Christian Overconfidence

[Athanasius]

Oh, I guess I simply cannot agree, on this point. Well, I mean of course I agree that everything that can be communicated requires that the receiver have some prerequisite ability to decode (I guess some concepts of supernatural revelation wouldn't), however I cannot rightly credit the bible with being a highly efficient means of communicating ideas, that is to say efficiency in this case meaning that it encodes relevant information in a manner that is least likely to suffer from decoding errors or is constructed to provide the greatest possible chance of being correctly construed by humankind.

I don't know what you mean by 'highly efficient means of communicating ideas' given the broad timeframes, audiences, and genres of the books of the Bible. But whatever you mean, I don't think you'll find any Christian making the claim in question.

Again, I think your criticism is utopic. You want a book that spans thousands of years, countless genres, languages, etc. etc., to be an efficient communicator across space and time. I just don't see it. I also don't see why we would assume the Bible itself is a poor communicator, rather than the issue lying with the interpretor -- or both. Clearly there are Pauline phrases that leave one scratching one's head, but I don't know, are you hoping for an alien artifact instead of a book?

I would argue that its pretty rare that even most christians will argue that the bible does not require theological sophistication to properly understand, or that it requires some manner of revelation to correctly interpret or that one must have a relationship with God to truly grasp the actual meaning. I'd be here all day if I tried to count the number of times I've seen it said about a reading or interpretation of some section of the bible that the interpretation is incorrect because the decoder was unwilling or unable to access or wield some spiritual qualia or quanta that is not optional for correct interpretation. More disturbing that that is that one can be absolutely convinced that they are using their spiritual decoder ring and be completely and utterly wrong, at least it is so according to many Christians i've un across. It is especially clear in the realm of apologies as there you can find 50 interpretations of a verse ranging from fairly mundane to spectacularly intellectually acrobatic and many of them mutually exclusive claims while still none of them ever runs the risk of being confused for a plain reading where the meanings of the words are taken at face value . In my world this is evidence that there is a fault in the encode, the decode or the transmission or all of them. I'm not so indoctrinated in information theory that I would claim that it is not communication if there are several ways configurations for a decoded message to appear in, languages are like that, but if better fidelity can be achieved with human languages and perfect fidelity when science is applied then I am at a loss as to why a God couldn't or wouldn't have done what was both possible and offered advantages in the stated goal of communicating ideas over what the bible achieves in practice.

Science requires scientific understanding, so why would theological sophistication be a problem, but not scientific sophistication? But also, scientific communication is hardly infallible, and it's purely descriptive, not prescriptive. Why would we expect God to communicate scientifically to a scientifically illiterate audience? Is this a bias showing through?

like your point is valid generally speaking but it just doesn't begin to put a dent in the illogic of the Bible cast as being really good at doing what it was created to do by the greatest possible creator of things.

Again, I don't know that anyone would make that claim (except maybe those who believe in dictation, and then, this criticism is better put towards Islam). I think the broader issue is that you're operating on dubious ideas of the construction of the bible, and possibly inspiration. You're looking for dents when the conception itself is eager for its very own false vacuum collapse.

In the context of books, Glossaries and appendices are a couple of commonly used methods.

Do I need to point out the shortcomings of this suggestion, or were you already not quite convinced when you wrote the above?

okay, good analogy I think, it would be pretty difficult to find the right mix of ant chemicals to convey the idea of love to an ant....still mostly because ants most likely have any capacity to understand concepts like love. I think that is all well and good, but its clear that humans can create better communication methods than the bible demonstrates, so why not do that, or if we must stick with the idea that that somehow breaks free will or that humans must progress unimpeded by being taught in a way that is incrementally better to the degree that it is indistinguishable from natural human development over time then I still think that the contemporary portions of the bible should be the absolute greatest examples of what humans were capable of. I do not think the bible is that, but I would be delighted if that is an argument you want to make because it sounds genuinely interesting.

There isn't a bible v2 because the bible is fine, and even at times conveys its message beautifully. The bible doesn't assume that its readers are idiots, and if its readers are idiots, then that's not the bible's problem to address. Could you imagine, having to address the various idiocies of thousands of years? The glossaries would reach to the moon and back.

The most well written book in the history of books can't make up for human disinterest, agenda, apathy.

wow, thank you for sharing that. not to be a bugaboo, but what about the actual expirience, it happened in the morning when you woke up, or while you slept? I'm curious about the context you supplied and i appreciate it, but i'm also curious about the actual expirience, like did you bolt up from your bed? Oh how could i forget , what did jesus look like?

I was asleep so :shrug: It happened at some point between falling asleep and waking up, although I woke up straight after. I didn't bolt up, no. I'm not sure I could describe the emotion afterwards though, either. I couldn't tell you what Jesus looked like, he was too bright. Actually it was incredibly bright at that point in the... dream? vision? It was a strange kind of bright that didn't hurt my eyes, but it would have made our sunniest day look dark in comparison.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I don't think many people kill themselves because they think life is meaningless. Well, it wasn't the case for me, anyway.

Well, I mean I don't either because as i tried to point out, the pleasure and satisfaction that many of us get from life probably overwhelmingly isn't based in meaning...I'd go as far as to say that often meaning is ascribed to things because they are pleasing or satisfying or useful and not the other way around... but really I guess it's not even clear to me what we are even talking about. I like being alive, if I didnt I might kill myself, I think there is plenty of stuff to like about life and I think many of us can not believe in God and also not kill ourselves, I don't think that overarching meaning is required to enjoy life, making up meaning in order to create fulfillment might work sometimes for some folks but i dont think its sure fire by any means...are we disagreeing on any of these points?

It would be a waste of what, exactly? Do you perceive any conflict between this idea of meaning-making and your OP about Christian overconfidence?

