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19 Responses to “On Scary Bible Quotes and Cultural Cognition”  

1. 1 pensans Oct 8th, 2006 at 7:02 am

   I am not sure exactly how such normative commands are “contrafactual.”

   Did the Canaanites deserve mercy? Was it wrong to wipe them out? One may sensibly ask, why? Because Mr. Kaiser know of an empirically grounded norm against it? Of course, according to the Torah, the Canaanites were an especially wicked people — whose wickedness and the threat of its spread, rather than the Israelites’ goodness, apparently justified their treatment.

   Was it “weird” for God to command His People to refrain from eating certain kinds of foods? One may sensibly ask, why? People throughout history have utilized food as part of their culture. Of course, as taught in the Torah, refraining from such foods was part of the way that the Israelites set themselves apart from the world for God.

   The suggestion that belief should be limited to what can be empirically grounded is interesting, but it is hardly clear that empiricism is an adequate ground for ethics or culture.

   I suppose, for Christians, it is not surprising that the Word of God does not seem wholly rational and acceptable to Mr. Kaiser, then it would have nothing to teach him.

2. 2 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 8th, 2006 at 9:22 am

   Pensans, keep in mind that Hanno’s “counterfactual” point was not just concerned with the selected quotes, but to the Bible in general. I mean, are you proposing that the Earth was created in six-to-seven days, and plants created before the existence of the Sun? That’s counterfactual, but it’s Genesis.

   Your anthropological point about arbitrary food customs is well-taken. “Weird” doesn’t quite describe it; “silly” may be better.

3. 3 pensans Oct 8th, 2006 at 3:46 pm

   First, if the Bible were counterfactual “in general,” then illustrating the claim with just two examples of norms was an odd choice.

   Second, if these two commands are supposed to be characteristic of the general counterfactuality of the Bible, then I take it that they are supposed to appeal to a contemporary Western moral consensus that, under the influence of the Bible, has rejected mass murder and cleanliness ordinances as self-evidently bad.

   In this regard, my immediate points above were simply that a closer readings of the passages reveals that (1) the “scary” command did not order or praise mass killing in general but the destruction of a particularly wicked group of people, and (2) the “weird” command did not make a claim to universal rationality but established a ritual relationship between man and God in a way that human civilizations have commonly used to the present day to establish sociality. God’s use of food rituals to relate to man is no weider than my inviting my friends to dinner to facilitate socialitiy.

   The self-evident impropriety of these claims fades when they are placed in their immediate textual context. It fades even more when they are placed in their general Biblical context. For example, the Hebrew prophets and the New Testament subordinate and then reject food cleanliness as a significant moral goal. Likewise, in both the Torah and New Testament, the exceptionality of the cirumstances justifying the destruction of the Canaanites are made clear.

   Third, to focus in the generality claim, what is the proportion of commands that Mr. Kaiser finds insufficiently grounded to those that he does? It’s hard to imagine that Mr. Kaiser believes that all Biblical injunctions are weird and scary.

   For example, the central summary of the moral law in the Torah is the covenantal Decalogue whose “weird and scary” prohibitions forbid dishonoring parents, murder, adultery, theft, perjury and coveting. Whatever one thinks of other Biblical claims, does the centrality of these commands provide an alternative explanation for the Bible’s survival?

4. 4 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 8th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

   Pensans, the ‘counterfactual’ point was made at the end, and as a followup to the poll comment. To understand the first two selections as illustrations of the ‘counterfactual’ claim is to misinterpret the context of the post. The rest of your post here seems to be predicated on continuations of that misreading, with the added point that you have augmented Hanno’s claim about “much” of the text as being “all” of it.

   In addition to these misreadings, you seem to be advocating points that I would contest on more philosophical grounds. I am unsure how genocide is ever anything less than a horrific and vile thing, even when the populace has been dubbed “a particularly wicked group of people”. “Textual context” salvages nothing, and reinforces the point that we’re dealing with the literature of witchburners.

   Nor am I sure how a functional act (socializing with friends, eating to sustain and survive) ought to be conflated with a merely symbolic act (do not eat of the cloven hoof), except in the narrow sense that symbolic actions are served for their own sake to sate some existential angst. If the latter, they qualify, quite readily, as silly; and universally so, whatever the culture. But at least it isn’t as outright dysfunctional and anti-social as some other Biblical convictions (the genocide example being one).

   You’re surely right in your last sentence, though. All evil which can survive in the light of day is smuggled through the good and the ethical: the latter being most of the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth, those against hypocricy, and so on. “Cultural cognition” seems to raise a number of questions — perhaps more questions than it has answers for.

5. 5 Pensans Oct 8th, 2006 at 9:53 pm

   Not illustrations, really? So, this is your reading: Mr. Kaiser wrote a post, entitled “On Scary Bible Quotes and Cultural Cognition,” with two bible quotes and an argument for cultural cognition. But he actually intended no illustrative or argumentative connection between the quotes and his argument for cultural cognition. On your read, the post could be summarized: “Hey, let me read you some crazy Bible quotes. Oh, and in a different vein, – and mind you I didn’t meant to illustrate this by reading those crazy Bible quotes just a second before– I think believing in the Bible is so crazy that only cultural cognition could explain it.” Sorry, I don’t see it.

   With respect to the rest of your remarks, I understand why you are “unsure” over whether genocide could ever be justified; indeed, I applaud and share your uncertainty. But to reject the Bible as clearly erroneous on this basis would require us to KNOW that no amount of corporate evil could ever justify the total destruction of those portions of ethnic groups within a particular territory. I don’t think that is very clear; certainly, not clear enough to declare it obviously false or “counterfactual.” In any case, textual context – e.g. laws requiring Israelites to offer peace terms sparing all lives before besieging any non-Canaanite city — show that those who believe in the truth of the Bible are not committed to affirming the propriety of genocide in every circumstance, but only as possible in one, where God orders it as judgment on particularly wicked segments of various ethnic groups in a particular territory.

   With respect to eating, if as you say, socializing with friends can be a functional act then why not socializing with God? The purpose of covenant obedience to the Israelites was to set themselves apart for God and to commune with God through conformity to His Will. If dietary rules accomplish this, then what’s silly about them? Maybe its nice to commune with God?

6. 6 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 9th, 2006 at 1:40 pm

   Yes. In the normal pragmatics of ordinary English, the phrase “in any event” can be used to signal a break in conversation, where one specific train of thought is passed by in favor of another, more general (albeit related) one. (No doubt there’s a technical term for this in discourse analysis, probably a kind of interpropositional relation.) The rest of your worries seem to continue pursuing a supposed conflation of the fact-value distinction which is not actually in Hanno’s post, and which arose out of neglect of the “in any event” clause.

   Shifting gears: the points which show that the Bible is factually erroneous are, I think, well-known and disseminated amongst those who are allied with secular humanism, and don’t really require repetition here (though I gave two examples above from Genesis — it’s not hard to find others).

   Support for genocide in any instance where those with free will are targetted, is always wrong. For if the beings truly do have free will, statistical experience tells us that there must be a percentage who have chosen not to do evil; and yet they will be given the ultimate punishment despite their innocence. There’s just nothing more to say about that, really — unless of course you want to endorse a “shoot the hostage” sort of mentality.

   By “functional”, I mean activity that intends to satisfy some goal(s) with some (empirical) justification toward thinking that the kind of manner with which the act is carried out is capable of succeeding. When’s the last time God asked you to pass the gravy at dinnertime? It doesn’t satisfy the empirical requirement.

