The Absolute Truth

[Minimalist]

To sum up (assuming God exists)

If you start with such a dubious assumption you cannot trust any logic which flows from it.

[Brakeman]

I would further argue that the Bible does not really require 100% theological accuracy.

How could it not be 100% accurate if god were real as opined?

If Billions of christians truly heard the holy ghost and had even the slightest bit of guidance from him, then the culmination of that much god talk would necessarily have polished the bible to a perfect work, given that god is unchanging. It is as if a billion imperfect sculptors all with one perfect vision were sculpting a Venus de Milo, after the first few, the following billions would be adjusting ever smaller imperfections, until all imperfections were removed.

If you keep adding sides to a polygon, you eventually get a smooth polished circle, similarly, if god gives authors any real inspiration, the work would be without blemish by now despite man's fallibility.

Instead, we get the exact result expected if god is made up in every believer's head, a jumbled, vague, biased, mishmash of nonsense.

[Neo-Scholastic]

FallenToReason, think about true love. Or a ruler or gun sight that is true. This use of the word truth isn't about the veracity of a set of facts. Biblical truth is the spiritual standard against we measure our lives. Is our love as true, or steadfast, as the Lord's love for Israel? We consider the person of Jesus to be the perfect manifestation of truth in the same way. Does our life rise up to the love demonstrated by Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels?

[jstrodel]

I would further argue that the Bible does not really require 100% theological accuracy.

How could it not be 100% accurate if god were real as opined?

If Billions of christians truly heard the holy ghost and had even the slightest bit of guidance from him, then the culmination of that much god talk would necessarily have polished the bible to a perfect work, given that god is unchanging. It is as if a billion imperfect sculptors all with one perfect vision were sculpting a Venus de Milo, after the first few, the following billions would be adjusting ever smaller imperfections, until all imperfections were removed.

If you keep adding sides to a polygon, you eventually get a smooth polished circle, similarly, if god gives authors any real inspiration, the work would be without blemish by now despite man's fallibility.

Instead, we get the exact result expected if god is made up in every believer's head, a jumbled, vague, biased, mishmash of nonsense.

No, actually what you get is 2000 years of Christian tradition in which God permits the exegesis of specific concepts out of the Biblical culture and the application of them into a new culture. The product is so close together that Christians read the different theologies as devotional literature.

The differences between theology is small. But if God demanded 100% accuracy in everything that God did, would he even be able to communicate with sinful people whose hearts were corrupted by pride and whose sins filled the linguistic categories and philosophical categories of Hebrew and Greek?

God talks to people in their own language. It is perfect, but it does not reveal everything about God because God is unknowable, very separate from all creation. We know God only as God reveals himself, no one has ever seen God and Gods basic nature could not be communicated.

Some Christians believe in Biblical innerancy. This is fine, they consider that the text of the Bible is without any errors in it.

[ronedee]

The REAL TEACHER is the HOLY SPIRIT! All else is either inspired by Him, or lies.

Substitute "intuitive mind" for "HOLY SPIRIT" and we might find some common ground. Suffice to say that anyone capable of original, creative work knows the difference between the gift of insight and the machinations of the rational mind. New ground is opened by the intuitive mind and which then becomes charted and settled by the rational mind. Both are important and no one is forced to specialize.

Obviously our common ground won't be all inclusive. For example, I'm not sure what to make of your claim that all else is "lies".

I like you whateverist! You are one of the few here that can makes sense of your reasoning w/o the bs!

You can call the Holy Spirit an intuitive mind, or even feelings if you like! But the Holy Spirit represents "ABSOLUTE TRUTH"!

What else can be called that? What do we know as absolute truth? Things we see? Things others tell us? Math? Science? People?

No! ITS ALL TAINTED.

There is all around us truth, but we refuse to believe that it is of "intrinsic value". Therefore we suffer as a result.

If there is no absolute truth in what we see or know, where are we to turn?

So, the circular reasoning belongs to you my friends. And those who refuse God.

[Tonus]

To sum up: a book whose truth-value depends on time, place & culture for it to be verified and deemed as the plausible Ultimate Truth should always be discarded.

I think the corollary to this is that if there was a hyper-everything being that created all that exists and had specific plans for us, he'd have provided us with a user manual that was so brilliant that no one could find cause to deny that it was from such a source. The Bible doesn't come anywhere close to that, with its disjointed narratives and a god that is at times mystical and benevolent and at other times (or even at the same time) very human in his actions and barbaric attitudes. Read without the "god is real" mental filter, you can more easily see the various writers and how their disparate versions of certain stories were slapped together to form an incoherent whole.

[FallentoReason]

Because the Bible is a text, it means that the meaning derived from it will be subject to the person reading it. This arguably means that there will be as many interpretations of the text as there are people reading it. How is it possible then to ever think that the Bible is the Ultimate Truth, since truth is binary in nature (i.e. something can be true or false). We seem to have a whole spectrum of what God made a reality (and hence the truth) according to the broad range of interpretations, but only one interpretation will have the right combination of true/false propositions.


