Sorry your Honor, I thought we were on an internet message board, not a court of law.
This isn't semantics, since in the real world, murder is a difficult charge to prove, and simply "believing" someone is guilty of it holds no water in the real world, so why now?
Tell a judge he's playing "semantics" if he gives you elements needing to be satisfied before he can charge an alleged murderer with murder.
Murder is not difficult to prove. The differentiation of murder (1st, 2nd, 3rd degree) is what proves difficult.
If I told someone that if they did not do something I would kill their children, no matter how difficult the task, when I follow through with said threat, that is murder.
God intended to kill those children, there is no other way a concept like God can do something. It wasn't on accident.
I'm sure he will find something in your statement to quibble over, instead of addressing the core issue of god innocent children.
I hear you, and I don't know why God judged children "better off" as dead, and since you don't know either, its dishonest to say "murder" because if God is so "unknowable", how can you possible attain his motives or intent?
This is really what I want to get to here, because I also think its dishonest to say " well God is unknowable....BUT he murders people" with murder only being applicable when the individual in question is "knowable" to some degree.
I won't admit God murdered people because I have no evidence of such, but I have acknowledged that people have died, even children.
I'm only dishonest because I'm not making a baseless charge against God because I don't have proof.
That's real honestly -- refraining from passing that sort of judgment based on evidence I can't seem to find.
Hence why I stressed "killing" over murder.
The "rule" as it appears in the KJV and NIV says "kill".
Now what?
So if its accurately rendered "kill", you're correct and I will concede the argument.
Assuming that we're still talking about 1 Samuel 15, the Hebrew word rendered "slay" here is not the one typically used for either "kill" or murder. It is actually from a root nominally akin to the word "prohibit", and is usually rendered "destroy" in the KJV. It's usually used in the context of destroying cities or peoples, and from the context it is implied that this is based on divine justice or wrath, which somewhat support's Rob's argument, at least from a biblical perspective.
That said, there is no valid justice that exacts a capital toll upon children under any circumstances, and anyone who would attempt to dance around that is being transparently intellectually dishonest. While the practice may have been widespread back in those days, the entire point of a religion is to impose a higher standard of ethical behavior.
Regardless of Intent or the definitions of Kill/Murder, clearly this "god" is a monster with no Morality worthy of enshrining. There is also no way of verifying its' commands, outside of simply trusting some Dudes' claims about it.
That said, there is no valid justice that exacts a capital toll upon children under any circumstances, and anyone who would attempt to dance around that is being transparently intellectually dishonest. While the practice may have been widespread back in those days, the entire point of a religion is to impose a higher standard of ethical behavior.
Yes, but that's a pretty disingenuous answer on God's part. Remind us, Rob: how many righteous men are there?I partially agree with you here, and I wasn't sanctioning the killing of children, but I was saying that as a believer, I see God as having an elevated view of things. I will share a Biblical example of what I mean.
In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham actually asked God a series of questions regarding the destruction of the people in those cities. He asked God would he destroy the cities if he found as little as ten righteous men, and God said he would not destroy the cities on account of the ten.
My first thought is that either God exists or He doesn't. I don't believe you can study the issue and not agree.
Is the Bible infallible? And if it is not, can it be believed?
You are wrong reducing it to the question whether "God exists or not"..since this EXTREMELY simplified.....but...well, naturally, this is human nature.
Our established religious have a ridiculous, ok, excuse me for saying it, retarded idea of "God" or deities for that matter.
When I was raised and still "had to" go to Church, "God" was more or less personified...or in some form a "being". Many people might still picture God as a "being" or entity which is still driven and motivated by purely human things, such as "being in control", or my "favorite" JUDGING or whatever other things taken straight out from human behavior and applied to what God supposedly is. (You REALLY think that God's main purpose is to judge people's physical existence? )
Needless to say, in my X years of life I got more curious and had more questions so at some point the overly naive ideas of God that established mainstream churches provide did not cut it any more, by a long shot.
Over time I tended a lot more towards the spiritual side of things where I also read a lot of good books, namely some Afterlife/NDE books by Carter, Newton....Seth books and so fort etc.. which much more satisfied my hunger for knowledge and where (in my opinion) the thoughts/philosophies are MUCH, MUCH better as compared to mainstream explanations (Church...) in regards to what God is supposed to be.
Please look at your first sentence and notice the HE <-- You already imply a lot of things, not only personify you god, you also give "him" a gender
Once you dive into more spiritual schools you will learn some amazing things.
I had some very interesting books with accounts where "god" was actually referred to as "the source" or "the creator"....while at the same time still refraining from even to go as far as saying god is an "entity".
If those schools of thought are true that god is indeed "all that is" and "we are good" and "god is in everything"...not even the idea of "an entity" makes a lot of sense anymore (ok, maybe to some extent)..and it becomes clear how ridiculous many people's idea of "the god" actually is.
I remember one book I read where people who allegedly were in the afterlife actually stated there are multiple Gods or creators. (I say: Why not? I mean it's possible and not less "out there" as the idea of ONE god).
Even "the creator", whatever it or he/she might be was in some instance said to have its OWN creator...and so forth..
What I am saying is that the question whether "god exists or not" becomes
moot or doesn't make any sense if we don't even know the nature of god.
If we are are "part of god" (which is a common spiritual idea today)...how much sense does the question about "his" existence actually make?
If I say "yes I believe that God exists"..the least I would expect is that I have a more or less vague idea of him/her/its purpose, or own role in relationship to "him". Since I don't know that yet...I cannot ask about the existence. (Or at least it would make answering this extremely difficult of course).
