The Miracle of Water.

[ecco]

It does Not have to say how old, but to me common-sense reasoning on Scripture lets us know it is old.
By my saying Noah's day we understand that to mean more than a 24-hr. day.
Just as grandfather's day was more than a short period of time.
So, it is easy to understand that the creative days were Not 24-hr. days.
We don't even know if each of the creative days were of the same length of time or differing lengths of time.
We do know as per Hebrews 4:4-11 that God's 7th day was still on-going in the 1st century.
So, there is No way The 7th day was a 24-hr. day and No reason to think the creative days were 24-hr. days.

What you wrote is your opinion. You have provided no evidence from scripture for your position.

The bible says "day". Moses knew what a "day" was. I'm sure that back in Moses' time there was a word for "period". Moses also knew what a morning was and what an evening was.



Moses clearly said: there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

He did not say: there passed many evenings and mornings - the first period.


It's very clear. However, you want to change what was written because your 21st Century "common sense" seems to tell you it's wrong.

 

[Windwalker]

Why? How is that the logical conclusion? If scriptures are shown to be flawed, this concludes all spiritual experiences of humans throughout the millennia should be discounted? How? Why? Please explain the logic of this to me.

Holy scripture is believed, by the believers, to be "dictated by God" and transcribed by people in cases like Mohammed and Moses.

Alternatively, as in the Gospels, written by firsthand eyewitnesses.

Do you believe this reflects the views of all people who believe in the reality of God? It does not. If it does not, then how is it a logical conclusion that if you can prove the Bible is flawed, this means belief in God is flawed? Explain.

Regarding the stories direct from God: if they contain factual errors then we can look at a few reasons:

• God lied
• The stories were transcribed incorrectly
• The stories did not originate with God

Any of these lead to the conclusion that the stories are not really about a God. In other words, they are works of fiction.

No actually, it does not lead to that at all. What it does lead to is the realization that people's perceptions of God are reflective of the time and culture and language which they speak about God using. This limits the understanding, and as such makes them a reflection of human evolution at that stage of development. This is true about anything in human understanding, being that science, psychology, medicine, etc.

Do you conclude that because people spoke of "bad spirits" causing illness, that illnesses aren't real? That should be the logical conclusion one should make, if we are to follow this line of reasoning above.

Regarding the stories from eyewitness accounts: if they contain factual errors then we can look at a few reasons:

• The eyewitnesses are unreliable.
• The eyewitnesses could not have recorded the information.

Either of these lead to the conclusion that the stories are not really about a God. In other words, they are works of fiction.

No, they very much are about God. They are the thoughts and ideas people had about God as they understood it at that time, and reflective of their own personal awareness. The creation of mythologies, is completely about just this. They are metaphors about some transcendent reality people intuit, or directly experience firsthand. The accuracy of the words, will naturally not be scientifically correct. It's not about science, but human experiences.

You know they are works of fiction, yet you choose to believe the primary subject is factual.

Yes. And it's really not a matter of "choice" for me. My experience tells me it's real. My ideas about it fall far short of that reality. I can change how I believe about it, without it affecting the facts of my own experiences.

What were the primitive origins? Fear of the unknown (which still drives a lot of people today). Ignorance. Why is there lightning? Why did our crops die? Where did we all come from (which still drives many people today).

God is believed in for many reasons, and as a magical placeholder for natural phenomena, you do see that in human evolution. But that is not the sole, or necessarily original source for belief in God, to explain a volcano erupting, or such. I mentioned before that mystical experience is what is at the heart of most religions. All that other stuff gets tossed on to that by those who are looking for answers outside themselves to these issues. They are looking for casualties.

But the experience of God is not about that. It's not about connecting the dots of natural phenomenon. It has to do with the mystery of one's own existence itself. It has to do with being alive, existence vs non-existence. It has to do with connecting oneself to life itself. That's the core of this, not why does it rain.

"Mystical experiences" can be brought on by ingesting peyote, chewing cocaine, spending hours in a sweat box, blacking out, being psychotic and hundreds of other reasons. Mystical experiences are not reality.

And yet, people have them. They obviously are part of reality.

BTW, your conflating of "blacking out and being psychotic" with mysticism is categorically incorrect. You don't know what you are talking about here. I do.

That is completely wrong. Gods are the creation of man's imaginings. All gods. Thor, Athena, Ogun, Shiva, Allah, et al.

I'm not talking about gods. I'm talking about the Divine Reality which is the substrate of all existence. Not deity forms, such as this tribal god of thunder and such. Those are a different matter of focus. That's what I am trying to impress upon you here.

That is completely wrong. Unlike most people, I treat all gods equally. Gods are the creation of man's imaginings. All gods. Thor, Athena, Ogun, Shiva, Allah, et al.

And this is why you are not being scientific at all, but religious about your beliefs. A careful and honest study of this will show this is not at all all they are.

 

[ecco]

If you are really willing to learn, read:
Formed by Megafloods, This Place Fooled Scientists for Decades

I took the time to read through the long article you linked, perhaps you should take the time to read the article I linked.

You know, I will. I appreciate the time time you took to read the 1st line of evidence. There was a lot.