   I mean, I’m not totally unsympathetic to the underlying logic. We might say that the arbitrary customs which relieve existential angst are “functional” in the sense that they succeed in making people more happy; and expressing gratitude increases enjoyment, and thus, happiness. But they’re not uniquely functional — you could replace a prayer to God with a round of thank-yous to the cook (and the dead animals) and it wouldn’t make a difference.

7. 7 pensans Oct 9th, 2006 at 8:14 pm

   Hmmm. I think the implausibility of your defense of Mr. Kaiser has made me a believer in his theory. In defending what he wrote, you display such real Talmudic industriousness in your interpretations — carefully considering audience, parsing sense and structure to determine meaning – whatever is necessary to find a sensible reading. To condemn the Bible, you insist on crabbed interpretations and throw up the lightest objections. What can better explain this than Mr. Kaiser’s theory?

   For example, to condemn the first quote, you resort to “arguing with the hypothetical” in your interpretation of Deuteronomy. God commands Israel to drive out the portions of the nations living in Canaan because they are so completely wicked. But you refuse to consider the situation described in the Bible. You respond that “statistical experience tells us that there must be a percentage who have chosen not to do evil.”

   What experience tells “us” this? You have extensive experience of ancient Canaan? But, working from modern experience, how many exactly do you know who have not chosen to do evil? (I would like to meet them.)

   But, given your insistence on the objective and empirical, I am sure you would not rely on subjective experience. How did you measure this? How large a sample did you take? How exactly do you “experience” evil and good in others? (Incidentally, is failure to choose evil the test of responsibility or rather choice of the good?) How did you decide empirically the conditions under which something is evil in all the complicated situations of life?

   Apropos to our discussion of corporate responsibility, how do you handle situations like the one von Moltke claimed in Mr. Kaiser’s post today, where inaction in the face of others’ evil is itself evil? Suppose that certain persons in a wicked town merely chose not to do evil – e.g. they did not personally engage in child sacrifice — but did not choose to fight against this evil. How does your statistical method count such people? Are there conditions under which anyone remaining in a wicked town is bound up corporately in its wickedness?

   If you were as interested in determining the proper sense of the Bible as you were Mr. Kaiser, you would acknowledge that your objection is raised and dealt with in the Torah. Abraham raised the same objection – what if there are good men in Sodom — and was reassured; Moses raised the same objection with respect to the rebellion of Korah and was reassured; God gave the same assurance to Jeremiah with respect to the judgment of Jerusalem. But given the widespread knowledge among secular humanists about the Bible, I suppose such a careful reading of the Bible is not required to condemn it.

8. 8 Hanno Kaiser Oct 9th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

   According to the poll cited by Huemer, millions of people believe that “every word of the Bible is literally accurate.” If true, how is that not a supremely strange state of affairs crying out for an explanation? I am not claiming that Biblical stories aren’t educational (some are, others aren’t), that Judeo-Christian values have no normative force (some do, some don’t), or that faith hasn’t shaped our culture and history (it sure has, for better or worse). I am also not criticizing serious exegesis, that exquisite seduction of the mind, or the love for the literary beauty of the great foundational texts of our civilization. I merely refuse to take people seriously who insist that “every word of the Bible” (or of any great historical text for that matter) “is literally accurate,” in the sense that every claim, factual and normative, made in the text is true and valid. That is simply indefensible.

9. 9 Pensans Oct 10th, 2006 at 12:25 am

   You “merely refuse to take people seriously” because they hold differing religious opinions from you? What’s mere about that?

   Refusal to give serious regard to those who differ over fundamental beliefs is the real danger to liberal civilization, not belief in the Bible. Even a perfectly rational foundation for such anti-liberal disdain for others would not makes it less anti-liberal.

   I feel equal surprise at the religious beliefs of humanists who keep the ancient and refuted faith in the sufficiency of human goodness and human rationality. But, unlike you, I have no problem taking seriously people who hold such views.

