Toaster strudel alliance takes on drugs, atheists and liberalism

[jstrodel]

If you want to learn about scripture, learn about it. If you want to indoctrinate yourself deeper into your atheists myth, do that, but don't call it using "reason" and "logic". To be able to reason about scripture you must know a fair amount of it.

How about this irreconcilable dependency?

You've essentially stated that the act of interpreting (reading->understanding) scripture requires one to know (have interpreted) scripture.

It simply makes no sense as a statement, yet you're the one to make claims about the unreasonability of others?

I suggest, little Christian, that you take a hard look in a mirror.

Are you suggesting that if you want to learn something, you can do it the first time, and you will do it perfectly?

The act of interpreting scripture does indeep require one to interpret scripture. There is no way that you will do it perfectly the first time.

What things have you done in your life that you have done the first time.

I will add, that the process of understanding scripture does not necessarily require you to accept the Bible is the Word of God, though many things will be veiled to you. There are people who are perfectly responsible in their knowledge of ancient Greek and Hebrew who are not Christians that have passable knowledge of exegesis and the ancient cultures to be able to assess what the original intention of the scriptures is.

The very modest claim I am making is that atheists who criticize the Bible should either 1. know how to do these difficult tasks 2. rely on people that do. This is the most basic intellectual responsibility, to require people to have the skills to be able to correctly handle a complex historical document.

If someone asked you to read a translation of an ancient Chinese legal code, would you demand that people give a perfect understand of the code, without relying on a commentary or caring enough about the context? Of course you would immediately say that anyone who claimed to be an expert in such a matter without going through the requisite tasks would be an irresponsible interpreter, and his opinions about the legal code would not matter. But this is exactly what most atheists do when they read Leviticus.

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I guess you missed the deep critique of modernity's propensity to exaggerate the absolute, trans-cultural elements of phenomenological and probabilistic science which has undergone scientific revolutions, from Newton to Einstein, from Aristotle to modern biology and physics.

Perhaps you imagine like many of the enlightened critical thinkers who treat scientific theories that undergo dramatic revisions at about the same rate of change as nation states change leaders as absolute, transcultural, universal authorities.

You see no place of assessing the personalities or the role of hubris and enthocentrism in defining the relationship between the models of science and the world it purports to represent.

That is because you are what you call a critical thinker. A critical thinker is someone who understands these things have no place in "critical thinking".

I just received a copy and paste vibe.

I just typed that. Why can't you write arguments? Everything you write is a one line ad hominem attack or some kind of pop psychology? What prevents you from writing arguments?

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Because you can't understand what I write, doesn't imply that what I write is stupid.