Let me know when you've read it. Let me know your thoughts after having read it.

Now, if you’d please note the other 7 evidences. They’re not as long!
Thank you.

No. I'll not bother to read the other seven evidences. It is clear from your author's writings on the scablands that he is wilfully ignorant of facts or he deliberately tried to mislead. Since there is no reason to be ignorant of facts that have been established for over a half century, I have to go with he deliberately mislead.

 

[ecco]

ecco:Holy scripture is believed, by the believers, to be "dictated by God" and transcribed by people in cases like Mohammed and Moses.​

Alternatively, as in the Gospels, written by firsthand eyewitnesses.

Do you believe this reflects the views of all people who believe in the reality of God? It does not. If it does not, then how is it a logical conclusion that if you can prove the Bible is flawed, this means belief in God is flawed? Explain.

Are you saying that some Christians believe the Bible is the word of God and some Christians do not? If people do not believe the Bible is the word of God, then why are they Christians?



ecco:

Regarding the stories direct from God: if they contain factual errors then we can look at a few reasons:

• God lied
• The stories were transcribed incorrectly
• The stories did not originate with God

Any of these lead to the conclusion that the stories are not really about a God. In other words, they are works of fiction.
​

No actually, it does not lead to that at all. What it does lead to is the realization that people's perceptions of God are reflective of the time and culture and language which they speak about God using. This limits the understanding, and as such makes them a reflection of human evolution at that stage of development. This is true about anything in human understanding, being that science, psychology, medicine, etc.

So, essentially you are saying the Truth of the Word of God changes as time goes by. Are you also saying that what was written in the Gospels is not truth?

Do you conclude that because people spoke of "bad spirits" causing illness, that illnesses aren't real? That should be the logical conclusion one should make, if we are to follow this line of reasoning above.

Nonsense. Are you trying to compare the words of "people" to the Biblical quotes of the authors of the Gospels? The words of the writers of the Gospel are, allegedly, God's Truth. If you don't believe that the words of the writers of the Gospel are God's Truth then I don't understand why we are having this conversation.

ecco:

• The eyewitnesses are unreliable.
• The eyewitnesses could not have recorded the information.

Either of these lead to the conclusion that the stories are not really about a God. In other words, they are works of fiction.​

No, they very much are about God. They are the thoughts and ideas people had about God as they understood it at that time, and reflective of their own personal awareness. The creation of mythologies, is completely about just this. They are metaphors about some transcendent reality people intuit, or directly experience firsthand. The accuracy of the words, will naturally not be scientifically correct. It's not about science, but human experiences.

As I said: In other words, they are works of fiction. I see we agree.

ecco:You know they are works of fiction, yet you choose to believe the primary subject is factual.​

Yes. And it's really not a matter of "choice" for me. My experience tells me it's real. My ideas about it fall far short of that reality. I can change how I believe about it, without it affecting the facts of my own experiences.

So you recognize that the Bible is a work of fiction, yet some "experiences" you have had lead you to conclude that it reflects a reality.

I really don't know what to make of that.

 

[Notaclue]

This has been discussed many times before.....the opening verse of Genesis says that God created the whole universe in one mighty act of creation. That includes the earth and the "heavens"...is the sun part of the heavens? The "lights" (sun, moon and stars) were apparently not fully visible until the the 4th day...

Job tells us that there were thick "swaddling bands" of clouds in the early part of creation. (Job 38:9) Clearing away those clouds would have revealed all the heavenly bodies.

Jn.5:45‘Do not think that I will accuse you unto the Father; there is who is accusing you, Moses — in whom ye have hoped;46for if ye were believing Moses, ye would have been believing me, for he wrote concerning me; 47but if his writings ye believe not, how shall ye believe my sayings?’





Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.(2Cor.5:17).

 

[Hockeycowboy]

@ecco wrote:

“Moses clearly said: there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

Please ask yourself, “Is this how the Hebrews counted their literal days?”

No, it wasn’t. Their days’ beginning or end had nothing to do with mornings. Their day started when night fell, and ended when the next night came. Mornings had nothing to do with it!

“When G‑d created time, He first created night and then day. Therefore, a Jewish calendar date begins with the night beforehand. While a day in the secular calendar begins and ends at midnight, a Jewish day goes from nightfall to nightfall.”

— The Jewish Day


So, Moses wasn’t describing literal days. If he meant that, he would have said, “the daytime ended, and the nighttime began.’

Rather, it was in a poetic style Moses was writing.
Very appropriate, indicating one epoch (of unknown duration) ended, and another one began.

All one needs to do, is look at Day 6, and notice all that was going on...way too much for a literal 24 hours!

 

[Hockeycowboy]

I know more about the world than Newton did simply by virtue of having been born centuries later. Today, we stand on the shoulders of the likes of Newton, who came before us.

That does nothing to change the meaning behind the posts, which were...
The Miracle of Water.
...and....
The Miracle of Water.
The words in the Bible he had, are the same we have today! And a better scientific understanding hasn't changed this aspect.

Nor would I defer to Newton's interpretation of scripture over my own. Or anybody else's.

