblical scholars", BTW, all acknowledge that Genesis 1 is a royal chronicle. I'd post an article showing that, but all I can find is in German, and my grasp of that tongue has receded sufficiently that about all that I can really tell about them is that they're in German. That is established truth, as much as it's established that Julius Caesar dreamed in Latin -- i.e., there's no doubt.

BTW, for real mathematicians, "1 + 1 = 2" depends on your axioms.

For me, "Book of the Living God, an all powerful all knowing, righteous holy being" would not contradict anything which was provably correct and might appear in "An Accurate Guide to the Objective Reality of the Cosmos". For me, (notwithstanding your arguments about communicating on ancient people's terms, even if that's what God was doing) such a book would stand the test of time. It would not become outdated and inaccurate as man's knowledge advanced. But it has. That says to me that the simplest explanation is that the Bible contains man's knowledge, not God's.

Okay, so you admit (again) that you're imposing your own worldview on the Bible, instead of even trying to find out what it really is or says. From the perspective of that worldview, you can claim that it's become outdated, but that's a matter of ignoring reality and sticking with your private philosophy.
It's really odd that you accuse me of offering my opinion when I keep offering objective information, when you keep plainly stating that you're relying almost entirely on your own opinion.

 

[Kulindahr]

Why are people so hell bent on the Bible being the one true and only word of God? It is silly to think the Bible was not manipulated to reflect the agenda of the religious powers that were and the agenda of Constantine at the time Christianity was propagated through the Roman masses.

The historical record shows otherwise.

The canon summed up under Constantine grew organically out of the array of books available, fake and authentic. All that's needed is a reading of the accounts of a multitude of local and regional councils in the century before, as congregations swapped what they trusted. The early and original material got accepted, the late and fanciful got rejected.

Except that there's the Apocalypse, which got in because of a loudmouthed minority.

 

[Kulindahr]

I mean it was man who decided what even went in the Bible. Many of the other rejected books (the gospel of Thomas for instance) were not inherently any more divine or recognizably inspired than the books which were canonized.

Have you read any of those in the original?
And have you checked out the dates on their origins?

The books that didn't get canonized didn't because they sound different, and are very late additions. The Gospels were all complete before the end of the first century, generally long before; the letters of Paul were complete most likely before that (though not without a bit of apparent editing and possible mixing up of documents).
"Thomas" isn't even a gospel; "gospel" is a well-defined type of writing, and "Thomas" doesn't fit, nor do others people love to claim belong.

 

[construct]

Given that description, I have to say I find them both lacking. I'll go with the way C.S. Lewis distilled from others, that there's enough evidence to give us a nudge, but not enough to overwhelmingly convince us or "prove" anything. Quite roughly, Kant tries to say that human reason can lead us to the right bridge, while Kierkegaard says there's no bridge, and neither is correct. The Bible's picture is that God gives what Lewis calls "hints", but that to make the crossing, you have to, as the 'evangelicals' say, "take His hand".


BTW, I wonder who else here has a clue about that word "deontological"?



Dang -- this almost makes me want to get out my Western Philosophy texts again!

^ always my problem in college: all areas of knowledge fascinate me.

C. S. Lewis would have been a decent philosopher, but he was born two hundred years too late. He never really got to this side of Kant. (All philosophy can be divided into Before Kant and After Kant.) Specifically, the gap between the phenomenal and noumenal is the beginning point of all subsequent philosophy.

If Kant ended up trying to smuggle God back into the picture, it wasn't the Christian god he was smuggling. It was more like a Deist god. Indeed one of his books was called Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone. Still Nietzsche called Kant out for it. Nietzsche said that the grandfather of German philosophy was a Lutheran pastor. He was right.

Lewis's Mere Christianity is a ridiculous hodgepodge of philosophical and theological notions, but the worst was The Abolition of Man. Here he attempted, badly, to disarm the logical positivists (Moore, Russell, Ayers, Wittgenstein). He ends up disarming nothing but straw men. Then, there was The Four Loves with its utter disregard for biblical and classical usage in attempting to distinguish the types of love and correlate them to Greek words for love. He should have stuck to writing about medieval literature. That was his real area of expertise.

If one wants to see contemporary theology done well, read Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. I would suggest their books on natural revelation. Brunner's book is called Nature and Grace. Barth's book is called No!: An Answer to Emil Brunner. They are published in English in one binding called Natural Theology. The whole thing is only about 125 pages.

 

[hotatlboi]

You apparently believe in magic.

You are utterly failing to grasp the very concept of God as mentioned in the Bible.

YES!!! A being of infinite power and ability would be capable of acts that we would define as magic.

And your last statement is false: you could only convey to me what I could grasp in my own cultural and linguistic context. Anything else would bounce off.

LOL! EPIC FAIL! If I could convey ANYTHING to you in that manner (as a being of infinite power easily could) then I could also convey any cultural or linguistic context which would allow you to understand it. Pull your head out of the sandbox and recognize your God for what he really would be PLEASE. lol

You're mangling it the moment you say it's a book about objective reality, which is what you keep doing.

Given the subject matter of the Bible, if it's not a book about that, then what good is it. If Jesus was not a real person, if his acts were not real, then what use is the Bible to anyone?

An easy defense -- label any information you don't like as "opinion", and dismiss it.

It's not about dismissing anything. There are statements of fact and of opinion. And you have a penchant for labeling facts as opinions. You are failing to distinguish between them.

You're still a fundamentalist, in thinking, still a literalist who can't see beyond his own comfy worldview.

You will never accept an argument that leads to an error in the Bible, no matter how well reasoned. Again, you have me completely wrong. I was comfortable in my old worldview, until I decided to change it entirely based on evidence.

"Professional biblical scholars", BTW, all acknowledge that Genesis 1 is a royal chronicle. I'd post an article showing that, but all I can find is in German, and my grasp of that tongue has receded sufficiently that about all that I can really tell about them is that they're in German. That is established truth, as much as it's established that Julius Caesar dreamed in Latin -- i.e., there's no doubt.

Never had any problem or disagreement with that. I just view MANY more parts of the bible the same way, which you want to take literally.

It's really odd that you accuse me of offering my opinion when I keep offering objective information, when you keep plainly stating that you're relying almost entirely on your own opinion.

We're both stating opinions, the difference between you and me is that you don't know it.