RE: Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis
January 26, 2019 at 10:06 pm
(This post was last modified: January 26, 2019 at 10:54 pm by donlor.)
Amazing how & what a lack of vision can lead to loss. Grandizer said in post 522 “Or if you're really keen, go gradually through my prior posts in this thread and see which ones you'd like to reply to.” I neglected this offer to the loss of the Gospel.
As I went through & spoke to some postings - it became frustrating to me as I saw responding to many contentions & their proffered sites to be a waste of the precious coin of time.
Yet, I was also truly here to see how my understanding of God’s word would stand before the fiercest criticisms. Was this to “stroke” me - no. I am secure in who & what I am. But, if you have the winning mega-millions lottery numbers - please pm them to me.
post 21 KevinM1 “I could never make it through Genesis. When your first statement is "In the beginning god created heaven and earth," my brain screams "prove it!" “I just nope right out of there.”
Amazing confession of a broad-minded person - how impressive - give me some time to reflect on this. This is so vogue & titillating that your brain is screaming.
But then again, duh, who is this first statement of Genesis attributed to - God through Moses.
I did have your back bro - but then you came against God & Moses - I gotta pass on this one.
“prove it!” - this is not possible. I have no problem with this & also co-joining this with that which I know, that the God of the Bible exists & He is as revealed in the Bible. This is my experience & that of combined multi-millions over 2,000 years. Yup, there are many dummer & dummest people out there.
“I just nope right out of there.” Here is one of the points that I can say, at bare minimum, that atheists lack in & at most sorely leave everything to be desired.
I can, & do freely meditate on the majesty of God revealed in creation - in all the myriad ways this can & came be understood. Much will come to light in future years.
From the unaccountable ways that creatures of life came to be with their unique distinctive’s & operating systems, to fractals (wish this was around in the 60ths & 70ths), space-time quantum physics, etc - all proclaim the majesty of God.
Why do I say this - to simply show how much I can rejoice in & hope for greater scientific understandings of anything & everything. I totally love real science - that which can be validated.
post 25 vulcanlogician - “it is rare to find even Christians who mine the text so deeply for meaning.” ...” ...none of those who take the Bible literally go that deep.”
This is ignorance at it’s best pretending intelligence. It is a simply making a statement of untruth with no supporting evidence. There are multiplied hundreds if not thousands of works on Genesis to be plumbed from a literalist interpretation. Is my assertion correct - or yours? Please show me to be ignorant or wrong - which I contend that you are both.
post 28 Neo-Scholastic “The Swedenborgian perspective the interior meaning of Gen 1 is about the regeneration of the individual soul as it comes to know God. That sounds to me very similar to the Return to the All in the Enneads. Similarly the interior meaning of Gen 2 is about the corruption of the individual soul as it moves away from God. That sounds like Plotinus's Emanations from the All. As far as I can tell the concepts overlap very well.”
I will just laugh & leave it there. Have fun.
post 29 SteveII “You can't study Genesis 1 without textual criticism:”
thank you for your insight & wisdom. How ignorant & misguided thousands of years of commentators have been. I can now just throw out all of their anti-evolution conjectures. Phew, - what a weight has been lifted!
Just a small note - textual criticism is just another of mans presumptuoms. Your statement about textual criticism means nothing. Why & how should I believe this textual criticism to be better (in being validated) than the Bible - God’s word to mankind?
I am simple but hardly simplistic. I ascribe to the Bible being absolute truth.
post 31 “Robert Price does a nice job explaining how the J ( Yahwist ) and E (Elohim) sources of the OT were merged into one document...”
Again - all you atheists do is to use simply conjecture pretending to be some small manner of truth. Please, do better than this.
How has this really disproved the testimony of the Bible. You stand on a vacuum of proof & expect me to say WOW - not gonna happen - prove your assertion.
post 32 Belaqua “I honestly don't know how many Christians in history have used it that way. Some of the early smart guys were happy enough to read it as a spiritual lesson.”
First, you do not know because you speak out of your ignorance. If you cared for reality a simple search would uncover how many Biblical scholars believed Genesis to be literal.
