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#440471 Another reading of the Qeiyafa inscription

Posted by The Budster on 07 June 2012 - 05:47 AM in Archaeology, Biblical History & Textual Criticism

Palis are holding their breath, waiting to find out if these laws are still on the books.



#440317 The Lost World of Genesis One - a review

Posted by The Budster on 30 May 2012 - 12:17 PM in Theology

I think the missing ingredient is that the ANE reader would have a function-oriented cosmology that played a similar role for him as our scientific cosmologies do us. In other words, they thought it was factual just as we do ours.

There's a danger in creating a false dichotomy between "functional" and "factual" cosmologies. Among other things, that leads to the erroneous notion that they were self-aware about the fact that their model was ahistorical. They weren't; that's what made it a "cosmology" as opposed to a "mythos." I think the key is the fact that they had no means of verifying their hypotheses anyway, so verification simply wasn't important. A sufficient test of a good theory was that it was consistent and useful. A recent miraculous creation was perfectly self-consistent, so no problems on that score. And a functional creation was quite useful to a pastoral civilization: it laid the groundwork for a discussion of seasons, the planting cycle, weeding, husbandry, etc. It was the shortest possible path from A to B, where A is "where did everything come from?" and B is "how do we go about surviving in this world?"

To them a bad cosmology would be bad because it was not self-consistent, or because it was inconsistent with the realities of their lives. One which taught them to plant in winter, for example, or condemned farming, or encouraged them to eat toxic plants, or undermined civic virtues like cooperation at harvest time.



#440273 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 25 May 2012 - 07:11 PM in Apologetics

My beef is with the use of the perjorative 'indoctrination' to describe a process which is not, in fact, indoctrination.

Sounds like a piffling quibble. When someone says, "You're indoctrinating your kid," you reply that you're not, because you aren't strapping 'em down; I reply that I certainly am, and so is every parent who ever lived since our rodent-like ancestor in the age of the dinosaurs.

My answer is a bit more accurate than yours. I freely acknowledge that I am raising my child with the overwhelming likelihood of belonging to the Christadelphian church, and liking science fiction, enjoying country music, Asian food, and the shooting sports, and rather disliking cops. And yet I am unusually scrupulous about giving him choices and not imposing my will on him. And yet... he recently told me that after meeting he'd like to go to the shooting range, then to a hibachi restaurant, and finally come home and watch Buck Rogers. It's quite obvious that I'm indoctrinating the living daylights out of him, despite the utter absence of any cult-like mind-control techniques, nor even the slightest desire to instill my personal likes and dislikes in him.

I have no doubt that it occurs in our community, but using this word as a blanket generalisation simply not accurate.

On the contrary, it's not nearly blanket enough. If you aren't profoundly influencing your child's views in almost all areas of life, then you are either a non-custodial parent, or dead.



#440272 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 25 May 2012 - 07:00 PM in Apologetics

There's nothing arrogant about saying you're not indoctrinating your kids when you're not. It's only arrogant (and false) when you are.


Please read again from the top, with comprehension. When we say we're "not indoctrinating our kids," we are claiming that "we aren't profoundly influencing their views on practically every subject." Which is false, because we are. If we aren't, it's because we don't have custody, or are dead.

If instead we interpret that statement to mean, "we aren't systematically using cult brainwashing techniques, but have instead decided to go about profoundly shaping our kids views on practically every subject using the more mundane technique of raising them in our household as dependents," then the question arises what the hell we're so proud of. But I suppose we deserve a cookie for not doing this:

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#440265 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 25 May 2012 - 04:24 PM in Apologetics

Yes the stats show you are more likely to do what you perceive as normal according to the environment in which you grew up. BUT there are lots of exceptions. That's the wonder of human free will.

Agreed. However, it puts the lie to arrogant claims that one isn't indoctrinating one's kids. The best you can claim is that you aren't actively trying to brainwash them.



#440257 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 25 May 2012 - 05:07 AM in Apologetics



Religious Indoctrination is the process of continually subjecting children to complex religious rituals, ceremonies, laws and doctrines before they have the ability to critically assess and consent to what they are doing.


