"The Virgin Birth, the Empty Tomb, and Other Fairy Tales You Don't Need to Believe to Have a Living Faith"
INTRODUCTION
"Human beings want to believe. People are therefore the ideal soil for the seed of religion. There's nothing wrong with that, as long they're dealing with God himself, because people can trust God not to hoodwink them.
But we humans deal not so much with God as with his authorized deputies. Since they assure us that it's all for our eternal happiness and salvation, we let them tell us many tales. Believers accept without question what they're taught to believe and do, because when authority comes forward bearing a mandate from God, doubt seems to be a sin.
Christians have to deal with God's truth only indirectly, because the catechism says: "The Catholic Church teaches us what God has revealed."...
Thus Christians only get the truth secondhand, if at all. But truth has passed through alien hands is censored truth, and the God whom we meet at the end of a series of ecclesiastical middlemen is a censored God. The truth, or whatever remains of it, has degenerated, thanks to theologically dense Christian pastors, into a mass of misunderstood and incomprehensible teaching; in other words, into pseudo faith and superstition.
The Church calls us to believe and not to think. Thus, throughout their lives , believers practice the mental gymnastics of saying amen to everything they're told. In a religion that blesses believers but distrusts doubters, the questioners go unblessed and arouse suspicion in more than a few believers. Yet questioning is a Christian virtue, though seldom practiced by Christians.
The discussions that follow are designed to help this questioning intelligence.
Some people will say this harms the faith, but understanding can't harm faith: actually it's faith that has all too often harmed understanding.
The desire to believe without harming one's mind is, rightly viewed, an act of piety. When people who long for a more immediately , authentic, and large scale truth simply walked away from verbose and empty sermonizing, it sometimes happends that a new truth, beautiful and gentle dawns in their darkness. This is the truth of God's compassion, which has been obscured by the Church's many fairy tales..."
CONTENTS
Luke's Christmas Fairy Tale
Matthew's Fairy Tale of Jesus Childhood
The Virgin Mother
The Angels
Jesus Genealogies
Good Friday
Judas the Traitor
Easter
The Ascension
Pentecost
The Fairy Tale of Acts
Peter in Rome?
The Apocrypha
Forgeries and False Authors
Hell
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Redeption by Execution
Thank you Dennis. I hope you don’t mind me commenting anonymously lol.
ReplyDeleteQuestioning is not a vice as was believed, and to this day, in the Armstrongite remains. It is not a lack of faith or a sign as such. With questions humanity may never have advanced to where we are in the sciences, medicine, socially etc ………Questions can protect us. Especially from charlatans, and great error, like we see in communities of ‘faith’ today. JWs, Scientology just two examples, and of course now the Armstrong movement and its prophets and associated pretenders to HWAs throne. It’s a dangerous world out there and communities of ‘faith’ can also be highly dangerous and damaging to one’s wellbeing. That is not to diminish those within faith communities but an acknowledgment of the dangers that may be lurking.
No problem. Thank you for commenting. My invitation was to anyone of those who commonly make derisive comments based on their projections of their own experiences. So far, no takers . To be expected I suppose. Perhaps they think the invitation was just to the one example of a recent comment. It was to any and all of them.
DeleteHere we go again! Dennis does all he can to mock believers. We are all stupid and believe in fairy tales. He is smart, we are dumb.
ReplyDeleteI didn't write the book nor the text. That was the author. Speak to her perhaps?
DeleteIf the shoes fits,….
DeleteThank you for this referral, Dennis. The comments by Karen Armstrong are interesting and enticing.
ReplyDeleteThanks too Glenn. It's refreshing to find one curious enough to want to know how the Bible and its stories in the Gospel are actually constructed and the issues with each. Most get threatened and jump right into blowback without even wanting to know anything more than they already think they know. Of course, few have ever read a study on such matters before they speak. Faith and facts are not compatible most of the time and the battle lines between the faithful and fact filled. By the time one defines information as "crown stealing", as is often done here on Banned or that information is "mocking" and accusations that the faithful are being thought of as "stupid" and "dumb", there is no actual chance of learning something with regards to common Biblical studies they never considered. Too scary I guess.
