(October 15, 2009 at 5:29 pm)Darwinian Wrote: No sarcasm intended
But even if we do read the Bible from cover to cover and do our research and after our efforts discover that the Bible is a far more coherent work than we had otherwise suspected, what does this mean?
Surely it simply means that it is far more structured and well written that we thought. I still fail to see just because we have a beautiful collection of texts on our hands that you can make that leap from stories written down ages ago to a belief that they somehow have any basis in the real world and contain 'truths' that are divinely inspired.
No matter how much research anyone does it does nothing to lend any verisimilitude to the actual stories.
I see your point. So I will modify my suggestion. Instead of focusing on researching the entire Bible, etc., evaluate the New Testament alone and whether or not Jesus was resurrected. My opinion as to how to do the research in my last post would still apply. I think you will find that the New Testament claims that Jesus was/is God incarnate, He died to pay the penalty for sins, and rose again as evidence they He was/is God. If after researching this, you conclude that it is hogwash, Jesus did not live in history, die in history, and then in history rise from the dead, then reject it and the entire Bible and God altogether and then feel free to post that "Rjh4 is an idiot"
. If you conclude otherwise, the truthfulness of the rest of the Bible will fall into place as the New Testament also says that Jesus quoted from the Old Testament which would then verify the truth of that. After all, the resurrection is the whole basis for Christianity and if that fails, it all does. See I Corinthians 15:13-19. I don't think it fails, but each person must decide for themselves.I hope this is not considered preaching here because I think there is a rule against that. I am not trying to preach but I am trying to answer Darwinian's question regarding the veracity of the Bible.
(Yes, if you have already done the research and concluded that it is hogwash, you can post that I am an idiot now.)
