Yet another biblical error

Originally posted by FabianFnas
No, no sound from scriabin. So the invitation is, as I suspected, a phony one from some strange fundamentalist.

Whenever a fundamentalist calls me a friend, then I'm suspicous. In this case I have forgotten why, but he surely has reminded me now.

my friend cannot challenge you, for are full up, please you must issue a challenge to him!

Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]Sokrates teachings are not the foundation of a religion, where its prime dogam is that everything Sokrates said was the very Truth, and that Sokrates is gods son. That's the difference.
Whenever I hear of someone starting a war because the words of Sokrates, then I will rethink.

Like I said, most people disregard the Bible based on its incredi ...[text shortened]... , if any, support in the NT documents themselves, as they are very strong, reliable accounts.[/b]

What standards do you accept for a valid questioning of the historical veracity of the gospels? The reason I ask is that I don’t want to waste my time banging up against a presumptive position that that the gospels cannot contain any historical errors or contradictions, and is willing to call in any kind of “maybe this” and “maybe that” as a defense. I fully concede, for example, that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke can likely be reconciled by sufficient eisegesis, of the “convoluted travels and adventures of Joseph, Mary and the Baby Jesus” variety.

I mean, nobody claims that Plato’s accounts of Socrates must be inerrant. As a Taoist (well, sort of a Zennish Taoist), I could care less about any putatively historical/biographical “facts” about one Lao Tzu. (That may be a prime difference between a system that requires the individual to judge the teachings for herself, and a system that requires the individual to simply accept the teachings.)

Anyway— This is probably clumsily put; but we know each other pretty well. I just don’t want to undertake the effort if whatever I could possibly come up with is ruled out of court at the get-go. Frankly, Epi, I don’t want to go through the effort that bbarr went through just to have you walk off…

So, I will concede at the outset that I don’t think there are any errors of historical fact or contradictions in the Bible that cannot be overcome with a sufficiently artful eisegesis. (The account of God’s stopping the sun to make daylight last longer might be problematic if one does not want to admit that “God’s word” includes inaccurate euphemisms of no spiritual consequence—but I have never been troubled by such euphemisms, or metaphors, or allegories, etc. in the way that biblicist/historicists/literalists have been.)

Originally posted by vistesd
What standards do you accept for a valid questioning of the historical veracity of the gospels? The reason I ask is that I don’t want to waste my time banging up against a presumptive position that that the gospels cannot contain any historical errors or contradictions, and is willing to call in any kind of “maybe this” and “maybe that” as a d ...[text shortened]... r metaphors, or allegories, etc. in the way that biblicist/historicists/literalists have been.)

You give me an insight here. The definition of 'true'.

When a fundamentalist says 'this is true' then he means another thing than when a scientist says 'this is true'. Is this a good standpoint for further discussions?

Let's use a proposition: "Two plus two equals five." Is this true?
No, a matematician or a scientist says no, because math teaches us other things.
But (important) a biblical fundamentalist may very well say yes, if seen in the bible, because it's meant metaphorically. When two people meets another two people, then they can combine their experiences far more together than if two people can, even two groups of two people. Right? Sensmoral: two plus two can very well be five, with suitable resonings.

So is Jesus really a descendant from David? Yes, metaphorical it may very well be truth, even if the bord of the bible for a scientist, genealogist, cannot agree. Because Jesus has a grandness *** as if *** he was a descendant. It doesn't mean anything if he is really a descendant or not, it just shows us the grandness! So this error is not an error, metaphorically! Right?

So we can very well *define* the bible as the perfect truth, because with a satisfactory metaphorical interpretation, anything can be true.

And, if you think in this way, anything that is against the bible, like the evolution theory, with a satisfactory metaphorical interpretation, anything can be false! Even if you see with your own eyes the proofs of an Earth billions of years old, with a satisfactory metaphorical interpretation it cannot be true. And even if it is impossible that Jesus can walk on water, with a satisfactory metaphorical interpretation it indeed is true.

As scientist I cannot understand this thinking!
... because then any truth can be false, and any falsity can be the truth.

But I now understand that the fundamentalist very well can think this way!
... even if it makes all discussions of this kind utterly meaningless.

If we use this kind of thinking when we argue about rules in chess then all discussions would end in stalemate. "Yes, I know that my pinned bishop cannot defend my king, but metaphorically speaking, taking the historic facts in concideration, using certain interpretations, then I win the game!"