So that would include most mainstream Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims etc. Pretty much most of the world really.


But withholding such things powerfully biases against ever adopting them; sleeping in on Sundays powerfully biases the kids to sleep in on Sundays as well. For that matter, going to church on Sundays but missing midweek class powerfully biases the kids to do the same. Of the full range of Christadelphian ritual (which is fairly narrow), the best predictor is the parents. My own non scientific inter generational observations support this as well. The kids raised going on Sunday infrequently keep doing so, skipping Bible classes and daily readings; the ones raised faithfully going to meeting only keep doing so; the ones raised going to meeting and Bible class keep doing that but not the readings, and the ones raised doing the readings keep doing them. Likewise for praying before meals or not.

Where of course "the ones raised... Keep doing..." is a shorthand for, "doing... In childhood is the best predictor of doing... In adulthood." I even know examples of people raised reading but not going to meeting--devout "isolation" families, who grew up and kept reading and praying before meals, but living in isolation. And I know families where the kids were sent to Sunday school while the parents stayed home, and you'll never guess what!

Indoctrination by immersion is incredibly pervasive. It even includes ridiculously small details about mannerisms, ways of conducting relationships, etc. it contributes to statistical patterns like children of divorce being more likely to divorce, and daughters of single mothers being more likely to become single mothers themselves.



#440255 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 25 May 2012 - 04:40 AM in Apologetics


The trouble is that all children are "indoctrinated," whether the parents like it or not.


So? You seem to be suggesting that because avoiding indoctrinating would be very difficult, it isn't a good approach.


I didn't say it's difficult. I said it's impossible. I didn't say most children are often; I said ALL children ARE. You can avoid blatant attempts at mind control, and I fully support that, but you're deluding yourself if you believe you're not indoctrinating. You are, merely by existing--the being they're genetically programmed to imitate, upon whom they are utterly dependent for mere survival, who establishes the routines that make up their lives. By what you say and don't say, read and don't read, do and don't do, where you go and don't go, you are indoctrinating them.

If you have kids and think you're not indoctrinating them, then you should maybe get that avatar you talked about, because you're engaging in nothing more than intellectual self-gratification.


Atheist's don't believe in anything, they LACK belief.


Lack of belief, skepticism, doubt, disinterest--the content of your indoctrination includes much more than a list of tenets. It includes attitudes, views held and not held, epistemology, esthetics, etc. Fort mentioned strong atheism, but indoctrination can also communicate mere doubt, uncertainty, or indifference as well. Deism or agnosticism are also communicated--including not merely the intellectual notion that God probably does or probably doesn't exist, but doubt whether we can know, or disinterest in knowing, or a firm belief that we can't know, etc.



#440242 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 24 May 2012 - 01:34 PM in Apologetics

A believer raising their kids to "make up their own mind" will end up producing a believer


I come from a family of 4 children. Our parents raised us to make up our own minds. Two of my siblings became unbelievers.


I believe you. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," though. The fact remains that the best predictor of present views is the parents' views.



#440237 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 24 May 2012 - 12:27 PM in Apologetics

The trouble is that all children are "indoctrinated," whether the parents like it or not. The single best predictor of a person's views, is their parents' views. And children are clever beggars: they aren't fooled by our pretenses of neutrality. They're very good at figuring out what we REALLY think, and then they go with that.

A believer raising their kids to "make up their own mind" will end up producing a believer; an atheist doing the same thing will end up producing an atheist. A hypocritical churchgoer will raise an unbeliever; and a superstitious person who attends no church will nevertheless raise a believer (in whatever). Perhaps not always, but usually.



#440202 John Loftus throws in the towel

Posted by The Budster on 21 May 2012 - 08:43 AM in Apologetics

... calling every Christian 'deluded' smacks of petulance and whining at the fact that his Outsider Test hasn't resulted in every Christian deconverting and thanking him for delivering them from obscurantist bondage.

