(October 26, 2013 at 10:08 am)catfish Wrote: Why, why, why does everyone require someone else to tell them what something says?
Read it yourself.
I'm not trying to get anyone to tell me what something says. I don't really care what your specific interpretation of any particular chapter or verse is in the Bible.
All I am trying to do is get you to describe the process that you use in order to determine which parts of the Bible you take literally and which you don't.
In other words, you read a particular passage and you decide, "that passage should not be taken literally", or, "that passage should be taken literally". How do you decide that?
You have to be making some sort of determination, following some sort of rules you have defined for yourself in order to make this distinction.
I'm not sure why you are having such problems with this?
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
