can you proove there isn't a deity?

[Saint Frankenstein]

Hopefully this is intended in a spirit of humor...

That's kind of what I was thinking. Either way, it made me roll my eyes.

 

[1robin]

I'm a Christian and I agree with you more than with 1robin (I disagree with him on almost everything, funny how that happens).

Here's an interesting article on Christian animism: On Christian Animism

My views are strict protestant orthodox and also consistent with almost all of traditional Catholicism. If you disagree with me you are disagreeing with core Christianity. Does not make you wrong but it does make your disagreements suspicious. Let me ask an almost necessary but certainly not mandatory question. What makes you think you are a Christian since you disagree with orthodox Christianity? First tell me how you KNOW you are a Christian then tell me the core beliefs you have. This is personal so feel free not to reply.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

1robin- in case you missed it.

 

[1robin]

This is vague at best, false at worst; the definition of validity is no more a matter of opinion than the definition of a triangle, of a cell, or of a particle- that is to say they are conventions: definitions are commonly agreed upon ways of using words.

It most certainly is. Triangles have accepted specific properties that make them triangles. Your criteria invented standards that make arguments invalid. Once defined no valid triangle can not meet the requirements of being a triangle. Even after establishing valid arguments can be labeled invalid. Truth is always valid. I can make an argument that is true that your criteria claims is invalid. However forget al that. My point is that when conventions make the production of wrong easier than the approval of right they are no longer relevant even if accepted by pure academics. Your criteria is not conducive to truth so it is less than meaningless.

Yes, we've been over this ad naseum, but you're doing your avoidance thing again- validity is basically a necessary but not sufficient condition for a good deductive argument.

Of course I am avoiding doing a bunch of needless typing. I will say it again. My argument is a good deductive argument (using your terms) therefor it is acceptable in an effort to identify truth. It may or may not be logically valid but since logically valid is not a reasonable criteria for truth who gives a rip.

No. You keep asserting this, but I've asked you several times for an example and so far you've produced none; an invalid deductive argument cannot be said to be a good, sound, or "true" argument (leaving aside the fact that, as I pointed out, calling an argument "true" or "false" is basically a category mistake).

I have given several examples of an argument that is not true but would pass your logically valid test. Here is yet another.

1. All red-haired people live in caves.
2. Carrot top the comedian has red hair.
3. Carrot top lives in a cave.

That is both a logically valid argument and perfectly wrong. Your criteria is meaningless in a search for truth.

If a deductive argument is not valid, it cannot be sound (once again, a valid argument may be unsound, but an invalid argument may never be sound). And if it is not sound, then what's the point?

This is the point. That is a criteria associated with mathematical logic not formal or informal debate.

An argument is sound if it's premise is true. Here is one of it's premises as an example.

5.An actual infinite cannot exist.
6.A beginning less temporal series of events is an actual infinite.
7.Therefore, a beginning less temporal series of events cannot exist.
Since (7) follows validly, if (5) and (6) are true, the argument is sound.
Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Here is another: During the Enlightenment, writers such as Georg Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke reaffirmed the cosmological argument. Leibniz (1646–1716) appealed to a strengthened principle of sufficient reason, according to which “no fact can be real or existing and no statement true without a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise” (Monadology, §32).

An argument is valid when its premises logically necessitate it's conclusion. An argument is sound when it is valid and when all of its premises are true.

The cosmological argument from contingency (CAC) is as follows:

1: Every contingent fact has an explanation.
2: There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts.
3: Therefore, there is an explanation for this fact.
4: This explanation must involve a necessary being.
Debate Topic: The cosmological argument from contingency is sound | Debate.org

Again, vague. Yes, there are several properties of a deductive argument that are relevant to its overall quality as an argument- an argument may be valid, but unsound. It may be sound, but trivial or impertinent. But as I've said numerous times, a deductive argument that is not even valid is almost certainly a bad argument, because its premises could be true, and the conclusion nevertheless false.

Arguments are not proofs. They are normally best fits or best explanations and even mere possibilities. Faith propositions are about what best explains the evidence without certainty. This facilitates reasoned faith or belief. If I have a hundred thousand best fits for the evidence that are all less than certainties but all line up with a general biblical narrative then while none are certainties all combined make a very persuasive argument which is the goal in formal and informal theological debates.

