One question for Christians

[Bad Writer]

...the writers of the Bible didn’t need to have such knowledge, the words are God-breathed and that’s why they never say anything that is actually wrong. I think you get my point about NASA though; descriptive language accomplishes more in certain situations than scientific language.

Telling me that something is God-breathed (and thank you for defining this term for me) is the same as telling me that Santa Claus called you on the telephone and told you to write down his naughty and nice list, after which you proceeded to propagate this information to everyone. I can't take you on your word because, first, you would need to prove that Santa is real, and, second, I don't care who Santa thinks is naughty or nice. Even if the god of the bible were real, I still would not worship him because I don't like with what people have written about him.

My concern is that you all apply a standard of criticism to scripture that you do not apply to anything else, and that’s illogical to do so. In a sense I am looking out for you my friend.

Thanks for looking out for me. But do you apply the same standard that you use to believe in the Bible to Al-Quran or the Bhagavad Gita? I would hope so, or your words of comfort would mean nothing to me.

If you’re going to debate with Christians you need to accurately represent our positions and doctrines, and [God-breathed is] one of our central doctrines.

Fair enough. Although you say that I don't accurately represent your positions and doctrines, I feel that the job of doing that should be up to you, as the representative. Instead, it's up to me to understand your point of view.

I do know what "God-breathed" means, and I was instead poking fun at it, because I think the concept is simply ridiculous, and the words themselves sound funny.

"The author himself does not need to possess the understanding," okay okay, so your prophets were dumb as rocks. Nothing we read in their writings should be taken as reliable then.

Not at all, that’s a straw-man argument. They would have possessed the scientific knowledge of the day, but that does not mean they were dumb at all, using that same argument you’d have to claim that Newton was also “dumb as rocks” because he possessed a 17th century understanding of the Universe. The words in the Bible are inspired by God, who knows everything.

You're right. I was misappropriating my words. Let me take a step back and instead say instead that smart men were making the best approximations at how their world works. Due to discoveries of our days, their assertions look really dumb.

I made no such appeal to special knowledge, you yourself have already conceded that there’s nothing actually wrong in the verse itself, end of discussion.

I would say that sometimes we appeal to special knowledge without realizing that we do so. Any assertion that says that there is an invisible god and the justification for believing such a concept always takes special knowledge, or special pleading. The belief itself is special, as it cannot be proven with demonstrable evidence.

It's quite sequitur...quite indeed. If I say a table is a flat, level surface, and then I tell you that tile floor is also a flat, level surface, would you think that they are both flat and level, or would you think, "No...they're two different objects, so one must be slanted!" You are a special kind of retard if you want to believe that.

Enough with the personal attacks, they only make your position look incredibly weak. Your analogy is fallacious because it is trying to use explicit descriptors to prove the author of Genesis was using implicit descriptors. I would say the table and the floor are both flat and level because you explicitly said they were. Just like I would believe the Sun and the Moon are both lights because the author of Genesis explicitly said they were. Guess what, they are both lights! They are not both light sources though, which the author never claimed they were.

Ah, shit. It wasn't a personal attack, but if you feel attacked, then I'm sorry. English colloquial speech inserts the Second-person voice "you" for the more accurate in this situation Third-person voice "one". Check it: "You are a special kind of retard if you want to believe that" should have been written " One[/be] is a special kind of retard if [b]he or she wants to believe that". That's my mistake, and I'll take the rap for it.

As for your explanation that follows...well, I agree. And that's what I was pointing out: that if we take those words written by the authors in Genesis about the sun and the moon to mean anything more, whether it be that they are light-sources or cheese, or whatever, then that person is making an assumption based on their own bias.

... you are trying to say that since the author claimed the Moon and the Sun are both lights, they must also both be light sources, that is like saying that since the floor and the table are both flat surfaces they must also both have four legs since the table has four legs. Since something can be a light (X) but not a light source (Y) it’s a logical non-sequitur to claim, “Object A and B both possess attribute X, therefore they must also both possess attribute Y.”

I am? I'm pretty sure that I'm meeting you on this one.

Contradictions? Are you referring to an actual internal logical contradiction? That’s what it’d take, and those are tough to prove exist in scripture. Nobody could provide an actual one in the 30 plus page thread dedicated to the task.

No, you chose to ignore the contradictions because you read the Bible with Rose-colored glasses, as evidenced by the fact that you think it's unerring due to a doctrine that says all words in it are "God-breathed". I'll chalk this up to brain-washing, since my time in the Mormon Church gives me some insight on how that looks. Just because you choose to ignore the contradictions, doesn't mean they aren't there.

I was not confused at all, it’s just my job to keep you from taking the discussion down rabbit holes that are not pertinent to what we’re discussing at the time. I know the way Yahweh thinks just like I would anybody else, by the way He behaves and by what He says.

And this is why I gave you rep. Your cool, calm demeanor keeps an A.D.D. guy like me on track. Tangents are a way of life for a firebrand like myself, and I do appreciate your efforts.

