Pastor attempts to walk on water, eaten by crocodiles
- Thread starter TarHeelEer
- Start date
WhiteTailEER you're very smart, but as smart as you are you could NEVER understand the things you question. None of us can, and you ask the same questions all of us do!
Why not?
You and all the rest of us have finite minds, and because of that we are limited in our understanding of things beyond our ability to comprehend them.
The best analogy I can give you is my 5 year old Grandson. He is very inquisitive and asks lots of questions. No matter how hard I try to break things down to him, I still struggle to explain to him what to you or me seem simple concepts...like time, and patience. I told him to be patient one day, and he asked me "what's patience Grandpa?"
So naturally I give him an example I think he can handle and he just doesn't get it..."Now" is all that matters to him and his little mind. Imagine if I tried to explain to him internet protocols, or engine compression ratios, or electrical current... He'd be clueless no matter how well I explained it because his mind is too finite at 5 years of development to fully comprehend what to you and I are somewhat understandable concepts as adults.
Well, how much more we can never understand the works of our Creator? Water into Wine? Impossible! Five loaves of bread and a few Fish into thousands...not doable! A Man coming back to Life after being crucified? Not in reality! A fully formed human being from a microscopic sperm and egg? Really? All of these things happen or have happened right before our eyes yet we still cannot fully understand even as reasonably intelligent adults.
Why not?
Because we are still only human.
I've mentioned this to you before, that humans can not do the things found in the Creation. There is only one Creator, and while we have attributes of the Creator (we too can create, we do Love, we have a measure of creative intelligence) yet we still cannot BE as the Creator nor do what only the Creator can do!
For instance we are incapable of making a simple strand of DNA (which is actually quite intracately complex), or eye colors, or genes (from our discussion the other day) or Blood plasma, or skin, or human organs, or wind, or water, or gravity, or gamma rays, or light wavelengths, or wormholes, or galaxies, or Super Novas of stars, or even a simple atom or a one celled amoeba!
Yet all of these things we can certainly attempt to understand, and even in some cases mimic but we cannot make them out of nothing as the Creator easily does.
Ironically, Faith requires a certain level of disbelief in order to believe. It's OK to not understand, or to question and even to doubt. But to see the wonders of our Creator, and stand in awe of it as well as in total helplessness over our lack of ability to fully understand or even attempt to copy any of it is to believe. Not to doubt that all of that complexity and unique design suddenly appeared on it's own out of nothing from nothing with design, and purpose, and precision, and complexity, and uniqueness, and beauty and amazing arrays of splendor. The Creator leaves a mark on all of creation in that nothing created is ever duplicated, nor can it be. It can't be copied, and stands alone as a statement of omniscience, infinity, magnificence, beyond human capability because no human can duplicate what the Creator does and nothing the Creator does is ever duplicated. Not even a simple snowflake...no two are identical alike...EVER! Nothing else is either, especially us...people!
Only a Creator, far beyond our ability to understand or fully appreciate is our only answer to this impossibe display of unique precision crafted creatitivty because no other answer makes better sense. Just like to my 5 year old Grandson, no other answer than the one he is capable of understanding about the things I can explain to him would make any sense. However he doesn't reject my explanations and substitute "nothing" for his lack of understanding...he just simply accepts what he can understand or whatever his Grandpa can help him understand as best as he can, and believes the rest as his reality.
Hope that helps you.
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I don't ... and neither do you know that any of them do ... I said I don't think ...
There you go again ... your conclusions on what God is looking for is coming from a book that I don't believe in ... PROVE to me beyond any doubt that what is stated in those passages is what God really wants. You can't.
As for historicity ... I understand what it means ... and I never doubted that those places existed and some of the people existed. But that doesn't prove everything in the Bible to be factual. It doesn't prove the Jonah story, it doesn't prove Adam and Eve and it doesn't prove the loaves of bread and fish stories ... the Bible is nothing but a bunch of fish stories.
a·the·ist
ˈāTHēəst/
noun
- a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.
That's me.
I'm an atheist.
When was that written?
By whom?
How has it changed from it's original form? Is it there in it's entirety?
And finally, after answering those questions ... how can you be 100% confident in any of those answers being absolutely factual?
I did not say to read the passage in Mark because of what it proves. I said to read it because of what you said the Bible says concerning heaven and hell. You say you understand historicity, but then you talk about what the Bible cannot prove, thus demonstrating you don't understand historicity. Finally, how do you know the Bible is just a bunch of stories? How do you know the stories are not true?
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When I teach youth historicity, I always start with, "I'm going to write a book that the south won the Civil War". It's a good lead-in to understanding it.
I don't know they aren't ... I just don't believe they are true.
How do you know they are?
I do understand historicity ... but as I stated, that doesn't prove any of the stories of the bible.
Let's go back ... I posted that I thought the stories of the Bible were fantasy or heavily embellished.
You answered that historicity of the bible is demonstrable ... which would lead me to think that you were saying that because that's true that all the stories of the bible must be true too.