Don't you think someone who 'studied it daily', would have more insight about it, than someone who quickly read through it?

What lawyer would you want....someone who quickly read through the law books, or someone who studied the law?

This is not persuasive. Recesses of the deep can refer to sea caves or even the holes in coral that the living organism occupy. If the Bible wanted to be persuasive, it should have refered to seafloor vents or chimneys or fumaroles, not recesses.

Now, come on, @It Aint Necessarily So , this is disingenuous.... I said "springs of the sea"; the recesses I compared to the Mariana Trench.

You can go through any holy book, find a dozen scriptures that can loosely be associated with modern discoveries, and call that prescient knowledge. In informal logic, we call that the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy - emphasize similarities, ignore differences, and call that meaningful.

If the Bible's accurate statements are just a Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy....not meaningful.... how come you felt the need to mischaracterize my point on the 'springs of the sea', at Job 38:16, ""Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?"

 

[Windwalker]

Are you saying that some Christians believe the Bible is the word of God and some Christians do not?

How people define what is the "word of God" can be different things, one of those things is believing it literally as a book of dictation from a deity, without any human error or reflective of anything less than accurate scientific and historical truth. That is actually a very modern view of the Bible held by modern fundamentalists. To others "the Word of God" does not mean the Bible, but something quite different than that.

If people do not believe the Bible is the word of God, then why are they Christians?

That is an excellent question. Why were people Christians before there was a Bible? We can start with that question as my answer. Why do you think? There was no "Bible" until a couple hundreds years after people were calling themselves Christians.

People became Christians because the message spoke to them on some level or another. Not because there was a Bible to believe in. One can recognize the Bible as just a compilation of various spiritual writings which have meaning to them, without needing to view those writings as supernatural in origin. Human beings have all manner of spiritual insights and can express them through many means, including art and poetry. You don't have to worship a poem or a piece of art and "believe it it" in order for it to speak to you.

There's a great deal more that can be said about this, but that is a quick and easy example to begin with.

So, essentially you are saying the Truth of the Word of God changes as time goes by.

As I just explained the "Word of God" can mean something other than "The Bible". In John 1:1 it translates Logos as "Word" but obviously since it identifies Logos with the person of Jesus in verse 14, it cannot, and is not referring to the Bible. "The Bible became flesh and dwelt among us"? Clearly those who conflate the "Word of God" with the Bible have something wrong with their heads.

But to answer your question about the Truth changing. If you used Truth with a capital T, then that is referring to the Divine itself, and not a propositional truth that one "believes in". The Divine is the Ground of all Being and "technically" does not change, because change is a measure of differences over time. God is "eternal", not in the sense of an infinitely long timeline, but rather exists outside of time, and is equally present within every changing moment of time according to our perceptions of it.

What does change is our ideas, views, and understandings over time. How people think of God can and does change over the course of our own lives, from childhood on through our spiritual growth and development. Obviously, if we are changing, then how we view God will change with that.

Are you also saying that what was written in the Gospels is not truth?

Sure it's truth, from the perspectives of the people writing it at that time. How we understand the truths they expressed, can and should be held in ways that make sense to us today. Obviously understanding what we do from science about the age of the earth for instance, it would be a great error to assume the writers of the the texts back then had magical knowledge like that, and we should therefore ignore science in favor of a primitive view of the natural world. But this does not therefore mean it invalidates timeless truths such as "love your neighbor as yourself". That is a valid understanding which transcends time.

Nonsense. Are you trying to compare the words of "people" to the Biblical quotes of the authors of the Gospels?

Of course they are the words of people. Do you think the Apostle Paul was a space alien?

The words of the writers of the Gospel are, allegedly, God's Truth.

To be spiritual truth, is really a matter of quality. A poet or a musician can speak these timeless truths of God as well. You have this idea in your head that these things are somehow magical or supernatural. That is like how a child imagines these things, like there being a Santa Claus. Because Santa is a myth, that doesn't mean the truth of the joy of Christmas time is not in fact totally real. Does it?

BTW, it's not your fault that magical view of these things is stuck in your thinking. It's how you were taught by those who think in those terms. But not all Christians think like a child in those ways, such as you find in such statements as this: Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy - Wikipedia

If you don't believe that the words of the writers of the Gospel are God's Truth then I don't understand why we are having this conversation.

Because you don't understand any other view of the Bible than that expressed by the fundamentalist point of view? Not all Christians think like they do. You can still find truth, value, and meaning in the words because they are as true today as then. However that does not translate into everything they thought and wrote is to be taken as factual. That's a bad bit of reasoning to think that way. I am more than free to say I disagree with some of those author's points of view in various places. What speaks to the heart as true, has value. It doesn't have to be defended by some erroneously defined statement on so-called "Biblical Inerrancy" as in the Chicago Statement referenced above.

As I said: In other words, they are works of fiction. I see we agree.

No, not a work of fiction. They also aren't a romance novel either. Something can be inspired, without needing to be factually correct. Even a work of fiction can be inspired, if it speaks to the human soul. That statement right there, is something that makes a fundamentalists head explode. Are you able to make sense of that statement yourself that I just highlighted?

