Biblical circularity.

[Minimalist]

Well scripture actually pre-supposes that it is the word of God.

Yeah....the priests of Amun-Ra pulled the same line of shit. But you think they were just idol-worshipers, right?

[Faith No More]

I pre-suppose the Bible is the word of God, I believe non-believers pre-suppose it is not the word of God; there is no middle ground on this subject. So both sides are biased on this matter.

I disagree and believe there is a middle ground. It is entirely possible to have an open mind when approaching the bible, and I believe that you are assuming if one does this, they will come to the conclusion that it is the word of god. I never had any reason not to believe it was god's word when I was being raised Christian, but still came to the conclusion it was the word of man. It's a common misconception that atheists are automatically opposed to the bible, because it seems unfathomable to theists that one could be open minded and not be in awe of the bible. Try to keep in mind that many atheists have actively tried to be theists, but just couldn't come to the conclusion that theism was the right point of view. It is incorrect to assume that anyone that doesn't believe in the bible must be biased.

[Anomalocaris]

I pre-suppose the Bible is the word of God, I believe non-believers pre-suppose it is not the word of God; there is no middle ground on this subject. So both sides are biased on this matter.

I disagree and believe there is a middle ground. It is entirely possible to have an open mind when approaching the bible, and I believe that you are assuming if one does this, they will come to the conclusion that it is the word of god. I never had any reason not to believe it was god's word when I was being raised Christian, but still came to the conclusion it was the word of man. It's a common misconception that atheists are automatically opposed to the bible, because it seems unfathomable to theists that one could be open minded and not be in awe of the bible. Try to keep in mind that many atheists have actively tried to be theists, but just couldn't come to the conclusion that theism was the right point of view. It is incorrect to assume that anyone that doesn't believe in the bible must be biased.

He is a windy moron who's been diving in the piss of christ and in the process depriving his brain of the oxygen of reality for too long to ever tolerate the clarifying scent of fresh air. The stench of the piss of christ not only made him pre-suppose, it also deprived him of the the vestigial honesty needed to admit others can avoid pre-supposing, even if it is to pre-suppose the opposite thing from what he does. In fact, non-believers do not pre-suppose it is not the word of God. Non-believers do not pre-suppose it is the world of god, nor indeed pre-suppose it is anything at all other than the externally obvious - a book with a lot of statements that are at inconcilable variance with what we've learned independently of it since when it might have first been prepetrated, and seeminly touting to be sublime virtues a lot of things which in our growth we've come to regard as unforgivable vices.

[Statler Waldorf]

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Well thanks very much for the response, I appreciate it.

I accept your reasoning that if you presuppose the bible is inerrant that anything that then finds fault with it can be discounted, because we both agree humans are fallible. There is no way to disprove this. The fault I find is in presupposing it.

I don't agree that you have to presuppose it isn't true, if you don't presuppose it is. You can have an open mind about it, be willing to be convinced. If I am open minded, and ask a simple question, how do you know it's inerrant, in an honest attempt to find the truth, is the only answer, because it says it is? If you presuppose something is true, you can make anything fit!

Sam Harris put's it this way, if there were some disaster, that destroyed most of human civilisation, and we forgot all knowledge of religion and literature and culture and technology, when we set about rebuilding our society, what would we learn first? And at what point would we decide the bible, out of all the literary and religious texts, was the truth? How could we test it to find out? What separates it from the qu'ran or the illiad or any other text?

As far as I can see, the only reason people accept it as inerrant and the word of god is because they already believe it is. Don't you think presupposing the truth of something on faith is faulty logic and irrational?

By the way you can indeed prove your senses are reliable, for instance, an eye test.

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I like this discussion

Ok here is why I feel there is no neutral ground on this matter. The Bible is very clear that you are either for it or against it (Matthew 12:30). So the Bible says there is no neutral ground. So if someone says, "I believe there is neutral ground on this matter." They are actually saying the Bible is wrong, which of course means they are not neutral. So I do not believe that Christians arrived at their positoin by being neutural, however I do not belilieve non-believers arrived at their position by being neutral. Is that fair?


