(November 5, 2008 at 8:10 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: There are several definitions of spirit. It can mean supernatural spirit, it can mean spirit like alcohol spirit, it can mean spirit as in "Fighting spirit!", there is more than one definition. I think it means all 3, but I don't believe that a supernatural spirit exists, I only believe in the natural.
The words translated as spirit can also be translated as more practical things that you can understand, like wind, breath; I think that this is important to you, the atheist, because theist often don't understand fully the meaning of those words and considering the pagan influence in modern day Xian teachings that can be some useful information. It allows you to take a more scientific approach to the Bible and dismiss the pagan (outside) influences.
As regarding the 'supernatural' can you elaborate on what exactly that word means to you.
(November 5, 2008 at 8:10 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: [ . . . ] And you can interpret it metaphorically so its very easy to make things true that are literally untrue. You can do that with a lot of things.
This is one reason why it is so important for me to be allowed to use scripture as evidence for God. There are two ways to interpret anything. The right and the wrong way. The Bible is in harmony with itself and any interpretation must fit in with the rest of it. Kind of like theory and science. If I try to interpret the spirit as some personage or mystical immortal part of a living thing - exclusive to humans etc. as religion has often done, those interpretations don't hold water to someone educated in the proper meaning.
(November 5, 2008 at 8:10 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Science does not know everything. But it knows a hell of a lot of things and it has evidence for these things. Religion doesn't without science's help. There is no evidence for the supernatural.
Your argument would be far more appreciated by me if you wouldn't use the term Religion in the context that you use it above. I hate religion. Religion is bullshit. Use the Bible instead of religion and you will make a stronger more precise point with me.
The Bible has been taken as false in certain historical statements until archaeology has demonstrated otherwise. In other words 'science' (used in a similar context as 'religion') and historians will say the Bible was wrong and science scoffs at the Bible and then archaeology discovers something that proves the BIble was right all along. Suddenly the Bible is vindicated in that sense because archaeology (scientists or historians or archaeologist who had questioned the Bible) had been wrong all along.
The point is that people tend to take 'science' and 'history' as infallible without realizing that the Bible keeps on proving itself. I personally think that if in the end science proved everything written in the Bible - even the supernatural - atheist like you would still reject it either out of ignorance or stubbornness but what you have to realize is that that isn't the point anyway. It is a good idea to educate yourself on the Bible and loathsome religion but if you don't like the idea of the Sovereignty of the creator and his will and all he stands for that is your personal choice.
As the Bible says, the demons know and yet shudder.
Richard Dawkins Wrote:There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.
Sure, and sometimes free thinking is only the guise for freedom of thought. I said that.
"He is . . . hanging the earth upon nothing." (Job 26:7) The Egyptians said it was supported by pillars; the Greeks said by Atlas; others said by an elephant.
The Bible states: "Star differs from star in glory." Scientists now know that there are blue stars, yellow ones, white dwarfs, neutron stars, and others. (1 Corinthians 15:41)
Centuries before naturalists were aware of migration, Jeremiah wrote (seventh century B.C.E.) "The stork in the sky knows the time to migrate, the dove and the swift and the wryneck know the season of return." (Jeremiah 8:7, The New English Bible.
A thousand years before Christ, Solomon wrote in figurative language about the circulation of the blood. (Ecclesiastes 12:6) Medical science did not understand it until the 15th century C.E.
The Mosaic Law (16th century B.C.E.) reflected awareness of disease germs thousands of years before Pasteur. - Leviticus, chapters 13, 14.
The creation account of Genesis is accurate biology - testified to by the fossil record and by modern genetics - when it says that each family kind was to reproduce "according to its kind." - Genesis 1:12, 21, 25
The genetic blueprint in the fertilized human egg cell contains programs for all the bodily parts before any hint of their presence. Compare Psalm 139:16: "Your eyes [Jehovah's] saw even the embryo of me, and in your book all its parts were down in writing, as regards the days when they were formed and there was not yet one among them."
