Is the Bible acceptable?

There is so much amusement to be found in iano's style of argumentation, so many clever variants on the same basic solipsist theme... What a shame more people don't accept it as the humor that it really is. (Yes, iano, I do believe that most of your posts are intended merely to pull our collective leg. Keep smiling, bro!)And the really cool thing is that every now and then, he drops a seed that is just so rich in its potential... Exactly so -- indeed, who is to say that God would not use the same basic technique: manipulate the senses of the intended audience in such a way that both sight and sound seem to present a coherent and consistent perception that they are being spoken to by a snake? God made the ears, eyes and brains of the audience, and he can make those things do whatever he likes. What more proof is needed to sustain this line of argument?(Let's see... what were folks arguing about here? Accuracy and Inerrancy in the Bible? And iano's consistent position: of course it's accurate and inerrant, so long as you believe it to be so, because your personal belief defines reality for you! External evidence of any physical nature has no bearing on this position, because the position is founded on solipsism. Ergo, refutation is futile.)Of course, if I understood the basic story, it wasn't supposed to be a case of God talking by way of a snake, but rather Satan (or some such other, lesser entity) doing the actual talking. Well hey, if God and CGI can do it, why not Satan too? The point is, it's all just a show, really. Of course there's no way that the respiratory and oral physiology of any snake could perform the articulations and air-flow control needed to actually produce speech. So what?In order to produce an actual acoustic signal resembling human speech, the snake would need the lungs, larynx, tongue, teeth, nasal cavity, velum and lips of a human, and the presence of all those things would, presumably, preclude any visual perception of a snake. So in the absence of all that, given that the listener in this case is "seeing" the speaker as a snake, we can safely conclude that the words are being "spoken" either internally (inside the listener's head) by way of hallucination or dream, or else by some synthetic contrivance that places a good-quality sound production system directly adjacent to a plausible 3-D image of a snake. (Well, obviously, if the sound is synthesized in some way, there's no reason to assume the snake isn't synthesized as well). If I can choose to believe anything in Genesis, I can certainly believe that, which means it must be true (for me at least). But seriously, folks, let's not get too carried away in this vein. If you place any value at all on the role that objective physical reality plays in your lives, don't argue with iano about that, and understand that your physical reality (which I honestly believe is something I share with you) will occasionally conflict with particular things that are said in the Bible. If the conflict bothers you, and you would prefer to stick with the biblical version, that's your choice, but don't expect that your belief will change the physical reality.If the above comes across in any way as personally offensive to iano, I sincerely and humbly apologize, for that is not my intention. I am responding only to iano's method of debate (which I find highly amusing), and I honestly do respect him as a person. I mean that.

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.