Re post 536
“You've made a counterfactual claim on reality.”    please explain exactly what you mean.
“The cross is just more symbolism - we don't actually need a cross.”   If there was another way besides the cross, then God might’ve chose that - who knows as this is simply speculation
As for the Cross being necessary - yes, it is. The Cross of Christ has it’s foundation in Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” This single act of sin is what has infected mankind since Genesis 3:6 became reality. 
God’s message & truth is always coherent, logical, comprehensive, & complete enough. God has a sole condition of fellowship with Him as He also had but one prohibition to Adam (it was plain & simple for Adam & Eve). God does not make the question of eternity too complicated - either fellowship with Him (heaven) or the company with all who reject Him (hell). The Bible is logical, coherent, logical, comprehensive, & complete in telling us of the only two eternities for man. God makes it explicitly clear as to what it is that puts each individual into either of these two eternal destines. Choice. The Bible is not ambiguous. Many hate this. 
The Bible can be rightly seen as a heralding of mans sinfulness & his rejection of God. It is a major theme throughout the whole Bible. The Old Testament is a continual telling of Israel turning to sinfulness of all manners throughout all of it’s history. Why would this be - to show how sinful & evil man is, so none will have any excuse on judgment day. Scripture strips away pretense. God’s clarion call remains clear & consistent throughout all of Scripture - choose life & come to Me - be Mine & enjoy an eternity beyond greatest imaginations. This is an extremely magnanimous offer on the part of an offended & sinned against God. He did the unreasonable in the sense of His being other-serving. How, in that He offers free mercy, forgiveness, & holiness to all who would take it & be His.
The New Testament continues on the theme of mans sinfulness & rejection of the freely offered mercy of God. The crucifixion of Christ is truly the most evil act of sinfulness ever committed. Here Love, Grace, & Mercy, in the person of Christ, unjustly was killed. There can, & will never be, a lower point in the history of man. The Gospel recounts something of the crucifixion that has great import. During Christ’s trial before Pontius Pilate, he asked Christ - “what is truth?” But, before hearing Christ’s answer he left. Amazing. Why did Pilate not wait for an answer? Could it be that he did not want to hear the answer & to then be held accountable to what Christ would say? Most of mankind is in the exact same place. Who is humble enough to repent & willingly surrender themselves to the Lordship of Christ? Truth always awaits sincere seekers.

(January 23, 2019 at 2:57 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote:

(January 23, 2019 at 1:30 pm)Drich Wrote: what a load of bologna thing to say. Buckster pour an hour or more into his post and you can't even be bother to respond to it topically... just a sweeping dismissal from the cheap seaats..

BOOOOOOOO! HISSSS Reset and try again

Not my fault that the deluge is so stupidly false, now is it?  I can't remember..are you also suffering under the peculiar affliction of believing that a planet destroying bomb of a thunderstorm magically failed to destroy the planet?  Or are you in the camp that asserts that the literally true magic book is wrong about that, and it was regional..and could you by chance point to a map...or...?

I believe what the bible says..

and I also believe to them there is no difference between what was known as the whole world and what is the whole world was the same to the man writting this passage. I also believe there is bookoo evidence for a literal world wide flood. AS THE BIBLE DESCRIBES.

In that there are three types of flooding (there are names I can't remember but can look them up for you if need be) but the first is like a Suomi where water if forced inland off the sea destroying everything and spreading crap every where. then you have flood conditions like rain and rivers over flow basically when water moves from high grown to low again it spreads sentiment and displaces debris every where. Then you have saturation which is very rare but some examples on you tube have been shown.. this is where ground water slowly leaches up no sediment or debris displacement. This saturation is in line with flood conditions. low area fill up fist so whe the rains cause the rivers to burst water is already there hence no displacement of debris or sentiment. 

Then we have whale bones in the deserts on mountains and even massive grave yards in deserts far far older than was supposed to have been an ocean. meaning dozens of whales bones found all with in a short/walking distance all from the same time when the desert was not or rather not supposed to be an ocean.

But again the way the passage reads "the world" was where man lived. the circle of the earth was used to describe the planet. but again there is evidence to support both scientific and litary takes.

I would lean toward a whole world wide flood just to piss people off even though I personally don't care, and neither or both don't change anything. because the bible itself as it is written makes room for both if you understand to whom and when it was written and consider how those original words had the flexibility to mean both

(January 23, 2019 at 3:32 pm)Drich Wrote:

(January 23, 2019 at 2:57 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Not my fault that the deluge is so stupidly false, now is it?  I can't remember..are you also suffering under the peculiar affliction of believing that a planet destroying bomb of a thunderstorm magically failed to destroy the planet?  Or are you in the camp that asserts that the literally true magic book is wrong about that, and it was regional..and could you by chance point to a map...or...?

