Originally posted by twhitehead
I think you missed my point. My point is that if God can see the future and inspired the gospel writers then one would expect him to inspire them to write something that would be useful to the maximum number of recipients of the message even after translation. So even if the King James translation is a terrible translation, the translated text might actua ...[text shortened]... e whilst simultaneously claiming it is inspired. I find the two claims somewhat contradictory.
Perhaps I misunderstood you.
This is a funny game we're doing. We often discuss with christians as if the christian god really existed. Like discussing as a scientist with people actually believeing tat you could travel in the speed of light or could divide with zero, and argue that *if* we could divide by zero then this and this could be calculated, or *when* we travel in the speed of light, then time stops and we see everything in bright yellow. Rubbish. We cannot divide by zero, we cannot travel in the speed of light.
Now we're saying that "If the bible is inspired by god (the christian god does not exist), then it would be translated to English (or Swahili or whatever) because the holy spirit (there is no such thing) will hold his hand over it and make it as god intended." We actually say so, playing by the rules of christians. We should say more often: "Rubbish. Your god does not exist!".
Never I hear some fundamental christian say: "As Darwin is a genius, it's a fact that all the primates have the same ancestor." They just wouldn't. No way.
Does this mean that we (who don't believe in the christian god) are more out-of-the-box thinkers, or more tolerant? Yes, I actually think so.