(December 26, 2017 at 11:44 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:(December 26, 2017 at 9:59 am)SteveII Wrote: That's a stupid statement for two reasons.
1. Your statement is not connected in any way to BBZ's very strong claim that Genesis was intended to be literal (and it is telling that he thinks it is) and
2. By your simplistic reasoning, all historical documents are assertions, and so should be disregarded in their entirety.
Good job undermining all of history!
1: Some people DO take genesis literally so it can't be that obvious.
What are the guides to what is true and what is not in the bible? Is it clear?
I imagine, and this is just me, that the parts that science has totally disproved, well the bible didn't actually mean that, even though for thousands of years that is what people were told that the bible meant.
Except you are wrong. 1600 years ago, Augustine (one of the first theologians) did not believe in a literal 6-day creation. YEC is a recent phenomenon. The OT is important because if provides basics and context so "points" are not going to be scored against Christianity by bringing up ancient histories or what was written down into books centuries later. What is important to be accurate is the NT.
Quote:2: Historical documents are always to be taken with a pinch of salt, the people who used to write histories were prone to exaggeration, lies and just being wrong, so a lot of supporting evidence is needed to give a true picture of the past. Another thing that historians used to do was attribute their chosen person with magic, lots of emperors and kings were supposed to have healing powers but these sorts of claims can be discounted straight away as just propaganda.
So if history is "just an assertion" then it should be not believed but scrutinised carefully and all magical claims discounted.
You have a very childlike view of the world Steve.
Now you are back peddling. I thought all histories were assertions. Now it's only those that contain the supernatural? That is question begging on a grand scale. Congrats.