I haven't looked deeply into his "outsider test," but it sounds like something Wittgenstein would have enjoyed: it presupposes some significant unknowns about how beliefs are formed--including atheistic beliefs. It's true that your parents believing something is the best predictor of your believing something, so if you equate "insider" with "raised in this belief," it clearly plays an important role.

But what exactly disposes a person to convert from anything to anything? Loftus is apparently presupposing that conversion to atheism always results from a coldly rational disposition to follow the evidence wherever it leads--but if that we the case, we wouldn't have phenomena like Bedson, who deconverts and then spends his life begging and pleading for his former associates to validate his deconversion by joining him. It wouldn't fully account for Dawkins, or Coyne, or their type, either: even if their atheism were purely rational, that wouldn't explain their evangelism. What prompts them (even assuming they're right) to take on the doomed cause of fighting ignorance and error? What makes them want to spread their views, instead of being content with their own rationality?

Without some sort of answer to those questions, it's unclear whether the "outsider test" has any validity. Does "thinking like an outsider" make you objective? Or is it yet another brainwashing technique: given our facility for post-hoc rationalization, does "thinking like an outsider" actually set up the right conditions for talking ourselves out of belief--not because the evidence is good or bad, but because "pretending not to believe" activates the mechanism we have for justifying prior decisions? The latter is actually more plausible to me.



As an aside, I've noted the phenomenon that movie actors who play lovers, sooner or later end up dating. The stars of Twilight are a recent example. It might be nothing more than sexual libertinism and a tendency to casually form shallow relationships. But I've suspected for decades that something else is at work. I suspect that pretending to be in love triggers the manufacture of justifications for being in love, which in turn convince them that they really are in love. As a teenager I would have said "actors are so stupid, they fall for their own acting!" My original explanation wasn't very precise or nuanced, but it's substantially the same as the explanation I'd give today.

As another aside, I read something 20-30 years ago about brain-washing in Japanese POW camps. The trick I remember was that they had essay contests, with cigarettes for prizes, and they freely awarded prizes to jingoist pro-American essays--but prisoners knew they could improve their chances if they found anything positive to say about the Japanese. So they waved the flag vigorously, but included things like, "That's not to say that the Japanese are evil plain and simple; many of them suffer the deluded belief that their cause is just." After the POWs were released, they were found to have noticeably less anti-Japanese ardor than their brethren who were never prisoners. Which IIRC, was the opposite of the expected outcome. POW camp is not fun; you'd expect them to come away more hate-filled than ever. But viewing the Japanese with "insider mind" changed their views.



#440135 Kevin Brown: Confessions of my Christian Unorthodoxy

Posted by The Budster on 17 May 2012 - 07:33 AM in Theology

Via Diglotting:

While I claim ignorance regarding what happens when we die, I must say that I definitely don’t ascribe to the idea of hell. Even though I did believe in it during my teenage years, I now find the idea of eternal conscious retributive punishment to be an abhorrent thing to believe in. I do believe in some sort of existence after death, but I am somewhat skeptical of the idea of an incorporeal soul part of us that survives death and flies through a tunnel of light to heaven. I find the idea of a future resurrection of the body to be a much more holistic and meaningful concept in this modern scientific age regarding the question of life-after-death.

I do. I ascribe several things to the idea of hell. Barbarity, injustice, sadism, sociopathy, and unspeakable horror, to name a few. I do not, however, subscribe to the idea of hell.









Sorry, couldn't resist. My hobby is spotting when smart people use the wrong fancy word. My Dad got me started, with his awful habit of saying "prodigious" when he meant "propitious."



#440010 Did Paul believe in a historical Adam?

Posted by The Budster on 13 May 2012 - 04:17 AM in Theology


It may be more accurate to say that they saw their myths as pre-history. They certainly believed the persons in these myths did exist and the events recorded did occur but this doesn't prove their conception of history was significantly different to our own.

I suspect something similar applies to Gen 1-11. It's likely that the ancient Hebrews saw the events and people as real, but the stylised nature of the accounts suggests we're dealing with "mythologised" history, where actual events involving historical people were related using the tropes and motifs of the ANE with which they were familiar, but which are alien to us...