DeleteOf course, the above 3:44 is me. Didn't see I was commenting anonymously. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat's gone aray with Karen Armstrong I wonder. I recall her thought provoking earlier book about God, from about twenty five years or more ago.
ReplyDeleteFaith isn't only based on what other men say either in radio broadcasts or pulpits. It's not necessarily found in church programmes, church bible studies or church organised events. That is the mystery of God. Faith is not necessarily found even in observing Feast of Tabernacles.
Look at the Temple priests and all they did during Tabernacles year in and year out, to only end up plotting the murder of their own Saviour. So how many of the modern day Temple priests missing the mark during 2025 Tabernacles? Do men/humans change? I doubt it.
Too many men have fallen foul of trying to manufacture faith, even Herbert Armstrong through trial and error thought he and Loma had the correct formula worked out: The AC college, the ministerial hierarchy, the conferences and training yet through all that arose Joseph Tkach to destroy it all.
God gave and then God let it all go. I heard a Pastor last night, who's name i dont know, who's church denomination I dont know, preach from the heart that the current 2025 religious world is awash with no respect nor fear of God. That without a reverance and fear of God all is lost for without God we are nothing. I think this mystery speaker has a point.
Paraphrasing, word from Jesus was that if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could move a mountain.
DeleteObviously, that was not one of the ingredients of Armstrongism, because everyone thought they had lots of faith in 1975, and that the WCG was doing God's work, but the events of 1972-75 never did come to pass as prophesied. Herbie and the Heartbeats suffered a real bad case of unrequited prophesy.
Now, all the little ACOGs have faith that the prophesy didn't fail, but was postponed, and it is still not happening. All they do is run around calling each Laodicean and saying we mock.
Surrender to fact, COGlodytes! You worship a false apostle!!!
I wasn't even alive in 1972 nor 1975. Why dont you surrender to it being 2025 and not 1975.
DeleteIn my studies on this world system, I have narrowed things down to the great conspicuous movements which share common characteristics and affect the great masses of humanity. In general terms, these movements are social, political, and religious. Specifically, they are the political machine, the religious machine, the economic, educational, science, social/culture, and the media/ entertainment machine. Comprising one system, what can be said of any one of these movements is applicable to them all. That being said, what Karen Armstrong reveals about the (false) religious system can apply to all facets of this world, and I would bet money, she is just as deceived about that as the next guy. Consider her words:
ReplyDelete"Believers accept without question what they are taught to believe and do because when authority comes forward bearing a mandate from (?), doubt seems to be a sin".
Do you think Karen fell for the covid fiasco? What about Dennis? How many trusted the science because they were told to and they feared the consequences?
Continuing, " the Church (you can also insert the Gov't, the media, the medical profession, HWA) calls us to believe and NOT THINK ".
Karen, Dennis, anybody here fallen for that? Sure, that's the kind of world we live in.
" In a religion (or any of these movements) that blesses believers but distorts doubters "??? where any deviation from an official narrative is immediately labeled a conspiracy theory, and those who doubt labeled as a kook. Continuing Karen's words, " yet, questioning is a Christian virtue, though seldom practiced by Christians (or anybody)". . .because we trust authority.
Dennis @344 wants us to know "how the Bible and its stories in the Gospel are actually constructed and the issues with each". He wants us to THINK for ourselves! Good advice. I encourage everyone to apply that wisdom to everything in life, especially when confronting any entity that tries to do your thinking for you, like those who call the Bible a myth merely on their say so.
The Bible is not a myth. In fact, it is the only reasonable and dependable source that clearly identifies the evils of this world system and the power behind it, and how to escape it. But by all means, don't take my word for it. See for yourself.
I will at some future point have a look at this book. But judging from the table of contents now, this looks fairly formulaic: a critic has perused the Bible with the assumption that the word of God must be perfect according to some assumed standard and discovers numerous places where that standard is violated. Hence, we can be assured that there is no God.