Does something need to be factually correct, scientifically valid, in order for truth and meaning to be found in it? Do you really believe that, like a fundamentalist believes the Bible must be factual in every way or it has no meaning either? Understanding this, will answer your question how people can believe in God or find truth and value in various spiritual texts without needing to think in the terms that fundamentalists do.

ecco:You know they are works of fiction, yet you choose to believe the primary subject is factual.​

So you recognize that the Bible is a work of fiction, yet some "experiences" you have had lead you to conclude that it reflects a reality.

When I said "yes", I was focusing on the fact I believe in God, not the bit about the Bible being a fiction, per se. From a literary point of view it's not considered a work of fiction. But there are in fact "made up stories" within it which are used to convey higher or deeper spiritual truths. This is the nature of what mythologies are and do. The "facts of the story" are not the truth of them. What the made up characters are saying, is the point of them. This is what will maybe help you to begin to separate out the meaning of the symbols from the symbols themselves.

But yes, having experience of the reality of God (which I first had before I was exposed to religious teachings, so it was therefore not based on the thoughts of others), lets me hear when others speak truths that resonate with that experience. It doesn't matter which religion they are speaking it from in the words and symbols they use. It's heard with the ears of the heart, not through rational deductive reasoning processes. Love is not a rational proposition. You don't know it's Love when you encounter it in your life, as the end result of a logical debate with your mind.

I can hear and see the Word of God in the song of bird in the tree in my backyard, or the eyes of a child looking across time to my eyes seeing theirs. I can hear God because I experience God. You don't need a Bible for that. The "Word of God" is all of creation. Creation is God speaking.

I really don't know what to make of that.

Hopefully this is exposing you to other ways of thinking that people have. Fortunately, not everyone thinks like a fundamentalist. Some people can see Truth everywhere, rather than only inside the Bible which they think is God incarnate, for some distorted reason in their dimly-lit minds.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

A lot is written in picturesque language. To assume it should be taken literally, is just that: assumption.

It is an assumption that the scripture is not to be taken literally, and as I said, there is no reason to believe otherwise.

Whose assumption? Please show where the authors of any scripture intended it to be taken as allegory.

Anybody who claims that prose in the Bible such as the creation story in Genesis is not to be taken literally is making an unjustified assumption. It is the believer calls biblical myths that are clearly not historically factual allegory or metaphor, not me. I take the words at their face value.

Nor would I defer to Newton's interpretation of scripture over my own. Or anybody else's.

Don't you think someone who 'studied it daily', would have more insight about it, than someone who quickly read through it?

Perhaps, but if you're referring to me - a former Christian and a good student - I studied the Bible at great length as a young adult, enough to trust my understanding of its contents.

Much of the Bible is vague and has no definite meaning, but some is in plain language. As I just indicated, I take the latter at face value, and the former as poetry - a verbal Rorschach test upon which the reader projects himself. What do the lyrics to Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds mean? The answer : whatever you want them to mean. It's poetry. It doesn't matter how long another person studies those lyrics, unless he can convince me that he has knowledge that allows him to define the author's specific meaning - and I know from the mouth of their author, John Lennon, that the words mean nothing specific - then I certainly won't defer to his explanation of what those words mean to him.

If Newrton's understanding of the Bible differs from mine, it changes nothing for me. Being a mathematics and physics superstar does not make him an authority on the Bible. Newton also believed in alchemy, and I'm sure that he studied alchemy for decades - far longer than most of us living today. Yet, as far as I know, none of us is deferring to his beliefs there, either.

If you looked at a house, how do you assume it came about? Would you assume it just appeared out of nowhere, or someone made it? Now, have a look at the universe, which is so much more complicated than a simple house.

False equivalence. Houses and universes are not equivalent. Houses never self-assemble, and therefore are not an apt analogy. We have discovered multiple laws and properties of the universe that account for it self-assembling. We see stars forming in bright stellar nurseries with nobody there to build them. Planets form into spheroids by the accretion of planetesimals that once moved in differing trajectories at different velocities, but as a planet, now move in unison as they rotate about an axis and revolve around a star. Nobody is needed for that kind of self-organization, which is unrelated to the pieces of a house coming together.

The universe is essentially assorted gases, dust, and rocks of assorted sizes and compositions blindly obeying unconscious forces, with at least one planet containing life and mind. We have no reason to believe that intelligence is needed to account for this. It might be, but we cannot justifiably say as with a house that it must be.

If I saw evidence for the Big Bang, I would believe as well.

You'll need to look with open eyes and an open mind to see the evidence, to which I alluded in an earlier post on this thread. That evidence simply not visible to the believer fitted with a faith-based confirmation bias that filters his input to conform to his presuppositions (see Morton's Demon in the spoiler below).

The Big Bang theory made two specific predictions about nature that were confirmed. That tells me and most others aware of it that the theory is correct in the main as far as it goes. It is undoubtedly incomplete, and it is expected that there will be some tweaking and additions over the decades and centuries, but a multi-billion year expansion beginning from an extremely small, hot, and dense state that lead to the generation of the fundamental forces and particles, which then eventually cooled and organized into galaxies full of solar systems, is pretty much here to stay.