To sum up (assuming God exists):
P1) God exists
P2) Truth depends on what God decided to be a part of reality or not
P3) There are an endless possibility of interpretations of what this reality is
P4) There is only one correct interpretation of the truth
C) Therefore, the probability that the correct interpretation is the one the believer holds is 0

James 3:1
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Assuming this verse means to say that anyone who teaches falsehoods will be punished, it then follows that pastors all around the world are leading their sheep astray (since the probability that their interpretation is 0) and they are earning themselves spanks on the bum for teaching these falsehoods.

To sum up: a book whose truth-value depends on time, place & culture for it to be verified and deemed as the plausible Ultimate Truth should always be discarded. A more reasoned approach to seek for truth is in nature, because nature isn't dependent on time, place & culture. Therefore the truths found in physics, maths & philosophy can always be verified and tested unlike the scribblings of a culture long gone.

P3) There are an endless possibility of interpretations of what this reality is
- If this is true, then your post is self refuting, because there is an endless possibility of interpretations of the reality that it expresses

I should have clarified I meant "...an endless possibility of interpretations through the Bible..." because this whole thread is about Biblical interpretations.

The reality is that texts have multiple interpretations, but there is not an endless number of possible interpretations, there is maybe 5 or 6.

I disagree. There's 7 or 8.

This leads to maybe 30 or 40 different main theological movements

I think you meant to say 40 to 50..?

that share the core themes and a bunch of other heretical movements that significantly deviate from the main movements, not because of differences in interpretation but because their theological methodological is totally different (e.g. reliance on philosophical theology over exegesis and/or acceptance of liberalism as an authoritative belief system).

Irrelevant. Plus, who are you to say there's only 5 or 6 interpretations. Where the hell did you pull that one from??

The matter of the fact is that we get nutjobs such as yourself claiming that God kisses your butt, and then we get elitist nutjobs like Drich claiming we have to kiss God's butt in order for things to happen. I'm not having any more of this bullshit...

I would suggest that a healthy dose of common sense could strengthen your understanding of the world.

LOL.

I would further argue that the Bible does not really require 100% theological accuracy. Jesus says "you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free"

Arguably every denomination will tell you they have "been set free" despite these goddamn fundamental differences! Can you PLEASE open your eyes for just one second??

but if you study the life of Christ, he explicitly rejects the Pharisiacal obsession with law. The New Testament is not a book of law, and adherance to Biblical morality does not really revolve around knowing every single theological issue perfectly. It does matter, and there are sharp disagreements about Christians over doctrine. But this is admist a continual reminder that Christians should center their lives around the love of "love your neighbor as your self" and not be like the Pharisees, who deified the law, sort of like todays intellectuals, and made all sorts of complicated formulas and ethical statements to require people to do all sorts of things that departed from the simple teachings of Christ, really, the teachings that each person is born with and knows instinctively from their relationship to the world.

You're turning a blind eye to the issue at hand; I can summon two different Christian friends that I know in real life and one will tell me through the Holy Spirit I can heal people and the other will tell me those days are over -- that miracles only happened in order to spread Christianity in the early days. These discrepancies highlight the fact that no one has the slightest clue what's going on because the Judeo-Christian god doesn't exist. If a certain doctrine was actually true, then the world would look a lot more like what the Bible describes it to be like, you know, like demons here and there, people actually being healed in church, born again Christians acting like Christ as opposed to living the same old life... the supernatural is embarrassingly lacking and absurdly shy because it doesn't exist.

Christianity is not really about knowledge of absolute truth, God says 'the secret things belong to the LORD our God but the things He has revealed belong to us and to our children forever'

God never said a word. The term "revelation" by definition means a message spoken from God to a person. What is the Bible composed of? Words from one mammal to another, therefore it is not the revealed "Word of God" but rather the testimony (whether true or false, not relevant) of one mammal about his experience with his tribe/culture's god to another mammal.

Deu. God hides things, God does not give people the original manuscripts of scripture, YHVH hides many difficult teachings from people.

Because your religion is one of the oldest Multi-level Marketing scams there is.

The proposition "Christianity is true" does not require a complete understanding of the full nature of Christianity any more than "America is a nation with many cities" requires visiting every city in America to verify that maps and past experience and testimonies of different cities are accurate. If there was a map that contained some inaccuracies, that would be an issue, but that would not change the fact that the proposition "America is a nation with many cities" is true and verifiable independently of errors in maps or gaps in travel.

If Christianity is the Truth of the Cosmos, then I demand that you explain yourself. You claim to have a two-way relationship with the being that created us all. Christians seem to take this little detail for granted. Interrogate the CREATOR and get back to me when you have some credible explanations for the confusion amongst Christians, the lack of supernatural phenomena & the apparent non-existence of your god altogether.

---

So, the circular reasoning belongs to you my friends. And those who refuse God.

You're joking, right?

You claim to know of the "absolute truth". Go talk to Drich about what Christianity is. Get back to me once you can both express what Christianity is without consulting the other.

So much for "absolute truth".

[jstrodel]

I should have clarified I meant "...an endless possibility of interpretations through the Bible..." because this whole thread is about Biblical interpretations.