ReplyDeleteThe violation of this contrived standard is a major blow to people who exalt certainty. This would include many fundamentalists and atheists. But the issue is if the Word (the person) of God underwent kenosis and came in the flesh why would not the word (the text) of God also not undergo kenosis in the earthly realm. As Dr. Peter Enns said, “God let his children tell the story.” Both the Word of God and the word of God are incarnational. That is to say, both are kenotic.
A further issue is that certainty is not the opposite of doubt. Certainty is the opposite of trust in God and that trust does not cancel doubt but renders doubt meaningful. Doubt is part of the process. In the last analysis, I am fine, though cautious, with the Bible with all of its marking by human fingerprints and curational abrasions. Whatever its status, Jesus came to this earth and he was all right with it.
Scout
truth [that?] has passed through alien hands is censored truth
ReplyDeleteAre those Ranke-Heinemann's words, or Dennis's? Whoever wrote this seems unaware of the irony that all teaching and learning involves passing truths through other hands. It is practically unavoidable that so much of what we think we know has come to us through others teaching us, whether in the form of books, or lectures, or even sermons. Even if you were to go to Israel and dig at archaeological sites, much of what you would learn would be mediated by what others have taught you about what you've found.
No, we can't avoid the reality that much of what we "know" has come to us second-hand. Even our language. If we learned Mandarin Chinese we would have different tools for understanding our world than if we learned Hebrew. The problem isn't that we've learned about the Bible and Christian history from teachers, it's that we sometimes fail to recognize that each teacher has his or her own agenda. Ranke-Heinemann has one agenda. Gerald Flurry has another. But if a teacher takes offense at having his presentation and agenda questioned, that's a pretty good sign that the teacher has an agenda other than truth. That's true whether your teacher is an Armstrongite or an Evangelical or a secular humanist. We should honor and treasure the "secondhand" information we receive, but we should also honor and treasure our ability to scrutinize it carefully, and not be pressured into accepting it uncritically.
The only information which can be taken as Divine Truth must come directly from God Himself to the person, with no intermediaries whatsoever. Any intermediary might be corrupted. No documents, no prophets or preachers, no child-molesting perverts. And no messiah figures. “Best Evidence Rule.” Anything that can possibly be wrong cannot be given that divine credibility. If you take such a potentially flawed source as divine, you will have to answer for it. Have fun with that.
ReplyDeleteShort of such a presentation, all we can know about our Creator and Judge is that our intelligence indicates that He is intelligent; and, that He must be taken as benevolent (and thus, we ought to be such also), because if He is anything but that, none of this matters. If He wants us to know more, He must tell us Himself, because we don’t want to get it wrong.
It is the perfect defense, because it is absolutely true. No quotation of scripture can overrule it. No archaeology can question it. No science can debunk it. No preacher or child molester can override it. And no random commenter on a blog can credibly challenge it. Most of all, God knows it’s true.
11.05, but only a minority of any Christian's knowledge comes directly from God himself. Part of being made in God's image is the responsibility of acquiring knowledge through our our efforts. 2 Timothy 2:15 "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." and Proverbs 25:2 "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of Kings is to search it out".
DeleteThe only information which can be taken as Divine Truth must come directly from God Himself to the person, with no intermediaries whatsoever.
DeleteLee, are you saying that when Jesus sent out pairs of disciples to preach, He was making a mistake and should have let the Father work directly with new converts? Or maybe you're saying that God the Father shouldn't/couldn't work properly through Jesus as His intermediary? And are you saying that what David Koresh claimed to receive directly from God Himself is more sound than what ordinary Bible students get from their pastors?
Seems to me that intermediaries are not just inevitable, but are beneficial... as long as you have the wisdom to evaluate which ones are supporting God's message and which are distorting it.
Dennis, like the many authors that he brings to our attention, rightly condemns what the bible calls Pharisaic Christianity, but then uses it to attack and smear true Christianity. It's like my experience with people trying to discredit my Christian beliefs by bringing up and throwing the inquisition in my face.
ReplyDeleteIf doubt is a sin then using your head is a sin.
ReplyDeleteQuestioning IS a lack of faith. To claim otherwise is to try to have it both ways.
ReplyDeleteGod, the God the Father in heaven, cannot inspire a book in Greek and Hebrew that is true, and require some, the Jews, to preserve the book to now?? I think God can .........