Ok here is why I feel there is no neutral ground on this matter. The Bible is very clear that you are either for it or against it (Matthew 12:30). So the Bible says there is no neutral ground. So if someone says, "I believe there is neutral ground on this matter." They are actually saying the Bible is wrong, which of course means they are not neutral. So I do not believe that Christians arrived at their position by being neutral, however I do not believe that non-believers arrived at their position by being neutral either. Is that a fair assumption?
As to the presuppositions point you made. It is not bad logic to presuppose certain truths I believe; in fact I think it is necessary in order to obtain any knowledge at all. Sure you can take an eye test, but how do you know you took the test in the first place? You’d have to use your senses right? So you have to make certain assumptions beforehand before you can obtain any knowledge at all. Some of these include, laws of logic exist and we should adhere to them, our senses are generally reliable, our memories are generally reliable, and the future will resemble the past. I believe that presupposing scripture’s truth gives us a solid foundation for why these presuppositions are accurate. Your thoughts?

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I pre-suppose the Bible is the word of God, I believe non-believers pre-suppose it is not the word of God; there is no middle ground on this subject. So both sides are biased on this matter.

I disagree and believe there is a middle ground. It is entirely possible to have an open mind when approaching the bible, and I believe that you are assuming if one does this, they will come to the conclusion that it is the word of god. I never had any reason not to believe it was god's word when I was being raised Christian, but still came to the conclusion it was the word of man. It's a common misconception that atheists are automatically opposed to the bible, because it seems unfathomable to theists that one could be open minded and not be in awe of the bible. Try to keep in mind that many atheists have actively tried to be theists, but just couldn't come to the conclusion that theism was the right point of view. It is incorrect to assume that anyone that doesn't believe in the bible must be biased.

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Read my post above as to why there is no middle ground, I want to hear your thoughts on it.

[BloodyHeretic]

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Well thanks very much for the response, I appreciate it.

I accept your reasoning that if you presuppose the bible is inerrant that anything that then finds fault with it can be discounted, because we both agree humans are fallible. There is no way to disprove this. The fault I find is in presupposing it.

I don't agree that you have to presuppose it isn't true, if you don't presuppose it is. You can have an open mind about it, be willing to be convinced. If I am open minded, and ask a simple question, how do you know it's inerrant, in an honest attempt to find the truth, is the only answer, because it says it is? If you presuppose something is true, you can make anything fit!

Sam Harris put's it this way, if there were some disaster, that destroyed most of human civilisation, and we forgot all knowledge of religion and literature and culture and technology, when we set about rebuilding our society, what would we learn first? And at what point would we decide the bible, out of all the literary and religious texts, was the truth? How could we test it to find out? What separates it from the qu'ran or the illiad or any other text?

As far as I can see, the only reason people accept it as inerrant and the word of god is because they already believe it is. Don't you think presupposing the truth of something on faith is faulty logic and irrational?

By the way you can indeed prove your senses are reliable, for instance, an eye test.

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I like this discussion

Ok here is why I feel there is no neutral ground on this matter. The Bible is very clear that you are either for it or against it (Matthew 12:30). So the Bible says there is no neutral ground. So if someone says, "I believe there is neutral ground on this matter." They are actually saying the Bible is wrong, which of course means they are not neutral. So I do not believe that Christians arrived at their position by being neutral, however I do not believe that non-believers arrived at their position by being neutral either. Is that a fair assumption?
As to the presuppositions point you made. It is not bad logic to presuppose certain truths I believe; in fact I think it is necessary in order to obtain any knowledge at all. Sure you can take an eye test, but how do you know you took the test in the first place? You’d have to use your senses right? So you have to make certain assumptions beforehand before you can obtain any knowledge at all. Some of these include, laws of logic exist and we should adhere to them, our senses are generally reliable, our memories are generally reliable, and the future will resemble the past. I believe that presupposing scripture’s truth gives us a solid foundation for why these presuppositions are accurate. Your thoughts?