That's also a good way to put it. Americans are again a poor example, because we have no pre-history to speak of. Our conception of the Wild West is probably the closest thing we have to a mythical past--we do pretty generally believe our own cowboy stories. I know that Davy Crockett was a real historical figure, and I'm pretty sure he did not in fact "kilt a bar when he was only three," but I accept the unverified claim that he was indeed "king of the wild frontier." The shootout at the OK corral really happened, but I'm sure is mythologized in ways I couldn't even tell you. Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, etc., are the sort of tropes that Americans believe.

(Which is unfortunate, in some ways. We believe that the West was uncivilized, when in fact Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, had only 45 homicides--a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year, and much lower than the homicide rate of any major US city today except Lincoln, Nebraska, and El Paso, Texas, both of which had 0.8 homicides per 100,000 in 2010. The belief that "gun-slinging" was accompanied by high murder rates, shootouts at high noon, and all the rest, has a significant impact on public policy today. Politicians surprisingly often say, "This isn't the Wild West anymore!" with no conception that the Wild West wasn't wild in the first place--they're appealing to American myths, perpetuated by movies.)

In any case, I don't think any of the three of us disagree materially here. History and myth are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps Romulus and Remus even existed, for that matter. So none of this discussion should be taken as dismissing anything in scripture as pure fiction. Instead, the much more modest heresy is being considered, that elements of exaggeration, or tropes that were the ancient equivalent of "gun-slinging cowboys," might have been employed in relating some of these stories, and that interpreting them as strictly journalistic accounts would have similar results to watching a John Wayne movie as if it were a documentary.



#440009 Did Paul believe in a historical Adam?

Posted by The Budster on 13 May 2012 - 03:59 AM in Theology

I don't know to what extent it's really so, but it appears that Greeks regarded their myths as history.


It may be more accurate to say that they saw their myths as pre-history. They certainly believed the persons in these myths did exist and the events recorded did occur but this doesn't prove their conception of history was significantly different to our own.

Fair enough. "Pre-history" is a nice way to put it. The fantastical elements were relegated to an unverifiable past. They weren't disbelieved per se, but they were compartmentalized differently than recent history, which relatively lacked fantastical elements and could be verified.

I'd say, though, that I have a certain amount of doubt whether "our own" conception of history is so different from theirs. We believe (in this country) that Washington "could not tell a lie," as shown by the mythical incident of the cherry tree; we believe that Lincoln "freed the slaves," which only happened after his death; we believe that Puritans came to this country seeking religious freedom, when in fact they came seeking a place where they could impose their (purer) vision for the Church of England; we believe that the colonists (apart from a handful of loyalists) unitedly sought independence, when historians agree that only 10-15% were in favor of secession in 1776; we believe that Roosevelt ended the depression by joining WWII, when in fact our prosperity in no way increased until some time after the war (we just failed to notice, because our rationing books were part of the "war effort," and our young men were dying in Europe, rather than idling on street corners). Our "knowledge" of US history is a complete hodgepodge of myth, propaganda, and selective ignorance. Less outlandish than Greek myths, perhaps, but different only in degree, not in kind.

Far more people believe the folk version of US history than the historians' version, and they persist in believing it even after they've been told the truth. My sixth-grade teacher told us as eleven-year-olds that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to confederate territories, where of course it had no force; that slaves in Union territories like West Virginia were not freed; and that the intent of the Proclamation was to prevent England aiding the South, with which it appeared likely to do, having strong sympathies in every area except the issue of slavery. Of those forty kids, how many still believe that "Lincoln freed the slaves"? Most of them.

The line between myth, folk tale, and propaganda seems blurry to me. All are types of falsehood that are sort of believed, but somehow compartmentalized in a way that avoids empirical verification. It is of course true that we have changed our attitude to "history" somewhat, and we now insist that our "myths" be packaged in a much more believable form. And Americans, perforce, have no interesting "pre-history," because in prehistorical times we lived in England and Holland, and that was only about 300 years ago.



#439975 Did Paul believe in a historical Adam?

Posted by The Budster on 12 May 2012 - 08:33 PM in Theology

Yes it's what we would now call history with literature. But to Herodotus and Josephus, it was just history.


