Good reason

[nobspeople]

In a different thread (listed below), when discussing, in part, if the bible is true, TRANSPONDER said " It is a well known argument that asserting what is in the Bible is true because it is in the Bible is a fallacy. A Lawyer would know that a witness statement is not going to be accepted as true just because he or she has said it. Nor of course rejected without good reason."

The above bolded section caused me to think (not claiming this is TRANSPNDER's assertion): is there good reason to think the bible isn't true?

For discussion: Is there good reason (define what is 'good reason' to you) to think the bible is or is not true*?

*TRUE here being used as 'legitimate, real word of God which was written by men, inspired by God' - this would assume everything written in it is true and agreed upon by God - in other words, nothing written is personal opinion of the writer.



Reference viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38540&start=10

[JehovahsWitness]

Why a god does or does not do something is called theology not science. You want to talk theology...?

Uh ... no. Theology assumes that gods exist.

No, you are wrong it does not.



Anyway you asked ....

And why would an omnipotent god choose such a clumsy and messy global flood to wipe out humans in the first place?

This is not a scientific question it is a theological one. If you insist otherwise , please explain how science would go about anwsering YOUR question?

[JoeyKnothead]

Noah's flood presented in the bible as some sort of miracle. The bible explicitly states it was God (not just the natural water cycle) caused the flood waters to fall. The bible presents miracles as actual events.

Only don't it beat all, the bible can't show those events were actual.

Noah's flood meets all the criteria of a miracle. It is presented as something that "surpasses all known human or natural powers", since as you correctly point out ...

Absolutely correct.

It meets all the criteria of a miracle, right down to can't it be shown to be the truth.

I am of the opinion that that God does not "violate" his own natural laws he merely manipulates (or perhaps overrides them) .

Your opinion here is useful as boots on a footuarial amputee, who has a side hustle dancing him the ballet.

In any case, the bible presents God as the first cause of the flood where he obviously used a "natural" phenonomen (water / gravity...) to achieve his ends.

Presents, and shows to be truth is different things.

Ya know, like all your arguments.

Only in Christianity is "obvious" enough to overcome "completely incapable of presenting truth".

Whether he or not he subsequently used his supernatural powers to eradicate all or some of the geological after effects of the event one cannot say for sure

Well boy howdy, ya finally said you some sense.

Ya'll marking at home, scratch him this'n here out a "boy howdy" somewhere along the page.

(it wouldn't be the last time God is reported to have returned things back to their previous condition after a miraculous manifestation of his power) but what we can say is an omnipotent God could.

"Is reported" sounds it an awful lot like "many folks say".

Now I'm curious to know if your uncle was a nuclear studier at MIT.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #72]

No, you are wrong it does not.

Really? How can the "study of the nature of God and religious belief" (direct from the definition you posted), not require the existence of at least one god? How does one study the nature of a god if that god does not exist? Or does that involve a miracle?

This is not a scientific question it is a theological one. If you insist otherwise , please explain how science would go about anwsering YOUR question?

It can't, because that would require knowing the mind of the postulated god being, which itself cannot be shown to exist. There's nothing for science to work with. But science can easily show that no global flood covering the tops of the highest mountains has ever occurred on this planet while modern humans were around (or any member of the genus Homo) without invoking miracles and similar explanations.

So it is reasonable to ask why an omnipotent god would choose a flood of all things to wipe out humanity, rather than just poofing them out of existence as he supposedly poofed them into existence, and starting over. Sure seems an awfully inefficient method for a perfect god being to choose, when there were no humans left to learn a lesson from the catastrophe (at least that could make some sense if the goal was to convince the lucky survivers to behave). But then again the poofing approach would not make for nearly as good of a story would it!

Does theology have an answer for why a flood was the chosen method of massive destruction and murder? Or has theology not considered that particular question for some reason?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #72]

No, you are wrong it does not.

Really? How can the "study of the nature of God and religious belief" (direct from the definition you posted), not require the existence of at least one god?

The same way you can ask a question about God (and presumably process the answer) without believing in the existence of one.



JW

[brunumb]

Sure seems an awfully inefficient method for a perfect god being to choose, when there were no humans left to learn a lesson from the catastrophe (at least that could make some sense if the goal was to convince the lucky survivers to behave).