I believe what the bible says..

Your entire tenure here argues against that little conceit, Drich.  You believe what you say about the bible..it really goes no further, lol.

Quote:and I also believe to them there is no difference between what was known as the whole world and what is the whole world was the same to the man writting this passage. I also believe there is bookoo evidence for a literal world wide flood. AS THE BIBLE DESCRIBES.

That's an unfortunate belief....you're a nutter.  

Quote:In that there are three types of flooding

-nope, don't bother.

---

(January 23, 2019 at 3:08 pm)donlor Wrote: Re post 536
“You've made a counterfactual claim on reality.”    please explain exactly what you mean.
“The cross is just more symbolism - we don't actually need a cross.”   If there was another way besides the cross, then God might’ve chose that - who knows as this is simply speculation
As for the Cross being necessary - yes, it is. The Cross of Christ has it’s foundation in Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” This single act of sin is what has infected mankind since Genesis 3:6 became reality. 
God’s message & truth is always coherent, logical, comprehensive, & complete enough. God has a sole condition of fellowship with Him as He also had but one prohibition to Adam (it was plain & simple for Adam & Eve). God does not make the question of eternity too complicated - either fellowship with Him (heaven) or the company with all who reject Him (hell). The Bible is logical, coherent, logical, comprehensive, & complete in telling us of the only two eternities for man. God makes it explicitly clear as to what it is that puts each individual into either of these two eternal destines. Choice. The Bible is not ambiguous. Many hate this. 
The Bible can be rightly seen as a heralding of mans sinfulness & his rejection of God. It is a major theme throughout the whole Bible. The Old Testament is a continual telling of Israel turning to sinfulness of all manners throughout all of it’s history. Why would this be - to show how sinful & evil man is, so none will have any excuse on judgment day. Scripture strips away pretense. God’s clarion call remains clear & consistent throughout all of Scripture - choose life & come to Me - be Mine & enjoy an eternity beyond greatest imaginations. This is an extremely magnanimous offer on the part of an offended & sinned against God. He did the unreasonable in the sense of His being other-serving. How, in that He offers free mercy, forgiveness, & holiness to all who would take it & be His.
The New Testament continues on the theme of mans sinfulness & rejection of the freely offered mercy of God. The crucifixion of Christ is truly the most evil act of sinfulness ever committed. Here Love, Grace, & Mercy, in the person of Christ, unjustly was killed. There can, & will never be, a lower point in the history of man. The Gospel recounts something of the crucifixion that has great import. During Christ’s trial before Pontius Pilate, he asked Christ - “what is truth?” But, before hearing Christ’s answer he left. Amazing. Why did Pilate not wait for an answer? Could it be that he did not want to hear the answer & to then be held accountable to what Christ would say? Most of mankind is in the exact same place. Who is humble enough to repent & willingly surrender themselves to the Lordship of Christ? Truth always awaits sincere seekers.

-and you'll just have to decide whether or not the message is important enough and true enough to be maintained in the absence of the literal accuracy of the communicative vehicle?  Similar to the way that we have to decide whether or not the truth of the moral of the tortoise and the hare is still true even if tortoises and hares don't actually talk or have footraces.  

Genesis, from the point of view of the originating culture, is a story on the theme of a god existing..and having a plan.  It doesn't matter to the authors whether the specific events occurred or..if they did, whether the authors got the convo right..because how would they know..they weren't there.  What was important, was that the message itself is communicated.  They knew, for example..that genesis contained three competing literary traditions..and they included them all without editing them against each other.  Why?  Because they were illiterate or too stupid to notice?  In a word, no.  The sort of literal accuracy you;re looking for (swear exists, even, lol) just wasn't a key aim of the narrative.  

So, we get the message, we get a few just-so as cultural filler, and voila.....but then a bunch of christian nitwits come along and read the book wrong.  Theyre told from the outset they've read the book wrong..but they're pretty sure that the jews cant jew right....so they persist anyway.

Is the bible accurate, and literally true..and genesis in specific? No..and in it's defense it was never intended to be. Either that's a failure condition for your faith in the greater notion of a god or it isn't.

re post 537
“History is an academic discipline, with it's OWN rules.” uh - yeah - ok - but what is your point?

