You make the whole Bible hyperbole because Christians over the last 2000 years have determined that Jesus sometimes used hyperbole.
What I said is that if one is allowed to call scripture hyperbole, metaphor, allegory, or any other word that means that the passage should not be taken literally, then he need take nothing in scripture at face value. If you can say that a day is not a day, anybody else can say that a resurrection was not a literal resurrection. That's hyperbole or allegory. There wasn't an actual body revivified. God being all-powerful is obviously hyperbole. If you say not, I ask why not, since you don't seem to have a rule for when you decide to call something hyperbole. The promise of everlasting life sounds life hyperbole to me as well.
And that's why one doesn't use hyperbole when giving important instructions that one wants understood clearly. It's why things like wills, directions to a destination and a recipe don't use imprecise language. If any of those use the word day such as let the dough leaven for a day before baking, or a beneficiary of a will needs to have been sober for 1000 days before receiving an inheritance, it means a literal day.
You might like to try practicing rebuttal here. Explain why that comment is incorrect. Show that you have a consistent rule for deciding what is hyperbole if you can, agree that you have no such rule, or remain silent and accept the latter as the default conclusion - failure to rebut means that the claim has been justified. Only one of us can be correct on this. Which of us is it? I've told you how the matter is decided in courtrooms, peer review, formal debates, and other academic pursuits. The last plausible, unrebutted claim prevails. That's mine right now.
If you become a Christian then you can decide for yourself what Jesus meant in His parables and sayings.
If one becomes literate in any language into which the Bible is translated, he can decide what the words he reads mean.
Do you recall the list I hid in a spoiler in post
230? Your comment was added. It's yet another example of a believer who reads scripture through a faith-based confirmation bias trying to disqualify the opinions of those who read the words without preconception. Isn't that what you're doing? I've already decided what the words mean. Having been a Christian doesn't help me understand them better. It helps me understand what reading through Bible goggles is like and why people do it. It helps me understand why your opinion is different than mine.
Would you like to rebut that? I just contradicted you again and gave a plausible argument in support. If you can't show that it is wrong, then you have no argument that it is.
There is the dating of the coming of the Messiah (
Daniel 9) and what He would do amongst other things prophesied in the same prophesy.
I looked at the scripture and couldn't find a date. It wouldn't matter if I had. Jesus does not match the OT prophecy. Yes, I realize that he does to any faithful Christian who has decided that it must before looking at it whatever was prophesied and whatever materialized. They are the same thing to the believer whatever they are because he needs them to be, because he assumes that they must be and therefore are.
You just made an unsubstantiated claim about the supernatural and God being part of nature and you want me to be the one to show that your claim is unsubstantiated.
I made more than a claim. I made an argument that the concept of the supernatural was incoherent. And yes, it is your duty if you want to persuade any critical thinker that you are correct to show why he cannot be, or he is justified in believing that he is. The argument presently stands unrebutted.
I thought that the one to make the claim bore the burden of proof.
That was you regarding the existence of the supernatural. I rebutted that with an argument showing the internal contradiction in the premise of a realm distinct from nature able to affect nature, and of the claim that such a realm would be undetectable. That meets my burden of proof for my counterclaim, whereas you still haven't tried to support your implied claim about the supernatural existing, nor addressed my rebuttal of it. If you understood the argument and found a flaw in it, you should have made your counterargument. That you didn't is understood as you either not following the argument, or else understanding it and realizing that you have no counterargument. Either way, that subthread of the debate ends with your position having been successfully contradicted.
I was speaking to a Physicist once and he said that science would be able to detect God if God did anything in this universe. Your claim is similar.
He is correct, and he is stating the same thing I am. The claim that a deity could modify nature yet not be detectable is incoherent. The very modification would be detectable. This is the problem Christians have with the claim that prayer can modify health outcomes, for example, or lottery outcomes. These things can be tested in randomized, double-blinded trials.
The STEP study did just that with people going for major cardiovascular surgery: "
Conclusions: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications." The first clause shows that those being prayed for who didn't know it did no better than those not prayed for. The second clause reflects that unblinding one cohort - telling them that they were receiving prayer - actually led to worse outcomes, revealing a negative placebo effect of the news. The point though is that one cannot claim that this deity can affect our world but that that could ever be undetectable.
I chose to see
Genesis 2 as a retelling of
Genesis 1 but with the emphasis on man and when that happened and what happened then. It ends up not contradicting
Genesis 1 at all
You
choose to see it that way? Yes, I know, and that's a problem for arriving at sound conclusions. Critical analysis a process wherein conclusions follow evaluating evidence, not precede it.
And Genesis 2 does contradict Genesis 1, but you'll never see that if you choose to not see that. Genesis 1 and 2 are two different creation stories with many similarities and differences, which commonly occurs with oral traditions, like the story of
Stagger Lee or the lyrics to Iko Iko. These things evolve along separate paths and start to disagree with one another more and more until they are written down.
The deity of Genesis 1 is Elohim, whereas the deity in Genesis 2 was Jehovah. Moreover, Elohim a creator who spoke things into existence, while Jehovah was a hands-on creator as when he fashioned man from dust and woman from a rib. Genesis 1 says that male and female was created together (no rib involved), while Genesis 2 says that man was created first and the woman as an afterthought. Were the trees created before man [Genesis 1:11-12, 26-27] or was man was created before the trees [Genesis 2:4-9]? Were the birds created before man [Genesis 1:20-21, 26-27], or was man created before birds [Genesis 2:7, 19]? Were the non-human animals created before man [Genesis 1:24-27], or was man created before the lower animals [Genesis 2:7, 19]? Were man and woman were created at the same time [Genesis 1:26-27], or was man was created first, woman sometime later [Genesis 2:7, 21-22]?
Regarding Stagger Lee, if you look at the link, you'll see the actual historical event that led to this legend - a street murder over a game of dice and a hat. Stagger Lee (also known by many similar names as you can read in thelink above) was Lee Shelton: "On Christmas night in 1895, Shelton and his acquaintance William "Billy" Lyons were drinking in the Bill Curtis Saloon. [snip] Eventually, the two men got into a dispute, during which Lyons took Shelton's
Stetson hat. Subsequently, Shelton shot Lyons, recovered his hat, and left." By the time the Grateful Dead did the song, the lyrics were, "1940, Xmas eve, with a full moon over town, Stagger Lee shot Billy DeLions and he blew that poor boy down. Do you know what he shot him for, what do you make of that? 'Cause Billy DeLions threw the lucky dice and won Stagger Lee's Stetson hat."
Look at how the year has changed but it's still Christmas eve, and Billy Lyons has become Billy DeLions. The Dead version injects two new characters, Delia DeLions and Bayo, the scared cop. This is exactly how these things evolve. Take a listen if you like:
