The Bible is Rediculous!

[_Doctor Scratch]

Maybe so, but it would be foolish---fallacious, even---to take in literally purely on the basis of the internal claims.

The standard method of dealing with historical documents is to assume that they are true and test the claim.

Okay. First: are you really trying to claim that the Bible is a "historical document" in the same sense as, say, Gibbon? Is there a respectable secular curriculum anywhere that treats the Bible purely as a "history," rather than a religious text? Second, "standard methods" are something outside the text. If you want to bring in extra-literary considerations, fine, but recall that my primary beef has been with your wrong-headed and naïve contention that authorial intent demands a literal reading---particularly when we're dealing with the supernatural. Finally, there is now respectable historian anywhere on the planet who is going to say, "Well, lookee here! The authors are claiming that this is real, authentic history! They must have intended us to read it that way! Well, I guess we should believe them. Look at this---how interesting! It looks like there used to be fire-breathing dragons in northern Canada." And that *is* what you were arguing early on, The Nehor. Go back and read over your posts on pg. 2.

[_The Nehor]

That was the point of the alien abductee analogy: you wouldn't believe the story just because the author of that story insisted that it was authentic. Likewise: you have got no business claiming that the Bible needs to be taken literally just because the authors say it should be. This is a very simple, obvious point, but you're so clueless and naïve that it continues to sail over your head. You can try to claim that this was never a part of your argument, in which case I'll just bring up your verbatim quotes once again, wherein you did indeed claim that the authors intended to treat the Bible as authentic.

I've stated again and again that I would not automatically believe the abductee's story just because they said it. Like all accounts of actual events you begin by taking the story on it's own merits and deciding whether to believe it or not. Again, either the abductee was abducted or he was not abducted. This is the way you deal with historical texts to determine accuracy. My argument is that you believe the account or you do not. You can even break it down and believe part of it is accurate.

You seem to want to dodge the question of accuracy in historical accounts by arguing that it is simplistic to believe the account is either real/literal or not.

[_Doctor Scratch]

But nobody, and I mean *nobody*, in their right mind, is going to be making the sweepingly dunder-headed argument that you made, which is that is perfectly kosher and okay to base the bulk of your interpretation an authorial intent.

If I was doing that I would rightly be completely embarrassed. I have no doubt you could pwn that argument. I know I could. My argument is that when a text purports to be literal it either is or is not literal. Are you arguing with this?

Yes. In particular, I'm arguing with your *reasons* for deciding when this "purporting" is to be taken at face value. You seem to think that authorial intent is enough, hence your remarks on pg. 2 of the thread.

I've stated again and again that I would not automatically believe the abductee's story just because they said it.

But you *do* automatically believe the Bible "just because they said it"!

Like all accounts of actual events you begin by taking the story on it's own merits and deciding whether to believe it or not.

And, your own rationale for deciding (from pg. 2):

You can call the whole account a lie if you want but thinking that the writers intended it to be metaphorical is a colossal joke.

(I.e., it should be taken as literal b/c the authors intended it that way.) And:

...it wasn't written as myth or legend which is why I don't see the need to read it as metaphorical or symbolic and I don't believe that it was written with that intent.

More about intent. This next bit though is really damning, especially to your claims about not shifting your argument:

I'm assuming we're still on the same topic as before which was not about the truthfulness of the account but the intent

Aww. Man, oh, man. Here you are, many pages later, wanting to make this about "the truthfulness of the account," and yet, from the outset, you were trying to make a case for interpretation based on intent. More pwnage.

Again, either the abductee was abducted or he was not abducted. This is the way you deal with historical texts to determine accuracy. My argument is that you believe the account or you do not. You can even break it down and believe part of it is accurate.

You seem to want to dodge the question of accuracy in historical accounts by arguing that it is simplistic to believe the account is either real/literal or not.