“"History" (as was pointed out above) was not something the culture recognized. Even Rome, (far more advanced), was not discussing the meaning of "writing history" until the turn of the millennium. 
Reading ancient literature as "history" is nothing but uneducated ignorant American Fundamentalism. 
The editors/redactors/assemblers of ancient texts had no actual way to know what happened centuries before.”

If Alexander the Great was reading & even studying Xenophon - then I wonder who Xenophon had been studying? It seems to me like books to these primitive brutes, Alexander & Xenophon,  (I believe appx 300-400 b.c.) were seen as books are seen today - repositories of knowledge or information. Your assertions of all of the above do not seem to be valid.

Did Alexander the Great read Xenophon?
McGroarty, Kieran
Hermathena – A Trinity College Dublin Review, No.181 (2006)
Introduction: It has been assumed by writers, ancient and modern, that Xenophon’s literary output had a direct influence on Alexander the Great. But is there any evidence to prove that it did? In spite of the paucity of references to Xenophon in the surviving Alexander sources, many writers, both ancient and modern, have no doubts concerning the influence of Xenophon’s writings on Alexander. An extreme position is suggested by Eunapius, the sophist and historian born at Sardis c. AD 345, when he says in his Lives of the Sophists (VS I, 453): ‘Alexander the Great would not have become great if there had been no Xenophon’. However, Eunapius might mean little more than Alexander had heard of, and been inspired by, what Xenophon had done in Asia. We are looking for evidence that Alexander had read Xenophon; most modern literature is in no doubt that he did. Almost all the major monographs on Alexander, those by Wilcken, Robinson, Tarn, Hammond and Lane Fox, among others, take it for granted that Alexander had read and learned from Xenophon.

“BTW thanks for telling us you accept the concept of common ancestor.”    
Need not thank me - I subscribe to the Bible - Adam & Eve - we all came from them. This is not complicated.
“Science knows the general mutation rates of various genes.”     
Quite interesting statement in that yes, gene mutations have some very interesting conclusions to be drawn from them. It is quite supportive of the Biblical timeline of universe, earth, man being approximately 6,000 years old. 
I’ve heard the following but can’t vouch for it. If we were (as a species - mankind) even one hundred thousand years old - it is most likely that we would’ve mutated our race out of existence.  
Claim 8: Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam probably weren’t an actual couple. - What does the evidence say? 
“No doubt copied from a Creationist web site ... no supporting documentation. A mere assertion.” 
Actually the website from where I used the two claims appears to be an evolutionist type site.  https://evolutionnews.org/2018/03/adam-a...onclusion/ 

as for the flood - we have the testimony of the God who was there. Genesis 7:11, 12 “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. The rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.”   What “all the fountains of the great deep burst open” I do not know - but it sure sounds like a lot of water to me. It is likely that this is where the bulk of the water came from. 

repopulation issues are no problem - the math works out with no games being played

Tower of Babel - what’s the problem? Where do you find it’s size? I must’ve missed that. 
Also, are you ignorant of that the problem was the unity of evil that man was conspiring in against God? Hence the confusion of languages, which made for the dispersion of man, & consequent people groups or nationalities. Genesis 11:8 “...they stopped building the city.” How curious that the tower is not mentioned here as it really is not the focus of the story. 
Scripture is straightforward. It is easily understood. 

The ark - most amazing vessel for people who weren’t seamen! How curious that it’s dimensions are exactly (as modern marine science shows) right for the best stability. How lucky for Noah & company.

“Greenland, that would be check mate.
Literalism is total bullshit.”
Sorry, I do not get your point here. Maybe it’s because I play twixt & checkers instead of chess?

(January 23, 2019 at 5:32 pm)donlor Wrote: as for the flood - we have the testimony of the God who was there.

.....you think that the words in magic book were dictated to a man by a god?  That the contents of magic book...are god's testimony?

That would be problematic..because it places all of the idiocy of magic book on god..rather than man. If you think that, when magic book gets something wrong, you can't defer to some guy who got it wrong and wrote that in. God..the lord of creation..then, got that thing wrong. Take a minute, be sure that you want to expose god to this needless guillotine.

Genesis is planet forbidden!

(January 23, 2019 at 5:32 pm)donlor Wrote: as for the flood - we have the testimony of the God who was there.

LOL
Your god was there, really ?
The Yahweh god ? Was his wife there too ? You do know he had a wife, right ?