   Although one would suppose that the evidence of human evil and fundamental irrationality could not be made clearer, I do not find it necessary to speak of humanists in dismissive tones, to ridicule what is important to them, to refuse to give them regard, to throw up my hands and cry “indefensible” at the mention of them.

   The apparent need to push disagreement with Bible believers into emotional denunciations of the other – “their Bible is ’scary’ ‘weird’ ’silly’ and ‘the literature of witch burners’” – suggests that this is not a rational disagreement about beliefs, but a matter of religious identity and affiliation.

   You admit that it is not the particular beliefs taught in the Bible that offend you – believing in the literal truth of any Book would be equally offensive from the Koran to the Diamond Sutra to the Analects to the Laws of Manu. It is apparently belief in textual Revelation or Authority itself that offends you. You seem to believe in the sufficiency of Reason and to think anyone who looks elsewhere worships at the wrong altar. Okay, let’s acknowledge that we disagree but we still need to take one another seriously.

10. 10 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 10th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

    Pensans,

    1. The meaning is very clear, so long as you care to read what is written, and are fluent in the language. Reading takes very little effort (”Talmudic” or otherwise). Please absord what has been said if you expect a reply.

    2. I have rejected the situation as described in the Bible precisely because I have considered it, and given reasons for my conclusion — reasons which, in fact, you go on to dispute, thus making your “refusal to consider” comment self-defeating.

    3. My “statistical” comment is based on the general observation that an aggregate’s capacity to do something entails that some portion of it shall in fact perform that thing. This idea, in context, was applied to the assumption that free will relevantly means the freedom to choose between good and evil — no matter how we normatively understand good and evil. Thus, assuming the body of persons being described had free will, then at least some of them would choose to do good.

    But if the above still makes no sense to you, I might go on and ask: where should the burden of proof lie in deciding the critical mass of guilt of a population — on the would-be apologist for genocide, or on those who side with ethics? The sensible person, I think, will say the former.

    4. Did you sincerely just ask me to cite a person who has ever chosen not to do evil? I suspect everyone, at some time or another. People have dark moments and they have shining moments. If you meant to cite a person who has always engaged in good and never evil, then I can’t. My original comment had to do with the former, since that’s all that’s required to defeat some fanciful vision of “wickedness”, which supposes no good whatsoever.

    5. By “good”, I mean some degree of duty-following for the sake of greater happiness for the greater number. The question of how to identify pro-social behavior is difficult because it is hard to get at peoples’ intentions; nevertheless, the easiest case to peg is when a person willingly performs acts against their own personal interests for the sake of the increased welfare of others. These utilitarian postures are obviously normative, and packaged within it is a strong doctrine of negative responsibility.

    6. No doubt some of these ethical considerations are echoes of Biblical thoughts. But so what? The original points that I sought to make — that you projected a fact-value conflation onto the text instead of reading it, and that there are sections of the Bible which are pure fiction — are completely satisfied. You are now changing the subject from moral silliness and factual quackery to morality; and if you’re looking for me to make a sweeping argument on that terrain, I assure you that you’ll find none. I’d be happy to repeat my condemnations of genocide to you, though (”reassurances” of Mr. Angel So-and-So notwithstanding). Not only will I condemn genocide, but I’ll throw in a condemnation of the Pillar-of-Salt murder, too; no extra charge.

11. 11 Pensans Oct 11th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

    Gosh, Ben, I hope I can “absorb” what you are saying sufficiently to deserve a reply. Against my own interest, I admit my great difficulty fathoming your claims:

    (1) that “reading takes very little effort” — although I suppose passing one’s eyes over words is easy, exegetical reading is commonly regarded as quite difficult. But if you say so of yourself, I believe that you make little effort in reading and certainly take less effort to read the Bible sensibly than you do Mr. Kaiser;