How does this deal with the fact that your view of philosophy of language is self refuting? If there is an endless possibility of interpretations about the Bible, there are an endless number of interpretations about everything.

1. There is an endless possibility of interpretations about the Bible
2. If there is an endless possibility of interpretations about the Bible, there is an endless possibility of interpretations of all texts
3. There is an endless possibility of interpretation of all texts
4. If there is an endless possibility of interpretations of all texts, there is no definite meaning to this text
5. There is no definite meaning to this text
6. If there is no definite meaning to this text, it has no knowable truth value
7. This text has no knowable truth value - the argument is self refuting because it is epistemological unknowable

This is the truth:
1. The Bible is a complicated book that has multiple interpretations
2. Where there are multiple interpretations, there is no definite, easily discernible interpretation in every case
3. There is no definite, easily discernible interpretation of the Bible in every case

I will accept that 3 is true. But for it to be significant, you must prove 4:
4. If there is no definite, easily discernible interpretation of the Bible in every case, the Bible text cannot communicate anything
or
5. If there is no definite, easily discernible interpretation of the Bible in every case, God has not revealed scripture

Neither of these are self evident propositions. They both require substantial evidence and both have very powerful arguments against them.
For instance,
4'. in spite of not having the original Biblical autographs, the original text of the Bible, the Bible has been the most important book in history and has served to ground the most powerful civilization in history in a clearly defined code of ethics
and
5'. In the Bible, God explicitly reveals himself as a God who will use a prostitute (Rahab), become born in a manager (Jesus), will intend evil as good (in the case of Joseph), will use murders and blasphemers (such as Paul) and will routinely not manifest H'Shem as a God who is absolutely concerned with being moral before God will manifest himself.

The other stuff is just talk, there is no argument (if you put it in self evident propositions -> conclusions like you did above I will give more detailed analysis)

[Minimalist]

You're joking, right?

Nah - he's a catholic. They don't get much more fucked up than true believer catholics. Fortunately they are dying out.

[FallentoReason]

I should have clarified I meant "...an endless possibility of interpretations through the Bible..." because this whole thread is about Biblical interpretations.

How does this deal with the fact that your view of philosophy of language is self refuting? If there is an endless possibility of interpretations about the Bible, there are an endless number of interpretations about everything.

1. There is an endless possibility of interpretations about the Bible
2. If there is an endless possibility of interpretations about the Bible, there is an endless possibility of interpretations of all texts
3. There is an endless possibility of interpretation of all texts

Wrong. I'll have to stop you there because you're assuming all other texts are like the Bible; they can't be verified anymore. Guess what? I'm alive and able to tell you what my text means. The authors and pseudo-authors of the Bible are long gone, hence the confusion about what it means.

4. If there is an endless possibility of interpretations of all texts, there is no definite meaning to this text
5. There is no definite meaning to this text
6. If there is no definite meaning to this text, it has no knowable truth value
7. This text has no knowable truth value - the argument is self refuting because it is epistemological unknowable

The rest of your points are irrelevant as one of your propositions is flawed.

This is the truth:
1. The Bible is a complicated book that has multiple interpretations
2. Where there are multiple interpretations, there is no definite, easily discernible interpretation in every case
3. There is no definite, easily discernible interpretation of the Bible in every case

I will accept that 3 is true. But for it to be significant, you must prove 4:
4. If there is no definite, easily discernible interpretation of the Bible in every case, the Bible text cannot communicate anything
or
5. If there is no definite, easily discernible interpretation of the Bible in every case, God has not revealed scripture

4: in essence the text communicates *something*, but that something is meaningless as we have Christians falling over each other trying to explain their mysterious invisible friend.

5: I already told you why the Bible isn't the "Word of God". Refute it, or deal with it.

Neither of these are self evident propositions.

Contradictory denominations makes 4 just about self-evident. 5... well, like I said, refute it or deal with it; the Bible is not the "Word of God" but rather a collection of words by fellow mammals.

They both require substantial evidence and both have very powerful arguments against them.
For instance,
4'. in spite of not having the original Biblical autographs, the original text of the Bible, the Bible has been the most important book in history and has served to ground the most powerful civilization in history in a clearly defined code of ethics
and

Examples off the top of my head:


"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." ~ Cardinal Bellarmine, during the trial of Galileo, 1615

"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.." ~ Hitler

Christianity: Fueling ignorance and genocide since the Bronze Age.

5'. In the Bible, God explicitly reveals himself as a God who will use a prostitute (Rahab), become born in a manager (Jesus), will intend evil as good (in the case of Joseph), will use murders and blasphemers (such as Paul) and will routinely not manifest H'Shem as a God who is absolutely concerned with being moral before God will manifest himself.

This doesn't counter point 5 whatsoever. Saying that the narrative has God supposedly doing things ergo the narrative is proof of God doing things is circular reasoning.

The other stuff is just talk, there is no argument (if you put it in self evident propositions -> conclusions like you did above I will give more detailed analysis)

Consider your work cut out for you. I demand explanations, so better start asking your god. Otherwise, consider your belief system invalid or severly questionable until any sort of explanation is given for such fundamental controversies.