It's about to get interesting, but I need your help.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by moJoe on August 7, 2008 at 5:54pm

I think that the order you laid them out in would actually work out pretty well. My $0.02.

That being said, I really am hoping this takes off. I love learning about history and scriptural criticism, but I am not so well versed as to make many statements of my own on the subject without some collaboration and dialogue going on.

I actually have a question that arose in a conversation I had with a friend of mine that I will make a post about later.

Permalink Reply by Lamar on August 9, 2008 at 3:10pm

I know that you're not online right now (for obvious reasons) but if your question has anything to do with the Aramaic NT (as we discussed on the phone), be sure and post it in a new thread. That could be a fun topic to go over.

Permalink Reply by Lamar on August 8, 2008 at 9:59am

I would love to discuss the writings of eastern religions at some point. I just don't know enough about them to get the ball rolling. If you have studied any of these texts and would like to lead a discussion, that would be great. I'll happily participate.

Permalink Reply by Eli on August 8, 2008 at 10:55am

I've got a Tao te Ching and I think I've got some other Eastern Texts, I'll search my library.

Permalink Reply by Lamar on August 8, 2008 at 1:33pm

I have a problem with some handling of the Gospels by freethinkers. It's one thing to show that fundies are wrong, but it's another thing to assume that the first Christians were fundies or writing with fundies in mind.

Consider that "Harmony of the Gospels" Lamar mentioned. That was in the back of his childhood Bible. It's one thing to find mistakes in that but another to argue that that "harmony" was asserted by the *writers* of the NT.

I agree. Let me assure you that my bias ends with my atheism. I do not believe the religious claims made by the gospels, and even that can be changed with sufficient evidence. Our examination of the gospels will be exploratory and any conclusions we may reach (a lofty goal indeed) will be influenced by evidence; not agenda.

As I have said before—and it will probably be repeated often—I'm not interested in nitpicking the text by pointing out contradictions. Of course the Bible has contradictions, and those contradictions are valid when arguing against inerrancy, but giving them any serious treatment in this group would seem a bit petty and could only result in some terribly uninteresting conversation.

Permalink Reply by bubba on August 12, 2008 at 10:10am

Disharmony of the gospels is an interesting enough topic... but as far as whether or not you are nitpicking depends really on whether or not you are a believer. I've followed some of Lamar's other threads that seem quite valid to me as a devout non believer (like who was Jesus' first disciple), but the apologist would argue that each gospel is simply filling in parts the other gospels left out(I think I heard somebody call this God of the gaps theology). This seems like a specious argument to me... but they will whip it out with a straight face every time. So obviously to the true believers this is all nitpicking.
So my question, as a complete non expert, is how do we(or more to the point y'all) objectively define the difference between pointing out major contradictions and nitpicking?

Permalink Reply by Lamar on August 12, 2008 at 6:51pm

Bubba said: So my question, as a complete non expert, is how do we(or more to the point y'all) objectively define the difference between pointing out major contradictions and nitpicking?

Contradictions and errancy in the text will be discussed; it's almost impossible to avoid it. When I say "nitpicking," I'm really talking about taking two or more verses out of the text, showing that they contradict each other, and then leaving it at that. A good example, and one that you'll see on the web a lot, is the number of stalls for Solomon's horses. According to 1st Kings 4:26, there were forty-thousand stalls, but 2nd Chronicles 9:25 says there were only four-thousand. Even the most conservative apologists admit that the larger figure must be a copyist's error, pointing out that we don't have the original manuscripts and it is the originals that are truly inerrant. As far as they're concerned, the conversation is settled, and as far as I'm concerned, the conversation is uninteresting. So, why even have it?

Everett Marx has also expressed some valid concerns when it comes to our treatment of the Gospels. He rightly points out that we should not assume that modern Christianity is in any way a reflection of its roots in Late Antiquity. For example, modern fundamentalist Christians are overly concerned with defending the inerrancy and historical accuracy of the New Testament, but the early believers seem far more interested in the esoteric mysteries in their scripture rather than how factual it is.

Now, all that being said, the gloves come off in debate. In an argument with a modern Christian that insists that her faith is a reflection of the early church, then feel free to allow that assumption for the sake of argument. Your opponent is only bating herself. The same is true for arguing against a KJV Only literalist. The contradiction regarding Solomon's stables knocks that house of cards right off its pedestal.

Permalink Reply by Lamar on August 15, 2008 at 12:40pm

I think this is the place Lamar is starting from. For although it may be enough *in an argument with an inerrantist who claims that every historical claim in the Bible is true in its literal sense* to point out a contradiction, atheists *as atheists* ASSUME books are fallible. We don't throw out Herodotus and Thucydides because they made up some speeches and made bad estimates about the size of armies in a particular battle. We sift the more reliable from the less so, all the time realizing we may have put something into one pile that will someday be shown to have belonged in another.

Exactly! I think that the best mindset to have when dealing with scripture is to remain skeptical AND open-minded. It would be falicious to begin with an assumption that nothing in a religious text is reliable simply because it is a religious text.

Permalink Reply by bubba on August 19, 2008 at 6:22pm

Excellent, I was really just looking for a sort of guide line between argument and 'nitpicking', and I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the line now.
Thanx