PureX
Well-known member
Yes. It's believing that God defied the nature of reality and made these human writers "inerrant".
What if you consider arguments on Christianity and you are left with major doubt?
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elohiym
Well-known member
What is "the nature of reality" being defied?
PureX
Well-known member
So … love is NOT love? :shocked:
We register that same effect when we feel anything. When we think, anything. That electro-chemical activity is a part of the phenomena of thought.
PureX
Well-known member
Because humans are not intellectually inerrant.
ClimateSanity
New member
They don't have to be intellectually inerrant. They just have to speak. God chooses what he wants from that to communicate.
elohiym
Well-known member
You got the point. :chuckle:
Different emotions produce different effects. Love causes the release of oxytocin--fear doesn't.
I don't deny that. You don't divorce God from that phenomena or from love, so what on earth is your point?
PureX
Well-known member
All you're identifying is an effect. And you think the effect is "love".
That's just weak-minded. Like identifying an ocean by the waves on it's surface.
My point is that God and love are ideals, not objects: they are paradigms through which we perceive and understand ourselves and the world around us (if we so choose). They are ideals that need to be experienced to be validated, and evaluated. They are NOT aspects of objective reality that can be proven to exist by science, or by supernatural feats.
There is no need for anyone to believe in supernatural feats, to believe in God.
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ClimateSanity
New member
How would you describe the god you believe in?
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Scientific researchers avoid using words like "prove," which is why I didn't expect to see it in the research paper, and why it wasn't there. You said the archaeologists "proved" the site was the Biblical Sodom, and in doing so, you stepped across a line that good researchers don't cross.
I'll leave you to it, then. I've made the point I wanted to make.
PureX
Well-known member
I can't describe "God" any more than I already have.
Krsto
Well-known member
In order for it to make sense that God "wrote something to mankind", and thus the writings were without error, God would also have to eliminate all of the other sources of error so that we could actually receive something without error, such as: make transmission, translation, and interpretation inerrant as well. Only the Catholics believe God has done that, for the reason I stated. They call it their Magisterium which they believe God MUST have instituted so that God's faithful could follow God's ways without error. It's easy for the rest of us to see how fanciful an idea this infallibility, but Evangelicals can't see how Verbal Plenary Inspiration is just as fanciful of an idea unless God has also shored up the boat of truth every step of the way so that something could be delivered to mankind that could leave nobody in doubt as to its veracity.
It's much more reasonable (less fanciful) to believe God inspired prophets and teachers but they are fallible vessels, their writings have errors, the copiers and editors introduced errors, accurate translation into 6000 languages is impossible due to the nature of language, and worst of all, people have to figure out what it all means and how to apply it to our own lives 2000 years later. What's the point in claiming inerrancy at one step if we don't have it at all steps?
Selaphiel
Well-known member
While I am a far cry from a conservative evangelical, I do believe that the church needs to maintain some idea of revelation. The reason I would claim that some idea of the revelation of who God is is so central to Christianity is the cross. To claim that God, the wellspring of existence itself, revealed himself in self-emptying love on the cross is not an idea typically associated with divinity before Christianity. To be in the ancient world and point to crucified peasant and say that it was the revelation of God, most people would think you were out of your mind. Of course, Christians believed that because they believed in the resurrection. Whether that resurrection was a 'walk out of the cave' bodily resurrection, a spiritual resurrection or something in between isn't really very relevant. What is important is that Christians believed that Christ was once again present as a living agent.
As the theologian Robert Jenson puts it, paraphrased, Jesus Christ was the self-identifying word of God, confirmed in the resurrection. The life of Jesus up until the resurrection a proposal of who God was, the resurrection a confirmation that this was God. Which means that God is one who eats and drinks with sinners and forgives even his own executioners.
To define God as mere 'mystery' seems to me to be pretty much the same as saying nothing, it very quickly becomes an empty label. So what?
The problem I see with that is that it often becomes an empty vessel for Feuerbachian projection. That is, an empty vessel we can always just fill by projecting our current ideals onto eternity. Biblically (I dont mean that in a fundamentalist sense that the Bible is inerrant or even a collection of books with just one theological voice) that is very close to idolatry, the chief of all sins. And it is not the idolatry of worshipping Baal, Zeus or some such nonsense, it can become the idolatry of self-worship, we end up worshipping the very subject that projects the values we want onto eternity.
Of course, you can claim that the content of the Christian revelation that I just described is projection a well. That is of course possible, but it would not be a Feuerbachian projection, it would be a Nietzschean projection, resentiment. The God of the prophets and the God portrayed by Jesus Christ is no bourgeoisie projection, He does not have the tepid values of the middle class, it is rather the roaring fire of insurrection.
All this being said, and this is the ironical part. Much of fundamentalist evangelicalism really just is Feuerbachian projection as well. The grotesque idolatry of projecting 'American values and common decency' onto the Son of God: We are saved and no we just carry on, saved from and to what exactly? Some bland ticket stamp to some completely discontinuous disembodied existence after death?
Will continue this later, will try to present some counterpoints to what I've claimed here. Obviously this is a rather complex topic. Just in case someone is insane enough to be interested.