^^ This.

We can call history a modern concept if we like. But there's no getting out of the fact that the ancients had their own version of history, and just like ours it was seen as a record of literal facts about literal persons and events. I honestly don't see a huge difference between the two.

I don't know to what extent it's really so, but it appears that Greeks regarded their myths as history. My limited experience with modern-day polytheists suggests that they would have had varying degrees of awareness that as their history passed back into mythic time, it ceased to be strictly literal. Even the ones who considered it mythic, however, would treat it as history.



#439946 The Gap Theory is dead

Posted by The Budster on 11 May 2012 - 07:04 AM in Theology

Before I relinquished it, my version of the "gap theory" was like the Stephen Wright joke: "One day I came home and realized that someone had stolen everything, and replaced it with an exact duplicate."

what forced me to drop even that, almost unfalsifiable theory, was Russell and his tree-rings. I was prepared to ignore completely the global flood implied by "the face of the waters," but the least I would expect is a discontinuity at about the time of the six-day recreation. Evidence of trees happily living before and after the creation week was more than I could accept.

The argument about verb tenses is a bit of a sideshow--too easily dismissed. So the earth "was" formless and void... at the time. It's easy enough to conclude that scripture is silent about how it might have been in prior ages.



#439863 Yosef Garfinkel to announce "archaeological discovery"

Posted by The Budster on 09 May 2012 - 06:42 AM in Archaeology, Biblical History & Textual Criticism

I noticed in the original writeup that they contradict their claim to have found no images.

Given my want--to listen to what people mean, rather than what they say, as far as possible--I quickly deduced that they are expressing the claim that these "guardian lions," etc., were not objects of veneration, and that no objects of veneration were found. In other words, no idols. Solomon's temple was decorated with pomegranates and cherubim, the latter of which I casually equate with similar images of winged, human-headed lions in Babylon, but contained no idols. It would be distinctive (I confidently assume) from foreign temples which had (I confidently assume) decorative images along the lines of the cherubim, but also (we know for certain) idols to be worshiped.

I'm unqualified to pronounce judgment. Tentatively, however, I come away with the sense that they found cultic storage boxes with more-or-less bog standard decorations, but no idols inside, and no idols on the site that might have originally been placed inside.

If that's true, and you can easily see the largish number of assumptions I'm using to fill in the gaps in my actual knowledge, then I'd say this is a pretty exciting find: that while the other Canaanites were opening the doors on their shrine boxes and offering incense and prayer to the figurine within, the Israelites were opening the doors of their shrine boxes (or leaving them closed) and directing their prayers and incense at the empty space (or space occupied by flowers or some such "offering"). That would be highly distinctive, and while not at all proof of "monotheism," as Ritmeyer seems confusedly to imagine is claimed, but rather proof of a ban on veneration of images, which suggests familiarity with Moses' law, or some earlier prototype thereof.

It would also seem suggestive that the concept of an invisible, or at least unrepresentable, God, is a very early element of Israelite religion--even if they were merely monolatrous at the time. It does strongly suggest monolatry, since there are (assumedly) no images of lesser deities. If a polytheistic people believed that the chiefest god was invisible, it would seem unlikely to me that they also believed that lesser gods, demigods, etc., were all invisible, so I would expect to see an empty shrine-box for the chief god, but statues of lesser gods around it as well, if they were polytheistic.

ETA: Indeed, to add folly to folly, or rather speculation to speculation... regardless of the significance of this find, I'm about half convinced that non-polytheists (including monotheists and monolaters) would structure their devotional life exactly as described above: by setting up the same type of shrine as they knew from the larger cultural environment, but removing the idol from the place setting.



#439678 Why is Esther missing from the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Posted by The Budster on 04 May 2012 - 09:53 AM in Theology

In that case I'd revise my estimate of the likelihood of misogyny downward, more or less in proportion as the gender mix approaches 50:50.

In the US, for example, the Shakers were a celibate community with a fairly equal gender mix, in which men and women shared leadership roles, and regarded "Mother Ann" as a prophetess, was as you'd expect full of bias against sex but relatively free of bias against women.

