(November 5, 2009 at 11:22 am)Secularone Wrote: 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.
Ok fair enough I was wrong.
Quote:(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.
Ok, there are better reasons to question the inerrancy of religious dogma.
Quote: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.
And it is totally impossible that the prophecy could be talking in a non-literal sense? That the meaning of the name (which would be well known) could be the focus not the name itself? Why is it a poor interpretation? Because Jesus was in fact 'God with us'? Explain how it could make anyone the messiah when considering all the other prophecies fulfilled by Jesus?
Quote: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.
So are you saying with critical thinking you should try to disprove a belief and not try to defend it from the possible evidences against that belief? If that is true I had single handedly tear down all of science since its not allowed to defend itself.
Christians believe what they do for good reason that practically works out in their lives. Why then should they disreguard that belief because of abstract reasoning when their belief in God so clearly is evidenced in their daily lives. Well thats just one arguement.
Mark Taylor: "Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not."
Einstein: “The most unintelligible thing about nature is that it is intelligible”
Einstein: “The most unintelligible thing about nature is that it is intelligible”
