RE: Why does science always upstage God?
October 11, 2021 at 2:35 pm
(This post was last modified: October 11, 2021 at 2:36 pm by Spongebob.)
(October 11, 2021 at 10:58 am)ayost Wrote:I will be willing to post some things, but this is where I am most astounded by Christians. You guys always come at us like a bull in a China shop and when we announce our objections, you want an itemized list with references, footnotes and so on. I stopped reading & studying Christianity over 20 years ago. I don't regularly read up on the newest research and problems and I certainly don't keep a notebook of all the reasons and sources that I used to form my opinions; I did all of that long ago and don't need to keep revisiting it. But you guys seem to expect us to do the work for you. I literally have this same conversation often with Christians I know. They say (insert Christian aphorism here) and I respond with, you know that stuff about Paul isn't true....and the response is always, show me all your research and I'll believe you. All we can say is this stuff is not even hiding in plain site; it's out there for everyone to see and you just ignore it, then criticize atheists for having read and understood things that you won't investigate yourself. It's astonishingly lazy is what it is. Do you know why I'm no longer a Christian? It's because I decided to question things and investigate. Christians who have no intention to consider new information shouldn't proliferate atheist forums.
What I mean is Christian scholars are not running from, hiding, or in fear of any contradictions or in the history of the transmission of the text. We don't have to be. History is what it is, let's talk about it. Pick a contradiction and let's talk about it.
Ok, there are believing Christians that have spent their lives exploring the historical roots of Christian texts as well. Textual Criticism isn't a purely secular pursuit. The people that I have chosen to believe, and that's what you and I do, choose who we will believe, see the same information and come to a different conclusion. Now, you may say that their religious background gives them a bias, ok fine, but that same critique should be leveled at the secular scholar. So i say consensus from who? Secular and believing scholars?
You won't hear me defend the KJV Bible. It's not the best translation. While they did the best the could, it can't be because translators of the King James version didn't have near the wealth of manuscript information that we have now. And with CBGM it's only getting better. KJV onlyism is bad theology, it's indefensible really.
I will look into this, but I can admit that I am skeptical of judging motivation without documentation of the motivation. We have to have 2 or 3 independent lines of contemporary testimony to the political alteration, otherwise its speculation. Maybe you could point me to those lines of testimony?
All that said, let me give it some thought and I'll pick a topic of translation or contradiction or some sort of biblical issue and post it on a separate thread. There's probably already a section for that on the forum.
Bible scholars are both secular and religious and many come to the same conclusions. There are in fact Christians who promote the idea of a Christianity that doesn't include the mysticism.
Why is it so?
~Julius Sumner Miller
~Julius Sumner Miller