    (2) that you considered the sensibility of Christians’ belief that God might rightly have commanded the Israelites to destroy wicked Canaanite cities. You specifically refused to consider such a situation. Instead, you insist that your novel human-capacity-for-free-will/capacity-entails-actuality argument makes wicked Canaanite cities a natural impossibility. But I do believe that you considered a situation that no Bible believer is committed to, i.e. that it would be right to destroy non-wicked nations;

    (3) that “an aggregate’s capacity to do something entails that some portion of it shall in fact perform that thing.” This is bad metaphysics. Potentiality never entails actuality. Potentialities can be unfulfilled. But I do believe that if your strange metaphysical claim is to be applied to ancient man, as you insist, then all other capacities of ancient man must have been fulfilled as well, e.g., some Canaanite man must have proven the Pythagorean theorem, because it was within the capacity of ancient man to prove such a theorem;

    (4) that the Bible’s “vision of wickedness . . . supposes no good whatsoever.” Wherever did you get such a strange idea? Why would anyone hold that a miniscule good act or characteristic would make an otherwise Hitleresque villain non-wicked? But I do believe, if you say so, that you think total wickedness is required before a person can rightfully be killed and therefore have a rare moral opinion that would reject not only Biblical standards but most moral systems that have prevailed in world history;

    On the other hand, perhaps I am worthy of a reply under your absorbtion standards. I absorbed carefully your admissions that it is very difficult to make judgments about human intent and that your definition of “good” involves vagueness that would make an objective determination impossible – certainly one of the kind required by empirically-minded secular humanists.

    I have absorbed your claim that, despite the conflict with your own empirical insistence, your non-empirical and non-grounded personal experience leads you to reject that the Canaanites were wicked because you believe that man has the potentiality to act well and that, based on a heretofore unheard of metaphysical principle, this entails actualization of this potential.

    I have absorbed your claim that you will make no “sweeping argument” regarding morality, but you believe you have decisively show that the Bible contains “moral silliness.”

12. 12 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 12th, 2006 at 9:29 am

    Pensans,

    I was on my way out the door when I wrote the last post. Sorry for bad spelling.

    Exegetical reading (by which I take it you mean glossing over the text) is fine, but I’m also entitled to point out what you missed, especially when a misreading leads to confusion and strawman argument. Were our places reversed, I would expect you to point out my missteps.

    Again, though, I want to repeat my conversational goal: first, to clarify the meaning of Hanno’s post, especially in that how he did not conflate the fact-value distinction; and second, to agree that the Bible contains a great bit of fiction. The following remarks are mostly tangential.

    (1) If I’ve misunderstood something from the Bible, you have not yet shown what. Rather, what you have shown are implicit moral disagreements I have with portions of it. (2) In addition, your “refused to consider” conclusion continues to ignore the “statistical” comment that was originally presented as a premise and just explicitly elucidated as an argument. This is despite your explicit responses to (and disagreement with) them later on. I won’t apologize for presenting the argument only now: I don’t have the time or inclination to write a book-length post.

    (3) We have come to another disagreement, this time with respect to ontology. The entire matter rests with how one understands the nature of probability and possibility. There is no such thing as a potentiality which will never be fulfilled in actuality. If it has a potential, then it actually will happen, at some point or other. If it never happens, then it had no potential to happen. I don’t believe this to be “bad metaphysics” — on the contrary, I believe that the position that ‘actuality and potentiality are disconnected’ minces down the latter into meaninglessness, is mere sophistry. In relation to your counterexample, if it turns out that no Canaanite did work out the concept of the Pythagorean theorem, then it is also the case that they could not have done so, given the state of their educational system, talents, dispositions, etc.

    Admittedly, though, modal concepts like “possible” or “potential” are relative to the purposes of conversation; left alone, they’re just analytic fictions. Perhaps that is the origin of our disagreement on this point.

    (4) The interpretation of “wicked” was a (plausible) semantic, not Biblical, attribution. Nevertheless, even if we were to interpret “wicked” as just meaning “really awful”, then that would only serve to weaken the proposition which I am attacking — this works in my favor.

