Thousands of gallons of water have been poured into this cup.

I have you to tell me exactly what I mean and what I think anyway, so this would be redundant.

No salvation, or rather no individual salvation is actually not that ludicrous. Remember that original sin as a doctrine did not come about until about 2 centuries into Christianity's history, and it is still rejected in mainstream Judaism. There are Christians who reject it still, though in fairness this can't be said to be a mainstream thing.

When you leave out original sin, you also tend to leave behind the idea of individual salvation and instead move towards the ideal of redemption for mankind. This traditionally has left room for more favorable interpretations regarding the fate of "non-believers" (as long as we are not talking about opposition of course).

Only if you accept my analysis.

We're definitely not short on Interpretations, I just find that when it comes to the fate of non-believers, I see no difference in asking what happened to the gentiles before Chirst, and asking what happened to the gentiles after Christ. Even in the OT, there are laws that are mentioned that apply to the gentiles, and there are gentiles within the text that manage to show faith. Nowhere does it imply that people were damned on the basis of when or where they were born, which I think this question implies, at least in a rhetorical sense which is almost always present when this question is presented.

Sure, but when OT was written salvation was not even on the table. OT is about the redemption of Israel, not personal salvation.

Everything about this thread is a catch-22. I cannot not believe in Christianity, yet I cannot believe in it (at least some parts of it).

How do we get to the bottom of this? Perhaps the whole idea of biblical innerancy / infallibility is flawed?

I mean, to say the whole Bible is man made, is laughable. But to say the Bible is 100% God's word, is also laughable. The problem is, no one is forensically skilled enough to decipher (if even possible) what the heck happened in the Scriptures.

Perhaps you may want to consider more carefully what Biblical inerrancy/infallibility mean. When you use those words, what do you think you're saying?

First, why would it be laughable to say the whole Bible is man made? Do you also think it's laughable that the Koran, Buddhavacana, Talmud, Book of Mormon, etc. are man made? Have you honestly done extensive and compelling enough research to, free of bias, determine that all religious holy books are man made, but The Bible is not?

But lets set that aside.

The main issue is that once you say that the Bible isn't infallible/100% God's Word, you have no real way to determine any sort of message from the divine. It's impossible from reading the text what is "God's Word" and what isn't once you say that some parts may not be, because ALL of the Bible has the fingerprints of mankind all over it: From the Torah to Psalms to the Gospels all the way to Revelation, they were written in the same themes as other obviously human texts of the time.

The Bible was obviously written by human hands, to a specific human audience at a certain time and place, using the literary themes relevant to that time. There is no way to ascertain that the Bible is divine without faith, and once you say, "I have faith that this part, this part, and this part are divine, but that part, that part, and that part aren't" the whole thing just falls apart, doesn't it?

Personally, I'd suggest you explore why it is that you think you "cannot not believe in Christianity." Is it because you find the idea of a godless universe unpalatable? Is it because you find the incompleteness of human knowledge uncomfortable? Does your desire for the Bible to be true have anything to do with whether or not it actually is true?

While the OT focuses on the redemption of Israel as a nation, and also emphasizes that salvation will come through this nation, personal salvation is not ignored, it's encompassed in the larger focus of Israel's redemption.

While Israel was chosen, God didn't spare those who rebelled, eg. the kings and judges, but did save individual persons who had faith, irrespective of nationality who were not part of the chosen race, eg. Rahab. edit: or Nineveh.

I can agree that the focus wasn't on salvation as much as the NT, which is primarily devoted to Christ and atonement, God's punishment for those who do not follow him is just as important a focus as salvation through the Jews.

I agree with this more than most Christians, aside from the YEC crowd. When you ignore certain passages, you open a door which is hard to close.

There are Christians who do take some passages as metaphors, and this prevents the bible from unravelling despite some passages not being "true".

Like I said, I am stuck in the middle between a rock and a hard place. For one thing, I've wondered where the root of morality came from? I've tried exploring atheism, but it also takes faith to trust that there is nothing else out there besides us.

Regarding other religions, I don't think they are "fairy tales" or made up either; that there is something "out of this world" behind it too.

I also disagree with your stance that to say one thing in the Bible is divine and another is not divine doesn't work. Using forensics and evidence, one can piece together what is what. For example, I could probably make out the picture in a jigsaw puzzle if 60% of the pieces are replaced with the color black.


-edit- What's stopping me from being an atheist is the existence of morality. And when exploring religion, Christianity seems to be the most comprehensive and explains why other religions exists (false God, idols, or the work of Satan)

It's worth noting that the Jewish interpretations of scriptures aren't focused on answering questions about "true" and "false." There is a lot of emphasis placed on the multiplicity of understandings of scripture, rather than trying to define and interpret the content in a singular manner. Since there is not a single interpretation, it negates the concepts of "true" and "false" as being applicable labels.

That's a fair point about interpretations. My point was more aimed at people who will point to someone not believing in a particular incident, say the flood, and concluding that this disbelief results in Moses not existing and erasing the Davidic line to where Jesus could not have existed. In all honesty, I do see a point to that objection if you had to take everything literally.