This is just nuts. It is as if we are discussing the guilt of a murderer all the evidence points to as guilty and you have so long ago dropped his guilt in favor on some procedural technicality that we are no longer even discussing anything associated with his actual guilt. We are combing through doctrines of search and seizure instead of the fact he was found while grinding up a guy is a shredder.

No, unless you mean "valid" in the vague colloquial sense that basically just means legitimate, reasonable, or something like this. But the cosmological argument isn't that either, so its the same result either way.

No, I meant that there are many ways to validate and argument beyond a strict logical validity. For example it is valid to chose option be if all other options are exhausted based on the principle of sufficient reason. Anyway I will get into this if I am forced to formally and technically justify each premise of the argument.

BTW I can guarantee you that using your own standards you cannot construct any argument for anything that would be valid if strictly adhered to. Give it a shot.

That's fine, but if I am correct (and I am) about the cosmological argument being deductively invalid, whatever other merits it may have are ultimately moot. An argument can be bad despite being valid, but it cannot be good despite being invalid.

Now you have done it. Live by technicality and die by it as well.

But it is not true that good arguments must be valid. We often accept arguments as good, even though they are not valid. Example:

No baby in the past has ever been able to understand quantum physics.
Kitty is going to have a baby soon.
So Kitty's baby is not going to be able to understand quantum physics.

This is surely a good argument, but it is not valid. It is true that no baby in the past has ever been able to understand quantum physics. But it does not follow logically that Kitty's baby will not be able to do so. To see that the argument is not valid, note that it is not logically impossible for Kitty's baby to have exceptional brain development so that the baby can talk and learn and understand quantum physics while still being a baby. Extremely unlikely to be sure, but not logically impossible, and this is enough to show that the argument is not valid. But because such possibilities are rather unlikely, we still think that the true premises strongly support the conclusion and so we still think that the argument is a good one.

In other words, a good argument need not be valid. But presumably if it is not valid it must be inductively strong. If an argument is inductively weak, then it cannot be a good argument since the premises do not provide good reasons for accepting the conclusion.
What is a good argument (I)? - Critical Thinker Academy

After looking through many definitions for a "good argument" the average would go like this. An argument composed of reasonable and known to be false premises that by inclusion provide strong reasons to accept the conclusion.

What does "official sanction" mean? Does this mean divine sanction, by any chance?

No, that it contains philosophically valid reasons to consider acceptable. I have already found them for all but one premise, so far.

Yeah, nice try, but logical validity isn't some minor, obscure, irrelevant "procedural violation"- its the property of having the conclusion follow from the premises. Which is a prerequisite, but not a guarantee, of a good deductive argument.

The heck it isn't. Any criteria which validates untruth far more easily that actual truth, and which as shown not a necessity for good argumentation would be trivial and almost meaningless even if every human on earth agreed with it. Tell me the last presidential debate, the last scientific speech, trial, or the last engineering meeting where anyone raised a logical validity objection with the criteria you gave. No technical discussion or meeting of any kind I have ever attended or heard of has included logical validity in the form you have used. I have been on two jury's, hundreds of technical meeting, attended dozens of scientific conferences, been to mathematical think tanks, and spent 10 years in college. They resulted in a myriad of truths that were accepted, legal decisions, and sophisticated solutions that had to work and did so, without the slightest reference to that technicality used in philosophical parlor games you have been on about so much.

2 + 2 will always = 4 no matter if every philosopher on earth it invalid. And I even know one who said it was false, or at least = 5 at times. I do not have time fro that garbage no matter how up it comes from. In my fields things must work, valid or not.

 

[1robin]

1robin- in case you missed it.

Thanks for reminding me but I had gotten to it. For better or worse.

 

[1robin]

Animals do have that "breath of life" or nephesh. Humans ARE animals. We evolved from animals and that has been clearly validated through science. My God is the animate forces of nature. Those same naturally existing forces or "spirit" that "breathes" life into all creatures and animates all of existence.

Not according to the bible which is the debate and the origin of the word. Only certain beings have been given a soul, a small percentage of animals. Whether we evolved is irrelevant. The two prominent interpretations of Genesis are that Adam was a distinct species (not sure if species is the right word technically, but you get the idea) but primate like and with a soul, or that he was the first along the evolutionary line of primates to be given a soul. Both of those keep evolution but make Adam the first with a soul.

