Biblical Truth

[anon5216]

Wow… you really limit God’s ability. You do realize the free will does not necessitate error, don’t you? I mean ‘to err is human,’ but to be human does not necessarily mean to err.

All I said was free will and misinterpretation necessitates the acknowledgement of guaranteed infallibility being off the table.
You do agree God gave us free will, do you not?

 

[anon5216]

And this necessarily makes it untrue? So unless God speaks to you directly through a burning bush or thunder and lightning… oh wait, that wouldn’t work either because God would be using a third party (in this case matter) to communicate. Also, even if Jesus did personally write down something, you as a reader would still claim that you were getting your information second hand, either because you as the reader were not there personally to receive said message directly from Jesus or because the copier of the writing is technically handing on what he supposed Jesus to have written. It is readily apparent that nothing will satisfy you because God can do nothing to present his divine revelation to you because, after all, as a fallible person, your eyes, ears, and mind could be misinterpreting the message you think you are receiving. Do I have this right?

If you personally heard a voice in a burning bush or in thunder and lightning, would you personally assume it was God?

Apparently, Jesus explicitly chose not to write things down himself - there could be a reason for that other than he wanted to use scribes of one fashion or another.

I simply don’t believe God works in the manner of a Mafia don who types up a set of beliefs you must profess loyalty to, or burn in hell.

 

[anon5216]

Did God not actually write down the Ten Commandments on tablets of Stone? What about the wall of the king’s palace in Daniel 5:5-31? Oh wait, you got me again, this is second hand information because I wasn’t there personally. And even if I was, my mere telling you about would still make it second hand information to you.

To start with, the writers of the books we now refer to as the OT are entirely suspect as having been produced for the purpose of political propaganda - to my mind at least.
Their ‘god’ has all the behavioral characteristics of a powerful disembodied Mafia don promising protection and spoils of war in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
It could be entirely fabricated, or some type of supernatural ‘Azazel’ being. Either way, there is nothing Divine about the ancient Hebrew’s ‘god’.

But just for the sake of discussion:
Assuming the story is true and Moses was truthful and honest about the stone tablets having been given to him by some kind of supernatural means.
Why assume the source was God? How would Moses know he was interacting with God and not just some (relative to humans of the time anyway) powerful and supernatural being who was not at all God Himself.

If you personally went up on a mountain and heard a ‘voice’ giving you spiritual instruction and then there instantly appeared a stone or metal tablet with rules engraved on it - or perhaps a luminous entity handed it to you:
would you personally assume you were dealing with God?
If so, how would you vet that interpretation?

 

[irenaeus1]

All I said was free will and misinterpretation necessitates the acknowledgement of guaranteed infallibility being off the table.
You do agree God gave us free will, do you not?

You do agree that God is sovereign, do you not?

 

[irenaeus1]

quote=anon5216;5513671]But just for the sake of discussion:
Assuming the story is true and Moses was truthful and honest about the stone tablets having been given to him by some kind of supernatural means.
Why assume the source was God? How would Moses know he was interacting with God and not just some (relative to humans of the time anyway) powerful and supernatural being who was not at all God Himself.

If you personally went up on a mountain and heard a ‘voice’ giving you spiritual instruction and then there instantly appeared a stone or metal tablet with rules engraved on it - or perhaps a luminous entity handed it to you:
would you personally assume you were dealing with God?
If so, how would you vet that interpretation?

Why don’t you tell me? You are the one who said when God wants to infallibly communicate, I believe God does it directly - without the use of human speech - especially not fallible 2nd hand speech. So what do you mean by directly? And however this direct communication comes, how do you know that it is God and not just some powerful and supernatural being who was not at all God Himself?

 

[irenaeus1]

People bet their lives on their beliefs all the time. It is no guarantee by any stretch of the imagination of said beliefs being correct.

We have already covered this… I’m not talking about those who bet their lives on something that they sincerely believe to be true but were nonetheless believing in a falsehood. I am speaking of those who were witnesses of the risen Christ. I’m speaking of those who knew him when he was alive, yet fearlessly professed that he had been raised from the dead. You believe that all these people got it wrong the same way? Also, eventually, the information HAS to come to others via second hand, third hand, and so forth for those who were not physically present when these event happened. And so by your definition, this must necessarily be dismissed as untrustworthy. All I am presenting here is how you set up a structure that could never satisfy you because you frame all the arguments such that your criteria could never be met.

 

[irenaeus1]

The Hindus certainly believe God has become incarnate on more than one occasion - they refer to such a manifestation as an Avatar.

That did not answer my question… unless of course you are a Hindu.

 

[irenaeus1]

Please don’t put words in other people’s mouths. I said explicitly what I meant and you even quote it above just before insisting that I really meant what you claim I meant.

I didn’t believe that I did put words in your mouth, which is why I said it was implied. Your only other option is that they were all (100% of them) deceived to believe the same false event, and I didn’t think that that was what you were proposing. But perhaps this is what you are saying since, according to you, second hand information is not trustworthy. Which makes me wonder if you even believe that George Washington was the first President of the United States, after all, you cannot know this first-hand.

 

[irenaeus1]

That is a question you would more productively put to those who claim infallibility (yes, with the official disclaimers about when invoked and when valid - faith & morals and all that).

Not really… it is extremely productive to ask those who do not believe in infallibility, especially when they pass off there statements as apparently absolute, which is why I asked you whether you could be wrong in your statement. Of course, you didn’t even admit the possibility.