ReplyDeleteAnnon 744 makes some very valid points. He writes,
ReplyDelete"The problem isn't that we've learned about the Bible and Christian history from teachers, it's that we sometimes fail to recognize that each teacher has his or her own agenda".
" But if a teacher (or institution) takes offense at having his presentation (narrative) and agenda questioned, that's a good sign that the teacher has an agenda other than truth".
I think this is what sets the Bible (with, as Scout puts it, all of its marking by human fingerprints and curational abrasions) apart from the narratives and agendas of this world system operated by carnal humanity.
We are all familiar with the lies and greed associated with false human agendas, but what about God's agenda as revealed in Scripture? It is found in a variety of scriptures from both testaments. Just a few examples are Jeremiah 9:23-24, John 3:16, 17:3, 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Timothy 3:15-17. When you read these you will find that all is good, there is nothing sinister or evil, and there is a remarkable consistency from one testament to the other, unlike what we see in human official narratives.
Another thing that separates the Bible apart from corrupt human thinking is the fact that it encourages one to test what it says, to search, prove, and to THINK for oneself (see Acts 17:11, 1 Thess 5:21, 1 John 4:1, John 5:39, Psalms 34:8, Romans 14:5). The Bible's agenda is by invitation, not by threat or force (see Matthew 11:28-30, Revelation 3:20). The contrast is striking. Divine nature is different from human nature, and if our unbelieving friends can't see that, I have nothing for them! What must be understood is, the problem with religion (false) is not the Bible, but false teachers that use the Bible for their own purpose and greed, thus misrepresenting everything it stands for, and Scripture even warns of this very thing (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).
The Bible is unique. It's inspiration and narrative is beyond how mere carnal humans think and function. It is not a flattering book for mankind or this world at all. If it were merely a human narrative it would read quite differently. For these reasons, I prefer the holy scriptures to waiting on some unknown voice (god) to speak to me.
Another thing that separates the Bible apart from corrupt human thinking is the fact that it encourages one to test what it says, to search, prove, and to THINK for oneself
DeleteIf this were true, Bible-believers wouldn't go ballistic when people test the Bible and find that while it has tremendous merit, it also contains serious errors and dangerously bad guidance in places. It's one of the very best human documents ever created, but it is far, far from infallible, yet those who claim "The Bible doesn't demand acceptance" cannot handle it when people test the Bible and find parts of it unworthy of acceptance.
Citing the Bible to prove the Bible is circular reasoning, just like citing a child molester to prove a child molester.
DeleteBtw, Jesus may well have simply been an Essene hippie who FAFO’d, with followers deluded enough to make up a resurrection story for him. lol “Eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.”
Why, Lee! Shame, shame, shame! You went and ratted on us to the Painful Truth!!! You wrote that your comments about Jesus on Banned always get censored, yet, lookie here! Gary just let your latest one through!
DeleteWhat's wrong with being a hippie, anyway? I can totally see Jesus at a Grateful Dead concert enjoying the excellent music and comaraderie. The people at the Grateful Dead concert would welcome Jesus, too! He'd probably make us some nice wine to make the concert more enjoyable!
~Mickey D
Lee seems to be a very unhappy guy. I tuned him out ages ago.
DeleteIs the Painful Truth still operating? I got turned off by how difficult is to navigate through all of the rabbit holes on the site and the politics.
If you read that post, then you know the actual story, and how it differs from your hyperbolic rendition.
DeleteAs for hippies, it was the itinerant lifestyle producing little or nothing of value and undermining the society that affords them the opportunity for the lifestyle. They were at best hobos without the character. (Yes, we have some of those today.) Modern so-called hippies today really more look upon the nostalgia in the taking of the title. Then they go back to their jobs producing something.
Just for a little entertainment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-gz-kj8NXCA&pp=ygUbb2xkIGhpcHBpZSBiZWxsYW15IGJyb3RoZXJz0gcJCfsJAYcqIYzv
The Painful Truth is an excellent collection of material which exposes Armstrongism, and can very effectively assist people in leaving that toxic cult. In the early oughts, there was also a vibrant forum community associated with that site. Very few participants ever used their real names there, either. Bullies got pissed because there wasn't a damned thing they could do to really get at them.