Actually, in all fairness, looking over your old posts (on pg. 2), it's clear that you weren't even arguing that the Bible was true---this was something you introduced later on, probably hoping that it would distract away from the holes in your argument. Instead, you were just trying to claim that it was impossible, or dumb, or whatever, to read it as "myth" or "legend" or "metaphor." Your rationale for making this claim was authorial intent. And that's why you got pwned. Your argument is akin to the alien abductee insisting that his/her story *must* be treated as literal, simply due to intent. By your logic, a psychologist's reading of the story as, oh, I don't know---a metaphor for repressed trauma, would be "idiotic."

Sorry, The Nehor, but you have been pwned.

[_The Nehor]

Okay. First: are you really trying to claim that the Bible is a "historical document" in the same sense as, say, Gibbon?

First of all, I think we should localize the argument. I have argued only for the Gospels. I do not think that Ecclesiastes is a historical document. Gibbon is different in that he is analyzing the historical documents of the period while the Gospels claim to be accounts from people who were there. The Gospels would be more comparable to Tacitus then Gibbon.

The Gospels are stories of the life of an individual. They differ from most modern biographies in that they do very little interpretation of the person of Jesus. They simply recite events. In that sense, they are historical documents. They describe a historical figure living a historical life.

Is there a respectable secular curriculum anywhere that treats the Bible purely as a "history," rather than a religious text?

I'm going to confine my remarks to the Gospels here. There are attempts at secular understandings of the life of Jesus that use as their primary text the Gospels. However, this is where the difference with Gibbon's works show up. It is generally impossible to decide that the Gospels are on the whole accurate and not believe that Jesus was divine. There is a stake in the decision. When reading a history of Rome there is no real personal stake in the matter.

Second, "standard methods" are something outside the text. If you want to bring in extra-literary considerations, fine, but recall that my primary beef has been with your wrong-headed and naïve contention that authorial intent demands a literal reading---particularly when we're dealing with the supernatural.

I fail to see how the supernatural has anything to do with it unless you say outright from the beginning that supernatural events can't occur. That is an entirely different question.

Finally, there is now respectable historian anywhere on the planet who is going to say, "Well, lookee here! The authors are claiming that this is real, authentic history! They must have intended us to read it that way! Well, I guess we should believe them. Look at this---how interesting! It looks like there used to be fire-breathing dragons in northern Canada."

No, my argument is that it should be examined like any other document. I would be wary of anyone who claims to believe this document and insists that the dragons are symbolic of man's descent into reptilian lizard creatures when the text doesn't discuss that. I'd have more respect for the guy who thought the dragons were real. The proper approach would be to compare that story to other accounts of northern Canada and figure out if it matches. Then you decide based on the weight of evidence. Admittedly, this would be a snap judgment in most cases as most of us are vaguely familiar enough with the history of Northern Canada to suspect there were no dragons there and if there were there would have been a rip-off of Jurassic Park where they clone dragons.

Imagine that the Gospels were lost shortly after being written and discovered today. They purport to be historical. Those who disbelieve in the supernatural would toss them on that count. Those who believed it possible would examine the evidence and make a decision.

And that *is* what you were arguing early on, The Nehor. Go back and read over your posts on pg. 2.

I just did. I stand by it all. From the beginning I've argued that the Gospels should be treated like any other account. If you've decided based on other premises that the supernatural does not happen then you would be quite right to discount the Gospels. If you compared the account to others from the First Century and find conflicts where the weight of evidence is on the other side then you should discount it.

[_Calculus Crusader]

Scratch, I don't think you quite understand the point of Crusader's argument. You see, Crusader really, really loves Jesus (in what sense, I won't comment), but almost all of the evidence for the specific Jesus Crusader believes in is in the same set of books as all those ridiculous stories about the Earth being created 6,883 years ago, the Tower of Babel, Jonah and the "fish", etc. This poses a consistency problem for him, so Crusader has to come up with some reason to read the New Testament "Jesus pulled a rabbit out of a hat" stories as literal, but not the Old Testament stories that geology and physics have been proving wrong for the last few centuries. He thinks he's found a rationale with his whole "the New Testament was intended to be read literally, while the Old Testament was not" shtick. Whether other documents are intended to be read literally doesn't really matter for this analysis, because Crusader's argument here does not purport to prove that the Bible is reliable -- it's merely a counterargument to skeptics' claims that the Bible is necessarily unreliable because of the antediluvian horse**** in the Old Testament.