You said you came here to reason. Instead we get this shit.
Yawn.
These fundies are a dime a dozen, and like gnats.
Let me know when we get beyond Third Grade here.

Re post 543
“Why?  Because they were illiterate or too stupid to notice?  In a word, no.  The sort of literal accuracy you;re looking for (swear exists, even, lol) just wasn't a key aim of the narrative.”  
“So, we get the message, we get a few just-so as cultural filler, and voila.....but then a bunch of christian nitwits come along and read the book wrong.  Theyre told from the outset they've read the book wrong..but they're pretty sure that the jews cant jew right....so they persist anyway.”
“Is the bible accurate, and literally true..and genesis in specific? No..and in it's defense it was never intended to be.”

I am so dense as to take the Bible literally; as it was written, in the context in which it is written, in the style it was written, for the purposes of which it was written. It is quite amusing to hear your wisdom in regard to how, why, & for what purpose we have Genesis. 
If you read something as it is written - it is then easier to get something out of it. 

How is it that you can affirm “Is the bible accurate, and literally true..and genesis in specific? No..and in it's defense it was never intended to be.” Millions of people over thousands of years have long missed your penetrating insight - Genesis was never intended to be read as & understood as truth. 

I would think there has been hundreds of commentators on Genesis. All of them wasted their time as they lacked your knowing that Genesis was never meant to be taken literally. Would you be so kind as to tell me of any other books of the Bible that are also so fictional?
Donald

(January 23, 2019 at 3:32 pm)Drich Wrote: and I also believe to them there is no difference between what was known as the whole world and what is the whole world was the same to the man writting this passage. I also believe there is bookoo evidence for a literal world wide flood. AS THE BIBLE DESCRIBES.

Oh........well. 
If it's in all caps, it must be true then. 
OK. Sign me up. I'll go get me some Jebus then. 
BTW, you forgot to tell us what this *beaucoup* evidence is. 
LOL

---

(January 24, 2019 at 8:05 am)donlor Wrote: Re post 543
“Why?  Because they were illiterate or too stupid to notice?  In a word, no.  The sort of literal accuracy you;re looking for (swear exists, even, lol) just wasn't a key aim of the narrative.”  
“So, we get the message, we get a few just-so as cultural filler, and voila.....but then a bunch of christian nitwits come along and read the book wrong.  Theyre told from the outset they've read the book wrong..but they're pretty sure that the jews cant jew right....so they persist anyway.”
“Is the bible accurate, and literally true..and genesis in specific? No..and in it's defense it was never intended to be.”

I am so dense as to take the Bible literally; as it was written, in the context in which it is written, in the style it was written, for the purposes of which it was written. It is quite amusing to hear your wisdom in regard to how, why, & for what purpose we have Genesis. 
If you read something as it is written - it is then easier to get something out of it. 

How is it that you can affirm “Is the bible accurate, and literally true..and genesis in specific? No..and in it's defense it was never intended to be.” Millions of people over thousands of years have long missed your penetrating insight - Genesis was never intended to be read as & understood as truth. 

I would think there has been hundreds of commentators on Genesis. All of them wasted their time as they lacked your knowing that Genesis was never meant to be taken literally. Would you be so kind as to tell me of any other books of the Bible that are also so fictional?
Donald

You need to go get yourself an education. 
While you're at it, look up the word "presentism". 

BTW, thanks for derailing this thread with your complete and profound stupidity and ignorance.

re  post 529
Sorry, you wasted some of your time here. We can all get “experts” to affirm both point A & point NON-A, so what? There is much written that I disagree with - likewise, much that I agree with. You know what they say about opinions!
I have no difficulty in considering that which I do not believe to be true. Quite often I critique myself - have I missed something - is there some faulty reasoning’s on my part, etc.
I have read some very, very stupid things from the “educated,” those with phd’s 
I have never read the Interpreters Bible but it is known to espouse both liberal & conservative views. No commentary is authoritative - only the Bible. See how easy I make it for you. 

“Here is a start on what archaeology has debunked.” 
Well, this statement of yours is ridiculous. What have you shown to be an archaeological error on the part of the Bible? Nothing - nadda - zilch - zero 
I know it is a lot to ask - but where is the Bible found to be at error as regards anything of a historical nature? Take your time - breathe deep - collect yourself - focus


“the Documentary Hypothesis” 
“The Babylonian mythic origins” 
as for an hypothesis & something of mythic origins - do you read what you write? What interest or point can be made from this stupidity - sorry to use the term - but that is what it deserves.