Spoiler: Morton's Demon

Morton's demon is the anthropomorphizing of a faith based confirmation bias invoking an imaginary demon analogous to Maxwell's demon. Morton's demon sits at the portal to the mind and admits some ideas while blocking out others according to whether they support or contradict the ideas believed by faith. It was the invention of earth scientist and former young earth creationist (YEC) Glenn Morton, who is now an old earth creationist (OEC), which is a creationist that accepts that the earth is billions of years old. From Creation Science, Morton's Demon :

"Thus was born the realization that there is a dangerous demon, Morton''s demon, on the loose. When I was a YEC, I had a demon that did similar things for me that Maxwell's demon did for thermodynamics. Morton's demon was a demon who sat at the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if and when he saw supportive evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data coming in, he closed the gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data. Fortunately, I eventually realized that the demon was there and began to open the gate when he wasn't looking.

[snip]

"The demon makes its victim feel very comfortable as there is no contradictory data in view. The demon is better than a set of rose colored glasses. The demon's victim does not understand why everyone else doesn't fall down and accept the victim's views. After all, the world is thought to be as the victim sees it

[snip]

"But one thing that those unaffected by this demon don't understand is that the victim is not lying about the data. The demon only lets his victim see what the demon wants him to see and thus the victim, whose sensory input is horribly askew, feels that he is totally honest about the data. The victim doesn't know that he is the host to an evil parasite and indeed many of their opponents don't know that as well since the demon is smart enough to be too small to be seen."

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Why do you believe?

Because the available evidence subjected to sound reasoning is compelling. There's really no other good reason to believe anything. The degree of belief should be commensurate with the quality and quantity of that evidence

We do not believe in evolution, nor see any proof of it whatsoever.

Evolution does not need to be believed in. It can be observed.

Once again, you're not going to see what you don't look at. Come, take a peak at evolution occurring:

It is not scientific fact, merely a theory.

Evolution is a scientific fact. Did you watch the video? Evolution is a fact like the earth rotating is a fact.

And the theory of evolution is not mere. It is a robust theory that unifies mountains of data from a multitude of sources, accurately makes predictions about what can and cannot be found in nature, provides a rational mechanism for evolution consistent with the known actions of nature, accounts for both the commonality of all life as well as biodiversity, and has had practical applications that have improved the human condition.

Like the BIg Bang theory discussed above, this theory is correct in the main, and will never be overturned, just tweaked and expanded.

I don’t get how animals can come before their food source exist.

They can't, which is how we know that creation as described in Genesis is mythical.

What an odd way of thinking. By this line of reasoning, everything is "faith".

I'm sure that you know that that's the plain - to try to put science and religion on an equal footing. The believer wants to say that the rational skeptic's beliefs, especially scientific beliefs, are on no more solid a foundation than his religious beliefs.

How many "improbable" things coming together, supposedly 'undirected' makes a person deny the need for intelligent co-ordination of the processes?

I have no need to invoke an intelligent designer. What problem would it solve that can't be explained without one? We have done a good job explaining how the universe works, and how it evolved materially and biologically over deep time to become what it is. The remaining problems are origins problems : How did the singularity that became the universe come to be, and how did the first life in the universe arise? We have hypotheses for these that don't require gods such as the multiverse hypothesis and abiogenesis, so we still haven't invoked any.

What's the least likely thing one can imagine existing without an intelligent designer to account for it? It would be a god. Probability arguments that assume the existence of a god to explain improbable things are fallacious - the special pleading fallacy. Implied in theistic arguments of this type that other improbable things need an intelligent designer, but the least likely thing to exist undesigned - a sentient, volitional, potent god - gets a pass and needs no explanation.

Edit: typo corrected.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The two lights God made were the sun and the moon.

The moon is not a light. And the sun is just one of countless trillions of stars.

All one needs to do, is look at Day 6, and notice all that was going on...way too much for a literal 24 hours!

An omnipotent god couldn't get that done in 24 earth hours?

Have you ever noticed that it's only the believers that make the argument that the days of creation were not literal days? Unbelievers have no need to reconcile the Bible with modern knowledge. We simply say that ancients were wrong.

The words in the Bible [Newton] had, are the same we have today! And a better scientific understanding hasn't changed this aspect.

A better understanding doesn't change the words in the Bible except when modern translations make unjustified substitutions to conform with present knowledge, but it's that better understanding that directs how many believers read the words. This was my point with the days of creation comment. Go back far enough in time, and there is no reason not to consider those days literal days, which is why I am quite confident that they were thought of that way.

Consider the concept of the seven-day week and the Sabbath. It's clearly based on a literal understanding of the six days of creation and a seventh to rest.

Today, with a better scientific understanding of nature and its history, Christians are reinterpreting their Bibles to conform with that new knoowledge. Notice that it is religious beliefs that increasingly are deferring to science, and never the other way around.

Of course they are the words of people.

If scripture is not the infallible thoughts of a deity, then it's just another book, and not authoritative.

Something can be inspired, without needing to be factually correct.

