Summations Only

A philosophy of "This particular book trumps reality" is inherently irrational.--Percy

Thanks GDR Well if you go through them point by point we'll debate every single point no doubt.))
I think the NT is book compiled with an agenda that has nothing to do with truth or facts.
It's obviously my view. I have been Catholic most of my life. Many years ago I really started reading the studying the bible, in my later Christian years. I read a lot of outside sources and poured through the bible time and time again. I conclude it's fraud. However, that is my view on any religion..man made fraud.

I should avoid responding to anything you write. This is so irrational it's mind boggling.
Consider casting lots like rolling a few dice. Every roll is random.
Here's what you are saying. " Sometimes" god is giving an answer to the heathens.
Well, the heathens get an answer every time they roll the dice. Every roll gives an answer.
If sometimes god is actually controlling the result but only " sometime", but every time you get a result. There is absolutely no way to determine if the result is random or " god controlled". Then you said before god did this for a while in an undetermined past and then changed his mind later and decided he'd let these things be random. But he was only "sometime" really doing it, when he actually was doing it. Amazing!
You display the obvious randomness of casting lots in your thought process. It's random and varied and there is no logic.

duplicate. what key do i hit that causes stuff to post before I am ready????Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I was very explicit about my comparison. I said that the marble worked in exactly the way your description of the "biblical context" said lots worked; i.e. "sometimes". Obviously the point was that my "cat's eye" marble, which is what essentially all marbles are, does not work.The misunderstanding here arises because you are superstitious. You cannot bring yourself to believe in the evidence that 'X' does not cause 'Y' as long as there are anecdotal reports that they have happened together. That explains your stance on any number of things including immunization, alien abductions, and casting lots.

No Nukes I want to respond to your car accident analogy to inconsistencies of resurrection. On the surface this is very plausible.However,
There is actually no evidence we had a car accident. The historical writers around that time that should have written about the accident, did not. Further the trial leading up to the accident, besides not being recorded ( which was not unusual) but it was done in manner never done by Pilate ever before. That is letting the crowd influence the trial. That is without precedent and inconceivable the psychopathic Pilate would let a crowd rule on anything. He did the ruling.
Okay, no evidence of a car accident.Let's look at the writers of the accident.
They were superstitious. Believing in casting lots, fortune telling, astrology. The equilavent today of believing in say BigFoot, alien implanted tracking devices and using your horoscope to guide you. By today's standards they are loons. They are not very credible by today's standards.They never witnessed a thing they write about. They were at best hearsay writers ( not allowed in a court of law today) and at worse making the whole thing up.
Then, like every religion in the history of mankind including today, they write to increase converts. So they aren't even without bias. Like getting paid by an insurance company to give an accident report.What do they say. Well for some unknown reason they don't actually report the car accident for 30, 40 up to maybe 90 years after it happened.The first writer called Mark, was not even in the area of the car accident because he gets the geography all screwed up.The other purported witnesses, well they copy this Mark and add there own spin. One writer even helps get Mark's geography correct.In the end we have no evidence of a car accident, no eye witnesses, purported witnesses that by todays standard would be loons, they copy each other, and are not unbias.

Of course that is right but I wasn't trying to make an argument for my position, I was simply stating the conclusions that I have come to, which is why I kept inserting IMHO. I wasn't trying to make a case for my beliefs. I have done that in other threads.

Who said it was about "justice"? Justice varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from time to time.It's about consequences. There are always consequences, whether just or not. They don't need to explain it to your satisfaction, only their own.

You simply have no concept of God at all.NO roll is EVER random, but WE are not in a position to see God's intent in most cases so the apparent randomness is all we can appreciate.And it's what the roll COMMUNICATES that is the point. You could throw the coin the requisite number of times for the I Ching oracle and always get some kind of answer because each combination of coin tosses is tied to a particular message, one message out of sixty four I believe, with six submessages per message, though I may have these numbers wrong. The tosses by themselves are random, or seem to us to be random, but when you get the same message something like ten times, as I once did, from different combinations of tosses, which in themselves are the random factor, you might begin to wonder if there is an intelligence behind the result. Again, not the tosses themselves, which are clearly random as far as we could ever tell, but the meaning attached to the combination.The casting of lots is likewise attached to a meaning, for instance the assignment of a particular person to a particular result. Dice could be but usually aren't. In any case, again, the numbers always come up randomly as far as we can tell, but when there is a meaning attached to them you may suspect that God is behind them.abe: Let me correct that. Other intelligences exist that can determine the outcome. But in the casting of lots in the Bible where the true answer was given we know it was God because of the context.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Doesn't "trump" reality, IS reality, shows us what reality IS. And it's not just a book, or a particular book, it's sixty six books by forty some odd authors inspired by God, and when you know it's God's own communication to us then you know that it is a revelation of reality itself.

Then why does it contain contradictions, falsehoods and errors?Are two fowl and seven fowl the same number of fowl? Is God unable to count?

Interesting. I don't recall making such an analogy; at least not recently. Sounds like something I might say though. Some hearsay is allowed, and some isn't. I'd be happy to review article VIII of the Federal Rules of Evidence with you if you'd like. Besides that, is 'allowed in a court of law' all that great a standard? A mom's alibi for her drug dealing son is admissible evidence. Let's see you back up your claims about precedence and Pilate's conceivable actions. Just how much do you really know about Pilate? How much do historians know? This argument was just as convoluted as when Faith used it. Sounds like both ancient and modern people are loony.

But since it isn't a revelation of reality - or even a good facsimile - we know it's not the word of God. It's the word of men claiming to speak for God, but men who didn't have a very good understanding of reality. And people who don't have a good understanding of reality mistake it for "real". You demonstrate that every time you touch your keyboard.

You're just witnessing for God, not providing anything real. All books are just books. There's nothing about a compendium of multiple authors that renders a book special. You can't even prove God exists let alone that his words have ever been written down.--Percy

You should be embarrassed posting this. I'm embarrassed for you. I would hope my wife would commit me to a mental institute if I ever said something like this.
Are you serious? I'm scared you believe what you actually write.