DeleteThe two people who regularly comment over there now have very similar world views to those Lee has expressed here. Him going over there is a match made in heaven. The problem is that there may be, oh, perhaps 4-5 comments per month. Here, it's more like 4-5 per hour. Better to be disliked and unpopular here, where your comments that do get through garner more attention, than to be a card carrying member of the club on a site where there is a paucity of actual discussion.
Cause the culties won't surrender to the fact that their apostle was a false apostle, and yet here we are in 2025, and the bogus HWAcaca hasn't happened.
ReplyDeleteAnon 602
ReplyDeleteHere we go again, blaming the Bible because of the actions of PEOPLE!
It's easy to say Scripture contains serious errors, dangerously bad guidance, and is unworthy of acceptable. What does that prove? Why not give a few examples so we can judge for ourselves? That would be another opportunity to compare a human narrative to God's narrative.
Also, citing the Bible to prove the Bible could be circular reasoning if that's the intent. But contrasting Scripture with human reasoning, thus proving its uniqueness is appropriate.
Face it. The real battleground is what Scripture says about "man" and this "world system" and the need for a Saviour. That is "foolishness to the natural man" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
BP8:
Delete“…citing the Bible to prove the Bible could be circular reasoning if that's the intent. But contrasting Scripture with human reasoning, thus proving its uniqueness is appropriate.”
It’s the same thing. You are citing scriptural statements in an attempt to establish the Judeo-Christian Scriptures as divine rather than human in origin. You can claim that you are simply PRESUMING this, and using those citations as supposed examples. Yet your argument is with somebody who apparently does not share that presumption. Thus for your argument to be valid, in the context of your discussion, you are indeed trying to prove the Bible (as divine) with the Bible.
People do come up with these ideas, by the way. My evidence: the writings found in the book called the Bible. People wrote that. We even have authors attributed. You make the extraordinary claim that God inspired it, yet the only evidence you offer here is your own conviction — that is, intuition. That’s the same basis Armstrongists use to hold to that cult despite the evidence (cf, the pervert’s use of John 6:44). And it is just as invalid.
By the way, you actually destroy your own argument by citing Scout and his “human fingerprints” ideas. If your God allowed his Word to be so corrupted, then you have a god hardly worthy to clean my cat’s litter box. You need a new God.
Anonymous 7:44 wrote, “We should honor and treasure the "secondhand" information we receive, but we should also honor and treasure our ability to scrutinize it carefully, and not be pressured into accepting it uncritically.”
ReplyDelete“Our ability to scrutinize it carefully” leads to another issue in this communication problem. The Bible exists as a document that was extensively curated by human beings. We know, for instance, that in the post-exilic period, the Bible was edited. The Torah seems to be an amalgam of the viewpoints of several interest groups in ancient Israel. We end up with curiosities like who really slew Goliath was it David or Elhanan. In the original ancient Hebrew, without rationalizing manipulation, it could be either one. But, of course, not both.
The Bible has been compiled and edited. “God let his children tell the story.” That characterizes the beginning of the transmission process. On the later receiving end, you sit down with the document and read it and you unavoidably engage in interpretation. The Adventists interpreted the Bible in a certain way, so did G.G. Rupert, so did the Church of God Seventh Day and so did HWA. And in the last analysis, the reader does the final interpretation. There is no uninterpreted Bible in the earthly realm.
And after all of that, this lengthy arc of communication, you have someone like Gerald Waterhouse who says the Bible says what it says and all you have to do is read it. (I heard him say this but I am not sure if he meant to apply it to the entire Bible are just a particular passage.) If you can be convinced of that then atheists and fundamentalists can have a field day with your belief.
It is interesting that God chose to do it that way. Since the Garden of Eden, we have nobody to consult directly on what the word of God means. Jewish scholars have engaged heavily in Midrash. Denominations have tried to cobble together creeds so they can define, preserve and follow faithfully the essentials of belief. Belief as they interpret it. In my view the Bible is one of the penalties for what happened in the Garden of Eden. It is great to have it but it brings a burden. It serves the ball into our court. We have to rightly handle the text with the help of the Holy Spirit. And the proliferation of denominational views has informed us that this principle works well at the center but not at the periphery. The Bible, as no other document, demands trust in God.