Sorry to point it out to you, but your argument revolves around 'the bible says this and the bible says that'. Of course there is a neutral ground, what of somebody hearing it for the first time, they cannot be 'for' it, as they're only just coming in contact with it, nor can they be against it for the same reason. They may remain undecided for awhile, during which time, they are neutral. Surely you accept this? The bible may indeed say that one must be for it or against it, but it's not a philosophically sound position to take. If you try and refute this with 'I believe the bible and the bible says...' we really can't have a discussion about it, or at least not a constructive one. Will you not even consider that it could be false?

About the senses, you have no choice in accepting them, one cannot live one's life if one chooses to reject sensory information. You could in fact be a brain plugged in to a sense creating computer, and of course there's no way of knowing, but there's no alternative to accepting the reality your senses present. There is an alternative to accepting the bible however, so the comparison doesn't hold.

Edited spelling.

[Epimethean]

The Bible-at least until the fucking boring New Testicle, was a pretty good fantasy story with some great fucking (OK, and some pretty creepy fucking: Lot, anyone?), some great boozing (OK, and some unfortunate results: Lot's kids, anyone?), and some straight up ass-kicking (OK, sure, it was genocide, but it was committed by the good guys, right?). I put it right up there with Battlefield Earth. Same sort of utter rubbishery covered up with the stuff that we like.

The New Testicle just plain blows. Boring, blah-blah-blah. A verbal lobotomy, to be sure.

[Faith No More]

I like this discussion

Ok here is why I feel there is no neutral ground on this matter. The Bible is very clear that you are either for it or against it (Matthew 12:30). So the Bible says there is no neutral ground. So if someone says, "I believe there is neutral ground on this matter." They are actually saying the Bible is wrong, which of course means they are not neutral. So I do not believe that Christians arrived at their positoin by being neutural, however I do not belilieve non-believers arrived at their position by being neutral. Is that fair?

That is definitely a fair statement to say there is no middle ground to interpreting the bible, unless of course you count those waffling agnostics. However, this was more of the point I was addressing on the fact that there is a middle ground-

I pre-suppose the Bible is the word of God, I believe non-believers pre-suppose it is not the word of God; there is no middle ground on this subject.

To say that there is no middle ground assumes that anyone interpreting the bible is under the assumption that it either is or isn't the word of god. My point was that it's entirely possible to read the bible open to either interpretation, which I would call a middle ground.

Ok here is why I feel there is no neutral ground on this matter. The Bible is very clear that you are either for it or against it (Matthew 12:30). So the Bible says there is no neutral ground. So if someone says, "I believe there is neutral ground on this matter." They are actually saying the Bible is wrong, which of course means they are not neutral. So I do not believe that Christians arrived at their position by being neutral, however I do not believe that non-believers arrived at their position by being neutral either. Is that a fair assumption?

I think here you are confusing being predisposed to think one way or the other to taking a presupposed stance on the bible. In the end, we only have our perceptions to interpret scripture which are always going to be biased and cause us to tend to think towards one end of the spectrum or the other with regards to religion. As long as the person is consciously trying to keep an open mind while coming to a conclusion on the bible, I do not see that as biased regardless or the conclusion reached.

As to the presuppositions point you made. It is not bad logic to presuppose certain truths I believe; in fact I think it is necessary in order to obtain any knowledge at all. Sure you can take an eye test, but how do you know you took the test in the first place? You’d have to use your senses right? So you have to make certain assumptions beforehand before you can obtain any knowledge at all. Some of these include, laws of logic exist and we should adhere to them, our senses are generally reliable, our memories are generally reliable, and the future will resemble the past. I believe that presupposing scripture’s truth gives us a solid foundation for why these presuppositions are accurate. Your thoughts?

