Contradictions between Genesis 1-2

With all the other six-legged insects. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

That is so sad.One error and the Bible is worthless? How weak is your faith?How would one error in the Old Testament make the teachings of Christ worthless?That's practically blaphemy. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Yes, it is... for you.You would drop your entire "world view" because of one minor error. That's pretty pathetic, IMHO.Your faith is a house of cards. And yet even one error will cause you to reject all that you believe. That is weak faith by definition. Well, for one, I don't know that they are not in error. But, I can relate Jesus' teachings to what I do know is not in error, and see if there are any contractions. Then, if not, I can determine whether or not I accept them as true.In fact, this is the same thing we can do with the Old Testament. When we find that the OT contradicts what we know to be true, then we should not change what we know to correspond to our interpretation of it, we should change our interpretation of it to correspond to what we know.Let me repeat that because it's important.You should not change reality to fit your interpretation of the Bible, you should change your interpretation of the Bible to fit reality. Not in the slightest. Faith is believing in Jesus despite the contradictions in the Bible. It's not closing your eyes to truth because you won't believe in Jesus anymore if you find out the truth. That is not faith. That is willful ignorance.

---

ABE:A fly creeps around on all six of its legs. Edited by Catholic Scientist, : see ABE:Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

---

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence.
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith, faith, faith, faith.
Science has failed our world.
Science has failed our Mother Earth.
-System of a Down, "Science"He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-Avenged Sevenfold, "Bat Country"

What you are doing is taking a belief, and then seeing if the Bible contradicts that belief, and then when it doesn't, you allow yourself to accept that belief. If a particular interpretation of the Bible does not conform to that belief, then the interpretation is assumed to be wrong and is adjusted until it does fit with the belief.But why go about it that way?Basically you are changing your interpretation of the Bible to line up with your beliefs.Don't you think it would be better to change your beliefs to line up with the Bible? Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

No, no, and no. But flying creeping things typically have six legs, not four, for a total of eight apendages.Having four legs and flying would mean six apendages. The only creature I can think of that is like that is this one: Can you give me an example of something, besides a unicorn, that flys and has four legs?Keep in mind:

quote:

---

Flying: Flapping of wings to produce thrust. May ascend without the aid of the wind, as opposed to gliders and parachuters.

---

But none have four... Wait a minute... You added that "or more" part. That is sneaky and suspicious.Let me fix it for you:

quote:

---

What this passage is saying is that everything that 1. crawls (also another word for creep) on the ground and 2. flys and 3. has four legs shall be unclean to you.

---

Okay. Now, give me an example of a creature, preferably non-ficticious, that fits that category.

---

But all this is unecessary. What I'm really interested is what I described in Message 92.Please answer those questions for me.All this other stuff is for exercise. I'm really only interested in why you don't form your beliefs from the Bible and instead form the Bible from your beliefs. Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Haha. You fucked up.You defined flying, in Message 93 that I responded too, as:

quote:

---

Flying: Flapping of wings to produce thrust. May ascend without the aid of the wind, as opposed to gliders and parachuters.

---

I did actually think of Flying Squirrels, and foresaw you bringing them up. That's why I reminded you {"keep in mind"} of your own definition.Flying squirrels are gliders, not flyers. The logical extension of what you are typing is that "God" was saying that we couldn't eat creeping fowl except for FLYING SQUIRRELS.Seriously? That's the literal interpretation!?Do you see what I mean about in Message 92, about you twisting reality to fit a literal interpretation?Basically, you are saying:

quote:

---

God wasn't wrong. He was talking about the Flying Sqiurrels

---

Fuck that. That is bullshit. I cannot accept it. No. If he had said six legs, then he wouldn't have been wrong. That he said four is what makes him incorrect.Now that we have demonstrated that "he" was wrong about something, can we admit that "he" is not "God's literal and inerrant word"?Why not?Seriously, why can't we admit that?That he said four when he should have said six is one contradiction with reality that you must willfully ignore to maintain that "he" is, in fact" "God's literal and inerrant word".Why do you twist what he said to fit with reality {by that I mean saying that he was talking about Flying Squirrels} instead of twisting reality to fit what he said {by that I mean admitting the error}?I really don't understand why.Will you please explain it to me? Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

Here.I can also be reached after you click on the Reply Button, to the left of the text box that you type in is a link after:dBCodes On (help)It goes to the page I linked above.

---

I don't believe you for one second.Do you really and honestly believe that that is what you just did? You need to be more honest with yourself.What you did was dig for meanings of words that fit your preconceived notions. It has been demonstrated in this thread.When questioned about Lev20:11, you did not say:"Oh, God is talking about Flying Squirrels."It was only after you were backed into a corner (due to those preconceived notions) that you came up with the Flying Squirrels. And you only mentioned them because they fit the bill. That's just a Strawman.Im not saying any of that.I do believe that God inspired the Bible. It is just obvious to me that it is not inerrant and should not be read literally. And I'm not going to lie to myself about what I believe some verses say in order to maintain my preconceived notions about the Bible. I'm going to let the Bible inspire me to conceive new notions.And that is what I think you should do too. I think they way you read it is wrong. But that just isn't true, as exemplified by this thread.But I doubt that I can convince you of this.Especailly now that Moose, I mean Purple Dawn, has stepped in a ruined our fun.At least the lurkers will know.