I have often imagined myself receiving an expurgated Bible to study in the afterlife and finding that it is only about the tenth of the size of the Bibles now on our shelves.
Scout
1/10 the size, Scout?
DeleteThen 90% of what people are using to build their faith is “human reasoning.” No one knows which 90% to ignore.
If a lawyer takes a deposition into court, and tells the judge that 90% of it isn’t really from the deponent, it will not come close to being admitted. “But Your Honor, you and the jury can examine it, and discern what they think is useful from it in order to craft their conclusion on this case.” That lawyer is dead. “Prejudicial” would only begin to describe it. “Perjury” is more like it.
It reminds me of the witness in a congressional impeachment hearing who, when asked what his evidence was for his claim against the official being impeached, said, “Just my presumption.” The Congressman asking him pointed out that there is direct evidence, and there is circumstantial evidence. Then he pointed out that what the guy offered wasn’t evidence at all. He didn’t even have a term to describe it, it was so… non-evidential. It wasn’t an opinion or conclusion. It wasn’t even presented as speculation. It was just… his presumption!
Your claim is worse. It’s just you talking.
Dennis, if there’s no God, then why do you care if people believe in something? If faith gives them a little solace or hope—real or not—what’s the harm? Death is already a pretty bleak deal; “congratulations, you’re stardust now” doesn’t exactly warm the heart. At least believers get to cling to the idea of purpose, forgiveness, or an after-party beyond the grave. To you, their faith costs nothing—no more threatening than someone clutching a rabbit’s foot, carrying a lucky coin, or knocking on wood to keep the universe from smiting them. If it’s all make-believe, then you’ve lost nothing. But if it isn’t… well, let’s just say you may wish you’d picked up a rabbit’s foot of your own.
ReplyDeleteTonto, Ever since the time of Madalyn Murray O'Hare, there has been a battle between atheists and theists. Her court case changed the complexion of both sides. The atheists saw prayer in school as an attempt to impose theistic beliefs upon them. Suddenly, atheism morphed from a loose lack of belief, into a well-defined counter-position, almost as exhaustively defined as a religion itself.
DeleteAtheists who come upon their world view through science are objective, and generally just see theists as being ignorant, superstitious, or fantasy-driven. Atheists who came into non-belief as a result of having been burned by or left wanting by, a religion, frequently have considerable anger attached as part of the equation. Seeing an enemy, they become very defensive if they feel that a believer is attempting to lead them back into belief, or attempting to control or legislate over their lives or behavior.
These are difficult times for deep or independent thinkers, people not in the box or bubble of the various borgs. Discussions here will most likely reflect that more and more as time progresses. Freedom means not having a belief which differs from one's own imposed upon one. Some have either lost sight of that, or are surrendering, going along to get along, just as we all learned to do in Armstrongism.
BB
Anon 602
ReplyDeleteHere we go again, blaming the Koran because of the actions of PEOPLE!
It's easy to say the Koran contains serious errors, dangerously bad guidance, and is unworthy of acceptable. What does that prove? Why not give a few examples so we can judge for ourselves? That would be another opportunity to compare a human narrative to God's narrative.
Also, citing the Koran to prove the Koran could be circular reasoning if that's the intent. But contrasting the Koran with human reasoning, thus proving its uniqueness is appropriate.
Face it. "And who would reject the faith of Abraham except a fool! We certainly chose him in this life, and in the Hereafter he will surely be among the righteous" (2.130).
The Koran is like any other library book. It's not 100% good, nor is it 100% evil. You will find some usable nuggets amongst its pages, and some things better thrown away.
ReplyDeleteIf you base your life upon it, and you do not wear your filtering blinders, your life will reflect the entire mixture.
Certain types of Christians defeat the balanced purposes of the Bible by taking it to extremes, becoming fundamentalist inerrantist zealots until they are the equivalent of the Islamic Jihadists.