Who were these luminaries you are so ready to speak of. Some names please.
post 35 Jehanne “Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.”
Another laughable post. You would contend that the Biblical account is based on the Mesopotamian account. What validates or even supports this assumption? I say assumption for one reason - as the truth has many was of being validated. I say this Mesopotamian account is just a poor perversion of the Biblical account. How do you prove me wrong? Ball is in your court.
post 36 SteveII “...who wrote it, when, the type of literature and that it is different...”
This is not complicated. The Torah is authored by Moses through God’s impartation to him. It is meant to be read as it was written - fact is fact, history is history, allegory is allegory, poetry is poetry.
post 37 Jehanne “Genesis was written by multiple authors:” “Quote: The documentary hypothesis (DH)...”
OK - another speculation of man. Am I to be cowered by it - no - it is just more folly to me. All this multiple author speculation is just that - speculation
let us deal with what is important. What is God - why is man in the condition he is in - is there hope?
post 38 SteveII “My point is that Grand wants to just read through the verses and pontificate on what they could mean. You cannot do that without FIRST looking at the text critically and identifying things like you brought up.”
Wow - I am so relieved that I came to this site! I now know that my simplicity of believing that something should be understood as what is written is naive. Wow - I am 70 - time to grow up!
post 40 Bahana “I've heard from Biblical scholars that the NIV translators were evangelically biased and used some funny business to cover up the difficult verses.”
Ah - excuse me - have you personally heard from these “Biblical scholars”? Wow - you must be in the loop! Just another pot of crap presented as something to eat. I shall abstain. Are you to be taken seriously?
re post 562 Grandizer “....it seems to me words like "image" and "likeness" seem to indicate physicality rather than spirituality, at least originally. Furthermore, we have many instances in Genesis where God is depicted physically as a human being who does such things as walk in the middle of a garden and be fed food as a guest by an old couple.”
There is nowhere in Scripture that there is any of the slightest intimation that God is a physicality, excepting Jesus Christ. If I have missed this - please show me.
As for "image" and "likeness” is this strange according to the Bible? Man is created - man has the image & likeness of God in his ability to reason, understand, & be a moral agent. What other document of history has anything near to being compatible with such true deep of the deepest realities?
As I went through & spoke to some postings - it became frustrating to me as I saw responding to many contentions & their proffered sites to be a waste of the precious coin of time.
Yet, I was also truly here to see how my understanding of God’s word would stand before the fiercest criticisms. Was this to “stroke” me - no. I am secure in who & what I am. But, if you have the winning mega-millions lottery numbers - please pm them to me.
post 21 KevinM1 “I could never make it through Genesis. When your first statement is "In the beginning god created heaven and earth," my brain screams "prove it!" “I just nope right out of there.”
Amazing confession of a broad-minded person - how impressive - give me some time to reflect on this. This is so vogue & titillating that your brain is screaming.
But then again, duh, who is this first statement of Genesis attributed to - God through Moses.
I did have your back bro - but then you came against God & Moses - I gotta pass on this one.
“prove it!” - this is not possible. I have no problem with this & also co-joining this with that which I know, that the God of the Bible exists & He is as revealed in the Bible. This is my experience & that of combined multi-millions over 2,000 years. Yup, there are many dummer & dummest people out there.
“I just nope right out of there.” Here is one of the points that I can say, at bare minimum, that atheists lack in & at most sorely leave everything to be desired.
I can, & do freely meditate on the majesty of God revealed in creation - in all the myriad ways this can & came be understood. Much will come to light in future years.
From the unaccountable ways that creatures of life came to be with their unique distinctive’s & operating systems, to fractals (wish this was around in the 60ths & 70ths), space-time quantum physics, etc - all proclaim the majesty of God.
Why do I say this - to simply show how much I can rejoice in & hope for greater scientific understandings of anything & everything. I totally love real science - that which can be validated.
post 25 vulcanlogician - “it is rare to find even Christians who mine the text so deeply for meaning.” ...” ...none of those who take the Bible literally go that deep.”
