Van Tillian/Clarkian Presuppositional Apologetics.

[The Grand Nudger]

You've stated that the consistency of calvinism is one of the indicators of it's authenticity to you. Can fiction not be made to be consistent?

[Statler Waldorf]

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And so we begin the process of debunking flimsy rationalizations...
Actually, the Bible does specify that man was created before the plants. Let's go to the tape again (bold emphasis added):

KJV Genesis 2:4-7 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Lets consult a few other translations to be sure I'm understanding this correctly:

NIV Gen 2:5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground,

ASV Gen 2:5 And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: and there was not a man to till the ground;

CEV Gen 2:5 no grass or plants were growing anywhere. God had not yet sent any rain, and there was no one to work the land.

ESV Gen 2:5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,

Looks like chapter 2 really does say man came before plants.

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Now I feel unfortunately that you are just being intellectually dishonest. I already pointed out that “plants of the field” are cultivated plants which are not the same kind of plants created on day three. That’s not a contradiction; in fact it’s not even a discrepancy. After doing about 5 minutes of research I was able to confirm what I had initially stated. The Hebrew term for plant of the field is different thant the Hebrew term for plant used in Genesis 1. The term used in Genesis 2 indeed refers to food bearing cultivated plants as I originally stated. So this cannot be a contradiction because the text states that God created plants A on day three and Plants B after man. If you had taken the time to do a little research you would have seen this to be the case too, but why would you do that? It would prove your alleged contradiction here to be false right?

The KJV gave a different indication but fine, I'll concede that your Bible agrees with your take. (You'd think that God would watch over all the translations to be sure I didn't have to cross-reference 20 different versions to get the right message).

Regardless of what you think God should have done, having multiple translations is a very good thing because it helps preserve the meaning of the original text because we can do a cross reference.

Once again, that's not what the KJV indicates:

Well maybe you should have this discussion with a “King James Only Christian” or a Mormon, the translators of the ESV (some of the best in the world) made it very clear that the Hebrew there should have been translated in the KJV as “had formed”.

So some modern translations agree with you while others agree with me. My explanation for the discrepancy is that modern translators, aware of the problem, have fixed it.

Have any proof of that little theory of yours? A better explanation is that scholars realize that Hebrew does not make the distinction between simple past tense (formed) and past perfect tense (had form), the reader actually determines which is being used by the context of the word. So you are going to have a real hard time translating it as “formed” since contextually it makes far more sense translating it as “had formed”, hence why the original author of Genesis and the thousands of Hebrew readers that followed and studied it had no issue with harmonizing Genesis 1 and 2. The translators of the KJV most likely didn’t realize how Hebrew differed from English in this regard or were just a bit sloppy in that verse.

You know that "together" has a specific meaning, right?

[quote]From dictionary.com:
4. at the same time: we left school together

Actually it has about five specific meanings. This is more of an issue with precision, if I say “My friend and I graduated together.” But he actually received his diploma 2 hours after me, you would not accuse me of contradicting myself because the precision of my claim was just that we graduated from the same school on the same day. Of if I had a twin and I said, “Yes we were born together.” But he was actually born 8 hours after me, you would not accuse me of lying either. You are really stretching on this one, Adam and Eve were created on the same day, so therefore they were created together.

I'm ready for the next deluge of obtuse interpretations, verses wrenched out of context, flimsy rationalizations and spurious ad hoc hypotheses that usually come from these conversations.

Are you referring to your next post here?

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You've stated that the consistency of calvinism is one of the indicators of it's authenticity to you. Can fiction not be made to be consistent?

False analogy, Calvinism is a theological position or worldview; it is not analogous to a stated work of fiction.

[Captain Scarlet]

It was just a simple question, I just couldn’t figure out why you seemed to value Rhythm’s opinions on a matter he knows very little about as much as Ryft’s who knows a great deal about the matter. I assume that you were implying I only read authors that agree with me, if you knew me you’d realize that was a ridiculous claim, but you don’t know me so I guess I will let it slide.

SW let's be candid. Your posts never really meet with honesty, facts and reality as your historical posts and thankfully brief interactions with me here demonstrate. I couldn't care less if you "let it slide" or not.

[Statler Waldorf]

SW let's be candid. Your posts never really meet with honesty, facts and reality as your historical posts and thankfully brief interactions with me here demonstrate. I couldn't care less if you "let it slide" or not.

The feeling is quite mutual.

[Ace Otana]

So I guess that’s the story in a nutshell.

So you had a pretty religious back ground. A rather religious environment. I wonder if that played a part.
My up brining is quite different. My early school tried to convert me into Christianity long before I could read or write. Years later when I became aware of their attempts, I was quite annoyed. Once I reached 8, religious teaching dropped dramaticly, I guess they could no longer take advantage of my age and gullibility. Religion disappeared completely once I started high school. For years religion never came to mind. I didn't know what atheism was till I was around 17. Looked it up and then I knew what I was. Joined a few atheist forums and that's where I really started to learn things. Both religion and science. At first I was useless at debating any theist, but as knowledge grew as well as experience in debating, I became alot better at it. It was by looking into religion that I encountered many fallacies. So it became almost too easy to argue against. But yeah, my back ground was mostly secular, but never was I pushed into atheism since I didn't know what an atheist was. Religion was the only one trying to push me into anything. Back fired though.

[The Grand Nudger]

False analogy, Calvinism is a theological position or worldview; it is not analogous to a stated work of fiction.

Broadly speaking any body of literature can be classified as fiction or non-fiction (though of course elements of either category can be found in a single piece of literature), but if it's something you don't wish to discuss I'm cool with that.

[Statler Waldorf]

Broadly speaking any body of literature can be classified as fiction or non-fiction (though of course elements of either category can be found in a single piece of literature), but if it's something you don't wish to discuss I'm cool with that.

It’s not that I don’t wish to discuss the issue, I would if it were applicable; it just simply is not. The internal consistency of a person’s worldview and epistemology has nothing to do with the internal consistency of a piece of fictional writing.

[The Grand Nudger]

If their wordview and epistemiology is based off of a body of literature, it most certainly is. You spend alot of time arguing that the bible is nonfiction, citing consistency again and again, and then when asked if fiction could be consistent it's not applicable? Agree to disagree.

[Statler Waldorf]

If their wordview and epistemiology is based off of a body of literature, it most certainly is. You spend alot of time arguing that the bible is nonfiction, citing consistency again and again, and then when asked if fiction could be consistent it's not applicable? Agree to disagree.

I see you must have realized the error of your ways and decided to move the goalposts from Calvinism, your original topic, to the inerrancy of scripture. If you want to provide me with another book that can work as an ultimate standard for truth I will be more than willing to show you how it fails.

[The Grand Nudger]

Calvinism isn't based off of scripture?