Amen to that. And did they behave afterwards? Nope, not all all. It seems that the omniscient one didn't realise that it wasn't the evil humans he had to get rid of, it was their inherent sin nature. You know, like he somehow gets rid of it when he lets them into heaven and they don't feel the compulsion to sin any more. The Bible really shows up Yahweh/Jehovah as one prize doofus that never seems to get things right and gets thwarted by mere humans at every turn. I think that's why he particularly favours the uneducated and the gullible.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #75]

The same way you can ask a question about God (and presumably process the answer) without believing in the existence of God.

So you're equating the study of the nature of a god with asking a question about this god. I was asking you about the rationale the god that I know you believe in may have used to choose a flood for his destructive mechanism, rather than some more efficient, faster and cleaner set of miracles for doing the same job (eg. just zap them out of existence entirely (or send them to hell?) and save the need for cleanup of the aftermath of a global flood).

Since I know you do believe that this god exists, I thought you might have an answer from theology as to why such a seemingly nonsensical method was employed, and what benefit this method had over some other, more direct method, given that no humans outside the ark survived to learn any lessons from it. Seems awfully inefficient for an omnipotent god, but I'm no theologian.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #75]

The same way you can ask a question about God (and presumably process the answer) without believing in the existence of God.

So you're equating the study of the nature of a god with asking a question about this god.

Do you habitually post and read posts without using any time and without any prospect of anaylsing the anwsers?

Why a god does or does not do something is called theology not science. You want to talk theology...?

So it is reasonable to ask why an omnipotent god would choose a flood ...

I didn't say it wasn't , I am just pointing out this is a theological not a scientific question and that one does not have to believe in the existence of god to participate in this kind of analysis (which is what you are presently doing).

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to brunumb in post #76]

And did they behave afterwards? Nope, not all all.

Good point! They went straight back to their wicked ways immediately and by the time old Noah died at 950 years old he'd have seen 350 years of that happening after he landed the ark on Mt. Ararat. Funny that it landed right back in the Middle East after drifting with no engines or steering mechanisms for a year (371 days to split hairs).

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened (Genesis 7:11).

And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth . . . and in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried (Genesis 8:13,14).

You'd think that will all the flooding going on, and in the process of the water receeding from above the tallest mountains back to sea level, the ark would have been moved great distances in the course of a year. But a miracle is all that is needed to explain this too ... very convenient these miracles.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #78]

Do you habitually post and read posts without using any time and without any prospect of anaylsing the anwsers?

No. I'm responding to your answers as I read them, and find they often change the subject or rephrase things to mean something different. For example, in post 71 you claimed that theology does not assume the existence of gods and you posted a definition of the word theology, which referred to the study of the nature of Gods. Now you post the definition of the word study which doesn't address that point at all because it is an isolated definition of the word study unrelated to what it is applied to.

I didn't say it wasn't , I am just pointing out this is a theological not a scientific question and that one does not have to believe in the existence of god to participate in this kind of analysis (which is what you are presently doing).

That's what I'm doing, but I'm not getting any answers related to the questions. I asked if theology had offered up any answers as to why god may have chosen a flood mechanism for the destruction and mass murder of the humans he'd created (as descibed in the Genesis flood story), and the response is that it is a theolological issue and not a science issue. So what does theology say about this, if anything? That was my question in post 76 (the post numbers seem to be 1 out in the replies so I'm using the numbers that appear in the normal view).

[JehovahsWitness]

I didn't say it wasn't , I am just pointing out this is a theological not a scientific question and that one does not have to believe in the existence of god to participate in this kind of analysis (which is what you are presently doing).

That's what I'm doing but I'm not getting any answers related to the questions

Okay so, you are now posting theological questions yes? If so, it seems fair to say ...

1) You have effectively shifted from scientific to theological questions.

2) one does not have to believe in God to do the above.

If you agree , I have no issue with your posts. I would however point out that the answers to theological questions cannot usually be found in science. They are philosophical questions based on the contents of religious texts /traditions not in scientific journals. If you ask a theological question you will get a theological anwser and it would be disengineus to then turn around and dismiss the answer because it is not scientific. This would be like asking someone the time and then dismisssing their response due to its lack of musical content.



JW