Inspired isn't good enough. Inspires implies a creation from without modified by a creative urge, the way that The Honeymooners inspired The Flintstones, and Romeo and Juliet inspired West Side Story. You start with somebody else's idea, and let it inspire you as you add your own input. In the case of divine knowledge and instruction, that's a contaminant. It invalidate the scripture as an authoritative source that can be depended on. It's not even possible to sort out which ideas are thought to be Jehovah's and which are the scribe's.

We can't have it both ways. Either scripture is the unadulterated, authoritative word of an omniscient god and can be trusted to be accurate and morally sound, or it is at least partly the ideas of men, many of which can be wrong or morally inadequate. Why should we have faith in or base our lives on the latter?

I can hear and see the Word of God in the song of bird in the tree in my backyard, or the eyes of a child looking across time to my eyes seeing theirs. I can hear God because I experience God. You don't need a Bible for that. The "Word of God" is all of creation. Creation is God speaking.

I too can see and experience those things as well, often with a sense of awe, mystery, connectivity, and gratitude. But I don't then call those feelings the experience of an objectively real, sentient, external entity. I call them aspects of my mind - a personal psychological state. There is no reason to assume more.

 

[Jose Fly]

You take for granted that there is water in the stream to begin with. Where did it come from?

Apparently according to you, God personally assembles every water molecule in the universe (since you've been arguing that it can't happen naturally).

What is snow? How do ice crystals form? Do snowflakes have to be beautiful and so incredibly diverse in form?

And now you have God personally assembling every snowflake in the universe! God's quite busy, eh?

 

[ecco]

How people define what is the "word of God" can be different things, one of those things is believing it literally as a book of dictation from a deity, without any human error or reflective of anything less than accurate scientific and historical truth. That is actually a very modern view of the Bible held by modern fundamentalists. To others "the Word of God" does not mean the Bible, but something quite different than that.


That is an excellent question. Why were people Christians before there was a Bible? We can start with that question as my answer. Why do you think? There was no "Bible" until a couple hundreds years after people were calling themselves Christians.

People became Christians because the message spoke to them on some level or another. Not because there was a Bible to believe in. One can recognize the Bible as just a compilation of various spiritual writings which have meaning to them, without needing to view those writings as supernatural in origin. Human beings have all manner of spiritual insights and can express them through many means, including art and poetry. You don't have to worship a poem or a piece of art and "believe it it" in order for it to speak to you.

There's a great deal more that can be said about this, but that is a quick and easy example to begin with.


As I just explained the "Word of God" can mean something other than "The Bible". In John 1:1 it translates Logos as "Word" but obviously since it identifies Logos with the person of Jesus in verse 14, it cannot, and is not referring to the Bible. "The Bible became flesh and dwelt among us"? Clearly those who conflate the "Word of God" with the Bible have something wrong with their heads.

But to answer your question about the Truth changing. If you used Truth with a capital T, then that is referring to the Divine itself, and not a propositional truth that one "believes in". The Divine is the Ground of all Being and "technically" does not change, because change is a measure of differences over time. God is "eternal", not in the sense of an infinitely long timeline, but rather exists outside of time, and is equally present within every changing moment of time according to our perceptions of it.

What does change is our ideas, views, and understandings over time. How people think of God can and does change over the course of our own lives, from childhood on through our spiritual growth and development. Obviously, if we are changing, then how we view God will change with that.


Sure it's truth, from the perspectives of the people writing it at that time. How we understand the truths they expressed, can and should be held in ways that make sense to us today. Obviously understanding what we do from science about the age of the earth for instance, it would be a great error to assume the writers of the the texts back then had magical knowledge like that, and we should therefore ignore science in favor of a primitive view of the natural world. But this does not therefore mean it invalidates timeless truths such as "love your neighbor as yourself". That is a valid understanding which transcends time.


Of course they are the words of people. Do you think the Apostle Paul was a space alien?


To be spiritual truth, is really a matter of quality. A poet or a musician can speak these timeless truths of God as well. You have this idea in your head that these things are somehow magical or supernatural. That is like how a child imagines these things, like there being a Santa Claus. Because Santa is a myth, that doesn't mean the truth of the joy of Christmas time is not in fact totally real. Does it?

BTW, it's not your fault that magical view of these things is stuck in your thinking. It's how you were taught by those who think in those terms. But not all Christians think like a child in those ways, such as you find in such statements as this: Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy - Wikipedia


Because you don't understand any other view of the Bible than that expressed by the fundamentalist point of view? Not all Christians think like they do. You can still find truth, value, and meaning in the words because they are as true today as then. However that does not translate into everything they thought and wrote is to be taken as factual. That's a bad bit of reasoning to think that way. I am more than free to say I disagree with some of those author's points of view in various places. What speaks to the heart as true, has value. It doesn't have to be defended by some erroneously defined statement on so-called "Biblical Inerrancy" as in the Chicago Statement referenced above.


No, not a work of fiction. They also aren't a romance novel either. Something can be inspired, without needing to be factually correct. Even a work of fiction can be inspired, if it speaks to the human soul. That statement right there, is something that makes a fundamentalists head explode. Are you able to make sense of that statement yourself that I just highlighted?

