(November 20, 2011 at 7:24 am)chadster1976 Wrote: GS. I neither said you committed atrocities nor that you believed the Earth to be flat. Strawman-tastic! Re-read my post and see the correct context.
I firmly believe the Bible to be divinely inspired but that is VERY different from believing it to be the ABSOLUTE word of God. Can you not see the difference?
E.g. If I say to you that I am Welsh and all the other Welsh people I know are nice people, you could say:
"Chadster says all the Welsh people he knows are nice" - my direct word;
"All the Welsh people Chadster knows are nice" - an interpretation of my words;
"All Welsh people are nice" - an extrapolated interpretation of my words;
"People of Wales ARE nice, thus is the word of Chadster" - an extrapolated interpretation describing authority to my words.
All 4 statements are inspired by my original words but only 1 correctly conveys the original message. That is why it is dangerous to rely entirely upon a flawed text (flawed because of man's translations and selective editing) and ignore the common sense and intellectual abilities God gave you. Ignoring the skills God gave you is a bit of a slap in the face to the almighty.
Chad, there is no almighty - you not worked it out yet, huh?
You are currently experiencing a lucky and very brief window of awareness, sandwiched in between two periods of timeless and utter nothingness. So why not make the most of it, and stop wasting your life away trying to convince other people that there is something else? The reality is obvious.