For Maklelan: LDS beholden to biblical claims

[_Simon Belmont]

Simon. That's quite the new avatar. Is it the portrait of the artist as a young man?

Not sure what you mean. It's "The Most Interesting Man In The World" from a beer commercial. I find the advertising on said commercial very funny and very well done. Yes, beer is against the WoW, and I am not advocating it.

[_sock puppet]

Simon. That's quite the new avatar. Is it the portrait of the artist as a young man?

Not sure what you mean. It's "The Most Interesting Man In The World" from a beer commercial. I find the advertising on said commercial very funny and very well done. Yes, beer is against the WoW, and I am not advocating it.

Do you have a link to a youtube video of the commercial?

I did not think there was a beer commercial I had not seen, but I do not recall one featuring this lad?

[_Simon Belmont]

There are a few of them. I really like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_ ... VQjUu-s2JA

You have to sign in because it talks about beer and may not be suitable for children.

[_sock puppet]

There are a few of them. I really like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_ ... VQjUu-s2JA

You have to sign in because it talks about beer and may not be suitable for children.

Thanks, Simon. I enjoyed that. He is indeed pretty darn interesting.

[_Darth J]

I've refuted each and every one of your points. Then I cured cancer and invented a time machine.

[_Sethbag]

The foundational claims of Christianity hold more weight than the question of in what manner a donkey communicated.

No they don't. The Bible says that the Holy Ghost fell upon a virgin girl and she got pregnant with the offspring of the Creator of the Universe. There's no evidence that this actually happened, nor that said Creator actually exists. Of what weight is the mere anecdotal claim, decades later, by someone who wasn't even there, that this actually happened? By your very logic, virgin girls aren't typically fallen upon by the Holy Ghost and impregnated with the spawn of the Creator of the Universe, so we're safe in assuming that the authors of the Gospels were uninformed and merely interpreting in a fanciful way some story they'd heard.

[_brade]

The foundational claims of Christianity hold more weight than the question of in what manner a donkey communicated.

No they don't. The Bible says that the Holy Ghost fell upon a virgin girl and she got pregnant with the offspring of the Creator of the Universe. There's no evidence that this actually happened, nor that said Creator actually exists. Of what weight is the mere anecdotal claim, decades later, by someone who wasn't even there, that this actually happened? By your very logic, virgin girls aren't typically fallen upon by the Holy Ghost and impregnated with the spawn of the Creator of the Universe, so we're safe in assuming that the authors of the Gospels were uninformed and merely interpreting in a fanciful way some story they'd heard.

I guess you missed his response:

It is more likely that God would intervene with a miracle (defined as something outside of natural law) on something as important as the atonement than it is to have a donkey speak Hebrew.

So you see, if God exists, then it's more likely that he would intervene in the birth of Jesus than make a donkey speak. That's because intervention in the birth of Jesus has to do more directly with the atonement. So really all you have to accept to find his argument compelling is the existence of God and the necessity of the atonement. That's all.

[_Chap]

I'm not sure I understand. In terms of how things usually are is there some reason I should think that virgin births caused by divine beings are less unusual than donkeys made to talk by divine beings? Why does one hold more weight than the other such that there's good reason to be skeptical of one and not the other?

It is more likely that God would intervene with a miracle (defined as something outside of natural law) on something as important as the atonement than it is to have a donkey speak Hebrew.

The talking donkey story (for those who may not remember having read the Bible a good few times) occurs in a context where someone is planning to wipe out the Children of Israel - Yahweh's chosen people, and for Christians the ultimate vehicle for the Atonement. Numbers 22 begins:

New International Version (NIV)

1 Then the Israelites traveled to the plains of Moab and camped along the Jordan across from Jericho.

2 Now Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites, 3 and Moab was terrified because there were so many people. Indeed, Moab was filled with dread because of the Israelites.

4 The Moabites said to the elders of Midian, “This horde is going to lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.”

So Balak son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, 5 sent messengers to summon Balaam son of Beor, who was at Pethor, near the Euphrates River, in his native land. Balak said:

“A people has come out of Egypt; they cover the face of the land and have settled next to me. 6 Now come and put a curse on these people, because they are too powerful for me. Perhaps then I will be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that whoever you bless is blessed, and whoever you curse is cursed.”

No talking donkey might have led to Balaam cursing Israel.

Balaam cursing Israel might have led to the Israelites suffering a massive defeat by the Moabites that risked imperiling their survival as a nation, and certainly could have prevented them taking over the Promised Land (precisely what the Moabites wanted to stop them doing.).

If Israel had not survived as a nation, where would Jesus have come from. and how could the Atonement have happened?

Like the other miraculous preservations of Israel in the Old Testament, this one fully merited Yahweh's entire attention, from the Christian as well as from the Jewish point of view.