(November 27, 2012 at 12:30 pm)Rhythm Wrote: The obvious question becomes, "why is going with whatever god thinks any different than going with whatever you think?" Neither involves an explanation for whatever authority we might wish to go with. In this way they are both entirely similar.
But God's will for you is the explanation for believers. That is, if you're a Christian/God-follower, God wanting you to do X is explanatory for why it is good to do X.
Quote:Illustrating the difficulty you alluded to above, your understanding of what god wills is yet another thing "you've got figured out", and we still can't explain why either you -or a god- has anything figured out without elaborating can we?
I don't understand your question, your phrasing is too ambiguous. You want me to account for why I have a particular understanding about premarital sex? Or why I have a particular understanding about God's will with regard to premarital sex? Or why God has a particular understanding of premarital sex?
Quote:It -is- written in english. The words we find in english are not a direct translation but an interpretation of what the phrase would mean in our vernacular (direct translations are often unintelligible). If the author wished to express the sentiment you've expressed they could have done so in whatever language they wished, and it would be interpreted in english to be as close as possible to this expression. What you are doing is unlike this, you are translating an expression -in english-...to another expression -in english-. Why this is required at all is the very thing I'm wondering. Even after we go through the trouble of this double dipping interpretation we still don't have a very useful statement, the criticism of the first applies as equally to the second.
(ignoring this entirely - would it be so unreasonable to expect that the very important message of a god be easily understood by any person of any culture and any language at any time? I don't think so, but in the case of this particular portion of the text I don't require it to be so, or even expect it to be so...because it's just something that a human being decided to write down one day- and again, we say silly things....)
It's the problem of communicating with language at all, isn't it? Different people might need it explained in different ways. Which is why there's an entire Bible to read in order to more fully understand God's nature/will/plan/whathaveyou. You're asking why proverbs--essentially, Hebrew "wisdom cliches"--aren't pithy when translated to English? Really?
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