Did you say you are a pantheist? I have always found that concept kind of silly and arbitrary, but no offense intended.

 

[outhouse]

The two prominent interpretations of Genesis are that Adam was a distinct species (not sure if species is the right word technically, but you get the idea) but primate like and with a soul, or that he was the first along the evolutionary line of primates to be given a soul. Both of those keep evolution but make Adam the first with a soul.

Nonsense

Genesis states he was made a man like all the other gods image.


According to you, you have a monkey god.

 

[1robin]

Nonsense

Genesis states he was made a man like all the other gods image.


According to you, you have a monkey god.

What?

You are really an ad-hoc kind of person are you not?

Here is the primary verse:

New International Version
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

This simply means man's body is material in nature. Nothing about monkeys.

Now here is the other about image:
26Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."…

Here is it's most prevalent interpretation.

1. This is not about the physical form as God does not have one and is immaterial. That is out by necessity. A six year old in Sunday school knows better than what you claimed. Why is a Biblical scholar such as your self making 101 errors?
2. We are made in God's image because we are free moral agents, we have self awareness, we have a soul and a spirit. We are volitional and can reason similar to God but chose not to far too often.
3. We alone appreciate beauty and can comprehend objective moral truth.

BTW as biblical orientation should have informed you the bible was not written in English. The word actually written for image was tselem. It is a masculine noun which means shadow of, type of, or shade. Shadows are biblically used to mean a form of (usually a lesser form or version of).

A very famous example is the shadow of the Passover being fulfilled in the crucifixion. Now Christ on the cross physically looks nothing like the angel of death passing over doorposts with lambs blood over them, does it. Yet they both contain the same message. God's provision will protect the faithful guilty from his judgment when the faithless guilty perish.


No one who is seriously studying the bible can possibly get a physical interpretation out of Gen 1:27. Why did you? I actually do not even think you sincerely think it. I think you just thought it would bother me for some reason.

Also you did not find this in any accepted version of any bible. "Genesis states he was made a man like all the other gods image." I have no idea where you coughed that up from. It is not even grammatically correct or coherent.

 

[outhouse]

Here is it's most prevalent interpretation.

1. This is not about the physical form as God does not have one and is immaterial.
.

Nonsense


We have pictures of Yahweh drawn around 800 BC and he was human looking.

Israelites were polytheistic before the monotheistic reforms after 622 BC, they believed in a family of deities.

History of ancient Israel and Judah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Canaanite faith from which it evolved[77] and other ancient Near Eastern religions, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers").[78] Its major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period.[79]

 

[outhouse]

Also the painting from 800 BC shows 3 deities, all worshipped by Israelites.

Yahweh, Asherah, and possibly Baal.

 

[1robin]

Nonsense


We have pictures of Yahweh drawn around 800 BC and he was human looking.

Israelites were polytheistic before the monotheistic reforms after 622 BC, they believed in a family of deities.

History of ancient Israel and Judah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Canaanite faith from which it evolved[77] and other ancient Near Eastern religions, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers").[78] Its major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period.[79]

Oh come off it. Your are not even trying anymore. There is no way your are being serious. I love humor but when it is possible humor was intended to be serious you do not know whether to laugh or cry.

I will agree that some Israelites have adopted the faiths of their neighbors and ancestors from time to time. I deny that has anything to do with the bible unless you mean where it records their constant suffering for doing so. It has nothing to do with Adam or the image of God as recorded in Genesis. It seems you went from ad-hoc claims to ad-hoc subjects.

In case you were being serious God is spirit by necessity (see causal characteristics) but can take the form of a man, but that man's body is not God. Quran doctrine considers even Christ 100% human (his body), and 100%divine (his soul and spirit). Drawings have nothing to do with anything but would be explained by this anyway.

 

[outhouse]

I will agree that some Israelites have adopted the faiths of their neighbors and ancestors from time to time..

LOL Israelites were the neighbors.

They formed from displaced Canaanites and other semetic peoples.

That is why Israelites used many of the Canaanite deities in the beginning after 1200 BC



Your talking about adam and eve mythology that was finished after the Babylonian exile somewhere around 500 BC ish.


Now humans have been on the planet as they look today Homo Sapiens for 200,000 years. NO Israelite mythology deals with any REAL aspect of human evolution.

 

[1robin]

LOL Israelites were the neighbors.