It is definitely necessary to make certain presuppositions but to come to a conclusion that is true to your personal pursuit of truth, one cannot presuppose either way whether the scripture is truthful or not. One loses all objectivity if not being open to either interpretation.

[twocompulsive]

Biblical Paradoxes / Inconsistencies :

Adam lived to 930 / Methuselah lived to 969 / Enoch never died at all.
God gets angry the with Jews in Exodus. Anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
God is angry because they were worshipping false gods. So why give them free will ?
Why get jealous when those being worshipped are lower down the metaphysical food chain ?
God anticipates punishing their children. Jesus states that anyone who does this deserves to die.
Eight people on the Ark. Procreation after first generation impossible without recourse to adultery or incest.

Abrahamic Paradoxes / Inconsistencies :

When Jesus was born he spoke in tongues.
He wasn't crucified but ascended into Paradise.
You can't enter Paradise unless you are a Muslim.
You can't enter Heaven unless you are a Christian.
Jesus is in Paradise / Heaven and he is neither : a Jew.
Jesus : In Judaism a blasphemer. In Islam a prophet. In Christianity a deity.

Philosophical Paradoxes / Inconsistencies :

Why does God need us to worship him if he is omnipotent ?
Why give us logic and reason if we aren't to question his existence ?
How can he exist outside of space and time when that is physically impossible ?

[DeistPaladin]

Playing Christian-Biblical Advocate:

Biblical Paradoxes / Inconsistencies :

Adam lived to 930 / Methuselah lived to 969 / Enoch never died at all.

So far so good.

God gets angry the with Jews in Exodus. Anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Actually, that sin is "wrath" and "the seven deadly sins" appears nowhere in the Bible. It's a Catholic tradition.

God is angry because they were worshipping false gods. So why give them free will ?

"Free will" is also a Catholic invention. The Bible never says "free will" and many verses specifically say we don't have that.

Why get jealous when those being worshipped are lower down the metaphysical food chain ?

Good question.

God anticipates punishing their children. Jesus states that anyone who does this deserves to die.

No, Jesus says that the children who don't obey their parents should be put to death, per OT laws.

Eight people on the Ark. Procreation after first generation impossible without recourse to adultery or incest.

Good point. And the Adam/Eve common ancestor also means we're products of incest. The authors of the book of Genesis clearly didn't think that one through.

Abrahamic Paradoxes / Inconsistencies :

When Jesus was born he spoke in tongues.
He wasn't crucified but ascended into Paradise.
You can't enter Paradise unless you are a Muslim.
You can't enter Heaven unless you are a Christian.
Jesus is in Paradise / Heaven and he is neither : a Jew.

Muslims insist that Jesus was a forerunner of Muhammad and that his teachings were consistent with Islam. The ancient Jewish prophets were also proto-Muslims. As their story goes, somewhere along the line, both Judaism and Christianity ran off the beaten path and started doing their own thing. Typical with schismatic religions, they claim to be returning to a more pure form of the faith.

[Statler Waldorf]

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Sorry to point it out to you, but your argument revolves around 'the bible says this and the bible says that'. Of course there is a neutral ground, what of somebody hearing it for the first time, they cannot be 'for' it, as they're only just coming in contact with it, nor can they be against it for the same reason. They may remain undecided for awhile, during which time, they are neutral. Surely you accept this? The bible may indeed say that one must be for it or against it, but it's not a philosophically sound position to take. If you try and refute this with 'I believe the bible and the bible says...' we really can't have a discussion about it, or at least not a constructive one. Will you not even consider that it could be false?