Well first I think it's just a pretty poor reasoning because there was never a God in the first place so realizing that God doesn't exist means that you've been alive for no reason for all of your life and couldn't tell the difference, so you could continue to do so. I think that again, emotionally the prospect of a person killing themselves for this reason causes a negative reaction in me and i'm okay with that being a basis for my negative "feelings" about it. On the more academic/selfish side of things though I happen to like people, in fact i'd argue that humans are social animals and so to some degree other people have an effect on us as individuals and as a group emotionally/psychologically, I believe that this is how we are and so we can either fight against this and try to be a different way (which to a degree i think is doomed to failure) or we can make choices and such that take into account how we are and attempt to optimize for that. Finally a lot of not only my favorite stuff but the stuff that I depend on to continue to be alive is and was generated by people, it would be a waste of the potential stuff that that person could have done for me or society or the future. I get that christians often cannot understand why I care about how my neighbor might be affected by a suicide, but we all live together here, we almost to a man live in groups and what we do affects each other, it affects how we feel, how we think, how we act, what laws we create, what kind of art we generate we are not islands. Okay this is getting long but I'll end with a super selfish example that might help. So somewhere in new york this Billionaire weirdo built a big weird art installation with a bunch of stairs where you can go look over the city, its pretty cool looking. Since it was built several people have leapt to their deaths from it...and now it is closed to the public. I can't go explore it and enjoy the view because some people killed themselves. This is very minor, but its an example of how suicide can have an effect on what i'm able to do, and i bet if your tried you could come up with a million other ways that suicides, murders, rapes and even littering can all have an affect on society butterfly effect style. The choices that others make and the behaviors they engage in directly or indirectly affect me, and even when they have no appreciable affect they can still effect me emotionally/Psychologically because that's how we are built generally speaking.

The point was that in a universe that lacks meaning inherently, there is no difference between the most delicious hamburger and a quarter pounder with cheese. It's all reduced, in the end. What do you make of that biological drive to keep going when you claim to know that there's no greater meaning 'out there'? Or maybe you do, and the drive to continue doing the things you love is evidence of that? Word and act and all the rest.

Oh boy, well first off I don't think either of us is pointing to meaning as the reason anyone enjoys burgers...I mean unless you are then you're going to have to really clarify your position. The difference between the worst burger and the best burger isn't in its ultimate meaning in the universe, its in its flavor, its presentation, its aroma the context of the dining expirience, it is in the perception and sensation of having that burger and how that interacts with the particular human enjoying it. People enjoy burgers because we have all sorts of apparatus that are able to sense burger components, because we gotta eat and there is a biological drive to sate hunger and a sensation of what its like to have that hunger sated, because we grew up in a culture where our memories and sense memories of the smell of flame broiled beef and catsup and pickles and sesame seed and yeast and toasted bread is tied to summer days and baseball games or 4th of july fireworks. Sometimes when some of us has a burger at a cookout we get to partially re-expirience that time when we had a pool party when we were 11 and the girl you had a crush on kissed you on the cheek over by the swings and your big cousin saw it and high fived you later, and that felt amazing. Again none of this has anything to do with the ultimate place platonic ideal hamburgers hold in the metaphysical framework of meat based products, still I could go on for pages about burgers and how they affect me, because that is what happens when we enjoy things. Its this whole mix of sense and memory and thought and emotion and expirience and It's not like i'm alone in this , this is just stuff we know about humans and even other animals. I feel like there is a tendency for Christians when making points in this realm to entirely ignore that there is a way that if feels to be a human and it has absolutely nothing to do with meaning that may or may not be attributed to it, but then we also attribute meaning to to things which also goes into the soup of what it's like to eat a burger or drink a tall sweaty glass of lemonade. Eventually we may be able to scan a brain and even replicate all of these things because they are occuring in our heads, but i'll bet that to the person experiencing it it would be indistinguishable, does that mean that it doesn't feel good or meaningful or is somehow not worthwhile to the experiencer? i'd argue that it doesn't, and luckily that is a perspective that I can have and you are free to poo poo it as having been reduced, drained of its magic or lack ultimate meaning, but I don't believe in magic so that's all it ever was to me in the first place and even believing the mundanity and the lack of mystical aspect to this physically based atoms and neurons explanation of it I still get a kick out of it...Knowing that thunder isn't angry gods doesnt stop it from startling me.... idk if thats where you were gonna go so sorry if i jumped the gun and i'll take the correction gracefully XD.

Okay on to the biological drive to keep living. Well I do think its a real thing of course but now that we are focusing here I want to add some nuance. I'm going to admit something here, as a child I watched alot of small animals die...don't get me wrong I didn't kill lots of small animals because i'm a sicko, but my environment afforded me opportunities to see it, trapping and extermination and such. Cockroaches, lizards, skunks, crocs, deer they all actually display fight or flight, its real, its common to nearly every animal and so from an evolutionary perspective its very old. I would think the usefulness of it is obvious, if the main point is to carry on and keep making slightly imperfect copies of yourself, then not dying is crucial. You also see in nature lots of things die immediately after they finish reproducing especially if they are only going to do it once. That's a strategy I can understand, one big hurrah then lights out. In those animals they often just take their deaths lying down, little to no fight, little to no flight. You also see other animals give up and just wait to die too, not just people but animals that seem to just give up in a trap or due to injury or illness. Even if you set them free they may just sit there and die. All that to say that it seems to me that this old biological impetus is fight, flight or eff it, i'm dead. The greater meaning in many of our simpler cousins is to reproduce, in our less simple cousins its reproduce, protect the young, survive to reproduce some more. Moving up we can see other behaviors that would take some explaining to relate back to reproduction but i think we can generate some compelling hypotheses. In humans though, I think we have that same old mechanism that found its usefulness in protecting reproduction in simpler beings, but we (and maybe a few other animals) are both social and intelligent, so we get to repurpose that instinct for self preservation, preservation of the young , preservation of the group, and then preservation of some very abstract ideas that only our brains can probably ascribe value. I don't think this is any more mysterious than the fact that wings are essentially made of really long weird looking fingers or that hooves are grotesque fingernails, just an old feature repurposed to work with new upgrades (please don't rake me over the coals for using upgrade , that's not what i think evolution is or how it works it was just a convenient term)...anyway something like that, doesn't seem especially difficult that it should exist without God.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Maybe an aside, but NT scripture actually demands revelatory experience and assurance.