Lee 916 writes,
ReplyDelete"If your God allowed His word to be so corrupted, then . . . .you need a new God"
Anything a corruptible human being touches will eventually become corrupted in some form or another. Why God allows "anything" to happen is below my pay grade. He doesn't verbally communicate to me His concerns and actions, but the Bible contains a good indication of both. Concerning His word and the problems associated with human fingerprints, I think Scout did an adequate job explaining that in his several postings, so there is no need to duplicate that here.
Do I need a new God? No, I'm happy with the one I have, and His word which helps me in the navigation of life. If it turns out that the Bible is pure myth, then I think special considering (even praise and worship) should be extended to that ancient band of gypsies who formulated and put it all together, whose insights and foreknowledge were far superior to anything we have seen to date. Otherwise, I accept it for what it claims to be, which is far better than waiting for a verbal voice from heaven or a strong hand from somewhere.
BP8: “Anything a corruptible human being touches will eventually become corrupted in some form or another” (12:04 Saturday).
DeleteAnd with that, you make my point for me: “The only information which can be taken as Divine Truth must come directly from God Himself to the person, with no intermediaries whatsoever. ANY INTERMEDIARY MIGHT BE CORRUPTED. No documents, no prophets or preachers, no child-molesting perverts. And no messiah figures. ‘Best Evidence Rule.’ Anything that can possibly be wrong cannot be given that divine credibility” (11:05 Friday throughout; emphasis added).
BO8: “…I accept it for what it claims to be, which is far better than waiting for a verbal voice from heaven or a strong hand from somewhere.”
Me: “If you take such a potentially flawed source as divine, you will have to answer for it. Have fun with that.”
Lee writes, "if you take a potentially flawed source as divine, you will have to answer for it"!
DeleteExactly WHO will I have to answer to? Some voice from heaven? How do I identify that voice? How do I know if that voice is a God or a Satan . . .by some subjective standard I set up for myself? Are you implying each one of us became a law unto ourselves?
Your carnal arguments are on the same level as the Sadducees, who came to Christ with a silly question about 7 brothers marrying the same woman (Matthew 22:23-29). The answer He gave them would apply to you:
" You do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the POWER OF GOD "!
It is true, we don't have a perfect copy of the scriptures, but by the power of God and the gift of His Holy spirit, what we DO HAVE is workable. Perfection doesn't exist in this world, no perfect wives, perfect husbands, children, the food we eat, religion, economics. But we don't discard these things because they have flaws, we work within the parameters we have and make them work. That's called " life".
I see value in the book we call the Holy Bible. It has been a blessing in my life. I accept everything it claims to be. If you don't, that's fine too. I wish you the best of luck navigating life on your own.
God, BP8. You will have to answer to God, the Creator and Judge of the universe, in your eternal judgment. Or have you Scout-ed that whole idea out of your Bible?
ReplyDeleteIt’s funny how you criticize my “carnal arguments,” then justify imperfections in your scriptures with earthly examples. “Well, since the human things aren’t perfect, we certainly can expect something from God to be perfect.”
And please stop with this claim of having this “Holy Spirit.” Unless you have reconfigured a geiger counter to detect it (or do you do “Him”?), all you are doing is another circular argument: “I have the Holy Spirit, therefore, I can know the stuff — including that I have the Holy Spirit!“ Armstrongists presume their John 6:44 drawing/clock calling, use that to defend Armstrongism, including very unique take on that verse. Exactly what I warned you about before.
Suggestion: Think your arguments through BEFORE you fire them off. People criticize me for verbose statements. The reason is that I seek to head off countershots before my opponents can actually take them. That’s why I was able to counter your previous comment by simply quoting my initial one. I had already given the answers. And yet you turn around and walk right into the point.
As I write this, I have to wonder if your mistake regarding who you will answer to has occurred to you as you were await my response. “Oh, [EXPLETIVE]! He means God’s judgment! I really [EXPLETIVE’ed] that one.” If so, don’t worry. We’ve all done it. The big thing here, though, is to learn from it, both tactically and substantively.
I gotta add this: I almost said this before, but I erred on the side of brevity.
