Christian Overconfidence

[Athanasius]

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

Your tensions are showing.

[RabbiKnife]

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

Your tensions are showing.

Ah, non-Christian overconfidence.  I've never had any significant issue with the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy; alas, it, like much of the Bible is supports, is often caricatured into oblivion.

[Oscar_Kipling]

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

Your tensions are showing.

I would hope that my views on Christianity, Christians and the Bible have been clear this entire time, that is that I'm not a believer and I even consider some of it as far from credible as a thing could be. It bums me out a little that anyone may have gotten the impression that I'm crediting Christianity with making sense in reality or within many versions of its internal logic...anything short of understanding that that is where i'm coming from makes me wonder what people think i've been talking about this entire time.

[Oscar_Kipling]

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

Your tensions are showing.

Ah, non-Christian overconfidence.  I've never had any significant issue with the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy; alas, it, like much of the Bible is supports, is often caricatured into oblivion.

Haha, yeah maybe as I am pretty confident that at least most of the versions i've run across are inchoate to say the least. I won't pretend that the idea hasn't been caricatured by non believers, but I think it's only fair to acknowledge that actual people who claim to be actual Christians are also proponents of many versions that even some other Christians would dismiss as infeasible. Idk, i've been getting the impression that maybe you guys aren't always acknowledging the full gamut of ideas that a great many Christians legitimately believe just because you don't think they represent your conception of Christianity very well. I'm happy to back off a bit and give credit where credit is due in that there are better and worse versions of inerrancy but there are still some very very bad imo indefensible versions...and I don't even think we'd disagree on some of them if you acknowledged that many Christians actually believe them.

[Athanasius]

I would hope that my views on Christianity, Christians and the Bible have been clear this entire time, that is that I'm not a believer and I even consider some of it as far from credible as a thing could be. It bums me out a little that anyone may have gotten the impression that I'm crediting Christianity with making sense in reality or within many versions of its internal logic...anything short of understanding that that is where i'm coming from makes me wonder what people think i've been talking about this entire time.

For what it's worth, I don't think you've ever credited Christianity with being sensical or credible.

By tensions, I mean (a) the challenge that the Bible ought to have been better written if inspired by God while (b) maintaining that the idea of inerrancy is plainly nonsensical. This makes the challenge impossible to answer because any mistake, error, etc., in the bible, real or perceived, is evidence against divine authorship. But since inerrancy is plain nonsense, we'd expect the bible to contain exactly these things.

Hence, tension.

[Athanasius]

Haha, yeah maybe as I am pretty confident that at least most of the versions i've run across are inchoate to say the least. I won't pretend that the idea hasn't been caricatured by non believers, but I think it's only fair to acknowledge that actual people who claim to be actual Christians are also proponents of many versions that even some other Christians would dismiss as infeasible. Idk, i've been getting the impression that maybe you guys aren't always acknowledging the full gamut of ideas that a great many Christians legitimately believe just because you don't think they represent your conception of Christianity very well. I'm happy to back off a bit and give credit where credit is due in that there are better and worse versions of inerrancy but there are still some very very bad imo indefensible versions...and I don't even think we'd disagree on some of them if you acknowledged that many Christians actually believe them.

Here's the thing: science is best left to scientists, and theology is best left to theologians. The core message of Christianity does not require theological sophistication, but Christian doctrine does. And just as not everyone is a scientist, so too not everyone is a theologian. The popular misunderstandings of Christian doctrine that the laity hold are teaching failures. The target to attack is Christian doctrine proper, and not everyone is a theologian, which means that a there are indeed a great many Christians who don't believe doctrine like they think they do, because they don't understand it like they think they do.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I would hope that my views on Christianity, Christians and the Bible have been clear this entire time, that is that I'm not a believer and I even consider some of it as far from credible as a thing could be. It bums me out a little that anyone may have gotten the impression that I'm crediting Christianity with making sense in reality or within many versions of its internal logic...anything short of understanding that that is where i'm coming from makes me wonder what people think i've been talking about this entire time.