"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His" Rm 8:9

"The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." Rm 8:16

So there is a definite point where the believer enters into a relationship with God as he or she believes the Gospel as it pertains to one's spiritual condition and eternal remedy, namely, the Cross.  Experiences for believers following that initial revelation are varied or do not necessarily happen to all.

Beyond that point, the point of saving faith, the believer is not assured that he or she will know all things or will be able to apprehend every detail of existence aside what Scripture, which he or she is compelled to both trust and fear, clearly teaches.

True salvation gives the believer confidence in the revelations of Scripture. Supreme confidence, whether or not he or she can explain or justify every claim by rationality alone.

Faith is the initial and essential element of both salvation and assurance. Until that first encounter, which Scripture demands, is what is called "darkness."

"But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Heb 11:6

No human has ever thought his or her way into the intimate experience called salvation, and no human can erase it's claims on the soul.

I mean, yeah I agree I think it does make this requirement, I think that's a huge issue but, yeah agreed.

[Oscar_Kipling]

A few? I counted 9 

Haha, not a journalist just nosy lol.

Yep.

Well, what was it?

Still are.

Aww, congratulation.

We lost the final, became vice world champion. We forgave the Germans for WW2 but never for the lost final in 1974 

Haha, some things are just unforgivable lol.

It's more that in those days there was not much knowledge, you did not get the right treatment, unlike nowadays.

Oh yeah, okay i see.

Good question. And hard to answer. Giving you my best shot, after my 2 baptisms in God's love I went (as every Saturday evening) to my fiance and she said, what happened to you? You glow! I must have looked surprised but felt insecure to tell her at that moment, that came later. Secondly, while walking home I realized 3 things, 1) God exists, 2) He is full of love and 3) He is holy. The latter (His holiness) became apparent to me because while walking home in thoughts I suddenly without any rational explanation saw the world with different eyes, as sinful and evil, but not in a judgemental way, on the contrary, I asked God, why me? so why not everybody else? That question was never answered. It was if I was given a glimpse how God looks at His world, with passion and love. I later learned about Christ and His sacrifice fits so well. The feelings slowly faded away and after about 2-3 weeks and it was time to make some choices.

Hm, maybe i should be a journalist lol. Sounds a little bit like mushrooms, without the mushrooms...well except that you were glowing, so mushrooms and pregnancy. I'm mostly kidding thank you for sharing that.

I did found similar cases but not in medical science, I found lots of similar testimonies from other people. What they have in common is a changed life afterwards.
 

Okay, but what if you did find that medical science could induce these experiences? Would you give one of these medically induced experiences if it were possible? Do you think that what you felt is something that humans are incapable of feeling without supernatural augmentation or do you think that what you felt is something that humans are capable of feeling and that God just used your existing hardware to convey feelings and ideas?

I save that for a separate posting.

Well, I can't wait to hear it.

I don't understand the question, if it is important please rephrase.

Okay, i'll try. It seems that you felt that you would have been able to rationalize a single expirience away with some natural explanation, but not 2. Why are 2 experiences naturally inexplicable whereas 1 would be... What makes the 2 experiences less susceptible to non-supernatural explanation. Why would a natural phenomena that could explain your first expirience not equally apply to the second expirience?   

[Oscar_Kipling]

I don't know what you mean by 'highly efficient means of communicating ideas' given the broad timeframes, audiences, and genres of the books of the Bible. But whatever you mean, I don't think you'll find any Christian making the claim in question.

Again, I think your criticism is utopic. You want a book that spans thousands of years, countless genres, languages, etc. etc., to be an efficient communicator across space and time. I just don't see it. I also don't see why we would assume the Bible itself is a poor communicator, rather than the issue lying with the interpretor -- or both. Clearly there are Pauline phrases that leave one scratching one's head, but I don't know, are you hoping for an alien artifact instead of a book?

I guess you've never heard Christians staunchly claim that the Bible is in fact the best book ever created, contains the greatest most useful and insightful information ever compiled, was transmitted with supernaturally high fidelity, is completely error free, and can be decoded/received/interpreted perfectly if you use the supernatural decode mechanism which everyone can access if they want to...but I have. I take communication to be the whole system kinda simply put the encode, the transmission and the decode (maybe I shouldn't put it this way, but it's about the simplest way I could think of to get across my manner of thinking). I think the best argument for the bible would be that its an especially good transmitter, that is things that were encoded many millennia ago have been transmitted into the future and all around the world.... but the information encode and decode stages are not especially unique or imo good. You might argue that the decode is all on the receiver, but not only would I argue that communication can be constructed to provide better or worse chances of being accurately decoded and that is what i'm criticizing, I would also say that many Christians claim that the encode and decode stages are rely on supernatural phenomena that are accessible to humans. This supernatural decode seems to me to be either wildly unreliable or extremely difficult to employ and or extremely difficult to detect whether or not the decoder is employing it correctly or at all. Could you imagine if I sent you an encoded message with an invisible decoder ring in a box full of hundreds of other incorrect decoder rings many of which also produce an incorrect output message that is not easily distinguishable from the correct output. That's kind of what the bible looks like to me when I try consider it as the supernaturally inspired word of God created to teach and guide humanity and help us form and sustain a relationship with the almighty creator of the universe. When I consider it as a collection of writings that people across time and cultures wrote as they struggled to describe and explain reality and sought to find the best ways to live that has undergone copies and edits and translations then it makes perfect sense that it is the way it is. I think your response to my criticisms work extremely well for a book written by and for people over a long period, but that isn't all the bible purports to be is it? I mean when considering what the bible is claimed to be your response inherently asserts (at least to me) that given the conditions, the God of the universe could not have possibly done any better or different, the bible is as good as it possibly could be at everything that it does...and when put that way I wonder why the greatest possible example of a Bible isn't appreciably distinct or measurably superior to other surviving contemporary literature of similar genre and purpose. My criticisms aren't utopic, they are beatific because if God made a burger I would expect it to fall within the constraints of what a burger is, I would expect to recognize it as a burger, but I would not expect to be unable to distinguish it from a 99 cent cheeseburger from McDonalds.