Since I can't find any source willing to commit to a guess about the gender mix, I'm stuck assuming they were about even. The graveyard studies, which aren't necessarily statistically significant, suggest 46% women, after excluding the graves that are thought to have been later burials by bedouins (i.e., shallow, east-west facing graves). So now I'd rate Ken's #! and #2 about equally likely.



#439676 Why is Esther missing from the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Posted by The Budster on 04 May 2012 - 08:49 AM in Theology

I've casually assumed that misogyny is at work, based on generally-remembered material I've read in the 1980's remarking that the Qumran community (1) were Essenes, (2) were a male-only ascetic community, and (3) did have writings that, e.g., made heavy use of the "sinful woman" imagery from Proverbs.

And combination of those might have been debunked by now, but assuming that all three are true, I'd still vote for misogyny. It's hard to imagine folks joining an ascetic all-male community while having good healthy attitudes toward women.



#439607 Holy Spirit (Mercia)

Posted by The Budster on 01 May 2012 - 07:55 PM in Theology

I found you rude because I found you what you wrote rude even if Mercia didn't...

OK. Misunderstandings happen.

Incidentally I find it rather high handed that you are giving me this kind of advice and talking about forgiveness, when *you* are the one with a grudge problem. You have blocked me on facebook for no good reason other than that you are offended by my husband and have blocked him. If I really had a grudge against you, I'd just block you.

You are right, Huldah: I should have told you what I was doing and why, and I wronged you when I failed to do that. I apologize.

I explained to your husband why I was going to block him, something like a week in advance, and gave him plenty of time to communicate with me if he wanted to work things out. He appeared amused by this. In any case, I finally put it into effect. Then, quite thoughtlessly, I included you, for no better reason than you both are in the same household and I'd as soon he not read my posts over your shoulder either. It was in no way meant against you, and I mistreated you by not at least telling you that, in advance, as I did your husband. Please forgive me.



#439604 Holy Spirit (Mercia)

Posted by The Budster on 01 May 2012 - 01:34 PM in Theology

You did, there was a bit dry sarcasm in their, the assumption my friends think I am mad (which is why he misread it), although it was not that clear I was talking from his ministering angels perspective.

It just wasn't clear to me that you were speaking from a new perspective not your own, so I thought you were speaking of your own friends. That's all.

He also attempted to put me in his 'wacky new ager type' pigeon hole box by appealing to rediculous extremes (a common CD tactic), i.e my "guardian angel"...

No, I wasn't trying to do that. Plenty of Christadelphians use the term "guardian angel," and they're the furthest thing from "wacky new agers." I don't necessarily agree with them, but I have no special quarrel with them--and the phrase "guardian angel" doesn't really have any associations for me, positive or negative, so I used it without realizing it would have a negative connotation for you.

I never use such language, I stay well away from any book that talk of guardian angels probably as much as he does...

Understood; I'll remember that. I don't avoid that terminology--in fact I don't have any preferred terminology, because I don't dabble much in angelology. So I'm likely to use terms quite freely and carelessly most of the time, and to speak in somewhat broad and general terms.

yet all this is part of the course when talking to most CDs about this Bible reality, as I say, it is just half way to athiesm and unbelief imo.

That last statement I don't quite understand, because you regularly say things that indicate that you mostly agree with Christadelphians, and that you think they're more or less right on most things. It's statements like this that sound to me as if you're saying that Christadelphians are "halfway to atheism and unbelief," which sounds very different from something you'd mostly agree with. So it's not really clear to me what you think of Christadelphians. That's probably why I understood your remarks about "organized religion" as suggesting that Christadelphians are blinded to truth by their adherence to their church's creed.

All I am asking you to do it reach the obvious conclusion of your own undefined theology of what the Holy Spirit is. Once you do that the mystery is removed and in private, alone, Christadelphians will be praying for guidance from their ministering spirit in droves...