For what it's worth, I don't think you've ever credited Christianity with being sensical or credible.

By tensions, I mean (a) the challenge that the Bible ought to have been better written if inspired by God while (b) maintaining that the idea of inerrancy is plainly nonsensical. This makes the challenge impossible to answer because any mistake, error, etc., in the bible, real or perceived, is evidence against divine authorship. But since inerrancy is plain nonsense, we'd expect the bible to contain exactly these things.

Hence, tension.

oh I misunderstood you, my mistake. I don't think there is any tension there because I think most versions of inerrancy that i've run across are proven ridiculous by the text itself, It could have been the case that these versions were in fact validated by the text but by my estimation they were not. Its not as if i initially heard the idea and dismissed it as nonsensical because concept itself is plainly ridiculous , in fact I probably took some version of it for granted as a child its just that upon critically reading the book it is plain to see that inerrancy as conceived by many cannot be the case. So inerrancy could have been evidence of that the Bible is as good as a book could be, it just so happens that it isn't inerrant and it's not as good as a book could be. Maybe you can show me that it is both inerrant and the best it possibly could have been, I doubt it, but again I have no special tension around being proven wrong on either or both points.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Haha, yeah maybe as I am pretty confident that at least most of the versions i've run across are inchoate to say the least. I won't pretend that the idea hasn't been caricatured by non believers, but I think it's only fair to acknowledge that actual people who claim to be actual Christians are also proponents of many versions that even some other Christians would dismiss as infeasible. Idk, i've been getting the impression that maybe you guys aren't always acknowledging the full gamut of ideas that a great many Christians legitimately believe just because you don't think they represent your conception of Christianity very well. I'm happy to back off a bit and give credit where credit is due in that there are better and worse versions of inerrancy but there are still some very very bad imo indefensible versions...and I don't even think we'd disagree on some of them if you acknowledged that many Christians actually believe them.

Here's the thing: science is best left to scientists, and theology is best left to theologians. The core message of Christianity does not require theological sophistication, but Christian doctrine does. And just as not everyone is a scientist, so too not everyone is a theologian. The popular misunderstandings of Christian doctrine that the laity hold are teaching failures. The target to attack is Christian doctrine proper, and not everyone is a theologian, which means that a there are indeed a great many Christians who don't believe doctrine like they think they do, because they don't understand it like they think they do.

hmm, I guess i've never really bought that the core message is both easy to extract and/or is all that matters and everything else is just frosting on the cake. It just seems that there are so many that claim to be adhering to the "core" and again they have mutually exclusive beliefs in conflict with others that are just as certain that they have gotten at the core. I do not see a way around the problem of fundamental conflicts because no matter how "core" you get I can find examples of Christians with a different core. I feel you just keep trying to pawn off the problem by suggest that no one believes this or that thing, or that there are no conflicting ideas but there are for just about any aspect of christianity that you might bring up.  Additionally if the core is all we need then why bother with the rest, why isn't the bible 6 pages long...i'd argue it's because whatever the "core" is its much more complex and in depth and mired in disagreement than you would like to present it here. If you edited the bible down to the core, what's left? Would every Christian in the world agree with you that you've cut to the very quick and left nothing crucial to the core out? I doubt it. Are those people that disagree just not true Christians? are they too sophisticated or not sophisticated enough? are they bad theologians or too good theologians? Is it because they are deceived, deluded too in love with sin? are they idiots? lazy? or is this just a bad experiment for some reason? or maybe you do believe you'd get universal agreement, you've surprised me before.

and to be clear i'm taking about the game, not practice, not sophisticated theology, not theory but the game, How Christianity actually looks in the world, what people actually believe, the conflicts that actually exist, the actual lack of a unified concept of what the core of Christianity is, not practice, the game XD

[RabbiKnife]

So, we are talking about Space Monkeys?  isn't that a bit of a straw man argument?