This is a good answer to my question about how you know how Yahweh thinks due to the fact that you can plainly read about his actions and words in your holy book. Most Xians are reluctant to admit this because they often claim the contradictory statement, "God is unknowable". However, it's these same actions and words that steer me clear of the god of the Bible. As I said before, even if he were real, I could not worship this guy. Modeling my morality after his own would make me a disreputable character indeed.

If I tell you there's a pink unicorn standing behind you, you'll tell me, "No, there isn't. There is no such thing standing behind me." I'll reply, "Well, it's invisible. It's there, you just can't see it." The claim of the invisible pink unicorn, SW, is completely and utterly bogus, unless I prove it to be true by your standards of evidence. I cannot expect you to prove it for me, for it is not your claim, but mine.

This sounds eerily similar to Sagan’s invisible dragon analogy, you didn’t steal it and just change it to a pink unicorn did you sir? This doesn’t prove the claim, “all claims are false until they are proven true” though, it at best proves that, “all claims about invisible pink unicorns are false until they are proven true.”

Okay, I'll concede a few things here. You're right that it doesn't prove all claims are true, but the Pink Unicorn/Invisible Dragon analogy stands as a good example for outrageous claims needing proof.

You are right that you can't take me at my word when I tell you that "all claims are false until they are proven true". But I think we can agree that there are different standards of evidence for claims. I still hold to the notion that no claim should be taken at face value, but here's a example to show you how this works:

Jimmy John from the office tells you that he ate a sandwich for lunch. Even though this is entirely plausible, it doesn't make it automatically true. We believe Jimmy though, because our experience tells us that eating a sandwich for lunch is not only possible and probably true, but there's also no reason to disbelieve him, as it doesn't really matter in the end if he ate a sandwich or a burrito. Our standard of evidence is very low, and the evidence is our human experience with hearing claims like this.

On the other hand, Susan Simpson tells us that she rode a dragon to work. Hopefully we don't take her claim at face value. Experience tells us that there is nothing that can give automatic credence to her claim, for there is no evidence readily available to have us believe that she rode a dragon. The standard of evidence, therefore, needs to be higher.

This is how I see the claims about god, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Alien Abductions, you name it. It's fine that everyone doesn't have the same standard of evidence for everything, because it's not always necessary to do a full investigation into whether or not little Timmy stole a cookie from the cookie jar. If your standard of evidence for believing in an invisible god is as low as Timmy's theft, then that's your prerogative. I'm saying your standard is low for all things, but that maybe you should reexamine claims as important as belief in an invisible god whose only reference are 2000 year-old books written by people with limited knowledge about the world.

OK. Let's start at the beginning, so to speak: Genesis chapter 1.
Yahweh creates light and calls it "day" in Gen 1:5. However, he doesn't create the sun until "day" 4, in Gen 1:16. Scripture claims that he created the sun (or "greater light") to "rule the day". But the sun doesn't "rule the day". It rather defines the whole concept of "day", as well as "evening" and "morning" mentioned on days 1, 2 and 3, referenced respectively in Gen 1:5, 1:8, and 1:13. So how exactly were there "evenings" and "mornings" without a sun?

Your mistake is that you assume days are defined in Genesis by the Sun, which is obviously not the case. All you need in order to have a day is a source of light and a rotating Earth, which are both present on day 1. The Sun is created later and from then on rules the day.

Special pleading.

Curiously, the sun isn't created until "day" 4, whatever "day" must mean since the sun, the very thing that defines what is a "day" wasn't created for the first three of them. Plants, which require sunlight, were created on "day" 3 in Gen 1:11-12. Now, plants, which thrive on photosynthesis, were created prior to the very thing that feeds them. You'd kind of think a designer would work the other way.

Plants just require light of a specific wavelength spectrum. Since we have light on day 1, plants would have been receiving light and been fine on day 3, also if plants did require sunlight (which they do not, hence why grow lights work) and not just light they’d surely be fine surviving without it for 24 hours from day 3 to 4. I hope this isn’t the best you’ve got.

Special pleading still seems to be the best you've got.

But of course, we know the sun is older than our earth and plants came much later, after the earth cooled sufficiently. So "day 3" would need to come after "day 4" to even be accurate in terms of poetic metaphor.

You know no such thing, that’s your current scientific theory of origins. What we do know is that science is fallible, so no appeal to science can be used to prove that scripture is not infallible.

Science is fallible, but the point of science is to give us the best approximation given the available evidence. An appeal to science is exactly what the doctor ordered here.

Yahweh also creates the stars in the sky in 1:16 almost as an afterthought. Primitive Hebrews didn't realize the stars were distant suns. Had they (or their god) known this, they would have had some of the stars created on "day 1", instead of "day 4". Not only are many stars older than our sun but they are much older than our earth. The earth was created on "day 3", Gen 1:10.

Again, more appeals to fallible science; that proves nothing in regards to the infallibility of scripture.

Day 7: "I'm bushed. Gotta rest."

That’s not what the term rest means there, when a violinist “rests” during a piece of music it simply means they stop playing, it has nothing to do with being tired. Nice try though.

If god is omnipotent as claimed, then your argument holds water, SW. So in the realm of your religion, you are right. I agree that there's no way to know if he was actually "tired", but, just as we can't know that, we also can't know if he actually created man out of dust and female from man's rib.