I counter that point to say that historicity doesn't prove those stories and you counter that I don't understand historicity.
Don't know what this is about ... you stated above you start with "i'm going to write a book that the south won the civil war" ... so the historicity can be 100% correct but the story be complete fabrication (fabrication of events, not of places and people)
Understanding the reliability of Scripture starts by lining it up with history. WhiteTailEER is correct it cannot "prove" all of its claims because a measure of it requires Faith...but where it lines up with what is provable, it is easy to appreciate that the rest requiring Faith is equally reliable.
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No it can't. Copy 1 would be over 100 years from the event trying to describe it, with no eye-witness authentication. Historicity fails with such a fable book.
Then explain how historicity of the bible is demonstrable. You can't.
Again, the places and people can be historically authentic while the events are not.
WhiteTailEER how else would you go about authenticating it? I get that the parts you don't understand are questionable in your mind (mine too actually) but the historicity of it is actually not open to debate. It lines up perfectly with known events, places, people, and times.
In fact the Bible's prophetical reliability is 100%. In other words it is not only a fabulously reliable History book, but it's also a perfectly reliable predictor of future events. Things written in the Old Testament were fulfilled thousands of years AFTER they were predicted and those prophecies lined up with actual events 100% as predicted!
No other "history book" has that sort of track record in that it lines up with historical records as they occurred exactly as predicted thousands of years prior to them actually occurring!
And even if you line up predicted events towards the end times (like maybe now) it's still 100% reliable. Formation of the nation of Israel, one world Government, the state of Human affairs, technology, mass media, how the cashless society and the "mark" will determine what gets bought or sold, amazing explosion of knowldge, inventions, it's all predicted two thousand years ago and you can easily see how it all lines up perfectly when you view our current World order and state of Man.
That's amazing.
Ugh. Historicity means the details are accurate to the period. Historicity doesn't mean the story plot is historically accurate.
Just pick the Jonah and the Whale story ... where is the proof of the historical authenticity of that story? That there have been people named Jonah, and there were whales, and there was a city called Nineveh? But then you get into the sticky subject of whether he actually survived in the stomach of a whale for 3 days and that it was all God's will and it was all because Jonah didn't want to preach to those people and so God placed him there.
Where are the historical documents ... other than the Bible ... that prove the events and motivations from the story to be historically accurate.
I think what you are demonstrating is a desire to appear right over a desire to be right.
WhiteTailEER, if blind people were given sight, Lame people were given ability to walk, and folks with disease were suddenly cured why couldn't someone have lived (or even died) in that Whale and then be made to reappear?
To me those Miracles are just as spectacular as the Whale caper that you're hung up on.
Again ... I stated that I thought the stories of the Bible are fantasy.
You countered with the historicity of the bible is demonstrable.
I stated that it isn't from the standpoint of the events. That it doesn't prove Jonah and it doesn't prove the loaves of bread and fish stories.
You countered by saying that I don't understand what historicity means.
THE states something about a civil war book, and I state that he can write that book and be 100% historically authentic in regards to people and places but be a complete fabrication of events.
He states that such a book wouldn't demonstrate historicity because it was written 100 years after the fact with no eye witness verification.
So I ask how then, is the historicity of the Bible demonstrable.
Then you say that "Historicity means the details are accurate to the period. Historicity doesn't mean the story plot is historically accurate."
Which was exactly what I was saying in the beginning when saying that it doesn't prove the stories in the Bible ... i.e. the details are accurate to the period, but that doesn't mean that the stories are factual.
Then you state that I'm demonstrating a desire to appear right over a desire to be right.
Okey dokey.
So ... let's go back to the beginning ... the stories of the Bible are fantasy.
I don't question that there was a Jesus, and I don't question that there was a Jerusalem ... I question that there is a God and that Jesus was the son given up to save us, born to a virgin, and I question that a 300 year old man built a ship and collected two of every creature, etc. etc.
Disprove that notion.
I can only assume at this point that there is a ton that's getting missed in what each of us is trying to say.
WhiteTailEER the story of Jesus (and the Bible) is about his death and resurrection. If that did not happen, nothing else in the Bible matters. If it did happen, everything else in the Bible can be equally reliable as an actual event because the Bible can't be separated from itself or it's parts.
It's either 100% accurate, or 100% false.
The Crucifixion & death of Christ and his subsequent resurrection is 100% historically accurate.
https://www.bethinking.org/did-jesus-rise-from-the-dead/the-resurrection-fact-or-fiction
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Historicity of the New Testament is verifiable. Old Testament, not so much. We can't pinpoint original documents for those manuscripts as well.
Glad to see a man who will stick to the topic.
I once had to cover a wreck where a goofy preacher took his hands off the wheel on a curvy mountain road on his way back from church with his family in tow. His wife said his last words were "Take over Lord!" before they plummeted over the hill and into the boulders and trees.
At least the Lord only took the preacher. Rewarded for his faith, no doubt.