Science requires scientific understanding, so why would theological sophistication be a problem, but not scientific sophistication? But also, scientific communication is hardly infallible, and it's purely descriptive, not prescriptive. Why would we expect God to communicate scientifically to a scientifically illiterate audience? Is this a bias showing through?

Of course that's my bias showing through, I'm wearing it like a convention nametag lol. But to your point I actually do think it would be a problem if the bible required 10,000 years of scientific development to read, but if it imparted 10,000 years of scientific development to the reader i'd be impressed. Anyway my point wasn't that the bible should have been IEEE encoded, I meant that we know that it doesn't match the greatest human methods ever developed and arguably isn't even an example of the apex of what was possible at the time. Most of the world was illiterate in every way for most of the existence of the bible, and even as literacy grew most people were illiterate in the languages that the bible was recorded in, so why is it a book at all and not a series of plays or better yet beamed into our minds at birth... These are actual issues I have too, but i feel like it is out of scope. The point is that even though it wasn't my point, people had to catch up to the bible as a book anyway, so if God had used a mechanism that was inaccessible to most people for most of history it might not have been that different except that a guy like me might be forced to concede that the bible doesn't look like anything else from its time and we are only just deciphering its mathematical elegance....but again, wasn't my point.

Again, I don't know that anyone would make that claim (except maybe those who believe in dictation, and then, this criticism is better put towards Islam). I think the broader issue is that you're operating on dubious ideas of the construction of the bible, and possibly inspiration. You're looking for dents when the conception itself is eager for its very own false vacuum collapse.

Again i'll have to beg to differ and insist that plenty of Christians do too... but outside of that maybe, I'd be interested in you defending why the bible is the absolute best it could have possibly been.

Do I need to point out the shortcomings of this suggestion, or were you already not quite convinced when you wrote the above?

No, but you asked for widely used examples, and short of perfect as glossaries may be, the bible in fact does not have a glossary of terms to my knowledge. The way I see it, the bible didn't even make this imperfect attempt.

There isn't a bible v2 because the bible is fine, and even at times conveys its message beautifully. The bible doesn't assume that its readers are idiots, and if its readers are idiots, then that's not the bible's problem to address. Could you imagine, having to address the various idiocies of thousands of years? The glossaries would reach to the moon and back.

Is the length of the bible also perfect? Are annotated study bibles somehow diminishing the bible's perfect ability to transmit its messages to humanity like how the added chairs in the Contact craft led to excess vibrations?Every idiocy, sure that's too much, but I don't know why its a problem if the bible took into consideration that many of its readers would be ignorant of many of its terms and the cultural and historical contexts in which it was written and many idiosyncrasies of its original languages. It's not exactly idiocy to be born 1200 years later and half a world away is it? Did it come as a surprise to God that people would need the book many thousands of years after its original languages and cultures died and many of its readers would have no easy way to accumulate this context? I mean if these sorts of things were predicted and accounted for i'd at least find the idea that it was intentional to be a bit more compelling. Here is where lots of christians would tell me that the supernatural would take over to fill in these gaps, of course I think we can just look around and see overwhelming amounts of examples to the contrary, but I do wonder why you believe that such considerations wouldn't have made the bible a communications device?

The most well written book in the history of books can't make up for human disinterest, agenda, apathy.

Yeah, but my argument is that its not even the most well written book. I propose that the best written book gives it the best possible chance. I mean the insinuation here is that perhaps god didn't bother to create the most well written book because he knew there would still be human disinterest, agenda, apathy to deal and thought why bother. if I know that its going to rain it doesn't make sense that I should also skip breakfast because if i'm going to be wet so I may as well also be hungry too.

I was asleep so :shrug: It happened at some point between falling asleep and waking up, although I woke up straight after. I didn't bolt up, no. I'm not sure I could describe the emotion afterwards though, either. I couldn't tell you what Jesus looked like, he was too bright. Actually it was incredibly bright at that point in the... dream? vision? It was a strange kind of bright that didn't hurt my eyes, but it would have made our sunniest day look dark in comparison.

Aww, dang it...Jesus' visage escapes me again lol. I mean it was a dream so no chance of hurting your eyes, but it sounds very affecting. So once you woke up how did you feel, what did you do , how long did it last?

[Athanasius]

I guess you've never heard Christians staunchly claim that the Bible is in fact the best book ever created, contains the greatest most useful and insightful information ever compiled, was transmitted with supernaturally high fidelity, is completely error free, and can be decoded/received/interpreted perfectly if you use the supernatural decode mechanism which everyone can access if they want to...but I have.

Of course, but specifically, I was commenting on the idea of 'highly efficient'. Besides, "some Christians say" isn't an argument in favour of what those Christians say. If some portion of Scripture is written to/from Babylonian exile, and casually read by a 21st century Westerner, then of course there are going to be considerations when reading the text. This isn't down to the Bible being poorly written, and is true of any ancient text being read today.

I would also say that many Christians claim that the encode and decode stages are rely on supernatural phenomena that are accessible to humans. This supernatural decode seems to me to be either wildly unreliable or extremely difficult to employ and or extremely difficult to detect whether or not the decoder is employing it correctly or at all.

