Roger Morrison wrote:Gazelam wrote:I wanted to revisit this thread, One: In hopes that others who have yet to contribute to it might add their opinions on the matters at hand. and Two: to bring up everyones disagreement with the story of the Flood.
Vegas (Who has yet to contribute here) stated that he didn't believe that a man named Noah even existed at all, while others seem to attribute the account to a Noah, but believe that he was wrong in his statement that the whole Earth was flooded.
I can understand how an athiest like Vegas (If that is in fact his stance) can disagree with the Flood story, but how can anyone with a testimony of the Bible and/or the Book of Mormon disagree with the account? How do you reconsile a belief in Christ with No belief in the story of Noah? And to add to the mix, how does a person reconsile a belief in Christ with no belief in the story of the Fall?
Hi Gaz, sounds AS IF these questions have my name on them ;-) I think i've covered these with you before?? However, why not again, eh?
Two schools of thought re Bible authenticity regarding its historicity:
1, Literalist, it's "God's" word. Inerrantly preserved by the Holy Spirit.... Many fundamentalists, evs. and LDS believe this to be the case. Do you?
2, Not to be taken literally. But as a story of creation imagined by our ancients. Handed down as 'true' but hardly beliveable, today. Mythology, legend and traditions were added to the compilations over time. Some of which are more believeable than other mystic imaginings that appeal to superstitions seeming valid in a vacuum of knowledge... More people of all sects and traditions, including LDS, subscribe to this understanding today, than in past times... As I do. Hence the contraversy...
"Testimony of the Bible"... Poor choice of words... I have a "Testimony" of the Bible. It just differs from yours. As I have "Testified" before: There was NO FALL! That is THE major contrivance in the parcel of Christianism delivered by the misinformed to the gullible, IMSCO!
That "Fact" OK, "supposition" has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of THE MAN Jesus & HIS MESSAGE!!
Gotta close off for now. It's after 10pm and i've been up since 4am... not at my best ;-0... Sleepy regards, Roger
Back again. (I changed a few words in the above for clarity.) Pasted below is from Spong's News Letter. I apologize for its length, but i think it illustrates some of the fundamental differences between the "Two Schools"...
I note first that no reputable church historian in the world today buys the traditional argument undergirding ecclesiastical claims that church leaders can speak with the authority of God. This argument states that Jesus chose the apostles to be the leaders of the Church and that they in turn chose their successors and that in this divine hierarchy truth was preserved in some pure and catholic form. That idea was imposed on history to serve the propaganda needs of ecclesiastical authorities who claim to represent "Christian Orthodoxy." Orthodoxy, however, does not mean that this point of view is true; it only means that this point of view won! The facts are that what we now call "orthodox Christianity" evolved out of many early competing factions and they were settled not by appeals to truth, but by those who had the political power to enable them to be the winners and thus to write the history of the movement. People seem to forget that once the Catholic Church had two "infallible" popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome, each claiming to speak with the unerring voice of God and each condemning the other. There is also documentable evidence that when new, indisputable truth emerged in history, challenging the old ecclesiastical formularies, even "infallible" church leaders found a remarkable ability to adapt the old certainties to the new realities. For example, originally the claim was made that Jesus alone of all human beings had escaped the infection of original sin, since the Holy Spirit was his father and his virgin mother had no part in his conception other than to be the receptacle to make human his divine life.. Then in the early years of the 18th century, science discovered that women had egg cell from which every life ever born received half of its genetic code. Women were thus equal, co-creators of every life. Since Mary was clearly a child of Adam like everyone else, she too would have been tainted by and would inevitably pass on Adam's "original sin" to her son regardless of the virgin birth claim. So the idea of Jesus being without taint of sin, so essential to the view of salvation in that era, was threatened with being made inoperative. "Not a problem," said the Vatican leaders and, before too many years had passed, a new dogma was proclaimed for the faithful to believe. Mary had been "immaculately conceived." Therefore, she was cleansed from Adam's sin even before she was born. It was a wonderful, but deeply revealing, accommodation forcing upon us the compelling realization that truth is never ultimate and that infallibility for any claim on the part of anyone to possess such truth in propositional form, is at best delusional and at worst, ridiculous. Yet Catholic fundamentalism still makes this claim. Few people, however, actually believe it.