They formed from displaced Canaanites and other semetic peoples.

That is why Israelites used many of the Canaanite deities in the beginning after 1200 BC

I will not bother with this as it is irrelevant. The Israelites were a distinct culture. However that does not matter. I am not debating cultures, origins, or social history. As A Christian I defend God and the bible. Neither one are of pagan influence or origin in their doctrine. The Bible of course record social or cultural facts related to the pagans but is not derived from them. It is emphatically and obviously anti-pagan in any form. I do not care where you think the people of Israel arose from.

Your talking about adam and eve mythology that was finished after the Babylonian exile somewhere around 500 BC ish.

I am talking about Genesis. Whether it be fact or fiction has nothing to do with when it was written. If I wrote Caesar crossed the Rubicon today I sit any more true or false based on the date? BTW there is no way to be certain either way and yet I notice that you have decided once again and brought reality into existence by mere assertion. At least we are honest enough to call most of what we say, faith.

Now humans have been on the planet as they look today Homo Sapiens for 200,000 years. NO Israelite mythology deals with any REAL aspect of human evolution.

Now that is about as ambiguous as they come. Our kids say they look nothing like we do. What is the standard as for what is exactly like we look. We have been growing significantly taller and loosing our brow lines just in modern times. However I will grant modern humans may have been around for 200,00 years, so what? I never said Israelite doctrine includes evolution. It is not a genetics text. I said it has been interpreted to allow for or make irrelevant the existence of evolution. It can be just as true given or missing evolution. I do not normally debate the Pentateuch, other than very generalized claims, as it concerns things that cannot be corroborated by historical records one way or the other and I know of no certain way to separate allegory from literalism. Don't let that stop you from claiming to know all manner of things you can't possibly actually know, and asserting reality into existence, however. If non-theists started being rational and consistent it would be unsettling.

 

[outhouse]

Neither one are of pagan influence or origin in their doctrine.

Do you know anything at all about the religion you follow?

That has to be one of the most ignorant things I have ever read.

Israelites used pagan deities, Yahweh was a pagan deity, before Isarelites constantly redefined him over centuries to constantly meet their changing cultural needs.

Christianity was labaled Pagan from its start

Christianity and Paganism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pagan influences on Christianity[edit]

Further information: Hellenic philosophy and Christianity

Pythagorean mysticism influenced Christianity.



In the course of the Christianisation of Europe in the Early Middle Ages, the Christian churches adopted many elements of national cult and folk religion,[1] resulting in national churches like Latin, Germanic, Russian, Armenian, Greek and so on. Some Pagan ceremonies were brought in and the festivals became modern holidays as pagans joined the early church.[1] The Pagan vernal equinox celebration was 'Christianized'[1] and then referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord and celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation. The Germanic Pagan solstice celebrations (Midsummer festivals) are also sometimes referred to by Neopagans and others as Litha, stemming from Bede's De temporum ratione and the fire festival or Lith- Summer solstice was a tradition for many pagans. This pagan holiday was basically brought in and given a name change, and in Christianity was then associated with the nativity of John the Baptist, which now is observed on the same day, June 24, in the Catholic, Orthodox and some Protestant churches. It is six months before Christmas because Luke 1:26 and Luke 1.36 imply that John the Baptist was born six months earlier than Jesus, although the Bible does not say at which time of the year this happened.[2]

One goal of the Reformation was to return the Christian churches to the state of early Christianity. Restorationists such as Jehovah's Witnesses continue to argue that mainstream Christianity has departed from Apostolic Christianity due, in part, to such Pagan influences.[3] See also Great Apostasy.

 

[outhouse]

I am talking about Genesis. Whether it be fact or fiction has nothing to do with when it was written.

.

This is embarrassing


It is not fact or fiction.


It is theology. Written using, metaphor, poem, allegory, and well known mythology.

 

[outhouse]

Here is your pagan Yahweh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh_(Canaanite_deity)

Yahweh, prior to becoming Yahweh, the national god of Israel, and taking on monotheistic attributes in the 6th century BCE, was a part of the Canaanite pantheon in the period before the Babylonian captivity. Archeological evidence reveals that during this time period the Israelites were a group of Canaanite people

 

[Enai de a lukal]

It most certainly is. Triangles have accepted specific properties that make them triangles.

Valid arguments have accepted properties that make them valid in just the same fashion.