Why 'extremely' difficult? If we have the text before us, and someone claims "God told me this says that", but clearly it doesn't, then that fault lies with the person who persists in whatever pet belief they insist on holding onto. I was just adored by the "Holy Spirit told me" crowd when I was younger, because "the Holy Spirit told me" isn't a substitute for critically looking at the text with one's own eyes.

Could you imagine if I sent you an encoded message with an invisible decoder ring in a box full of hundreds of other incorrect decoder rings many of which also produce an incorrect output message that is not easily distinguishable from the correct output. That's kind of what the bible looks like to me when I try consider it as the supernaturally inspired word of God created to teach and guide humanity and help us form and sustain a relationship with the almighty creator of the universe.

What are the hundreds of other incorrect decoder rings analogous to?

When I consider it as a collection of writings that people across time and cultures wrote as they struggled to describe and explain reality and sought to find the best ways to live that has undergone copies and edits and translations then it makes perfect sense that it is the way it is. I think your response to my criticisms work extremely well for a book written by and for people over a long period, but that isn't all the bible purports to be is it?

It's not an either/or. It can be all of this, and "God-breathed" because even if God superintended the books' creations, those works will still be struggled with, edited, translated, transmitted, etc. Again, you seem to have expected God to create an alien artefact that perfectly conveys information across thousands of years and disparate cultures and languages. A Prothean beacon, perhaps? But then we'd be complaining about visions and people claiming to have seen different things. The medium probably isn't the problem, it's the people who receive the message.

I mean when considering what the bible is claimed to be your response inherently asserts (at least to me) that given the conditions, the God of the universe could not have possibly done any better or different, the bible is as good as it possibly could be at everything that it does...and when put that way I wonder why the greatest possible example of a Bible isn't appreciably distinct or measurably superior to other surviving contemporary literature of similar genre and purpose. My criticisms aren't utopic, they are beatific because if God made a burger I would expect it to fall within the constraints of what a burger is, I would expect to recognize it as a burger, but I would not expect to be unable to distinguish it from a 99 cent cheeseburger from McDonalds.

What would be a concrete example of better?

Of course that's my bias showing through, I'm wearing it like a convention nametag lol. But to your point I actually do think it would be a problem if the bible required 10,000 years of scientific development to read, but if it imparted 10,000 years of scientific development to the reader i'd be impressed.

Yes, and we would instead be talking about what happened to humanity's technologically advanced ancestors. Different context, different 'problems'.

Anyway my point wasn't that the bible should have been IEEE encoded, I meant that we know that it doesn't match the greatest human methods ever developed and arguably isn't even an example of the apex of what was possible at the time. Most of the world was illiterate in every way for most of the existence of the bible, and even as literacy grew most people were illiterate in the languages that the bible was recorded in, so why is it a book at all and not a series of plays or better yet beamed into our minds at birth...

Ah, Prothean artefacts.

Why do you think plays would be a better method of communication and transmission? I mean, it is also plays (and songs), and likely it was orally transmitted before it was written down, and even then, orally taught, acted out, and so on. Are you fully appreciating the breadth of the subject?

Again i'll have to beg to differ and insist that plenty of Christians do too... but outside of that maybe, I'd be interested in you defending why the bible is the absolute best it could have possibly been.

Well, if accept their arguments then we must declare them to be wrong.

I'm not necessarily defending the Bible as the "absolute best it could have possibly been". I'm not sure that "better" or "worse" are the right categories to apply. I know what worse is, but what's better?

No, but you asked for widely used examples, and short of perfect as glossaries may be, the bible in fact does not have a glossary of terms to my knowledge. The way I see it, the bible didn't even make this imperfect attempt.

You're asking ancient books to contain glossaries? Modern bibles can have glossaries of terms, but to expect that of ancient works is confusing.

Is the length of the bible also perfect? Are annotated study bibles somehow diminishing the bible's perfect ability to transmit its messages to humanity like how the added chairs in the Contact craft led to excess vibrations? Every idiocy, sure that's too much, but I don't know why its a problem if the bible took into consideration that many of its readers would be ignorant of many of its terms and the cultural and historical contexts in which it was written and many idiosyncrasies of its original languages. It's not exactly idiocy to be born 1200 years later and half a world away is it? Did it come as a surprise to God that people would need the book many thousands of years after its original languages and cultures died and many of its readers would have no easy way to accumulate this context? I mean if these sorts of things were predicted and accounted for i'd at least find the idea that it was intentional to be a bit more compelling.

And thus, the human element? (Why explain the context to an audience that has the context?)

What's an example from the Bible that you had in mind?

...I do wonder why you believe that such considerations wouldn't have made the bible a communications device?

Because that's not consistent with an ancient mindset, and it was the ancients who wrote the books.

Yeah, but my argument is that its not even the most well written book. I propose that the best written book gives it the best possible chance. I mean the insinuation here is that perhaps god didn't bother to create the most well written book because he knew there would still be human disinterest, agenda, apathy to deal and thought why bother. if I know that its going to rain it doesn't make sense that I should also skip breakfast because if i'm going to be wet so I may as well also be hungry too.

I'm saying that you'd still have criticisms even if you thought the Bible were as well written as it could have been. What's an example of a better written book/books?

Aww, dang it...Jesus' visage escapes me again lol. I mean it was a dream so no chance of hurting your eyes, but it sounds very affecting. So once you woke up how did you feel, what did you do , how long did it last?

I ate breakfast, and 20 odd years later I'm still thinking about it.

[ProDeo]

Well, what was it?

That I was as healthy as a fish and should stop worrying.

I did found similar cases but not in medical science, I found lots of similar testimonies from other people. What they have in common is a changed life afterwards.