But Crusader's position is still problematic for a couple of reasons. First, his warrant for reading the New Testament as literal also applies to a hell of a lot of the Old Testament. He thinks we should read Luke literally because it references historical events and persons, for example. Well, the Book of Exodus references the Egyptian pharaohs; if Crusader wanted to maintain consistency, he'd say that turning a staff into a snake should be read literally as well. (Although maybe he does, I dunno -- the point is, we should laugh at him either way.)

Another problem for Crusader is that in all the millennia that the Bible's been around, it's only since the advent of modern geology that Bible believers have tried to interpret any significant part of it as non-literal. Crusader wants to say that the forebears of his religion, the ancient Hebrews (who divided up their society into classes based on who was descended from which of Noah's descendants) were naïvely reading their texts, because the story of Noah wasn't intended to be read literally. He'd also have us believe that Jesus didn't find this pervasive and fundamental misinterpretation of God's word worthy of comment when he teleported to Earth to tell everyone that they'd been f*****g up his religion. Crusader's view of OT-as-not-necessarily-literal doesn't fit in with the Jesus story at all.

If all this reminds you of LGT-theory Mopologetics, it should: both are unconvincing ad hoc patches of religious beliefs that were once universally held by their adherents until science demolished them and made the unconvincing patches necessary.

Dear pretentious moron,

How many times do I have to tell you that I don't think the entire Old Testament is ahistorical?

[_Calculus Crusader]

Scratch,

I don't suffer fools gladly. As for Blixa's examples and appeals to analogy, I've already shanked her(?) jengaship.

Quit while you are behind Scratch. Your b.s. postmodernism and pretense of learning will not prevail against my knowledge of Biblical scholarship.

If you've got a real point, then make it. Boasting does you no favors. I'll just say that you're going to have a very, very hard time making a case for the Bible as a totally literal document based solely authorial intent. If you want to bring in other kinds of evidence.... Well, then, that's cool. My point here all along has simply been to obliterate The Nehor's dumb and ineffective authorial intent argument. And I've done that.

I've already made my points. You have not demonstrated that the "historical" fiction you like to cite existed two thousand years ago. Your assertion that Native American myths are "historical" fiction is laughably absurd. (Really, are you that stupid?) Where are the historical persons, places, and things in those stories which allow one to place them in a specific historical context? Allow me to answer: there are none. It's all "in the time before time" stuff.

The New Testament has all the hallmarks of accounts that are meant to be read literally. (Whether they are truly historical is another argument.)

[_The Nehor]

Yes. In particular, I'm arguing with your *reasons* for deciding when this "purporting" is to be taken at face value. You seem to think that authorial intent is enough, hence your remarks on pg. 2 of the thread.

I still do.

But you *do* automatically believe the Bible "just because they said it"!

No, I don't. I accept the Gospel account as largely accurate because it fits the period and seems plausible. Admittedly, I do believe the supernatural is possible because I've experienced it. My preconceptions influence my decision as to whether the account is accurate as they would for anyone. The decision is still there.

Like all accounts of actual events you begin by taking the story on it's own merits and deciding whether to believe it or not.

And, your own rationale for deciding (from pg. 2):

You can call the whole account a lie if you want but thinking that the writers intended it to be metaphorical is a colossal joke.

(I.e., it should be taken as literal b/c the authors intended it that way.) And:

Yes, that is the reason. When someone writes what they claim to be a historical document it should be analyzed as one until it passes or fails the test.

...it wasn't written as myth or legend which is why I don't see the need to read it as metaphorical or symbolic and I don't believe that it was written with that intent.

More about intent. This next bit though is really damning, especially to your claims about not shifting your argument:

Yes, I take what the author intends seriously. That's why we have forewords today in books.

I'm assuming we're still on the same topic as before which was not about the truthfulness of the account but the intent

Aww. Man, oh, man. Here you are, many pages later, wanting to make this about "the truthfulness of the account," and yet, from the outset, you were trying to make a case for interpretation based on intent. More pwnage.