I can't say I agree with all you say about angels or the Holy Spirit, but I can't say I have much quarrel with you either. The Bible is rather vague about both topics, and there are Christadelphians who believe they have watching angels, and also an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Since the Bible is rather vague on these points, and says things that are somewhat supportive of those views, I simply can't and wouldn't argue with them.

If people claim to have gifts such as healing or tongues, I will happily put them to the test, because I would tend to doubt their claims. I believe that if Jesus walked among us today, his healings would be real: we would see people with documented cases of cancer, proven to be cancer free. I don't think Jesus' healings would be like the faith healers', which are long on hearsay and short on proof. So if anyone claimed to have such gifts, I would only believe him after he proved it.

Here is a simple question, if Christadelphians pray to God for help in understanding the Bible, as they did at the start of each lesson I had with you, then how do you think such prayers are answered? ...

Personally I recognize that we're quite vague on that point, and mostly I'm content to let it be so. When the Bible paints with broad brush-strokes, I'm very reluctant to come along with a fine-point pen and try to draw the outlines--I'd expect to get it wrong, and ruin a work of art in the process. I don't believe that prevents me from being a full Christian, because I believe that if God really wanted me to have a certain belief on the subject, He would have spelled it out plainly.



#439601 Holy Spirit (Mercia)

Posted by The Budster on 01 May 2012 - 09:10 AM in Theology

I was not offended by anything you said, just to clarify, I do not mind you being rude to me, (even though I did not see it that way), just not rude to the Holy Spirit.


:thank:



#439594 A strong argument against creation evangelism

Posted by The Budster on 01 May 2012 - 06:06 AM in Apologetics

It's previously been raised. The Horde didn't lose faith. Myers is competent developmental biologist who has carved out a niche at his current home...

What's the niche? Teaching?

Ah, how I miss academia--and the war between the researchers and the teachers! One crusty old curmudgeon (who was a favorite teacher of mine) asked my thesis advisor, "Do you realize that students are paying for your research?" My advisor replied, "Do you realize that students are paying for your no research?"

Good times.



#439593 Holy Spirit (Mercia)

Posted by The Budster on 01 May 2012 - 06:03 AM in Theology

It's not the first time you've been rude to someone claiming to have the Holy Spirit Len.

I wasn't rude, so calling this "not the first time" is begging the question. No rudeness there. Ask Mercia whether he feels insulted or rudely treated. A perfectly non-rude exchange.

Perhaps I should have forgotten about it. I just thought I detected sarcasm in what you wrote.

My guess is that you're interpreting my post through the lens of your personal feelings toward me, which aren't especially fuzzy nor inclined toward giving the benefit of the doubt. I forgive you, of course, but I suggest you look into that. It's good to treat people based on what they're doing right now--not on what they did, or you think they did, in the past. We call that sort of thing "holding grudges," and it's unhealthy: even if you're right, and I did misbehave in the past, holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping your enemy will die from it.



#439590 Holy Spirit (Mercia)

Posted by The Budster on 01 May 2012 - 04:18 AM in Theology

No Len, but once again you're being rude to someone who claims to have the Holy Spirit.


What? Mercia clarified that in the latter half of his post he was speaking from the viewpoint of one's guardian angel, rather than from his own; that bit I clearly misunderstood. The rest of my summary was accurate. What rudeness do you see there, exactly? You seem to be reading something into what I wrote. Also, I have no idea what you mean by "once again," although it suggests that you're in some way judging my recent post in light of some past conversation I don't remember--or in other words, not reading my post at face value.



#439582 Holy Spirit (Mercia)

Posted by The Budster on 30 April 2012 - 09:27 PM in Theology

I think he means that he knows the truth about angels and the Holy Spirit, and could explain it to people so that they would be saved; in particular, one friend refused to listen to him for 20 years, while his other friends called him a nutter for claiming to have this special knowledge.

Meanwhile, he is offering for the people at BTDF to learn from him the truth concerning angels and the Holy Spirit, and so be saved. However, he doubts that anyone will listen, on account of being blinded to his message by their conviction that the teaching of their (Christadelphian) church is correct. For this reason, he believes that there's more hope of salvation for those who don't belong to any church.

Seems simple enough.