(November 5, 2009 at 4:40 am)solarwave Wrote: You asked for an explanation, I gave it to you, if you want to disagree with me, just to try to disprove Christianity wrong in some dodgy way that no expert would accept (theist or atheist) then go ahead.
No expert would accept? Sorry. Not so. There are many Bible scholars that reject Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy for Jesus. Do a little homework outside of your church and you might learn volumes.
(November 5, 2009 at 4:40 am)solarwave Wrote: Seriously there are much better reasons not to believe in God than this.
Is this supposed to be a reason not to believe in God? I never said that. It is supposed to be a reason to question the inerrancy of religious dogma. And maybe a good reason to start thinking critically about all the other problems with religious dogma as well.
(November 5, 2009 at 4:40 am)solarwave Wrote: The name Immanuel was obviously used because of the meaning. If you know anything about language you will know how I explained it is a possible explanation.
Whether it was used because of its meaning is irrelevant. I don't have a problem with it being used. I have a problem with the fact that the prophecy says this child will be "called Immanuel" and "Jesus was never called Immanuel," by anybody. Big difference that you keep ignoring. The very idea that your so called prophecy can be blatantly false and still correct is absurd. You know as well as I do that such flim-flam interpretative manipulations like yours could be used to make anybody the messiah.
(November 5, 2009 at 4:40 am)solarwave Wrote: (I give a capital letter to words referring to God)
Well the scripture doesn't use capital letters, so by your standard that child was not God.
But of course, lacking the use of a capital letter really implies nothing. But the complete absence of Jesus ever being called "Immanuel" does.
A core principle of critical thinking is the continuous effort to prove a belief wrong. If you honestly try to find such evidence and cannot, you're justified in your faith. But if you can find such evidence and do everything in your power to disregard it... well, you know what that means. You should give critical thinking a try.
For anyone seeking to get to the truth of any issue, it is far wiser and honest to look for evidence that a lie is false than it is to look for plausible arguments to maintain a lie is true. If one knows anything at all about apologetics, one should know there are millions of ways to make lies sound like they're plausible.
The problem with Christianity is that Christians are taught to disregard any evidence that something they believe might be false. As a result, they never find any.
This explains why there are thousands of contradicting teachings taken from the same so-called inerrant scripture. Nobody is willing to admit that there might be error in their thinking.