I argued that the intent of the authors means that it should be taken as a historical text and judged on those merits. I fail to see pwnage.

Actually, in all fairness, looking over your old posts (on pg. 2), it's clear that you weren't even arguing that the Bible was true---this was something you introduced later on, probably hoping that it would distract away from the holes in your argument.

So you admit you've been attacking a strawman regularly and often. I didn't introduce it later on. I never argued that the Bible was real because someone said it was. I argued that it should be taken as a historical account. Pwnage.

Instead, you were just trying to claim that it was impossible, or dumb, or whatever, to read it as "myth" or "legend" or "metaphor." Your rationale for making this claim was authorial intent. And that's why you got pwned.

I disagree that I got pwned. I argued that it was ridiculous to read it in that way. I still do. I would also argue that it would be ridiculous to read Tacitus as if it was a beautiful story about the 'ideal' of Rome and not as actual history. The only rationale that you've offered to not put the Gospels and other histories in the same category is that the Gospels have supernatural elements in them. This could be grounds for saying it's false history but I don't see how it can be removed from the same standards of proof applied to other historical documents.

Your argument is akin to the alien abductee insisting that his/her story *must* be treated as literal, simply due to intent. By your logic, a psychologist's reading of the story as, oh, I don't know---a metaphor for repressed trauma, would be "idiotic."

I think the alien abductee would be quite right to insist that his story be taken literally.

I'm going to use something I used before in a slightly different form. Let's assume I'm the abductee. Whether I was actually abducted or not is irrelevant. Let's say I run to tell someone my story and they respond by see in my story a beautiful metaphor. I would think they were nuts and insist it happened. They pull out more symbolic meaning. They are perverting what happened to me and not taking my account seriously. This person is comparable to the person who sees the Bible as myth to me. Luke would have torn his hair out trying to explain his gospel to someone who took it that way.

Now, let's say I run and talk to someone who is willing to listen to my story and hear the evidence. If they decide based on the evidence that I'm wrong then they go about their lives and pay my account no heed. This is comparable to the atheist or member of another faith that reads the Gospels and decides that the evidence is against them and they are not accurate.

Two different states. I'm arguing that the first state is the state of the lunatic who will pervert texts. The second is an investigator who reached a conclusion.

Sorry, The Nehor, but you have been pwned.

Sure buddy.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Okay. First: are you really trying to claim that the Bible is a "historical document" in the same sense as, say, Gibbon?

First of all, I think we should localize the argument. I have argued only for the Gospels.

ROFL! Um, yeah. I was wondering how long you'd take to shift the goalposts like this. (The title of the thread is, "The Bible is ridiculous".)

The Gospels are stories of the life of an individual. They differ from most modern biographies in that they do very little interpretation of the person of Jesus. They simply recite events. In that sense, they are historical documents. They describe a historical figure living a historical life.

This does nothing to help your case. By this logic, so long as the alien abductee "simply recites events," it's real history, and a real historical document. This is something you have never seemed to get the hang of over the course of the thread: the interior textual elements will not support your claims---or demands, really---for a literal reading.

I'm going to confine my remarks to the Gospels here.

Lol. Okay, go ahead. It's probably a wise move.

There are attempts at secular understandings of the life of Jesus that use as their primary text the Gospels. However, this is where the difference with Gibbon's works show up. It is generally impossible to decide that the Gospels are on the whole accurate and not believe that Jesus was divine. There is a stake in the decision. When reading a history of Rome there is no real personal stake in the matter.

There we go. It's not really about relying on "intent." It's actually about your "personal stake" and your testimony---pretty much just as I said from the outset. You don't believe the text is true because of authorial intent; you believe it's true because of your beliefs.

Second, "standard methods" are something outside the text. If you want to bring in extra-literary considerations, fine, but recall that my primary beef has been with your wrong-headed and naïve contention that authorial intent demands a literal reading---particularly when we're dealing with the supernatural.

I fail to see how the supernatural has anything to do with it unless you say outright from the beginning that supernatural events can't occur. That is an entirely different question.

It has plenty to do with why you wouldn't trust *other* supernatural accounts. You probably wouldn't trust the alien abductee mainly because you don't think that aliens are real. It's not a matter of believing that supernatural events can or cannot occur; it's about relying upon authorial intent to insist that they're real. (Which, again, is what you did.)

Finally, there is now respectable historian anywhere on the planet who is going to say, "Well, lookee here! The authors are claiming that this is real, authentic history! They must have intended us to read it that way! Well, I guess we should believe them. Look at this---how interesting! It looks like there used to be fire-breathing dragons in northern Canada."

No, my argument is that it should be examined like any other document.

Kind of a broad statement, no? Do you read it like fiction? Or like poetry? Or like your bank statement? Or like a comic book? You treat it differently due to the "codes of reading" Blixa mentioned earlier. And, in your most recent post, you admitted that your main criterion for judging/reading it is "personal stake."

I would be wary of anyone who claims to believe this document and insists that the dragons are symbolic of man's descent into reptilian lizard creatures when the text doesn't discuss that. I'd have more respect for the guy who thought the dragons were real. The proper approach would be to compare that story to other accounts of northern Canada and figure out if it matches.

This is all beside the point as far as intent goes. Then again, maybe you have non-Biblical texts from the same era that discuss Jesus' resurrection, and you're just not mentioning them, despite the fact that they'd help your case? I'm curious as to what you think the proper comparison is to the Gospels.... Obviously, it's highly problematic to just compare them to themselves....

Imagine that the Gospels were lost shortly after being written and discovered today. They purport to be historical. Those who disbelieve in the supernatural would toss them on that count. Those who believed it possible would examine the evidence and make a decision.

Again: this is missing the whole point about authorial intent, but, then again, you have been trying long and hard to dodge that point, so: fine.

Here your standards are arbitrary. You toss out some supernatural but you accept other kinds. And what "evidence" are you examining? Do you have lots more evidence of people coming back from the dead, ala Jesus?

I just did. I stand by it all. From the beginning I've argued that the Gospels should be treated like any other account. If you've decided based on other premises that the supernatural does not happen then you would be quite right to discount the Gospels. If you compared the account to others from the First Century and find conflicts where the weight of evidence is on the other side then you should discount it.

I don't think that's ever been the issue here, The Nehor (though this was a nice attempt at re/mis-direction). This issue here has been whether or not it's appropriate to treat the Gospels (and the Bible) as literal history based on authorial intent. You argued that it was, and you got smacked down on that account. There's really no denying this; it would be intellectually dishonest if you were to try and insist that you *weren't* arguing for the legitimacy and historicity of the texts based on authorial intent. You were; I called you on it, and you got pwned.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I've already made my points. You have not demonstrated that the "historical" fiction you like to cite existed two thousand years ago. Your assertion that Native American myths are "historical" fiction is laughably absurd. (Really, are you that stupid?) Where are the historical persons, places, and things in those stories which allow one to place them in a specific historical context? Allow me to answer: there are none. It's all "in the time before time" stuff.

No.... Some of them are "just so"-type stories that explain how certain geographical features came to be, etc.

The New Testament has all the hallmarks of accounts that are meant to be read literally.

What are they?

[_Doctor Scratch]

Yes. In particular, I'm arguing with your *reasons* for deciding when this "purporting" is to be taken at face value. You seem to think that authorial intent is enough, hence your remarks on pg. 2 of the thread.

I still do.

And that's the Intentional Fallacy in action.

But you *do* automatically believe the Bible "just because they said it"!

No, I don't.

You're contradicting yourself.

I accept the Gospel account as largely accurate because it fits the period and seems plausible. Admittedly, I do believe the supernatural is possible because I've experienced it. My preconceptions influence my decision as to whether the account is accurate as they would for anyone. The decision is still there.

Well, then, bully for you. At least you're willing to admit that your decision is based on extra-literary considerations.

More about intent. This next bit though is really damning, especially to your claims about not shifting your argument:

Yes, I take what the author intends seriously. That's why we have forewords today in books.