This is ignorance at it’s best pretending intelligence. It is a simply making a statement of untruth with no supporting evidence. There are multiplied hundreds if not thousands of works on Genesis to be plumbed from a literalist interpretation. Is my assertion correct - or yours? Please show me to be ignorant or wrong - which I contend that you are both.
post 28 Neo-Scholastic “The Swedenborgian perspective the interior meaning of Gen 1 is about the regeneration of the individual soul as it comes to know God. That sounds to me very similar to the Return to the All in the Enneads. Similarly the interior meaning of Gen 2 is about the corruption of the individual soul as it moves away from God. That sounds like Plotinus's Emanations from the All. As far as I can tell the concepts overlap very well.”
I will just laugh & leave it there. Have fun.
post 29 SteveII “You can't study Genesis 1 without textual criticism:”
thank you for your insight & wisdom. How ignorant & misguided thousands of years of commentators have been. I can now just throw out all of their anti-evolution conjectures. Phew, - what a weight has been lifted!
Just a small note - textual criticism is just another of mans presumptuoms. Your statement about textual criticism means nothing. Why & how should I believe this textual criticism to be better (in being validated) than the Bible - God’s word to mankind?
I am simple but hardly simplistic. I ascribe to the Bible being absolute truth.
post 31 “Robert Price does a nice job explaining how the J ( Yahwist ) and E (Elohim) sources of the OT were merged into one document...”
Again - all you atheists do is to use simply conjecture pretending to be some small manner of truth. Please, do better than this.
How has this really disproved the testimony of the Bible. You stand on a vacuum of proof & expect me to say WOW - not gonna happen - prove your assertion.
post 32 Belaqua “I honestly don't know how many Christians in history have used it that way. Some of the early smart guys were happy enough to read it as a spiritual lesson.”
First, you do not know because you speak out of your ignorance. If you cared for reality a simple search would uncover how many Biblical scholars believed Genesis to be literal.
Who were these luminaries you are so ready to speak of. Some names please.
post 35 Jehanne “Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.”
Another laughable post. You would contend that the Biblical account is based on the Mesopotamian account. What validates or even supports this assumption? I say assumption for one reason - as the truth has many was of being validated. I say this Mesopotamian account is just a poor perversion of the Biblical account. How do you prove me wrong? Ball is in your court.
post 36 SteveII “...who wrote it, when, the type of literature and that it is different...”
This is not complicated. The Torah is authored by Moses through God’s impartation to him. It is meant to be read as it was written - fact is fact, history is history, allegory is allegory, poetry is poetry.
post 37 Jehanne “Genesis was written by multiple authors:” “Quote: The documentary hypothesis (DH)...”
OK - another speculation of man. Am I to be cowered by it - no - it is just more folly to me. All this multiple author speculation is just that - speculation
let us deal with what is important. What is God - why is man in the condition he is in - is there hope?
post 38 SteveII “My point is that Grand wants to just read through the verses and pontificate on what they could mean. You cannot do that without FIRST looking at the text critically and identifying things like you brought up.”
Wow - I am so relieved that I came to this site! I now know that my simplicity of believing that something should be understood as what is written is naive. Wow - I am 70 - time to grow up!
post 40 Bahana “I've heard from Biblical scholars that the NIV translators were evangelically biased and used some funny business to cover up the difficult verses.”
Ah - excuse me - have you personally heard from these “Biblical scholars”? Wow - you must be in the loop! Just another pot of crap presented as something to eat. I shall abstain. Are you to be taken seriously?
re post 562 Grandizer “....it seems to me words like "image" and "likeness" seem to indicate physicality rather than spirituality, at least originally. Furthermore, we have many instances in Genesis where God is depicted physically as a human being who does such things as walk in the middle of a garden and be fed food as a guest by an old couple.”
There is nowhere in Scripture that there is any of the slightest intimation that God is a physicality, excepting Jesus Christ. If I have missed this - please show me.
As for "image" and "likeness” is this strange according to the Bible? Man is created - man has the image & likeness of God in his ability to reason, understand, & be a moral agent. What other document of history has anything near to being compatible with such true deep of the deepest realities?