---

What's the last two beliefs that you changed?

---

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence.
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith, faith, faith, faith.
Science has failed our world.
Science has failed our Mother Earth.
-System of a Down, "Science"He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-Avenged Sevenfold, "Bat Country"

You're more than welcome. Stick around and you might not be so quick to thank us (especially Ringo ). You're not going to get away with anything around here. That's funny, because I think that you are the one who is approaching it wrong. You should try reading it without expectations and without presumptions about god. Just read it.Also, I am not attcking in search of incongruity. There are plenty of people that do, but I am not one of them.Basically what you end up doind while searching for a "literal" interpretation, is start to make up all kinds of stupid shit in order to maintain inerrancy.For example, you've basically said that God tells us in Lev. that we should not eat Flying Squirrels and Praying Mantisses. That's total bullshit in my opinion.In fact, that is as far from a "literal" interpretation as I can think of.So why do it? You have to not be reading literally in order to get a literal interpretation? That's retarded.

Its your prerogative.

But then we would not be reading the verse literally. Why can this verse be interpreted non-literally to explain away the obvious error, but then GEN 1 cannot be interpretated in the same fashion to allow for evolution?If you're a literalist, then its all or nothing. You can't take GEN literally, and then read LEV non-literally because the error is so obvious. That's disigenuous.

Because if you're not reading it literally, then you can make up any old interpretation as long as it fits the bill.You could interpret "forming man out of the dirt" to mean the gradual process of inorganic material turning into organinc material then to cellular life that evolved into mankind.Why won't you accept that interpretation and accept evolution as well?Or you could interpret LEV to say that god is talking about Flying Squirrels and Praying Mantises.As long as the interpretation is internaly consistant, you can make the Bible out to say almost anything.But this is not how we determine creationism. Creationism is determined by reading the Bible literally. Where it says what it says and you don't get to make up whatever crap you want to get the ends to meet. If you're not a literalist, then why try so hard to prove the inerrancy of the Bible? Why support creationism? Its only necessary with a literal interpretation of the Bible.If your going to start making up your own interpretations to fit what you want to believe, why not grow up, take the blindfold off and realize that evolution does occur?Why hold on to a literal interpretation in one part of the Bible, which greatly effects your world view, but then use WAG interpretations in other parts of the Bible where errors are obvious?How do you not feel like you are lying to yourself?

How do you know that your interpretation is the right one? Actually they're not, and they're not mutually exclusive either. But that is not the topic here. There are plenty of threads on that. How?Can a book read itself? No, just the parts that deal with creation... Then why call them G1 and G2, if there's not 2 of them. If they were the same there would be only one. Actually, you're totally wrong.If you actually read them literally then there are contradictions. Its only when you start introducing "interpretations" (which actually makes it no longer literal, by definition) that you can see them as two takes on the same story.That's what I don't get. How can you say its being read literally when you are using an interpretation to extract the meaning.You only need to interpret something when you cannot read it literally.For example:

quote:

---

I am hot.

---

The literal reading is that I am at a relatively high temperature.An interpretation could be that I am incredibly sexually attractive.But you can not say that the interpretation is literal. And FYI, the literal reading is not an iterpretation. The literal reading is only one of temperature not of attractiveness and it requires no interpreting. You just read it as it is written.If we read GEN according to the above definitions of literal and interpretion, the literal reading is one with errors, and you inerrant interpretation is not a literal reading.How can you get around this?

---

That's not on topic so don't reapond to this. I don't want tthzr3, the topic nazi, to bust your balls. But I will answer your question.When I say that evolution does occur, I mean that species are evolving. Decent with modification. Every individual is one negligible transitionary point on a multiply divided continuum from a common ancestor to the plethora of species we see today.You cannot deny that evolution occurs as it is a fact observed by scientists. When the frequency of an allele changes in a population, that population has experienced evolution.The fact that we have seen speciation occur, shows there is no barrier from stoppin micro evolution to become macro evolution.Do deny evolution is to deny reality.Now, we can argue 'till the cows come home if the Theory of Evolution accurately describes what we observe, but to say that things don't evolve is most fallacious.

---

WAG = wild ass guess Do you take the Quran literally? If not, why not? To me, the errors are blindingly obvious, and the only way you can NOT see them, is if you make up stuff to get the ends to meet via some interpretation. The actual literal reading does contain errors.

That you read it as it is written and do not make up post hoc "interpretations" to make what you are reading fit with what you are seeing.If you have employ "interpretation" it then your not reading it "literally". I can accept that. And now that I re-read what I was replying too, this seems to be more what he was saying than what I initially thought.At first, I thought he was saying something more on the lines that they were supposed to be one chapter.