Of course I am avoiding doing a bunch of needless typing. I will say it again. My argument is a good deductive argument (using your terms) therefor it is acceptable in an effort to identify truth. It may or may not be logically valid but since logically valid is not a reasonable criteria for truth who gives a rip.

You've contradicted yourself. If the cosmological argument is a good argument using my terms, then it is substantive (non-trivial) and sound (it is logically valid, and its premises are all true)- but you then say it may not be logically valid. Since logical validity is a necessary condition for soundness, and a sound deductive argument is generally what is taken to be a "good one" (or, at the very least, a valid argument whose premises are probably true), we most certainly "give a rip" whether the argument is valid.

I have given several examples of an argument that is not true but would pass your logically valid test. Here is yet another.

1. All red-haired people live in caves.
2. Carrot top the comedian has red hair.
3. Carrot top lives in a cave.

That is both a logically valid argument and perfectly wrong.

This is not what I asked for. I've already pointed out, ad naseum, that validity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a "good argument"- meaning, when we determine whether a deductive argument is good, we certainly want to know whether it is valid- but then we also need to know something else as well. This does not mean that validity is irrelevant- just that it is not the whole story. If you want to be able to ignore validity, you need to give an example of a good deductive argument that is logically invalid, not a valid argument that is not good. Seriously, I feel like a broken record here.

This is the point. That is a criteria associated with mathematical logic not formal or informal debate.

It most certainly pertains to formal or informal debate- mathematical logic is not different from any other sort of logic on this point. Validity is validity, which is premises following from a conclusion. Its really that simple. In an informal debate, if you give an argument in which your conclusion does not follow from your premises, then you will most likely lose the debate.

An argument is sound if it's premise is true.

AND if it is logically valid. Google it, look it up on any website or textbook you care to pick. Soundness is validity, and true premises.

Here is one of it's premises as an example.

5.An actual infinite cannot exist.
6.A beginning less temporal series of events is an actual infinite.
7.Therefore, a beginning less temporal series of events cannot exist.
Since (7) follows validly, if (5) and (6) are true, the argument is sound.
Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Here is another: During the Enlightenment, writers such as Georg Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke reaffirmed the cosmological argument. Leibniz (1646–1716) appealed to a strengthened principle of sufficient reason, according to which “no fact can be real or existing and no statement true without a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise” (Monadology, §32).

An argument is valid when its premises logically necessitate it's conclusion. An argument is sound when it is valid and when all of its premises are true.

The cosmological argument from contingency (CAC) is as follows:

1: Every contingent fact has an explanation.
2: There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts.
3: Therefore, there is an explanation for this fact.
4: This explanation must involve a necessary being.
Debate Topic: The cosmological argument from contingency is sound | Debate.org

Yeah, neither of these arguments are sound, and neither are the full argument we're talking about (i.e. the cosmological argument for the existence of God), and we're not past the basic stuff about validity and soundness yet, so we'll just leave this be for now.

Arguments are not proofs. They are normally best fits or best explanations and even mere possibilities. Faith propositions are about what best explains the evidence without certainty. This facilitates reasoned faith or belief. If I have a hundred thousand best fits for the evidence that are all less than certainties but all line up with a general biblical narrative then while none are certainties all combined make a very persuasive argument which is the goal in formal and informal theological debates.

This is just nuts. It is as if we are discussing the guilt of a murderer all the evidence points to as guilty and you have so long ago dropped his guilt in favor on some procedural technicality that we are no longer even discussing anything associated with his actual guilt. We are combing through doctrines of search and seizure instead of the fact he was found while grinding up a guy is a shredder.

Irrelevant hand-waving.

No, I meant that there are many ways to validate and argument beyond a strict logical validity. For example it is valid to chose option be if all other options are exhausted based on the principle of sufficient reason.

Now you're just equivocating.

BTW I can guarantee you that using your own standards you cannot construct any argument for anything that would be valid if strictly adhered to. Give it a shot.

Seriously? Its not that hard, we can literally come up with an indefinite number of trivially valid arguments, including the good ol' "Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal" example.

Now you have done it. Live by technicality and die by it as well.

But it is not true that good arguments must be valid. We often accept arguments as good, even though they are not valid. Example:

No baby in the past has ever been able to understand quantum physics.
Kitty is going to have a baby soon.
So Kitty's baby is not going to be able to understand quantum physics.