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Well scripture says that Creation itself so attests to God’s existence that nobody has an excuse to not believe in a Creator. So even if a person has never heard the Gospel, they are still expected to believe in the Creator God. So when you say that the person who has not read the Bible is neutral if they do not believe in a Creator you are saying that scripture is wrong which of course makes your position not neutral. So if the person says, “I am neutral on this matter, I think the Bible is wrong when it says people cannot be neutral.” Is that person actually being neutral? I would say that they are not because they are taking a position against a truth claim scripture makes. We can certainly have a constructive conversation, and I feel we have done so up to this point. I am just saying that there really is no middle ground to meet on this issue. This does not mean we cannot discuss the issue though right?

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About the senses, you have no choice in accepting them, one cannot live one's life if one chooses to reject sensory information. You could in fact be a brain plugged in to a sense creating computer, and of course there's no way of knowing, but there's no alternative to accepting the reality your senses present. There is an alternative to accepting the bible however, so the comparison doesn't hold.

Edited spelling.

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I think your reasoning here violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason. You are saying that we have to accept our senses are reliable in order to obtain knowledge, I completely agree, but you do not give a reason as to why our senses would be reliable given your worldview and presuppositions. The Christian worldview can certainly account for the reason why someone’s senses are generally reliable; I am not so sure an atheistic worldview could. Please explain if you disagree though.

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To say that there is no middle ground assumes that anyone interpreting the bible is under the assumption that it either is or isn't the word of god. My point was that it's entirely possible to read the bible open to either interpretation, which I would call a middle ground.

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I would disagree though, before I became a Christian I was opposed to and an enemy of God, after my conversion I was adopted as God’s child through Christ. So even the person who claims to be open-minded and neutral on these matters is really not neutral because they are claiming that scripture is wrong when it says there is no neutrality.

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I think here you are confusing being predisposed to think one way or the other to taking a presupposed stance on the bible. In the end, we only have our perceptions to interpret scripture which are always going to be biased and cause us to tend to think towards one end of the spectrum or the other with regards to religion. As long as the person is consciously trying to keep an open mind while coming to a conclusion on the bible, I do not see that as biased regardless or the conclusion reached.

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You are one of the straightest shooters on this site , and I really appreciate it. I think we are arriving at a similar conclusion but by different means. I say the playing field is equal because everyone is biased, you say the playing field is equal because people on both sides are not biased. Either way I think we can agree that both sides are allowed to use their own ammunition right?

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It is definitely necessary to make certain presuppositions but to come to a conclusion that is true to your personal pursuit of truth, one cannot presuppose either way whether the scripture is truthful or not. One loses all objectivity if not being open to either interpretation.

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You see what I am saying is that if scripture were inerrant there would be no way to test for this. So I think it really has to be a presupposition. However, I do not believe this is incorrect reasoning because presupposing that scripture is what it claims to be offers a foundation for a host of other presuppositions that are also required to gain knowledge. I actually cannot think of a way to account for these other presuppositions in a world that the God of the Bible does not reside over.

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Eight people on the Ark. Procreation after first generation impossible without recourse to adultery or incest.

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Incest was not forbidden until after Noah’s time. In fact in the “Sexual Orientation” thread on here I learned that most atheists on here don’t even believe incest is wrong, so not sure what your point is. The Human Genome would have had so few mutations in the time of Noah that incest would not have produced any birth defects.

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Why does God need us to worship him if he is omnipotent ?

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Where in scripture does it say God needs us to worship Him?

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How can he exist outside of space and time when that is physically impossible ?

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That’s like saying Walt Disney cannot exist outside of a sheet of paper because Mickey Mouse can only exist on the paper he is drawn onto.

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Adam lived to 930 / Methuselah lived to 969 / Enoch never died at all.

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So?

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Good point. And the Adam/Eve common ancestor also means we're products of incest. The authors of the book of Genesis clearly didn't think that one through.

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So does evolutionary theory, so what’s your point? In fact you can’t escape the fact that we all arose from incestual relationships somewhere in the past, so it is not a matter of not “thinking things out” but rather a matter of fact.