Atheist debates: Always misunderstanding Scripture?

[fhansen]

Yep, and even there the Church recognized great value in his writings, regardless of his opinion. STA just realized the enormous chasm between human understanding and the understanding that can and will be granted directly by God, as he was granted a profound insight. Either way it’s the Church that decides what’s worthwhile and what’s not in the ponderings of her people. And not everything that STA wrote has been accepted by her BTW.

 

[goout]

goout:

Very true you have an impasse.
I don’t need testable and repeatable empirical evidence to prove a specific reality. I truly don’t think anyone needs testable and repeatable empirical evidence to prove all of reality. That paradigm is something atheists insist upon to justify a belief system. The paradigm fails, but it’s something to stand pat on.

Love for instance. Love is not subject to testable repeatable empirical evidence, but I trust that it’s very real, and has an effect on the destiny of the world.

Yes but you do need that evidence to support the existence of a specific deity, unless you’re claiming that reality is a god in and of itself.

In a sense you’re right, but love in humans is the result of a chemical reaction and therefore is, in part, testable, repeatable, and observable.

Well, when you have empirically testable evidence to prove love, in the manner that you are demanding for God, let us know please. And I am hoping you agree that love is as real as the potato in front of me. (more so, in my opinion).

Note that you are talking about testing the effects of love, or the physical signs of it. If you concur with this kind of evidence, then God is real, slam dunk, by that very standard.

 

[Lee1]

STA just realized the enormous chasm between human understanding and the understanding that can and will be granted directly by God, as he was granted a profound insight.

I don’t think STA said why he wouldn’t write anymore, someone high in the Church asked him to continue i think and he wouldn’t elaborate on why he wouldn’t, apart from sayingmit was just straw. We will never know why he stopped and why he made that comment, but undoubtedly it was due to a profound enlightenment and one which was to remain personal and private.

 

[fhansen]

Yes, I may’ve been presuming a bit there. I just doubt that he viewed his work as wrong, however, so much as inadequate or inferior in attempting to describe that which is really ineffable in the end.

 

[BoomerangToo]

I thought Catholics accept that the Bible is fully the work of men

That is how I think of the Bible. Men wrote it and men are prone to evil, which shows in the Bible. I can’t believe the genocidal manic God of the OT is the same God as Jesus. I really think the OT authors attribute things to God which originated only in the minds of men. In other words, the people didn’t understand God until Jesus came and set us straight.

I am reading the OT now for the first time since childhood. I am now up to Ezra. I find it difficult to swallow the notion that God commanded the Jews to destroy hundreds of thousands of people and take their land. Whatever happened to “Thou shalt not kill”?

I’m really beginning to think the Jews got hoodwinked many times by false prophets who claimed they got a message from God telling them to kill. I can well understand the atheist’s argument that God is a serial killer and always angry. Who would want to follow this God?

I’d like to dismiss all this unpleasantness altogether except that brings us into dangerous territory. If we dismiss the angry God of old, what next? Do we dismiss Jesus, too?