ReplyDeleteWhen you suggest I might be pushing a subjective standard you set for yourself, or being a law unto yourself, you don’t realize that YOU (and Scout) are the one(s) doing that. Your scriptures are imperfect, so you have an excuse to get around them when you think they’re wrong. You have some sort of personal sense (subjective) that tells you how things are supposed to be, and then you use that to get around contrary scriptural statements (law unto yourself). And of course, you’re basing it and justifying it by your objectively unsubstantiated claim of having the Holy Spirit.
You hit the trifecta!
BP8 is an example of "The just shall live by faith " (Heb 10:38, Heb 11:1) and the non compatibility of the physical (non believers/unbelievers/atheists) and the spiritual (God oriented) which leads to 1 Cor 2:4. To each his own.
ReplyDeleteLee 718 says, "I will have to answer to God the creator and judge of the universe in my eternal judgement ".
ReplyDeleteIs this statement divine truth or your opinion? If truth, why is it the truth, because you say so? In an earlier comment (1105) you said:
" The ONLY information which can be taken as divine truth MUST come directly from God Himself to the person".
If that is the case, How do YOU know God is creator and a judge? How do YOU know there is going to be an eternal judgement? Are you saying He revealed these concepts to you personally? Did He speak to you? You scorn me for believing and quoting a historic document that is accepted worldwide, but you expect us to accept your subjective visions and opinions as fact? You can't have your cake and eat it too!
You also previously said, "ALL we can know about our creator and judge is that our intelligence INDICATES ??? . . .that He is intelligent, and that He MUST??? be taken as benevolent, and thus we ought to be such also".
How do you know He is intelligent, benevolent, or that He even exists? These are questions our good friend Dennis would be asking.
Which is it? You know about God by His direct communication with you, or by your human reasoning about intelligence, which leads you to various conclusions? Either way, both are subjective standards which you have adopted for yourself. And by doing so, you have rigged the game so you can't lose. Your opinion becomes the rule of any argument and it's futile for any one trying to gain say your perspective. You won't accept any authority but your own. That's a no win situation for everyone but you.
I know you hate HWA, but in reality you are more like him than you think. You believe in a strong hand from somewhere and you are a theist without portfolio. Good luck with that.
BP8:
DeleteWhen you are down to questioning those most basic points which we should hold in common, you have spiritually bankrupted yourself, and for a mere Internet argument. I don’t need to prove you wrong. You just destroyed yourself. Think about it: If there is no divine Creator and Judge, and no eternal judgment, then you are wrong as well, and none of this matters.
You are right about one thing, though: I can’t lose on this.
Lee
ReplyDeleteI have nothing against you personally and I support your right to believe any way you desire, but we clearly have nothing in common.
I accept and believe the concepts of a Creator, Judge, and eternal judgement because they are fundamental truths of holy Scripture. You are on record that you accept them because they "seem" to be "logical", therefore making them mere products of your imagination. Also, you espouse scriptural truths in order to destroy scriptural relevance, which is very close to the scenario described in Matthew 4:1-11.
No, you can't lose. It's impossible to debate another person's imagination and win!
Maybe this will clarify it:
Delete- It’s not imagination to accept the self-evident fact that there is a Higher creating Power with the intelligence to give us intelligence.
- It’s not imagination to recognize that God being benevolent rather than ambivalent or malevolent is only chance we have. (And a benevolent God wanting His creation NOT to be benevolent really isn’t all that benevolent for a deity.)
If God does not have the two traits above — intelligence and benevolence — are not true, faith and religion is just a self-deluding game. Trying to discern divine truth from a book, particularly one you recognize as imperfect, by subjecting it to your human evaluation is what amounts to imagination here.
The actual reason I can’t lose is that if God says I should’ve believed something more as divine truth, I simply note that I could not in good conscience do so, because He never confirmed it. It could have been wrong. If He doesn’t accept this, He appears unjust before the whole host of Heaven. It’s the perfect defense.
People can make their judgment on our dispute. And one day, God will make His.
Peace, bro.✌️
Please note in previous comment that phrase “are not true” in paragraph about “two traits” is bad edit. Please disregard those three words. Thank you.
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