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The Standard of Truth + False Signs

Father Heathen

Veteran Member
Ancient, primitive, savages? Please explain.
You know, the people who thought it proper to murder people with rocks for eating shrimp, wearing mixed fabrics, rotating crops, speaking to menstruating women, and who also sold their own daughters into sexual slavery. I.E. the people who placed words in God's mouth when they wrote your Bible.

My church? My church isn't a place, it's a people and we don't presume to speak on God's behalf. I will leave that to the Pope.
yes, this is exactly what any religion that claims to represent God's word and will does.

God created us with the ability to reason and people reason differently. As for brains, everyone alive (excluding the brain-dead) uses their brains.
Sure, but many engage in willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty. An example would be people who choose to blindly adhere to what they were indoctrinated to believe without question rather than use critical thinking.
 

Sky Rivers

Active Member
You know, the people who thought it proper to murder people with rocks for eating shrimp, wearing mixed fabrics, rotating crops, speaking to menstruating women, and who also sold their own daughters into sexual slavery. I.E. the people who placed words in God's mouth when they wrote your Bible.

yes, this is exactly what any religion that claims to represent God's word and will does.


Sure, but many engage in willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty. An example would be people who choose to blindly adhere to what they were indoctrinated to believe without question rather than use critical thinking.
1) What men do is what men do. What God does is what God does.

2) I'm not sure about you but I do question. In fact, questioning and critical thinking brought me to Christianity.
 

1213

Well-Known Member
.... how can I (without great signs which I should not seek) know if I am measuring by the Holy Spirit or if I'm simply deceived? Do I trust visions? Feelings? Dreams? ...

I think logic and reason are good tools. But nothing is enough, if one doesn’t remain in truth, or if person deceives himself to “see” what he wants to see, instead of truth.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
I've been wondering lately if the Bible is truly without error. It's been translated many times and these translations different. If it's not without error, how can it be a standard or measure for truth? How can the liars and those deceived be found out? If there is no measure for what is true, anyone can claim anything about God?

Furthermore if the Bible IS without error or sufficiently preserved to be correct, even in other languages, or even in just the AKJV, are Bible-Believing Christians making this book into an idol?

While I currently do accept scripture as my measure of truth, I only do so because I lack an acceptable alternative. If the Holy Spirit should be what I test all things by (the Word of God), how can I (without great signs which I should not seek) know if I am measuring by the Holy Spirit or if I'm simply deceived? Do I trust visions? Feelings? Dreams? Do any of us? Perhaps all the signs stopped and all signs today are false (as prophecy states)? How then can we measure anything by the Holy Spirit of we don't even have signs to know he indwells us?

The bible is filled with all sorts of fantastical claims that cannot be verified. Without such verification it would be ludicrous to suggest that the book is 'without error'.
 

74x12

Well-Known Member
I've been wondering lately if the Bible is truly without error. It's been translated many times and these translations different. If it's not without error, how can it be a standard or measure for truth? How can the liars and those deceived be found out? If there is no measure for what is true, anyone can claim anything about God?

Furthermore if the Bible IS without error or sufficiently preserved to be correct, even in other languages, or even in just the AKJV, are Bible-Believing Christians making this book into an idol?

While I currently do accept scripture as my measure of truth, I only do so because I lack an acceptable alternative. If the Holy Spirit should be what I test all things by (the Word of God), how can I (without great signs which I should not seek) know if I am measuring by the Holy Spirit or if I'm simply deceived? Do I trust visions? Feelings? Dreams? Do any of us? Perhaps all the signs stopped and all signs today are false (as prophecy states)? How then can we measure anything by the Holy Spirit of we don't even have signs to know he indwells us?
Why don't you have signs to know you have the holy Spirit? They all spoke in other tongues in the book of Acts.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I've been wondering lately if the Bible is truly without error. It's been translated many times and these translations different. If it's not without error, how can it be a standard or measure for truth?
Why would anyone with an open mind conclude that the bible is without error?

Even on first principles, it was entirely written by humans, at various times and various places for various agendas, and in many cases later edited ─ and that's before any question of translation arises. It contains the cosmology of its day, a flat earth immovably fixed at the center of creation; the sky is a hard dome (firmament) over it to which the stars are attached; if they come loose they'll fall to earth. It has no concept of the moon as an orbiting satellite, the earth as an orbiting planet, of deep space, or that stars are other suns, or of galaxies. It contains the history, maths, science of its time, including belief in magic ─ if God created the universe, entire silence on what techniques [he] employed. How did Pharaoh's magicians turn the Nile into blood? Are we meant to take literally talking snakes and donkeys? And imagine the commercial uses of turning water into selected vintages of wine at very little cost.

Its morality is from the Bronze Age ─ God is cool with slavery, women as property, invasive wars, massacres of populations, mass rapes, human sacrifices, religious intolerance double underline, death penalties for breach of priestly rules, and so on. If you think those things are an infallible guide on how to behave, have a very good lawyer on retainer.

You can go on the net and find entire sites devoted to bible errors, self-contradictions, and so on. Anyone who wants to insist the bible is infallible is in the deeply dishonest position of having to invent excuses and false explanations and translations; the job of the apologist is not to defend what the text says but what the apologist and his or her team want it to say.

And as is well known, the bible never claims to be infallible. Not once, not anywhere.
 

Rational Agnostic

Well-Known Member
I've been wondering lately if the Bible is truly without error. It's been translated many times and these translations different. If it's not without error, how can it be a standard or measure for truth? How can the liars and those deceived be found out? If there is no measure for what is true, anyone can claim anything about God?

Furthermore if the Bible IS without error or sufficiently preserved to be correct, even in other languages, or even in just the AKJV, are Bible-Believing Christians making this book into an idol?

While I currently do accept scripture as my measure of truth, I only do so because I lack an acceptable alternative. If the Holy Spirit should be what I test all things by (the Word of God), how can I (without great signs which I should not seek) know if I am measuring by the Holy Spirit or if I'm simply deceived? Do I trust visions? Feelings? Dreams? Do any of us? Perhaps all the signs stopped and all signs today are false (as prophecy states)? How then can we measure anything by the Holy Spirit of we don't even have signs to know he indwells us?

It's full of errors. We could start with the passage that says insects have four legs (Leviticus 11:23) or the passage that says pi equals 3 (1 Kings 7:23).
 

Sky Rivers

Active Member
Why don't you have signs to know you have the holy Spirit? They all spoke in other tongues in the book of Acts.
They spoke in a sound or "tongue" which could be understood to each in their native language. Do I have this? No. Have I met any who have it? No. I've met plenty who speak gibberish and claim it as "tongues" but not one who actually speaks in tongues. Furthermore, I'm a soft cessationist. I don't accept that "tongues" still exist, since it's not needed as a sign of having the Holy Ghost, since such signs seem to have been done away with. Also, the gift of tongues on Pentacost was a temporary reversal of what happened at Babel.
 
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