The countering Protestant claim for the inerrancy of the Bible developed because the Reformation could hardly accept the papal infallibility against which they were so busy rebelling, so they elevated the scriptures to the status of the "revealed word of God." One wonders first which version of the Bible was the inerrant one since they differ widely. Second, people are generally unaware that the original texts of the gospels had no punctuation, no paragraphs, no capital letters and no space between words. All of those things were imposed on the gospels by interpreters hundreds of years after they were written. Were these grammarians also inerrant? It next needs to be stated that we have no complete manuscript of any single gospel that dates any earlier than the 6th century of the Christian era. We have only handwritten copies of handwritten copies of handwritten copies. Were all of the copiers inerrant? Finally we recall that Jesus spoke in Aramaic but the gospels were written in Greek. Thus before the first word attributed to Jesus was recorded, it had to be translated. Were the translators also inerrant? How many layers of inerrancy claims can rationality absorb before collapsing?
We can even go far beyond this point. For example, we now know that both Matthew and Luke had Mark in front of them when they composed the gospels that bear their names. Yet neither Matthew nor Luke copied Mark verbatim. Both omitted things from Mark with which they disagreed, added things that were not in the Marcan original and actually corrected Mark from time to time. Does one edit, correct, omit from or add to the "inerrant word of God?" Of course not, but you might well do those things to the words of Mark.
Finally, what happens to the inerrancy claims when you confront places where the Bible contradicts itself? In Mark and Matthew there are two versions of Jesus feeding the multitude with a limited number of loaves and fishes, while Luke says there is only one. Mark says the appearance of the risen Lord will occur in Galilee, but he never describes any such appearance. Matthew says the resurrected Jesus did appear in Galilee on top of a mountain. Luke says no Galilean appearance ever took place and that all appearances occurred in the environs of Jerusalem. Mark says the women in the garden on that first Easter did not see the Risen Lord. Matthew says they did. Luke says they did not. How can the inerrant "Word of God" be contradictory?
Still infallibility claims for church leaders and inerrancy claims for the sacred texts are the accepted presuppositions of fundamentalism in Christian history, yet neither claim is capable of being sustained rationally, but in every dispute in church history one or the other of these two hysterically absurd claims becomes the weapon of choice of the fundamentalists. They shout these claims with authority, defend them with anger and invest them with the virtue of antiquity. All of this, however, is little more than the pitiful claim of frightened people whose security has been disturbed by emerging truth. That is what lies behind today's fundamentalism, but to my surprise people still pay attention to these strange claims. They even give credibility to the propaganda of the fundamentalists that suggests that homosexuality is really the issue by listening as their condemnation of homosexuality is said to be based on the "clear teaching of the word of God." It is not! It is rooted in the fear and prejudice of the frightened and ill informed few who feel like the world is changing and they cannot adjust. Yet because they clothe their fear in religious language people continue to give it a credibility it does not deserve, since these claims come very close to being little more than the delusions of the mentally ill.
Take this as you will, Gaz. I hope it helps the understanding that "belief" does not always equate with "truth". It is often easier to believe a lie. Especially when at the time of presentation of the "lie" the truth of the matter was yet to be discovered--Earth centred Universe et al...
As for Noah and "the flood". The consideration is not that it is "unbelievable". It is absolutely "believable"! IT IS SIMPLY NOT HONESTLY CREDIBLE TODAY!
You have my book. Reread the section dealing with the logistics of the collection of the ark's creatures. Penguins from Antarctica, Polar Bears from the Arctic; every living creature from the Earths surface herded by Noah to one gang-plank... OK, maybe several but in one single crossing of the lines of longtitude and latitude in the millions of square miles of earth surface... All of these noncredible stories are Old Testament originated and bear little on the "Two New Commandments" presented by the man Jesus.
IF anything in the Bible is believable AND credible it is the presentation of humanitarian principles encompassed in the life and teachings of the walking, talking empathetic Jesus, who was crucified because he defied the religious establishment of his day. The final nail, so to speak, was his assertion that those professing to represent "God", did not know "God"!
IMSCO, the whole of our Judeo-Christian tradition has completely avoided that Jesus spoken "truth". IF one "believes" the Bible, what about THAT statement of Jesus? Seems *you don't know "God"* could well be made today when we witness churches that don't stand for peace, that enmass fortunes, tokenly clothe and feed, endorse Mammon, persecute nonbelievers, edict entrance to Heaven...
The choice is (y)ours, believe your church, or believe Jesus. OK, some where in between if it makes ya feel better... And, ya don't even have to attend church to live by those principles of love... Warm regards, Roger