I mean, I could google the exact definition, but I just don't think you can use the Bible the way today's evangelical/fundamental Christians are viewing it.

For example, a fundamental Christian would say that everyone who does not accept Jesus as his personal savior is going to hell, a place that is eternal fire. They derive this from the book of Revelation, and the Gospels (John 14:6). This to me is blatant misuse/misunderstanding of Scriptures, its background, and a lack of common sense, because the Scriptures also say that God is omnipotent and just and loving, and there are many people who have never even heard of the word "Jesus" throughout their lifetime.

How can you be sure there is a root of morality?


It sounds like you dont understand what atheism is, then . Atheism isnt something you "try out" like trying starbucks rather than costas. If you believe in god, then your not an atheist, no matter how much you "explore" it. Atheism says nothing about there being nothing else out there besides us ( i guess strong atheists who explicitly state " there are no gods" may be saying something ).


So you can tell which bits of the bible are divinely inspired, and which bits are made up by man?


No, whats stopping you being an atheist is your belief in god. Atheism also says nothing about the existence of morality. Also, how do you know that morality exists outside of a concept?

Okay... but what does their usage have to do with your struggles with Christianity? Even if they're doing silly things with the Bible, you don't need to join them.

This is why it's important for you to know what you mean by words. What does God's omnipotence have to do with anything here? What does it mean that God is just? That God is loving? The answers to some of these questions will vary quite dramatically from one Christian to another (especially as you probe the details). And that variation potentially accounts for a lot of the confusion that exists around various doctrinal statements.

So I would encourage you again to really figure out how you understand these words and to start trying to put together what all of this means. The practice of doing this would go a long way towards helping you sort out whatever it you think you are having problems with.

I meant Noah, not Moses

I think you will find that this is an interpretation, and one that is much younger than the OT writings themselves. Salvation is tied to original sin, a Christian concept from around the 3rd century.

This is also in my opinion one of the truly big biblical disrepancies. The God of OT simply has very little to do with the God of NT.

I can't say you're wrong, because at it's been pointed out it's a matter of interpretation, but don't you think there are implications of heaven and hell in the OT? What is the consequence of rebelling against God? Why were the Jews expecting a Messiah? Is the difference between God sparing Nineveh, but destroying Sodom only in how and when they died?

I disagree with this criticism and dislike how popular it is among atheists today. So, a couple points:

First, this is not an accurate presentation of the actual view you are criticizing. Most Christians who reject the literal (or "plain") reading of some passages are not thereby claiming that those passages are not divine, or inspired, etc. Typically they will claim that they still are inspired, but that it is some other meaning that is inspired, or that inspiration means something different than just God stamping "true and morally right" on everything said or done in the Bible.

Second, regarding the bolded, it is just obviously false. The Catholic Church is one of the longest and most powerful institutions in the world, but throughout its history it has not accepted the literal reading of every passage as the true and inspired meaning. So, the whole thing doesn't just fall apart if we don't accept the kind of literal reading of fundamentalist Christianity. In fact, I would argue that the kind of interpretation based on church authority and tradition practiced by Roman Catholics is much more likely to be able to bend with the times (and so hang together) than that of Protestant fundamentalists.

Finally, I want to address the argument more directly. I really don't see a good justification for claiming that the only way that God could have communicated to us is through a dictated book. I think people get too hung up on the idea of the Bible as a collection of claims about the nature of the world. This is not the focus of the Bible at all. Of course beliefs about the nature of the world are part of the background assumptions of the authors of the books of the Bible, but I don't see why this means that they must all be true. To me it is like criticizing Shakespeare because he didn't know about genetics.

In fact, the strongest argument against the theory of inspiration that underlies fundamentalism is that it is ends up showing Christianity is false. In other words, the probability that inerrancy is correct if Christianity is "true" is very low (because inerrancy is almost certainly false), whereas the probability that some other theory of inspiration is correct if Christianity is "true" is much greater.

EDIT: My last paragraph is wrong. What I meant to say is that the probability of Christianity and inerrancy being true is significantly lower than the probability of Christianity and some other theory of inspiration being true. This is because the probability of inerrancy being true is so low.

Maybe he just mellowed out as he got older?

edit: nice post Orp... i likey

Yes, the Bible is dependent not only on the level of awareness of the people that contributed to it but also on the level of awareness of the reader.

In other words, I would pay more attention to what Jesus said than what was said about him or what other people interpret.

OrP wrote the post I would have liked to have written if I were the kind of person who wrote good posts

I'm fine with this as long as they take the metaphors as metaphors and the literal stuff as literal.

There are some passages that are seen as ambiguous when it comes to Biblical study, but in the majority of cases where laymen tend to argue whether something is literal or not, there's a clear answer that's already been revealed through academic study. Most of the time, a clear understanding of the style of literature in relationship to other literature of the time is enough to understand whether something was meant as a depiction of a literal event (such as the story of Exodus) or as an instructive or uplifting story rather than a literal real world event (such as Job and Esther).