Yeah, we aren't talking about inductive arguments, which are ALL deductively invalid, regardless of whether they are good or not. The cosmological argument isn't an inductive argument. It is a deductive argument. (in other words, what is true of inductive arguments is irrelevant here: give me an example of a good deductive argument that is invalid- that is all that is pertinent)

The heck it isn't. Any criteria which validates untruth far more easily that actual truth

It doesn't "validate untruth"; that's equivocal. Yes, an argument with untrue premises can be valid. But the property of validity doesn't "validate" such arguments as in "pass them off as good arguments". We've already noted, so many times my head is spinning, that validity doesn't make an argument good- the premises must also be true, or at least probably true or compelling, and it should also be pertinent and substantive. And insofar as validity doesn't speak to the truth of the premises at all, it cannot "validate untruth far more easily than actual truth"- it doesn't prefer either, it simply has nothing to do with the truth or untruth of the premises, but is about the relationship between the premises and the conclusion: does the conclusion follow from the premises?

 

[Contemplative Cat]

There are Gospels wriiten in Greek afterall.

This furthers the Gnostic argument that Yahweh is not the Christ God, since Yahweh is a pagan deity not the one true God(this does not go for kabbalah).
yehweh was part of the Babylonian patheon.

yehweh(the deity) is considered an imposter god in Gnosticism. The real God is in our hearts, the one Jesus talked about. Yehweh(yahdoloth) is a renegade aeon(angel) that out of pride claimed to be equal to the unknowable God, hes described as Satan.

 

[Runewolf1973]

What?

You are really an ad-hoc kind of person are you not?

Here is the primary verse:

New International Version
Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the 0man became a living being.

This simply means man's body is material in nature. Nothing about monkeys.

Now here is the other about image:
26Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."…

Here is it's most prevalent interpretation.

1. This is not about the physical form as God does not have one and is immaterial. That is out by necessity. A six year old in Sunday school knows better than what you claimed. Why is a Biblical scholar such as your self making 101 errors?
2. We are made in God's image because we are free moral agents, we have self awareness, we have a soul and a spirit. We are volitional and can reason similar to God but chose not to far too often.
3. We alone appreciate beauty and can comprehend objective moral truth.

BTW as biblical orientation should have informed you the bible was not written in English. The word actually written for image was tselem. It is a masculine noun which means shadow of, type of, or shade. Shadows are biblically used to mean a form of (usually a lesser form or version of).

A very famous example is the shadow of the Passover being fulfilled in the crucifixion. Now Christ on the cross physically looks nothing like the angel of death passing over doorposts with lambs blood over them, does it. Yet they both contain the same message. God's provision will protect the faithful guilty from his judgment when the faithless guilty perish.


No one who is seriously studying the bible can possibly get a physical interpretation out of Gen 1:27. Why did you? I actually do not even think you sincerely think it. I think you just thought it would bother me for some reason.

Also you did not find this in any accepted version of any bible. "Genesis states he was made a man like all the other gods image." I have no idea where you coughed that up from. It is not even grammatically correct or coherent.

So you're own Bible clearly states that God made man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life so he could become a living being, then later on the Bible goes on to state how man should rule over every other living thing that creeps on the Earth... I don't get how you can think that man is the only nephesh creature if the meaning of the word nephesh is literally "breath of life". Also, why the need for so many versions and interpretations of the Bible? Obviously they must have got at least one of those interpretations wrong or they wouldn't have had to revise it....sounds fishy to me. There is obviously some serious human error going on there. I can not trust that kind of "Word" or revelation. I am not a pantheist, I am an animist. I have no need for gods. The closest thing I would consider to being god-like are those naturally existing, animate forces of nature. To me, the belief in an all powerful god resembling an old man with gray hair and a beard that created the Earth by flapping his magic hands around is silly. It falls along the same lines as the belief in Santa Claus...very much a childish fantasy.


---

 

[Runewolf1973]

I will note that although I do believe that Jesus was most likely a real person, I don't believe that he was the Son of God. I believe his message got twisted around. I believe his message was exactly like that Gospel of Thomas quote I posted earlier. We are all sons of God. Not of a literal man-like deity, but rather we are all part of this great existence...the light that shines over all things, from whence all came forth and to which all return. That which God is, is inside us and all around us.