As the theologian Robert Jenson puts it, paraphrased, Jesus Christ was the self-identifying word of God, confirmed in the resurrection. The life of Jesus up until the resurrection a proposal of who God was, the resurrection a confirmation that this was God. Which means that God is one who eats and drinks with sinners and forgives even his own executioners.
To define God as mere 'mystery' seems to me to be pretty much the same as saying nothing, it very quickly becomes an empty label. So what?
The problem I see with that is that it often becomes an empty vessel for Feuerbachian projection. That is, an empty vessel we can always just fill by projecting our current ideals onto eternity. Biblically (I dont mean that in a fundamentalist sense that the Bible is inerrant or even a collection of books with just one theological voice) that is very close to idolatry, the chief of all sins. And it is not the idolatry of worshipping Baal, Zeus or some such nonsense, it can become the idolatry of self-worship, we end up worshipping the very subject that projects the values we want onto eternity.
Of course, you can claim that the content of the Christian revelation that I just described is projection a well. That is of course possible, but it would not be a Feuerbachian projection, it would be a Nietzschean projection, resentiment. The God of the prophets and the God portrayed by Jesus Christ is no bourgeoisie projection, He does not have the tepid values of the middle class, it is rather the roaring fire of insurrection.
All this being said, and this is the ironical part. Much of fundamentalist evangelicalism really just is Feuerbachian projection as well. The grotesque idolatry of projecting 'American values and common decency' onto the Son of God: We are saved and no we just carry on, saved from and to what exactly? Some bland ticket stamp to some completely discontinuous disembodied existence after death?
Will continue this later, will try to present some counterpoints to what I've claimed here. Obviously this is a rather complex topic. Just in case someone is insane enough to be interested.
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elohiym
Well-known member
I never claimed the word "prove" would be in the document, and I don't understand why you would have spent the time searching for that word instead of reading about the archaeological findings. You seem more interesting in nitpicking at my comment than discussing whether or not the evidence found at Tall el Hammam proves it is the ancient city of Sodom.
Has anyone proven that vaccines are safe and effective? You can't answer affirmatively now without stepping "across a line that good researchers don't cross."
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
:chuckle: No, you merely claimed that archaeologists "proved" the site was Sodom, when they made no such statement. Your quote is right there in the thread, and you seem more interested in my "nitpicking" than you are acknowledging your misrepresentation. And by the way, it only takes a few seconds to do a word search of a document, which I did after reading the paper merely out of interest. I wasn't convinced, by the way.
:freak: I'm not interested in your vaccine tangent.
1PeaceMaker
New member
PureX
Well-known member
elohiym
Well-known member
Yes, based on the definition of the word prove.
I didn't claim they made "such statement" and never claimed they used the word prove. Why are you trying to make an issue of this? I've explained it a couple of times already.
I didn't misrepresent anything. You are misrepresenting that I claimed the researchers used the word "prove" or a derivative in that one document, but I never did that. You are trying to find fault where there is none, and it's disturbing.
:freak: Because it undermines what you're claiming about me.
Faith is knowledge beyond proof.
Atheists need empirical evidence, and while they masquerade this as healthy skepticism, it's really just a purposed limitation.
Some people just don't want to believe in the Creator. Saint Augustine was a brilliant theologian and thinker, and he stated outright that there are many things science cannot explain which are nonetheless true- a man who lived well before the age of modern science.
Atheists need empirical evidence, and while they masquerade this as healthy skepticism, it's really just a purposed limitation.
Some people just don't want to believe in the Creator. Saint Augustine was a brilliant theologian and thinker, and he stated outright that there are many things science cannot explain which are nonetheless true- a man who lived well before the age of modern science.
PureX
Well-known member
I agree that the church needs to be able to offer some sort of divine (transcendent) revelation. And I believe that it does. I also agree that Jesus' death on the cross is significant in part because he is characterized as having transcended it. Without that part of the story, he's just another dead preacher, and his message and example gets sort of stuck in his time and place.
The story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection matter because it tells us that the ideals he presented to humanity, and the promises he made about them, are not stuck in the past, but are 'eternal'. And are as real and apropos to us today as they have ever been. Jesus is the embodiment of those divine ideals, and through them he has transcended his own mortality. Maybe not bodily, but in every other way that matters.
Yes; the Divine Spirit being expressed in a human form, and through human experiences. This is the true revelation of Christ. A revelation that can save humanity from itself, as it ultimately saved Jesus, from us.
Who is defining God as "mere mystery"? Seems to me we error in the other direction, by defining God as reflections of ourselves, complete with all our character defects and flawed desires. I truly wish more of humanity would allow God to be more of a mystery, so as hopefully to engender some humility in us.
So in the end, how DO we refrain from creating God in our own image?
I think we have to let God be God, and stop trying to define God. Stop trying to control God by our "compliance". And stop trying to 'own' God so we can dole God out to others, for a price (as the practice of 'organized religion'). Yet this is NOT what the current church is teaching. Nor is it what it's been doing. Sadly.