Summations Only

You should not have to try at all. If you are truly bothered by the inconsistencies in John or any other part of the Bible, I would expect you to be able to rattle off the issues from memory with perhaps some refreshing of your memory by glancing at the text. What's the source of your difficulty?FWIW, there are some past threads where people cited inconsistencies in the Bible and other people attempted to refute those citations with varying degrees of success including outright failure to refute.

I just did that, no problem.
But, I'll avoid doing it now. Don't want to rub guys wrong.

[q/s=phat]You do seem like an interesting chap! Stick around awhile...I love meeting new people.[/qs]Thanks. I'll try and stick around awhile.
I'm not that interesting by the way.

This is a debate site. I expect and hope to see controversy here. Are you sure you aren't bluffing?

Bluffing, about what?
No clue, absolutely no clue, to what you speak

Interesting. Is the following exchange really that hard to follow? To be clear, I'm asking if your reticence to cite contradictions in the Bible is really a bluff or are you truly concerned about hurting someone's feelings? After all, you initially told us that you were going to provide some more examples.I'll admit that I am merely trying to prod you into continuing. Feel free to ignore.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I quoted you about it being a conclsuion when you said: "if you conclude that the Gospel account....". I do think that we can conclude what it is that we believe about any of the Biblical accounts. I'm not sure why you would question what "calling for conclusions" means.Tolliken made it clear that what he was writing was fiction. We have no evidence to tell us whether the authors of the nativity narrative including the virgin birth were writing metaphorically, historically or fictionally. (If there is no such word you know what I mean. )The fact is we don't know so we can come to our own conclusions based on the fact that somebody wrote it leaving open the possibility that it was written historically and that it was correct. However I agree that in the end it is faith.However once again it still all goes back to the resurrection. If Jesus was resurrected then the story of the virgin birth does gain some credibility, even though it doesn't confirm it. If the resurrection is not historical then there is absolutely no reason to believe that the virgin birth was historical IMHO. By real world I assume you mean the natural world as we perceive it. The resurrection and/or the virgin birth if they happened are assumed to be non-repeatable events. Actually the claim, at least for the resurrection is that the claim is made in a book that claims that the source was from observations and evidence of what you are calling the real world. We don't actually know that those things didn't happen.Our experience in life tells us that they can't happen which doesn't mean that there is more than what we directly experience couldn't happen. Personally I don't believe the story of the pillar of salt or the whale and I believe the story of the virgin birth with the reservation, as I said earlier, that it really does read like a legend.However all of that is a matter of belief and my Christian faith wouldn't be affected even if I knew conclusively that the story of the virgin birth was legendary and not historical. I agree that we have to form our conclusions from a variety of sources. Many of the Biblical authors believe and wrote about the Holy Spirit. Many other authors, including yourself in this thread have argued against there being a Holy Spirit. We have to form our conclusions mostly subjectively based on our own life experiences and whatever we can glean from the world in general.I know that when I see and hear about the tragedies of people I have never met I feel empathy for them. I know that I feel a compulsion, or a still small voice that I should do what I can about those less fortunate than myself which is probably about 99% of the world's population. I can attribute these feeling and emotions to my parenting and other human influences, I can attribute them to my genetic make-up or I can attribute them to something that is not directly perceivable to me and believe it to be the Holy Spirit. (Or all of the above for that matter.)So yes, I do call it evidence but not in the scientific sense. It isn't concrete, it isn't provable and in the end it is a faith. However, as Bob Dylan said, "you've got to serve somebody" and we all make our own choices.

The evidence will be lived out in the Christians today. We have failed in the past.

There's nothing special about you, empathy is a human emotion like love, hate, happiness, anger which - with the exception of psychopaths who are missing this emotion - is common to all. It's a measurable brain function which we're beginning to properly understand. There's absolutely no reason to ascribe it to a superstitious concept of 'Holy Spirits' when it can be seen in action using neuroimaging. Do you ascribe all our other emotions to various spirits?

I suppose that love can also be quantified. Im going to remind you that you said that, one of these days.

Okay. In my own personal universe there is only evidence with a sliding scale of quality and science as the standard. Text of a religious book (any religious book, I'm not picking on the Bible) relating a miraculous but impossible event ranks near the bottom.There are many apocryphal stories of Jesus's childhood relating miracles that didn't make it into the canon, they are text that someone wrote and believed (as is The Book of the Dead that jar mentioned) yet you give them little or no credence. You're on much more rational and consistent ground when you describe your beliefs as based upon faith instead of evidence. I understand you say it isn't evidence in a scientific sense, and using the word in that way is fine in discussions confined to a religious context, but in discussions here it might be better to avoid using the word evidence in a non-scientific sense since it will be constantly confused with the scientific definition. Maybe you could use some other term, perhaps testimony, which at least has a familiar religious interpretational context.--Percy

You have an odd way of prodding. I put up a few passages which you don't find impressive. Kind of half BS. If I can continue on spewing BS, seems pointless don't you think? Ringo thinks similar and True Christian has seen it all before and it's another moot point or misses the point.
So in absence of specific direct question on it, I'll pass on further head banging into wall.

But you can can tell the difference by the effect that it has on you. Being unable to percieve a difference at the time of drinking does not remove the difference.All measurable and rational.

LOLSorry but that is just silly.If I am not aware of any measurable differences then how can my decision be rational?Sheesh!

faith is often irrational. You yourself know that the Nicene Creed is illogical from a rational perspective.(as an example)