Does something need to be factually correct, scientifically valid, in order for truth and meaning to be found in it? Do you really believe that, like a fundamentalist believes the Bible must be factual in every way or it has no meaning either? Understanding this, will answer your question how people can believe in God or find truth and value in various spiritual texts without needing to think in the terms that fundamentalists do.


When I said "yes", I was focusing on the fact I believe in God, not the bit about the Bible being a fiction, per se. From a literary point of view it's not considered a work of fiction. But there are in fact "made up stories" within it which are used to convey higher or deeper spiritual truths. This is the nature of what mythologies are and do. The "facts of the story" are not the truth of them. What the made up characters are saying, is the point of them. This is what will maybe help you to begin to separate out the meaning of the symbols from the symbols themselves.

But yes, having experience of the reality of God (which I first had before I was exposed to religious teachings, so it was therefore not based on the thoughts of others), lets me hear when others speak truths that resonate with that experience. It doesn't matter which religion they are speaking it from in the words and symbols they use. It's heard with the ears of the heart, not through rational deductive reasoning processes. Love is not a rational proposition. You don't know it's Love when you encounter it in your life, as the end result of a logical debate with your mind.

I can hear and see the Word of God in the song of bird in the tree in my backyard, or the eyes of a child looking across time to my eyes seeing theirs. I can hear God because I experience God. You don't need a Bible for that. The "Word of God" is all of creation. Creation is God speaking.

Hopefully this is exposing you to other ways of thinking that people have. Fortunately, not everyone thinks like a fundamentalist. Some people can see Truth everywhere, rather than only inside the Bible which they think is God incarnate, for some distorted reason in their dimly-lit minds.

Your condescension is noted.

Do you really believe your above post "exposed" me to some great new truths? Seriously!

All you are saying is that, when it comes to religion, people pick and choose whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. That's not news to me. Regarding religion and the Bible, I've quoted PSEUDOLUS more than once...

Something familiar
Something peculiar
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something appealing
Something appalling
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns;
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!

Old situations
New complications
Nothing portentous or polite;
Tragedy tomorrow
Comedy tonight!

Something convulsive
Something repulsive
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!



That's one of the reasons religious beliefs are so silly.



You make up your own little set of rules and beliefs: I can hear God because I experience God. You don't need a Bible for that.
...and then...
You said: "You can still find truth, value, and meaning in the words because they are as true today as then".

It looks like you have made up your own religion as you went along.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Evolution does not need to be believed in. It can be observed.

Once again, you're not going to see what you don't look at. Come, take a peak at evolution occurring:



Evolution is a scientific fact. Did you watch the video? Evolution is a fact like the earth rotating is a fact.

.

Only changes within species, genera, possibly families.

The bacteria in your video....it stays bacteria. It may morph into another species, but even under lab-controlled experiments (which fast-tracks evolution), it's nothing more than bacteria.

Breeding programs, again fast-tracking effective genomic change, still produce organisms within their families .

The studies performed on Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly), just highlights the stability of the genome...mutations that do occur within the DNA, are either neutral or detrimental. Beneficial changes that do happen, are so rare...there's no way they can account for the diversity of organisms we observe. And there are even more new species (about 10,000) every year that get discovered.

 

[Windwalker]

Your condescension is noted.

Do you really believe your above post "exposed" me to some great new truths? Seriously!

My condescension was not to you, but to fundamentalists with their "dimly-lit minds" as I called it. You on the other hand, just present yourself as uninformed about things, since you appeared to be bewildered how someone can believe such things without violating reason.

I had hoped to expose you to something you apparently were unaware of. If you call than condescension, I'm not sure why. You asked the question, and I answered it as best I can, assuming you were ignorant, which you sounded like you were. Are you just being defensive now that you got a reasonable answer that didn't fit into your preconceptions?

All you are saying is that, when it comes to religion, people pick and choose whatever they want for whatever reasons they want.
That's not news to me.

It's a little more complex than that, but if that's how you want to understand it in the framework you look at these things though, then that'll work for you. For me however, it's a lot more nuanced and complex than that.

You make up your own little set of rules and beliefs: I can hear God because I experience God. You don't need a Bible for that.
...and then...
You said: "You can still find truth, value, and meaning in the words because they are as true today as then".

It looks like you have made up your own religion as you went along.

Not exactly. But you don't sound like you're actually interested in knowledge, so I'll leave it at this.

 

[ecco]

All you are saying is that, when it comes to religion, people pick and choose whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. That's not news to me.

You make up your own little set of rules and beliefs: I can hear God because I experience God. You don't need a Bible for that.
...and then...
You said: "You can still find truth, value, and meaning in the words because they are as true today as then".

It looks like you have made up your own religion as you went along.

You on the other hand, just present yourself as uninformed about things, since you appeared to be bewildered how someone can believe such things without violating reason.

I got over being bewildered long ago when I realized the deep, lasting effects of early childhood indoctrination. When the concept of god in particular, and superstition in general, is instilled into young minds it precludes reason.

I had hoped to expose you to something you apparently were unaware of. If you call than condescension, I'm not sure why. You asked the question, and I answered it as best I can, assuming you were ignorant, which you sounded like you were. Are you just being defensive now that you got a reasonable answer that didn't fit into your preconceptions?