Okay, but what if you did find that medical science could induce these experiences? Would you give one of these medically induced experiences if it were possible? Do you think that what you felt is something that humans are incapable of feeling without supernatural augmentation or do you think that what you felt is something that humans are capable of feeling and that God just used your existing hardware to convey feelings and ideas?

I believe we all are equipped with a spiritual antenna, some people use it, others don't. On Saturday September 28 1974, around 18:00 at the Starterstraat 24, The Hague, the Netherlands I used it.

Well, I can't wait to hear it.

It's not a very popular subject on a Bible forum but here goes. After my 2 baptisms in God's love I wanted to know everything about God. After some initial confusion where to start I became attracted by the then popular youth movement "Youth for Christ" and how they experienced their faith, in joy. I started to study the very basics of Christ, was also told the Scriptures were 100% inspired by God and that every letter from Genesis till Revelation was true.

Fast forward to 2004, I was in the fortunate position I could retire early at the age of 54, sold my little company and suddenly had a sea of time for other things, exploring science, learned to play bridge, pondering about faith issues, etc. And I stumbled on a question about my faith I could not answer. In 2008 I subscribed to the first result Google gave and joined Bible Forum (the one you also were on, I remember we even had some post exchanges) in order to find out if they could answer my (burning) question.

The forum was amazing, so many things I did not know, there were weeks I learned more than 5-10 years in church. But there was a downside waiting for me, increasing knowledge comes with a price. After years of active participation I slowly, step-by-step started to doubt about the inerrancy of the Scriptures, a main pillar of my faith and it took me years to finally admit to myself and much to my dislike the inerrancy of the Scriptures is an invention of man which started in the 4-5 century when the canon was an established fact. And it caused a crisis in my faith, it's quite cynical a Bible Forum meant to increase your faith does the opposite. I cried some tears over it.

On the other hand I (in the meantime) was knowledgeable enough to recognize the indisputable parts of Scriptures that are divinely inspired and concluded that I have to look at the Scriptures in a different way, written by man, composed by man, each telling the story of God and how they experienced it, written by approximately 40 men of diverse backgrounds over the course of 1500 years. I am in agreement what Athanasius said about the issue, I refer to that.

So anno 2022 I am (again) happy with my faith, the main pillar is God's revelation to me in 1974, it's the only thing I know for sure and I when I read the Scriptures I read them how I experienced God, love, love, love - For God so loved the world,  that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [John 3:16-17]

Fits exactly with 1974.

[ProDeo]

Okay, i'll try. It seems that you felt that you would have been able to rationalize a single expirience away with some natural explanation, but not 2. Why are 2 experiences naturally inexplicable whereas 1 would be... What makes the 2 experiences less susceptible to non-supernatural explanation. Why would a natural phenomena that could explain your first expirience not equally apply to the second expirience?

Because I am human? And my head is a scary place to be? That I know myself?!

On the old Bible Forum (you were too) I once created a poll with the question how members came to Christ, the fast majority selected the option an experience with God so my testimony is not uncommon.

[Athanasius]

...my dislike the inerrancy of the Scriptures is an invention of man which started in the 4-5 century when the canon was an established fact. And it caused a crisis in my faith, it's quite cynical a Bible Forum meant to increase your faith does the opposite. I cried some tears over it.

This speaks to one of Oscar's issues, which is theologically competency (no negative implication intended). Much of the doctrine of inerrancy that people repeat isn't inerrancy proper, just like the Trinitarianism people profess is usually probably heretical in formulation (people who refer to clovers and states of water, the roles of husbands, etc.). I'm not personally convinced against the doctrinal developments of the 4th - 5th centuries because, well, what else were theologians at the time going to do other than the theology they did?

Mind you, here too you'll run into differences in understanding. Modern disagreements between Geisler and Craig, for instance. But then this leads into what I was saying above, which is more Craig than Geisler.

[ProDeo]

...my dislike the inerrancy of the Scriptures is an invention of man which started in the 4-5 century when the canon was an established fact. And it caused a crisis in my faith, it's quite cynical a Bible Forum meant to increase your faith does the opposite. I cried some tears over it.

This speaks to one of Oscar's issues, which is theologically competency (no negative implication intended). Much of the doctrine of inerrancy that people repeat isn't inerrancy proper, just like the Trinitarianism people profess is usually probably heretical in formulation (people who refer to clovers and states of water, the roles of husbands, etc.). I'm not personally convinced against the doctrinal developments of the 4th - 5th centuries because, well, what else were theologians at the time going to do other than the theology they did?

Mind you, here too you'll run into differences in understanding. Modern disagreements between Geisler and Craig, for instance. But then this leads into what I was saying above, which is more Craig than Geisler.

I am not so much interested in the William Craig vs Norman Geiser debates, it was more that through the years on the old BF forum I noticed a pattern of ~10 ever returning topics that always ended in a stalemate. In a nutshell, On a specific subject I listened to the opinion of person X and thought, he has points, then I read the interpretation of person Y and was left with the same feeling. And the thing is, both can't be right. Oddly enough most of those ~10 stalemates were about the epistles and not so much what Jesus said in the Gospels.

I see the epistles as an explosion of new and trustworthy theology through the work of Christ by an developing first century church, not so much as inerrant.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Of course, but specifically, I was commenting on the idea of 'highly efficient'. Besides, "some Christians say" isn't an argument in favour of what those Christians say. If some portion of Scripture is written to/from Babylonian exile, and casually read by a 21st century Westerner, then of course there are going to be considerations when reading the text. This isn't down to the Bible being poorly written, and is true of any ancient text being read today.

Hey I don't buy their claims any more than you do, probably less even, but it appeared to me that you were claiming that no Christians are making those kinds of claims and I wanted to point out that lots of Christians are making such claims. It does in my mind support the idea that even people that believe they are using their "supernatural antennae" get it wildly wrong...so its either not clear when you are correctly using them or using the at all or they are difficult to properly employ and lots of people are doing it wrong. Without the opinion of what that says about God or the bible, do we agree that it's not exactly straightforward to employ the requisite supernatural component of bible decipherment? 

