true religion

If you don't want people to talk about your beliefs why do you voice them so publicly? If your faith can't survive a couple of questions best you keep it to yourself. Interesting - so, you think that belief and faith might not be the best way to determine the way things really are and what our place in this world might be? Funny, that's what we've been saying all along.

Then why withdraw? The way you're backing out of all your debates on this thread and others makes it seem like you're afraid to argue or something. It's like you're sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "I can't hear you!"That's not a position suggestive of intellectual honesty. Consider the example of Truthlover, who (in my opinion) is as intellectually honest a person of faith as anyone is likely to come across. Does he say stuff like "I'm tired of evos arguing with me?" No. When he doesn't have an answer, he says so. That's honesty.It looks like you're just retreating from questions you can't answer because you're afraid that if you don't have the answer it says something about your faith. To the contrary. If you don't have answers, no one's going to think worse of you or your faith if you just say so.Take the last word, if that's important to you - but think about what I've said.

That's a great question for Rrhain! Since he's so certain that negatives can be proved, I'd like to see him tackle this one.Now, me, I'd say that since Mike is making the positive claim ("the bible is true") it's up to him to support it. Otherwise we'd just yell "Prove it is!" "No, you prove it isn't!" back and forth.Anyway, why would you use evidence from the bible to confirm the bible itself? That's circular reasoning - assuming what you are trying to prove.

Right, but it's indistinguishable from one. Like all special revalation, third parties can't tell the difference between somebody recieving private messages from god and somebody who's lying about it.For all you know the bible is a work of fiction that people mistakenly believe. I would point out that (especially at the time the bible was written) there's significant financial reward for starting religions, especially ones that tell you to donate all your worldly goods to the church or you won't get into heaven.

That doesn't even begin to answer the question. The question is, why must faith in God equate to a literal reading of the bible? Especially in the face of evidence (internal and external) against such a reading?Plenty of people have faith in god but accept the findings of science. (I'm not one of them, but there are plenty.) Again, why does that have to mean creationism to you? I for one am curious.

Schraf's question, if I read it right, asked you why faith in God has to mean faith in a literal reading of the bible. For many reasonable, faithful people, it doesn't. I'm just curious how you defend the literal interpretation. Sure, but does it have to be literally, historically true to have that significance? I can appreciate that that's the foundation of your faith but it doesn't have to be a literal narrative to be the case. It could simply be a parable. It's possible for a story to express a truth without itself being literally true.

A myth is not the same as a lie. The genesis story can be true in what it tells us about the relationship of God and humans - as well as the relationship between a man and a woman - without being a literal account.The thing is, if it's a literal account, if you actually believe that the Genesis stories REALLY happened, you must admit that they would have left significant evidence for their occurance? Things that really happen tend to leave evidence that they happened.This is not the case for the Genesis stories. There's significant evidence that they do not represent true historical narratives. Even in the text itself. (If I tell you a story that starts with "once upon a time", everyone who hears it knows that story didn't really happen. There are elements in the story of genesis that are the same kind of indicators.)There's no reason you can't accept the truth of the thesis of the Genesis story (the need for man's redemption) but not the truth of the events described actually happening.

The seven-day creation week, for one thing. Seven is a number often used in classical literature to suggest mysticism, or an innumerable amount. (This appears in other places in the bible. In the Oddessy, Odysseus spends "seven years" in a place when the story of what happens in that place is clearly fantastic. In parts of the narrative that are more realistic, he spends more normal amounts of time. Clearly the use of the number 7 is to suggest a mystic dimension to his stay at that place.)The number 7 also appears in the story of Cain and Abel, when god marks Cain and commands that if any slay him, his punishment will be "sevenfold". God's not just doing math, here; he's suggesting that the punishment for killing Cain will be innumerably stronger.There's much repetition of phrases, like "And it was so." Repetition is often used in myth to highlight a natural order to things.To the modern reader these aren't as clear as "once upon a time", but to readers of antiquity they would have been clear indicators that they weren't reading history, but myth. Anyway these are just the few I could come up with on a cursory examination, a deeper study could uncover much more.An interesting note: my fiance is working on her thesis, a look at matriarchal remnants in Russian folktales. She tells me that Russian folktales tend to end, not with "and they lived happily ever after", but something like "and I have been to their home where I drank their beer, but not a drop of it passed my lips." Simultaneously asserting the fictional veracity of the tale and the speaker's sobriety.