(September 27, 2012 at 11:39 am)Stimbo Wrote:(September 27, 2012 at 8:49 am)treshbond Wrote: Stimbo,
And until you can present something to support what you state, you are expressing nothing more than opinion. For example, which parts have merit and why?
Interesting how you expect facts to be handed to you when you in return have provided none such so far. That may sound intolerant or whatever the word of the day happens to be, but all I see in your posts is opinion and bald assertion. In what way is the bible a reliable book, especially when it's one hundred and eighty degress about-face about so much of what we know to be fact (the Universe was not made in a week, bats are not birds, sprinkling avian blood and chanting magic incantations is not a viable cure for leprosy, etc)?
Faith in terms of reasonable expectation, as you agree, is demonstrable. Faith in terms of a baseless conviction in spite of, and against, evidence is not. Switching contexts midsentence between the two definitions is unreasonable and needs to be discouraged in the interests of honest discussion.
I note in passing that your religious views seem pretty certain so far.
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I haven't presented myself well, in fact it is misquoting that I am most concerned about. I have many quotes from books I have not read and I have no way of knowing whether those quotes have been carefully selected to support the argument being made. I guess I am hoping that there may be some here who are more familiar with such books and are able to provide evidence that other sources have left out.
I am no scholar, so clearly I am not speaking with any authority as to how well the Bible has been preserved, all I can go by is what I find. Wikipedia states quite clearly that very few scholars consider Jesus of Nazareth to be a completely fictitious character. Most agree that He was a real person who was tried by a roman court and crucified for claiming to be the son of God.
Books such as 'The Canon of Scripture' by Bruce, F.F. , 'The cannon of the new testament' and 'The text of the New Testament' by Metzger, Bruce M
such books state for example; the Roman historian Tacitus wrote his Annals of Imperial Rome in about A.D. 116 and that his first six books exist today in only one manuscript, and it was copied about A.D. 850. Books 11-16 are in another manuscript dating from the 11th century. Books 7-10 are lost. The point made is that there is a long gap between the time it was written and the oldest existing copy and yet it is considered a reliable source of history.