Why 'extremely' difficult? If we have the text before us, and someone claims "God told me this says that", but clearly it doesn't, then that fault lies with the person who persists in whatever pet belief they insist on holding onto. I was just adored by the "Holy Spirit told me" crowd when I was younger, because "the Holy Spirit told me" isn't a substitute for critically looking at the text with one's own eyes.

Well, I think that if it were always a case of a disagreement being clearly resolvable by the text then there wouldn't be the cornucopia of interpretations that people spend lifetimes debating and defending all while insisting that they are using the text and/or the holy spirit to guide them. Clearly you believe that you have a generally functional method for resolving these conflicts, but sight unseen i'd bet that your confidence in a good old fashioned critical reading of the text has frequently failed to be compelling to those who were just as certain that their interpretation method and results were reliable or even God breathed. I'm not saying that you are wrong, because I think critically reading words is how books work but we must admit that there are lots of claims around the bible in particular and how one extracts the truth from it and some of them disagree with you and I. It seems you want to chalk this up to humans kinda sucking, and that may be true but I personally cannot jibe that with the idea that the almighty has no way to mitigate this ...well actually its not even that I cant jibe it, revelation and other supernatural intercession is supposed to be not only a real thing but a thing that happens to people even as recently as 1974 Holland so there actually is a supernatural mechanism in existence that could ameliorate these issues but it seems to be sparsely deployed. The idea that God is mysterious is good for describing the fact that it doesn't make any sense but it doesn't actually make it make any sense.

What are the hundreds of other incorrect decoder rings analogous to?

the instances where folks staunchly believe that they were "spirit guided" or have critically read the text or were revealed to in a vision, but are in mutually exclusive conflict with others that staunchly believe the same thing. Even if I accept that someone must be right, its obvious that many others must be wrong and yet they feel not just correct but supernaturally correct....that's troublesome imo.

It's not an either/or. It can be all of this, and "God-breathed" because even if God superintended the books' creations, those works will still be struggled with, edited, translated, transmitted, etc. Again, you seem to have expected God to create an alien artefact that perfectly conveys information across thousands of years and disparate cultures and languages. A Prothean beacon, perhaps? But then we'd be complaining about visions and people claiming to have seen different things. The medium probably isn't the problem, it's the people who receive the message.

Expectation is probably not how i'd describe it, More like within the internal logic of Christianity God clearly can and has supernaturally interceded to get his message across exactly as he meant it, heck one time he even directly wrote on some stone tablets (which I would consider an alien artifact, because how is it not?). So that it could be done and has been done doesn't exactly conflict with the internal logic as I feel you might be suggesting. Its very rare in my life that i'll accept someone having not done something because it wouldn't solve all of our problems, its like if the wife said she didn't pay the mortgage this month because there is still a water bill or better yet because there is just going to be another one next month is not good reasoning. I'm perfectly willing to conceded that if God did create a series of protean artifacts that it wouldn't address every single possible protestation or disagreement or case of apathy for every individual throughout all of history but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been an improvement, admittedly it doesn't mean that it would have been either but at best we're locked in a Judean standoff.

What would be a concrete example of better?

ah, there is the rub. However i'm brave and I'd suggest a Glossary.

Yes, and we would instead be talking about what happened to humanity's technologically advanced ancestors. Different context, different 'problems'.

Only if God allowed that thread to die out for some reason and why would he? I mean the Jews are still knocking about remembering recipes from eons ago, so why would we have to be having the conversation about the extinction of ancient techno-wizards? Why couldn't we all be talking about how cool it is that there is a perfectly preserved golden thread that traces all the way back to the dawn of humanity and how nice it is to teleport to work every morning because of the science God revealed to abn bin ezekial 2500 years ago. Now that is Utopian, but I don't know why it absolutely has to be post-apocalyptic instead.

Ah, Prothean artefacts.

oooor, or it could just be beamed directly into our minds, don't forget about that one, because in all actuality I think that would be superior to any musty old artifact.

Why do you think plays would be a better method of communication and transmission? I mean, it is also plays (and songs), and likely it was orally transmitted before it was written down, and even then, orally taught, acted out, and so on. Are you fully appreciating the breadth of the subject?

Actually you have me there, much of the bible probably was performed, heck even later like in the instance of Catholicism in europe it was sort of still performed. it was a poor and thoughtless point and i'm freely admitting it.

Well, if accept their arguments then we must declare them to be wrong.

I'm not necessarily defending the Bible as the "absolute best it could have possibly been". I'm not sure that "better" or "worse" are the right categories to apply. I know what worse is, but what's better?

I'm fine with saying they are wrong, The entire purpose was to point out that they exist because you suggested they didn't. I think that the idea that it is the best that could be hoped for is implicit in your consistent assertions that there would always be "issues" and that we must take into consideration how the bible was compiled over time and space , languages and cultures. I was giving you the benefit of what i took to be the most sensible implication because the alternative is that there is a whole landscape of better and worse and what we actually got is sort of arbitrary and God didn't intentionally give it the best or worst shot, just kinda got it out there without considering what it was for or who would use it or how it would be received. Now though, it seems I may have unfairly boxed you in and you may be on something else entirely, so if better or worse is the wrong way to consider it, what is a more correct way?

You're asking ancient books to contain glossaries? Modern bibles can have glossaries of terms, but to expect that of ancient works is confusing.