A "foreward" is rather different from what the Bible is doing. And, I don't think that anyone is going to take issue with you "taking what the author intends seriously." Insisting that authorial intent dictates interpetation, though? That's a problem.

Aww. Man, oh, man. Here you are, many pages later, wanting to make this about "the truthfulness of the account," and yet, from the outset, you were trying to make a case for interpretation based on intent. More pwnage.

I argued that the intent of the authors means that it should be taken as a historical text and judged on those merits. I fail to see pwnage.

It's pwnage because it's fallacious reasoning. The reality is that you don't start your interpretation with authorial intent; you are starting from the standpoint of the believer.

Actually, in all fairness, looking over your old posts (on pg. 2), it's clear that you weren't even arguing that the Bible was true---this was something you introduced later on, probably hoping that it would distract away from the holes in your argument.

So you admit you've been attacking a strawman regularly and often.

No... I directly addressed the claims you made w/r/t to authorial intent.

I didn't introduce it later on. I never argued that the Bible was real because someone said it was.

You said that it should be read as real because, in your view, the authors intended it to be read as real.

I argued that it should be taken as a historical account.

Based on authorial intent.

Instead, you were just trying to claim that it was impossible, or dumb, or whatever, to read it as "myth" or "legend" or "metaphor." Your rationale for making this claim was authorial intent. And that's why you got pwned.

I disagree that I got pwned. I argued that it was ridiculous to read it in that way. I still do. I would also argue that it would be ridiculous to read Tacitus as if it was a beautiful story about the 'ideal' of Rome and not as actual history. The only rationale that you've offered to not put the Gospels and other histories in the same category is that the Gospels have supernatural elements in them. This could be grounds for saying it's false history but I don't see how it can be removed from the same standards of proof applied to other historical documents.

What does this have to do with authorial intent?

Your argument is akin to the alien abductee insisting that his/her story *must* be treated as literal, simply due to intent. By your logic, a psychologist's reading of the story as, oh, I don't know---a metaphor for repressed trauma, would be "idiotic."

I think the alien abductee would be quite right to insist that his story be taken literally.

But you wouldn't be foolish to accept it as literal for that reason alone.

I'm going to use something I used before in a slightly different form. Let's assume I'm the abductee. Whether I was actually abducted or not is irrelevant. Let's say I run to tell someone my story and they respond by see in my story a beautiful metaphor.

Wow, you are really bad at this, The Nehor. So what if the person sees "a beautiful metaphor"? Is the person's interpretation wrong? Sure, the alien abductee might disagree, and *want* the story to be taken literally, but what law of interpretation says that the listener *must* interpret the story in a given way? Suppose the listener is a psychiatrist who sees the story as evidence of a repressed trauma? Does it really matter if the abductee thinks the psychiatrist is "nuts"? Does that make the psychiatrist's interpretation any less valid?

I would think they were nuts and insist it happened. They pull out more symbolic meaning. They are perverting what happened to me and not taking my account seriously.

No, actually, you are playing Mr. Totalitarian and *insisting* and having complete and utter control over the text's meaning.

This person is comparable to the person who sees the Bible as myth to me. Luke would have torn his hair out trying to explain his gospel to someone who took it that way.

More mind-reading.

Now, let's say I run and talk to someone who is willing to listen to my story and hear the evidence. If they decide based on the evidence that I'm wrong then they go about their lives and pay my account no heed. This is comparable to the atheist or member of another faith that reads the Gospels and decides that the evidence is against them and they are not accurate.

Yes, but it's doesn't account for the multitudes of other readings.

Two different states. I'm arguing that the first state is the state of the lunatic who will pervert texts. The second is an investigator who reached a conclusion.

"State of the lunatic"? Who is it that's crafting straw men?

And: it needs to be said that all of this is a distraction away from the main issue vis-a-vis authorial intent. No one in your examples accepts or disbelieves the account simply due to the abductee's "intent." And that's why you were foolish in the first place to use intent as positive evidence in favor of the New Testament's historical authenticity. That's why you got pwned.