    Your moral inference is a departure from the text, although a plausible one. My opinion is that it’s not even feasible to engage in genocide if there are innocents involved. I believe that it is at least feasible on the face of it to kill a group of entirely wicked persons, just as capital punishment is feasible on the face of it. Ultimately, I think that, for the mostpart, both are wrong, for a variety of reasons — but that would be delving into even more tangeants, and was far beyond my original conversational purposes.

    Indeed, human history is littered with justifications for homicide. That is shameful, not something to be celebrated.

    My meaning of “sweeping refutation” was something like “All of the Bible is morally and factually wrong”, and I never said anything like that. I fear that “don’t eat the cloven hoof” is hardly a general statement which required a sweeping refutation, and certainly not a sweeping refutation of those portions of the Bible which are agreeable (i.e., many of the doctrines of Christ). It is one statement requiring a heartbeat of dissent. And it is silly enough that we’re obliged to ask if it is “moral” at all, in any except the most semantic of senses.

    I said that moral determinations were difficult. I didn’t say they were vague. Nevertheless, an argument for the latter might be made, but I would have to confess a need for further study and reflection into the semantics and pragmatics of moral terms before I said anything quite like that.

    In any case, you seem to be making the statement that the only way to ward off vagueness in morality is moral objectivity (where the objective is something independent of the mind). That’s false, and misunderstands the nature of morals. All that moral clarity requires is moral rationality and cooperative conversation.

13. 13 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 12th, 2006 at 9:29 am

    Pensans,

    I was on my way out the door when I wrote the last post. Sorry for bad spelling.

    Exegetical reading (by which I take it you mean glossing over the text) is fine, but I’m also entitled to point out what you missed, especially when a misreading leads to confusion and strawman argument. Were our places reversed, I would expect you to point out my missteps.

    Again, though, I want to repeat my conversational goal: first, to clarify the meaning of Hanno’s post, especially in that how he did not conflate the fact-value distinction; and second, to agree that the Bible contains a great bit of fiction. The following remarks are mostly tangential.

    (1) If I’ve misunderstood something from the Bible, you have not yet shown what. Rather, what you have shown are implicit moral disagreements I have with portions of it. (2) In addition, your “refused to consider” conclusion continues to ignore the “statistical” comment that was originally presented as a premise and just explicitly elucidated as an argument. This is despite your explicit responses to (and disagreement with) them later on. I won’t apologize for presenting the argument only now: I don’t have the time or inclination to write a book-length post.

    (3) We have come to another disagreement, this time with respect to ontology. The entire matter rests with how one understands the nature of probability and possibility. There is no such thing as a potentiality which will never be fulfilled in actuality. If it has a potential, then it actually will happen, at some point or other. If it never happens, then it had no potential to happen. I don’t believe this to be “bad metaphysics” — on the contrary, I believe that the position that ‘actuality and potentiality are disconnected’ minces down the latter into meaninglessness, is mere sophistry. In relation to your counterexample, if it turns out that no Canaanite did work out the concept of the Pythagorean theorem, then it is also the case that they could not have done so, given the state of their educational system, talents, dispositions, etc.

    Admittedly, though, modal concepts like “possible” or “potential” are relative to the purposes of conversation; left alone, they’re just analytic fictions. Perhaps that is the origin of our disagreement on this point.

    (4) The interpretation of “wicked” was a (plausible) semantic, not Biblical, attribution. Nevertheless, even if we were to interpret “wicked” as just meaning “really awful”, then that would only serve to weaken the proposition which I am attacking — this works in my favor.

    Your moral inference is a departure from the text, although a plausible one. My opinion is that it’s not even feasible to engage in genocide if there are innocents involved. I believe that it is at least feasible on the face of it to kill a group of entirely wicked persons, just as capital punishment is feasible on the face of it. Ultimately, I think that, for the mostpart, both are wrong, for a variety of reasons — but that would be delving into even more tangeants, and was far beyond my original conversational purposes.