As for the Bible, uhm, sorry, OF COURSE the Bible is fallible. 99% of the bible has nothing to do with what the Christian belief what once about.
THEIR (Church's) idea of "the afterlife" and the idea of a judging and personified god and all the other fantasies about hell etc. I happily REJECT. This is for simpletons in my opinion. Only in some very basic core principles the bible is right (eg. the idea of an "afterlife" and the idea that a "god" or "creator" likely EXISTS)...but beyond those basic truths bible and most religions are entirely distorted and get it entirely wrong while actually losing the important basic fundamentals, often so deliberately.
Today, established religion has the audacity to reject spiritual ideas, there are "religious" people who reject NDE experiences, Out of Body experiences etc. and also the idea of re-incarnation.
Especially the idea of rejecting reincarnation I think is funny since how else would Jesus be able to "come back" at some time as obviously is the belief of many Christians. The afterlife idea is "basically" correct however the idea that we only live one physical life and then ONE afterlife is absurd, doesn't make any sense and is of course also not correct (Physical life here is only one, one of many different aspects of our "uber-soul", so to speak. Church possibly doesn't want to accept this and then later on "fabulated" the idea of eternal judgement "in the afterlife" to scare people.
Where us Christians and the Darwinists disagree is in macro-evolution. I think you have to be ignorant to not see that species evolve. I think it takes a huge amount of faith to believe that "through chance and time" a single cell somehow became a human. The odds of that are beyond measure. If you would like to debate this, I have a thread in Discussion Club where we have a rather large debate about it.
Has science disproved anything that is said in the Bible?
In my now 10 years working in various labs--developmental genetics, evolutionary genetics, transgenics, and again evolutionary genetics, I have worked with various animal models--flies, mice, zebra fish.
In setting up hundreds and hundreds of crosses, isolating sexes for various breeding purposes, I have yet to see a single case of a virgin female animal producing an offspring.
I have yet to see such a finding published anywhere and believe me--it would be quite astounding. (certain fish and reptile species are known to change sex when conditions are necessary, and fertilize themselves; but we know that humans can not do this. There has not yet been a case of a fertile hermaphrodite. They are, by necessity, born sterile)
Science has yet to provide evidence that such an event can occur. This, after decades of experimentation and millions of papers published that involve animal husbandry.
granted, the scientific community does not concern itself with setting out to disprove biblical claims, as many of them are simply not worth investigating.
A single sentence declaring itself as, or interpreted as absolute truth, does not warrant scientific investigation, because it does not claim itself to be testable.
Further, it was an event bereft of witnesses, divorced by decades from the time when it was first related, so any type of forensic approach to such a claim is impossible.
All I can say, is that millions of peer reviewed studies have not yet provided evidence that it is possible for this claim, made only one time ever, could possibly be true.
I'm not a botanist. Otherwise, I might have spent more time setting plants alight. I have attended many a bonfire, brush fire, witnessed plenty of fires in my life, however. I have not yet witnessed a case where plant matter survived fire, untouched.
Well...one of my friends did once, in college...after a Phish show. ....he had popped a few tabs before the show.
Thought to ponder: Mt Sinai had open flames and smoke that could be seen for miles. The ground had a habit of shaking. If you retrace the steps in Exodus, it doesn't lead to the mountain named Mt Sinai. It leads to a volcano which also lines up perfectly with the one place in the region where the crossing of the Red Sea was possible. But that's only if you believe the scientific research done.
The 'magic' in the Bible is there for effect in my opinion. It adds the crucial element of hope to this morality tale. Wine from water, feast from famine, it's magical like we hope the universe is.In my now 10 years working in various labs--developmental genetics, evolutionary genetics, transgenics, and again evolutionary genetics, I have worked with various animal models--flies, mice, zebra fish.
In setting up hundreds and hundreds of crosses, isolating sexes for various breeding purposes, I have yet to see a single case of a virgin female animal producing an offspring.
I have yet to see such a finding published anywhere and believe me--it would be quite astounding. (certain fish and reptile species are known to change sex when conditions are necessary, and fertilize themselves; but we know that humans can not do this. There has not yet been a case of a fertile hermaphrodite. They are, by necessity, born sterile)
Science has yet to provide evidence that such an event can occur. This, after decades of experimentation and millions of papers published that involve animal husbandry.
granted, the scientific community does not concern itself with setting out to disprove biblical claims, as many of them are simply not worth investigating.
A single sentence declaring itself as, or interpreted as absolute truth, does not warrant scientific investigation, because it does not claim itself to be testable.
Further, it was an event bereft of witnesses, divorced by decades from the time when it was first related, so any type of forensic approach to such a claim is impossible.
All I can say, is that millions of peer reviewed studies have not yet provided evidence that it is possible for this claim, made only one time ever, could possibly be true.
I'm not a botanist. Otherwise, I might have spent more time setting plants alight. I have attended many a bonfire, brush fire, witnessed plenty of fires in my life, however. I have not yet witnessed a case where plant matter survived fire, untouched.
Well...one of my friends did once, in college...after a Phish show. ....he had popped a few tabs before the show.
No.Does every question have one answer that is the truth, even if we don't yet know what that answer is?
Sure. The earth is not a circle.Has science disproved anything that is said in the Bible?
Is the Bible infallible?
I believe it was inspired by the Holy Spirit and following it through thoughtful prayer can lead you to the right place in life.And if it is not, can it be believed?