 

[irenaeus1]

Apparently, Jesus explicitly chose not to write things down himself - there could be a reason for that other than he wanted to use scribes of one fashion or another.

Yes, and one reason has already been given… namely that it would not make any difference. Had he written something himself, the only way it could have been communicated to us later is through second-hand, third-hand, and so on down the line of being “handed on.” So why would you present an option that adds nothing to the debate; i.e., had it been true, you would still dismiss it?

 

[irenaeus1]

You do agree God gave us free will, do you not?

Do you know this to be infallibly true, or could you have misinterpreted some direct communication that may or may not have come from God Himself?

 

[anon5216]

You do agree that God is sovereign, do you not?

I think the word ‘sovereign’ has too much baggage in common usage to apply to God.
The word reminds me too much of someone like Prince Charles at the point his mother finally abdicates or dies and he becomes the ‘sovereign’ king of England.

I have to assume you want to use the word with a more nuanced and spiritually specific meaning - which I’d probably agree to as long as it wasn’t just an infinite version of King George.

 

[anon5216]

anon5216;5513671:

But just for the sake of discussion:

Assuming the story is true and Moses was truthful and honest about the stone tablets having been given to him by some kind of supernatural means.
Why assume the source was God? How would Moses know he was interacting with God and not just some (relative to humans of the time anyway) powerful and supernatural being who was not at all God Himself.

If you personally went up on a mountain and heard a ‘voice’ giving you spiritual instruction and then there instantly appeared a stone or metal tablet with rules engraved on it - or perhaps a luminous entity handed it to you:
would you personally assume you were dealing with God?
If so, how would you vet that interpretation?

Why don’t you tell me? You are the one who said when God wants to infallibly communicate, I believe God does it directly - without the use of human speech - especially not fallible 2nd hand speech. So what do you mean by directly? And however this direct communication comes, how do you know that it is God and not just some powerful and supernatural being who was not at all God Himself?

Then we agree that it is completely foolish to assume supernatural communications or experiences automatically are proof of God being the source of said communications or experiences?

 

[anon5216]

We have already covered this… I’m not talking about those who bet their lives on something that they sincerely believe to be true but were nonetheless believing in a falsehood. I am speaking of those who were witnesses of the risen Christ. I’m speaking of those who knew him when he was alive, yet fearlessly professed that he had been raised from the dead. You believe that all these people got it wrong the same way? Also, eventually, the information HAS to come to others via second hand, third hand, and so forth for those who were not physically present when these event happened. And so by your definition, this must necessarily be dismissed as untrustworthy. All I am presenting here is how you set up a structure that could never satisfy you because you frame all the arguments such that your criteria could never be met.

There are the facts of one’s experience as perceived through the five senses.
Then there are the interpretive beliefs of what those experiences mean, what their significance is, what their ramifications are, etc.

These are entirely different things.
We have already covered this.

 

[anon5216]

That did not answer my question… unless of course you are a Hindu.

Your question was "Do you believe that God could have become incarnate?
I responded “The Hindus certainly believe God has become incarnate on more than one occasion - they refer to such a manifestation as an Avatar.”

OK, I didn’t really fully answer that specifically. (I do not identify myself as a Hindu).
Yes, I believe if God could become incarnate once, He could do so an infinite number of times.
I’m not going to limit God in this area.

 

[anon5216]

I didn’t believe that I did put words in your mouth, which is why I said it was implied. Your only other option is that they were all (100% of them) deceived to believe the same false event, and I didn’t think that that was what you were proposing. But perhaps this is what you are saying since, according to you, second hand information is not trustworthy. Which makes me wonder if you even believe that George Washington was the first President of the United States, after all, you cannot know this first-hand.

There are the facts of one’s experience as perceived through the five senses.
Then there are the interpretive beliefs of what those experiences mean, what their significance is, what their ramifications are, etc.

These are entirely different things.
We have already covered this.

 

[anon5216]

Not really… it is extremely productive to ask those who do not believe in infallibility, especially when they pass off there statements as apparently absolute, which is why I asked you whether you could be wrong in your statement. Of course, you didn’t even admit the possibility.

Please see post #79 again.
In it I responded to you about this question explicitly: “I don’t claim infallibility for myself anymore than I accept those claims by any other human past or present - regardless of their title.”
In post #92 you quoted me - repeating my response in its entirety.
My response in post #99 also included this sentence.

So after reading my telling you explicitly that “I don’t claim infallibility for myself anymore than I accept those claims by any other human past or present - regardless of their title.” for the 5th time now,
where do you get this “you didn’t even admit the possibility” of being wrong from?

 

[anon5216]

Yes, and one reason has already been given… namely that it would not make any difference. Had he written something himself, the only way it could have been communicated to us later is through second-hand, third-hand, and so on down the line of being “handed on.” So why would you present an option that adds nothing to the debate; i.e., had it been true, you would still dismiss it?

You don’t seem to comprehend the possibility that Divine communication happens in something other than human language form.

 

[anon5216]

Do you know this to be infallibly true, or could you have misinterpreted some direct communication that may or may not have come from God Himself?

For the 6th time now: “I don’t claim infallibility for myself anymore than I accept those claims by any other human past or present - regardless of their title.”

 

[irenaeus1]

Then we agree that it is completely foolish to assume supernatural communications or experiences automatically are proof of God being the source of said communications or experiences?

Now wait a minute. You stated earlier that “When God wants to infallibly communicate, I believe God does it directly.” Please give me an example of this that doesn’t infringe upon one of your own criteria so that we can quit talking in circles.