Historical antecedents to modern-day Christian fundamentalism

I'm not at all hostile to science --in its place. It's done a lot for us, but that's only because God has allowed us to discover such wonderful things that help us out. Thank Him for the great boons of science. It will all dry up soon enough or turn around and bite us in the ass if we just keep crediting our own intelligence for it.

Faith: My question of course would be who are you to judge how someone else interprets the Bible?Did you ever consider the likelihood that you may not speak for God?

Church leaders from when? 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th centuries etc?I'm going to have to do more research I guess, but people just can't be saved at all, people just wouldn't have had the amazing energy they had to live the gospel of Christ throughout the centuries, if they hadn't believed in the literal truth of the supernatural revelation of the Bible, maybe not all of it, but enough of it, the supernatural events of Jesus' life and death and current reigning over the world for starters at least.The old mosaics and paintings affirm such truths. There are ancient hymns that affirm such Biblical truths. The Creeds and Confessions all the way back affirm them. They are now apparently twisted by liberals into other meanings, but how could you think those liberal meanings were believed up until recently? It takes sophisticated doublethink to twist them like that, but I guess if you do I can't convince you otherwise.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Who's talking about God? I'm talking about the natural reading of the text.Do I have to be someone special to have such an opinion?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A fair enough statement of your position.Think I better quit goading you before the OT sign appears.Will probably submit a personal belief statement within a few months. Hope to see you there.

I trust the road map. Our discussion is about how to read it. You managed to take a minor point that I made in my last post and disregarded the rest.You demonstrated you don't take the Bible literaly because you used your wisdom to decide that the passage from Mark was an "obvious metaphor". That is what all of us Christians do. We just don't always agree on what constitutes an "obvious metaphor".

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I think the problem here is that everyone takes the term "literal" WAY too "literally" (using the term wrongly for the purpose of making my point).I only use it because you all use it but maybe I'll stop. The way to read the Bible is intelligently, reading it as history where it presents itself as history, as metaphor where it presents itself as metaphor and so on.

So?You accused me in essence of worshiping the Bible.

Other than for a few very Liberal Christians, there are few of us that don't take the "supernatural events of Jesus' and death and current reigning over the world" on faith.My Christian faith is absolutely central to my life, as it is for so many others that I know that don't have as a part of their faith that the Bible is to be read literally. (Which as I pointed out previously isn't being done by you or anyone else for that matter.)St. Augustine, CS Lewis etc find truth in the Bible without trying to take the ancient stories literally. God gave us the Bible to read and interpret through wisdom. He also gave us His creation to read and interpret through wisdom.

Sorry. That was over the top.

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In modern parlance, we all use phrases based on narratives that we know are not real events. Take, for example, "crying wolf," "sour grapes," and "ugly duckling." These are all two word phrases that have a much deeper and immediately understood meaning beyond the words themselves, because they allude to stories we are all familiar with. If someone is said to be crying wolf, the implication of that phrase is clear, and a point is made. That point is made regardless of whether there ever was an actual little boy who repeatedly warned of a non-existent danger then ultimately succumed to that danger because of his false alarms.

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Is is not equally plausible that the writers of the NT were using stories from the OT in the same way?

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There is also reason to believe that the writers of the NT had the OT open in front of them, so to speak, and spun their tales of Jesus in order to make as many of the OT prophecies about the Messiah appear to be fulfilled.

Sly bastards weren't they? Evil liars.

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Sly bastards weren't they? Evil liars.

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I never said they were evil.They might have lied, yes, although I am sure they wouldn't have thought of it that way.I am sure that all of the writers believed that Jesus was, indeed, the Messiah and it is understandable that they would liberally and freely look through the OT to see what they could find to confirm and enforce their ferverent wish that they were right about him.Of course, they were also subject to all of the errors of thinking that humans have always been such as confirmation bias and post-hoc reasoning, so it is understandable that they would take such liberties.

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

Ya right. These would be the same guys that were jailed and martyred for their faith.The OT prophecies as understood by the majority of Jews at the time was that the Messiah would be a political figure that would lead them to freedom from the Romans. If they were making them up to fit the common interpretation of the OT at the time they sure missed the mark.Paul gave up a very lucrative career as a leading Pharisee to spend his life as an itinerant preacher, in and out of jail until he was put top death. Making up tales about Jesus was not actually the greatest of career moves.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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Ya right. These would be the same guys that were jailed and martyred for their faith.

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Although the authorship of the Gospels is quite controversial and pretty much unknown, I fail to understand how ending up a martyr for their faith has anthing to do with the plausibility of my statement.Here's one example of what I'm talking about.In the NT, a prophecy regarding the Messiah is said to be fulfilled by Jesus: Nowhere in the OT does such a prophecy exist.Now, let's look at the OT prophecy which is supposedly being fulfilled: In written Hebrew, the word for "branch" looks exactly the same as the word for "Nazarene". Since the context of the OT prophecy is an extended tree metaphor, "branch" is the more appropriate word choice, yet "Nazarene" was used in Matthew.In addition, the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, not Hebrew.Clearly, the writer of Matthew was not fluent in Hebrew and rather obviously mistranslated that prophecy in such a way that made Jesus look more like the Messiah.Note that this isn't a "lie", exactly, but rather a rather forced, streched attempt at making something about Jesus fulfill a prophecy.

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson