Sure, I can accept that as a broad principle. But I would just highlight the following fine points:
Mark 16:15-16 explicitly says that those who get baptized and have faith will be saved, and that those who do not will be condemned. So there's no room for additional criteria in that passage...
In his bestselling book “What’s So Great About Christianity,” Dinesh D’Souza says the following:
And what do you have to do to earn salvation? Mr. D’Souza says:
All you have to, according to Mr. D’Souza, is have faith in Jesus and you will earn salvation.
Is it really that simple?
The...
There’s nothing in the story that says that God created either the substance of the Earth or the waters. You are assuming he did so.
My interpretation is based on the fact that the belief that the universe began as an ocean of water was widespread at the time that this story was written-- and...
There are many passages in the Bible that explicitly say that Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is merciful and loving. Here’s an example:
But that’s far from the whole story. The book of Joshua describes the conquest of the lands promised to the Israelites. Chapter 12 lists 31 kingdoms that were...
Ah, thank you for that. As you no doubt guessed I used the biblegateway.com search engine, with the Revised Standard Version or the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition as sources. When I searched for the word "messiah" I got no hits in the Old Testament. But when I ran it again with...
The following well known passage of Luke 2:8-11 announces the birth of Jesus and specifically calls him the Messiah:
The Greek word for Messiah is “Christ.” So whenever Christians call Jesus the Christ they are affirming that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. The Hebrew word “Messiah” means...
Yup, I've heard all of those explanations before-- and many others as well. Not to nitpick, but I called them discrepancies, not contradictions. When I read these narratives, giving them each a naive reading without assuming that they should all fit perfectly together like the pieces of a jigsaw...
The belief that the Bible is inerrant is central to Christian dogma. Here’s how the Southern Baptist Convention states it:
And the Methodist Church:
The Catholic Church has this to say about the great truth of the Christian faith:
Was Jesus actually resurrected? Christian dogma asserts...
How do you know that the husband wasn't called first? The story doesn't say anything about who was called to be the first to cast a stone. Once again you're just injecting your own assumptions into the story.
You:
What would be the point? You're just going to ignore whatever I say anyway.
It's a syllogism:
Syllogisms have been studied at least since the time of Aristotle. In modern parlance a syllogism would be viewed as a set theoretic tautology. There's no need for the author to explicitly state that the woman is married since it is a simple deduction to conclude-- from the...
The scribes and Pharisees identified the woman as an adulteress. Adultery is "voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than that person's current spouse or partner." So the woman must have been married.
I have no idea what that means.
You:
I assume that you're referring to the serpent of the story of the garden of Eden. You do understand, don't you, that it's just a story, right? It's not real. Just to show how not real it is, here's a quote from the story about the serpent:
So according...
[Yawn. This is an utterly boring line of inquiry.]
Here's the Miriam Webster Dictionary's definition of "adultery":
Note the key phrase "married person." The woman in the story of John 7:53 – 8:11 was guilty of adultery, so she must have been married and not a prostitute. BTW, prostitutes were...
I won't dispute your assessment. Thanks for the link to the "Oven of Akhani" story. I'm not familiar with that body of literature, so it was interesting to read. I would just point out that what I said was the documents that have survived are "the most accurate recordings we have." And as I...
You have repeated that thought in your every response. I responded to it in my previous response with a specific example that contradicts your point-- and you utterly ignored what I said. In fact you've ignored everything I said in all of my previous responses. It appears that there's no point...
I guess it all comes down to what you mean by "Inspired." One book I found helpful was Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. Prof. Ehrman is recognized as a world class biblical scholar. His book documents the process by which the biblical materials were disseminated in the first and second centuries...