Bible is the infallible word of God! Proof!

[Whateverist]

Calling someone shit and stupid is against the rules, even if its in French. Where are the ban hammers?

You're bound to find one soon enough.

[Esquilax]

Do you not understand that if God's promise wasn't recorded, the blotting out of the Amalekites would have never been known.

Why do you think that stating the problem with the story again is a rebuttal?

The promise is important part of the story, the Amalekites are no longer around to make or be involved in history, they are gone forever.

But that's literally not what god promised. And you know it's not what god promised, because I quoted what he's actually purported to have said in my post: "blot out the name Amalek from under heaven." But the name Amalek is in the bible, and the bible is under heaven, apparently, therefore, god did not blot out that name. It's not my problem that your bible contradicts itself, but one thing you absolutely cannot do is make the words out to say something that is not present in the text.

I know that's a cornerstone of apologetics, but it's not going to work here, as there's an explicit promise there that hasn't been fulfilled, by design.

Any sensible person could understand that's what was meant by recording the event in the Bible.

GC

No, I think a sensible person wouldn't be taking this story of a space wizard committing genocide as seriously as you do, GC.

[robvalue]

This thing about highlighting what you are meant to be blotting out reminds me of this:

http://youtu.be/s6jYoagXmZE

[Minimalist]

Richard Carrier summarizes the historical "reliability" of the gospels. They don't come off so well.

As I noted earlier, this should have consequences to future research on the Gospels. We need to shift entirely to asking the question 'What is the author attempting to say or accomplish with this story, or with his revision of this story?' and not 'Did that actually happen?' Because the latter simply wasn't a concern of these authors. Even if they were concerned to convince people it happened, they were not themselves concerned if it actually did. They had a different agenda, and are crafting the myths they need to sell it. The Gospels were produced by faith communities for preaching, teaching and propaganda, and not as disinterested or even interested biographical
inquiry. There is no indication in them of a quest to determine what Jesus really said or did. There is no discussion of sources or of reasons to prefer one claim to another or of attempts to interpret contradictory data or even any mention of the existence of real alternative accounts (even though we know they knew of them-because they all covertly used them as source material). Each author just makes Jesus say or do whatever they want. They change the story as suits them and neglect to mention they did so. They craft l iterary artifices and symbolic narratives routinely. They frequently rewrite classical and biblical stories and just insert Jesus into them. If willing to do all that (and plainly they were), the authors of the Gospels clearly had no interest in any actual historical data. And if they had no interest in that (and plainly they didn't), they didn't need a historical Jesus. Even if there had been one, he was wholly irrelevant to their aims and designs.

These are thus not historians. They are mythographers; novelists; propagandists. They are deliberately inventing what they present in their texts. And they are doing it for a reason (even if we can't always discern what that is). The Gospels simply must be approached as such. We have to stop thinking we can use them as historical sources.

pgs 508-509

[robvalue]

Tell it like it is

It's amazing that christians think the writers of the bible were on some sort of truth serum. People lie, people exaggerate. Anyone can write crazy shit down.

They were on something though.

[IATIA]

It was the 'shrooms (manna).

[abaris]

The OP seems to have packed up and closed shop anyway since his missionary work hadn't been greeted with cheers of joy as he expected.

Their are virtually millions accounts of how wrong and incoherent the bible is in most everything. I'm not even speaking of it's atrocious nature, but about the thrown together hotchpotch of ancienct myths, translation errors and fraudulent additions over the centuries.

[robvalue]

How did Saul die again?

Infallible. Hah. It's not even average.

[abaris]

If someone would present the bible to some editor as a fantasy series, they probably would throw it right back for shitty writing and continuity errors. It's just a badly written book and if god really was the author, he should probably have his IQ tested. I doubt, he would even score 80.

[Allnewoutlook]

Forest Gump is God? Now it all makes sense!