4 Things Americans Can Learn About Faith and Evolution From Great Britain and Canada

Always like to help people with their homework.

You might want to take a look at Hittites and Hethites and learn when a Hittite is not a Hittite.

Bill, the book "5 views on Biblical Inerrency " is a good place to start in understanding how one can take the Bible seriously, and even call it inerrant, yet have different understandings of what it means. Interesting read if you get a chance.
http://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/five_views_on_biblical_inerrancy_a_review

Okay, then do you think there were any errors in the original manuscripts?

Who defines what an error is? If Samson killed 3,000 with the jawbone of an ass, does that mean that he did not kill 2,999 or 3,001? Are we evaluating by modern taxonomy which stipulates that a bat is not a bird and that a grasshopper has six legs, not four? Does the Bible give us a different π? Are some things poetic and others not, or is God actually made of rock?

So…what do you mean by “error”? I hate to make it sound like I’m quibbling, but if believe that Genesis 1 does not refer to 7 literal days, am I ascribing “error” to it?

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It is not in error if it is rounding to 3000, or if we do not know exactly what the Hebrew word is and our best guess is bat which could fall under the Hebrew definition for what we translated as bird, or if we do not have a better idea of the creature that the Hebrew word refers to which we translated as grasshopper. The passage on the circumference lists values that are consistent with the value of pi, probably done by accurately measuring it. (By the way, no one can write pi since he is always off by an infinite number of decimal places.)

When you say that you believe Genesis does not teach 24 hour days, you may have convinced yourself that that is what it says. If you really believe that then you could sincerely say that you believe the Bible and don’t think it has errors. However, I think that the Bible clearly teaches 24 hour days and anyone who thinks otherwise, for varied reasons, is denying the obvious.

No I don’t.

Well, of course there are reasons for thinking that it might not be literal 24-hour periods. Just like there are reasons to believe a lot of other things in the Bible aren’t literal.

I mean, nobody takes all of the Bible literally. We just sometimes disagree on where and how the lines are drawn.

Then again, sometimes things that once appeared obvious no longer do and vice versa. Most people no longer believe the world literally has “corners.” But they used to.

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I think I was unclear with my last statement. What I mean is that the Bible clearly teaches 24 hour days and anyone who thinks otherwise is denying the obvious. There are various reasons for why they refuse to accept the obvious truth. None of their reasons for doing so are good. They should listen to God rather than foolish ideas of men( and ultimately those ideas come from Satan).

Do you believe in the documentary hypothesis?

Why are you suddenly talking about what I believe, instead of reading your evidence for your claims? You already know the answer to that question. While the classical Documentary Hypothesis has been dead for some time, it is well recognized that the Pentateuch is the product of multiple sources and writers, and I have provided some of the evidence for this myself. Before you falsely blame this on “liberal scholars”, I’ll point out that the earliest forms of this model were proposed by medieval rabbis, who were just as fundamentalist as you are, and who believed the text was completely inspired.

I am just curious as to what you believe.

My beliefs are as far from yours as the twenty first century is from the medieval era.

I would agree.

but I was just trying to get an idea. I read the biologos website a little so I probably know about what you believe, but you may not agree with them so I was just curious.

Do you believe that Jesus is God?

No I don’t. It’s clear you are no longer comfortable trying to defend your original claims, and you’re looking for any way to change the subject to something you find more pleasant, like charging me with heresy.

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Are you being sarcastic or do you really not believe that Jesus is God. You said that you are a Christian, but there are a lot of people who say that and are not. Also if you do believe that Jesus is God, I would ask you why you believe that?

I am not being sarcastic. I really do not believe that Jesus is God.

I certainly agree.

I am not interested in telling you why I believe that. You have dismissed or simply ignored everything I have said to you previously about what I believe and why, and you have either failed to or simply ignored my questions to you. I have also seen you treat others in this way. I am fairly sure that this is not what this forum was intended for. Until your behavior changes I see no value in discussion with you.

Good night.

To the contrary, I don’t believe this is what Genesis 1 is teaching at all. There is a whole lot of stuff that Genesis 1 is teaching but we miss all that stuff when we insist that the main point is “God created the world in 6 days.”

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