I'm sure it was super confusing to watch oceans part and pillars of fire whip around all crazy or to become pregnant as a virgin too, but If God could do that surely he could have explained the concept of a glossary. I always imagine how absolutely weird and scary some things in the world must have seemed to ancient people even before we start talking about the supernatural...but I don't think they were fundamentally different than us. I think if we teleported a baby ancient israelite to modern America and placed them with a modern family, 18 years later you would never find them because they would be indistinguishable from any other 18 year old american...they would probably have a tik-tok and everything. It doesn't strain credulity for me that God could have imparted the concept of glossaries and footnotes and appendices on mankind or even helped us to develop the printing press and beyond. You may argue that still problems would arise but I can guarantee you that the bible would have been an easier read for me with at least some of those things, and I can say that with confidence because my first study bible was a friggin revelation, pardon the terminology lol.  Outside of being useful, a glossary would be an anachronism that would distinguish the bible from other ancient texts unlike how it is now, that is to say pretty much impossible to tell apart. just saying.

And thus, the human element? (Why explain the context to an audience that has the context?)
What's an example from the Bible that you had in mind?

because most people that would ever actually read it would not have the context. The proportion of people who have encountered the bible in a contextual setting and mindset is relatively tiny compared to the number of people who have encountered it period.

Because that's not consistent with an ancient mindset, and it was the ancients who wrote the books.

And that was nurture not nature, ancient people could have grasped modern concepts too if someone had raised them up in that way. I think God had the capacity, he just didn't...for mysterious reasons I guess. Being inconsistent with other ancient peoples imo would have been a boon to the idea that they were in fact burdened with glorious purpose by the actual creator of the universe...instead looking, smelling and feeling like everyone else...not so much.

I'm saying that you'd still have criticisms even if you thought the Bible were as well written as it could have been. What's an example of a better written book/books?

I might, but you know what criticism I wouldn't have?

The Cartoon History of The Universe, better written, better paced, far more entertaining , orders of magnitude shorter, and I learned a lot.

I ate breakfast, and 20 odd years later I'm still thinking about it.

hmm, I guess I just expected a more verbose description, but thank you I still appreciate you sharing this with me.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Hey guys after this round of responses i'm going to take a bit of a break...its not you its me. Bibleforums ate a significant portion of my time, effort and creativity without providing much but a better familiarity with apologies to show for it (not entirely useless, but c'mon). I like these discussions, probably too much and it exercises some muscles I otherwise wouldn't use, but I just don't want to get caught up doing this too much again when I could be doing other personal projects and things. So anyway I'll reply to everything that is here now and read any responses but then i'm gonna take a few weeks. thank you and I hope you don't feel slighted, I appreciate that you all put in effort to have discussions with me and i do love it.

[ProDeo]

Heya Oscar, it was good to have you although it was for a short time. Hope that you learned something especially on the subject of understanding the Scriptures in a different (non black and white) way. And we haven't even talked about the main message of the Scriptures that everybody understands, the problem of sin which caused the physical separation between God and man (Genenis 3) and the work of Christ on the cross reconciling the fallen creation with God. Forgiveness of sin and eternal salvation. That's not hard to understand. I never met a non believer who said he/she is without sin.

One more thought, in Genesis 3 mankind rebelled, they wanted to know about good and evil while God said: DON'T [!], but Adam and Eve did not listen and ate from the symbolic forbidden tree. And God said, alright I will give you what you wish, you go away from my presence on Earth, a place where you can learn by experience all about good and evil. You will live and die and then return to Me and then we talk and if you still want to rebel against Me.

If we go through human history it's a story of wars, injustice and if you are lucky less suffering mixed with good periods. In the end we all learn about good and evil, the fulfilled wish of Adam and Eve. And it isn't a nice story but effective it is.

Be well.

[Oscar_Kipling]

That I was as healthy as a fish and should stop worrying.

haha, i hope that is a common idiom in Holland because its magnificent!

I believe we all are equipped with a spiritual antenna, some people use it, others don't. On Saturday September 28 1974, around 18:00 at the Starterstraat 24, The Hague, the Netherlands I used it.

well alright!

It's not a very popular subject on a Bible forum but here goes. After my 2 baptisms in God's love I wanted to know everything about God. After some initial confusion where to start I became attracted by the then popular youth movement "Youth for Christ" and how they experienced their faith, in joy. I started to study the very basics of Christ, was also told the Scriptures were 100% inspired by God and that every letter from Genesis till Revelation was true.

Fast forward to 2004, I was in the fortunate position I could retire early at the age of 54, sold my little company and suddenly had a sea of time for other things, exploring science, learned to play bridge, pondering about faith issues, etc. And I stumbled on a question about my faith I could not answer. In 2008 I subscribed to the first result Google gave and joined Bible Forum (the one you also were on, I remember we even had some post exchanges) in order to find out if they could answer my (burning) question.

The forum was amazing, so many things I did not know, there were weeks I learned more than 5-10 years in church. But there was a downside waiting for me, increasing knowledge comes with a price. After years of active participation I slowly, step-by-step started to doubt about the inerrancy of the Scriptures, a main pillar of my faith and it took me years to finally admit to myself and much to my dislike the inerrancy of the Scriptures is an invention of man which started in the 4-5 century when the canon was an established fact. And it caused a crisis in my faith, it's quite cynical a Bible Forum meant to increase your faith does the opposite. I cried some tears over it.

On the other hand I (in the meantime) was knowledgeable enough to recognize the indisputable parts of Scriptures that are divinely inspired and concluded that I have to look at the Scriptures in a different way, written by man, composed by man, each telling the story of God and how they experienced it, written by approximately 40 men of diverse backgrounds over the course of 1500 years. I am in agreement what Athanasius said about the issue, I refer to that.

So anno 2022 I am (again) happy with my faith, the main pillar is God's revelation to me in 1974, it's the only thing I know for sure and I when I read the Scriptures I read them how I experienced God, love, love, love - For God so loved the world,  that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [John 3:16-17]

Fits exactly with 1974.

ah inerrancy, i've never understood why such a plainly nonsense idea managed to be so sticky...good on you.

[journeyman]

well, thanks.

You're welcome. Jas.1:5-7 is also very good.