My book report pt1

[pocaracas]

Well, if I have such a picture, it is absent of any god... and works pretty well..

Define 'works.' Works as in this life but not the next?

"next life"? what is that?

how so?

If you take all of it literally... like Bart claims to have done in his youth.

Read what I wrote again I did not ask when I ask How. I am asking you to explain the conclusion you believe Bart came to.

I think I'm not making it clear whether I mean the Bart before or after becoming atheist/agnostic.

Nonetheless, he says so many times that it wasn't the biblical inconsistencies, nor the unreliable historicity of the bible's text that made him lose his faith.... they helped, but were not the deciding factors. He also says repeatedly that he teaches all that's in that book in a seminary course, where most of the students (if not all) are christians and remain christians after taking those classes.

Of course not. He is working under the assumption that the text is a "reliable" (?)

No he is not.

Before deconverting, yes....
and he found that the book is not as reliable as he had been led to think.

account of the events.... with multiple accounts of the same event by multiple authors.
Given the importance of the message, he'd expect it to be pretty darn consistent and self-attesting...

If it were to fit his standard then someone else would simply scream copy.
As all the books were copied from one another.

How can you pretend to argue Bart's position when you don't seem to understand it?

errr... he says repeatedly in the book that all that he wrote there has been known for decades if not centuries... It's been taught in seminaries all over the world for years and years.
What is it that I don't understand?

He assumes they all had witnessed the events or had access to reliable witness accounts...

No he says the oppsite repeatedly. That the bible is a compliation of many unknown authors and sources.

Again, my fault for not pointing that this was his starting position in "life".
And then discovers, after careful examination, that it doesn't work that way... and then he claims what you just said.

But what if.... what if they all shared the same backstory, like we do with star wars, and made up a few details here and there to make it fit, in their own minds. They then wrote it down, according to their understanding of the events.

Then if God makes no changes to that story that is what He must judge and hold us accountable to.

It seems you missed the part where the "backstory" is fictional (like star wars)... and gets built upon, like you did earlier with R2D2.

Yes, some things do make sense, within the context of the story.
The problem we have is that your mind attributes this context to our reality... while being absent of any hints of such a connection, except for a few episodes which can be explained as psychological or random in nature.
And, as such, it isn't credible as a means of connecting the story with reality.

Again my experiences were meant for me alone. If you want such a connection God says all you have to do is A/S/K for yourself, and He will make that connection for you.

I'm not so sure it was any god who claimed that, see?...
I'm more inclined to think it was someone who understood how the human mind works, how it can convince itself of anything, provided it accepts a bit of it.
Belief in gods was nothing new when those texts were written, so it's very likely that such knowledge had arisen and been common among those in the know... as min says, the powerful, the priests, those looking to control the masses and remain in power through those masses.

If we are done here with the OP discussion I will post part 2

Fast reader, go on.