You really are full of yourself. You obviously have no clue about my preconceptions and you didn't post anything resembling reasonable answers. As I said, after reading your long post, you seem to make up your own version of religion.

All you are saying is that, when it comes to religion, people pick and choose whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. That's not news to me.

It's a little more complex than that, but if that's how you want to understand it in the framework you look at these things though, then that'll work for you. For me however, it's a lot more nuanced and complex than that.

Nonsense. You believe those parts of the Bible you choose to believe just like everyone else.

But you don't sound like you're actually interested in knowledge, so I'll leave it at this.

I seriously doubt I would hear anything from you that I haven't heard many times before. Just variations on a theme from someone who believes he has discovered something better than most.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

What you wrote is your opinion. You have provided no evidence from scripture for your position.
The bible says "day". Moses knew what a "day" was. I'm sure that back in Moses' time there was a word for "period". Moses also knew what a morning was and what an evening was.
Moses clearly said: there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
He did not say: there passed many evenings and mornings - the first period.
It's very clear...............

Isn't Genesis 2:3-4 clear to you ______
Doesn't it say ....... 'in the day' ......God created.....
So, all of the creative days are summed up by the singular word 'day' at Genesis 2:4.
So, as I speak of grandfather's day meaning more than a 24 hr, day,
The Bible is speaking of the word ' day ' in meaning more than a literal 24 hr. day.
So, Noah's day, or the days of Noah, is Not a specific amount of time - Matthew 24:37-38.
If the six (6) creative days are 24 hr. days, then why is God's 7th day Not a 24 hr. day because according to Hebrews 4: 4-11 God's 7th day was still on going in the 1st Century.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Hi,
Gen.1:14(NAS) Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
The two lights God made were the sun and the moon. Why do you think the stars were made before the fourth day? God just said he made them the fourth day! It doesn't get any clearer than this.

No, the stars, or starry heavens, were NOT made ( as in created ) on the 4th day.

In the beginning (Day One)God created the heavens and earth ( that means the starry heavens were before earth )
Please notice at Genesis 1:16 the word used there is the word ' made ' and Not the word created.
So, God ' made ' the existing lights: sun, moon and stars to do something.
Their already created light was now ' made ' to reach earth's surface.
Just as a parent's child can be ' made ' to do something like ' made ' to sit in a chair or 'made' to go to school.
God ' made ' the already created lights to do their job so we could enjoy living life on Earth.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

An omnipotent god couldn't get that done in 24 earth hours?

Certainly Jehovah could. But does that mean, he has to?

He set forces in motion (water cycle, nitrogen cycle, etc.) that are continuously governed by the laws He created (which, btw, are mentioned in Job 38:33).

Furthermore, He can suspend them at any time, but He doesn’t. He even allows those who ignore Him and scoff, to keep living. Letting these things continue, and Earth’s huge systems to function without His protection / interference, is part of settling the issues raised in Eden.

Mankind needs Jehovah’s loving guidance. Soon, everyone living will realize that....especially many of those resurrected.

 

[Windwalker]

If scripture is not the infallible thoughts of a deity, then it's just another book, and not authoritative.

Why are you making this an either/or case? I don't see any reason that is necessary. Some books are "more inspired" and some "less inspired". And there is a wide range in between. While some may be "more authoritative," none is absolute. None can be absolute because we are require to interpret things, and we are not perfect. We translate it into terms we can understand. Our understanding, is not absolute. So "The Word of God" perfect as that may be, is never perfect in our understanding.

Inspired isn't good enough. Inspires implies a creation from without modified by a creative urge, the way that The Honeymooners inspired The Flintstones, and Romeo and Juliet inspired West Side Story.

First, thank you for that bit of trivial knowledge. I never knew that about the Flintstones. That's great!

Regarding inspired means without a creative urge, I could not possibly disagree with you any more. I am a musician. I create music from my soul. I know what inspiration is. It is raw, spontaneous, and unique. What you are describing is imitation, not inspiration. Inspiration is the soul of God flowing through you, into the Infinity of the Universe. Inspiration is expressing the deep yearings of eternity to be known in form. That is inspiration, not what you described.

It invalidate the scripture as an authoritative source that can be depended on. It's not even possible to sort out which ideas are thought to be Jehovah's and which are the scribe's.

What you are describing here is a reliance on your mind to deduce or deduct what the will or mind of God is. You are using reason to apprehend God. This will fail. You need to use the heart, and the soul.

We can't have it both ways. Either scripture is the unadulterated, authoritative word of an omniscient god and can be trusted to be accurate and morally sound, or it is at least partly the ideas of men, many of which can be wrong or morally inadequate. Why should we have faith in or base our lives on the latter?

Why are you externalizing all of this? Why must God be some entity outside of yourself, and not living inside your heart and speaking to you through it?

I too can see and experience those things as well, often with a sense of awe, mystery, connectivity, and gratitude. But I don't then call those feelings the experience of an objectively real, sentient, external entity. I call them aspects of my mind - a personal psychological state. There is no reason to assume more.

You see, that is your problem right there. You said it. You said God is an "external entity".