    Indeed, human history is littered with justifications for homicide. That is shameful, not something to be celebrated.

    My meaning of “sweeping refutation” was something like “All of the Bible is morally and factually wrong”, and I never said anything like that. I fear that “don’t eat the cloven hoof” is hardly a general statement which required a sweeping refutation, and certainly not a sweeping refutation of those portions of the Bible which are agreeable (i.e., many of the doctrines of Christ). It is one statement requiring a heartbeat of dissent. And it is silly enough that we’re obliged to ask if it is “moral” at all, in any except the most semantic of senses.

    I said that moral determinations were difficult. I didn’t say they were vague. Nevertheless, an argument for the latter might be made, but I would have to confess a need for further study and reflection into the semantics and pragmatics of moral terms before I said anything quite like that.

    In any case, you seem to be making the statement that the only way to ward off vagueness in morality is moral objectivity (where the objective is something independent of the mind). That’s false, and misunderstands the nature of morals. All that moral clarity requires is moral rationality and cooperative conversation.

14. 14 pensans Oct 12th, 2006 at 5:58 pm

    Ben, I must cut off our dialogue, which I have enjoyed, because I am leaving on a long overseas trip. I still believe that you treat the Bible and Bible believers unfairly.

    I think briefly that there is something incorrect with your discussion of possibility/potentiality/capacity. A rock that never falls off a cliff nevertheless has a real potential energy that would really squash a pumpkin underneath. Unfullfilled capacities are real things. Especially since you raise this issue in the context of free will, it is necessary to speak of it so. If things only had a capacity when they subsequently excercised them, then there could be no freedom in choice because for each actual choice, we would say that it was the only possible one.

    Cordially,
    Pensans

15. 15 Ben Samuel Nelson Oct 13th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

    We must agree to disagree, I’m afraid. In any case, I’ve enjoyed this conversation as well. Have a safe / good trip.

16. 16 Marty Feb 2nd, 2007 at 11:50 am

    The Bible is all truth and you have to keep in mind that God talks in pictoral language. Also the old testiment laws for example the eating laws were strickt. Just ask any Jew. The Bible is the true word of God that is why it has lasted so long.

17. 17 Ben Samuel Nelson Feb 2nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm

    God speaks Wingdings?

18. 18 sami Mar 8th, 2007 at 6:20 am

    Saying that the bible is “all truth” is a bit problematic. The bible may have inaccurate details since not all bibles are the same if you look at them closely. In the story of David, Goliath’s height varies in different versions of the bible. However, these triva are not God’s message in itself. Each part of the bible is interwoven to form the “salvific truths” that have been a form of guidance for people over generations.

    Try to consider that the essence of the message is more important than the actual events in the text. About the Caananites and the pillars of salt, the quintessence of these verses is that God will punish evil and save the good. In the bible, the Caananite race is rather a symbol for those evil or those who harm God’s children and should not be considered as another country just like those we have now. The event was God saving the good and punishing evil; not God helping a country destroy another for land.

    These books are written by people given Divine inspiration by the Master Himself. Compare this to the writer and the pencil. The writers of these books are merely pencils used by the true writer (God). Also, given that people did write these books, artist’s styles come into play. These are like the different tints of pencils. Still, the message remains the same since they came from only one Master Writer.

    About the statistics on people believing that the bible is completely accurate or something like that, i have questions on those it surveyed. Do those people actually read the bible? i know only a few people who really read the bible. This might have been a flaw in the statistics. People may think that the bible is correct in every way even if they haven’t really read it.

19. 19 Hanno Kaiser Mar 10th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    Sami writes: “These books are written by people given Divine inspiration by the Master Himself.” How do you know? What’s your evidence? What do you have to go on? It always comes down to the same thing. There are those who require evidence for truth claims, and there are those who don’t. I cast my lot with the former.

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