"Here, let me attack your sacred text, not on the basis of the text itself, but on the basis of the ways in which some unidentified people may approach or understand it?

That's sound a lot like "living document Constutionalists."


Who cares about the game?  The game, as you call it, has no more meaning that theories that the earth is flat, that all dogs go to heaven, or that the CIA faked the moon landing.  Well, I'll give you the last one...

Game or practice, flawed as it may be, does not change the nature and character of the real deal as communicated to man by God.

[Fenris]

Ah, non-Christian overconfidence.

To be honest, I've never understood why Christians feel they have any more confidence in their faith than any other religion. Every religion has created martyrs.

[RabbiKnife]

I never argue with a man with a Space Laser.

[RabbiKnife]

I never argue with a man with a Space Laser.

AAIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/17/israel-successfully-tests-new-laser-missile-defense-system/

[Athanasius]

To be honest, I've never understood why Christians feel they have any more confidence in their faith than any other religion. Every religion has created martyrs.

Three things, I think: (1) a lack of awareness, (2) the Christian doctrine of assurance, and (3) the epistemological difficulty of discerning whether or not Christians do feel more confident in their faith than believers in other faiths or philosophy. I think (3) will follow as a necessity of (2). Otherwise, the assurance of all believers in any religion of philosophy is purely human-driven (i.e. internally generated).

But then that brings us back to (1), and something akin to the criticisms Oscar had earlier: the idea "I'm a Christian; therefore I'm more confident". I would expect this to be a driver-away from the Christian faith, actually, as those who are brought up in a Christian environment, under their parents faith, encounter believers in other religious who are just as dedicated as the most dedicated Christian they've met, or possibly more.

[Athanasius]

Haha, yeah maybe as I am pretty confident that at least most of the versions i've run across are inchoate to say the least. I won't pretend that the idea hasn't been caricatured by non believers, but I think it's only fair to acknowledge that actual people who claim to be actual Christians are also proponents of many versions that even some other Christians would dismiss as infeasible. Idk, i've been getting the impression that maybe you guys aren't always acknowledging the full gamut of ideas that a great many Christians legitimately believe just because you don't think they represent your conception of Christianity very well. I'm happy to back off a bit and give credit where credit is due in that there are better and worse versions of inerrancy but there are still some very very bad imo indefensible versions...and I don't even think we'd disagree on some of them if you acknowledged that many Christians actually believe them.

Here's the thing: science is best left to scientists, and theology is best left to theologians. The core message of Christianity does not require theological sophistication, but Christian doctrine does. And just as not everyone is a scientist, so too not everyone is a theologian. The popular misunderstandings of Christian doctrine that the laity hold are teaching failures. The target to attack is Christian doctrine proper, and not everyone is a theologian, which means that a there are indeed a great many Christians who don't believe doctrine like they think they do, because they don't understand it like they think they do.

hmm, I guess i've never really bought that the core message is both easy to extract and/or is all that matters and everything else is just frosting on the cake. It just seems that there are so many that claim to be adhering to the "core" and again they have mutually exclusive beliefs in conflict with others that are just as certain that they have gotten at the core. I do not see a way around the problem of fundamental conflicts because no matter how "core" you get I can find examples of Christians with a different core. I feel you just keep trying to pawn off the problem by suggest that no one believes this or that thing, or that there are no conflicting ideas but there are for just about any aspect of christianity that you might bring up.  Additionally if the core is all we need then why bother with the rest, why isn't the bible 6 pages long...i'd argue it's because whatever the "core" is its much more complex and in depth and mired in disagreement than you would like to present it here. If you edited the bible down to the core, what's left? Would every Christian in the world agree with you that you've cut to the very quick and left nothing crucial to the core out? I doubt it. Are those people that disagree just not true Christians? are they too sophisticated or not sophisticated enough? are they bad theologians or too good theologians? Is it because they are deceived, deluded too in love with sin? are they idiots? lazy? or is this just a bad experiment for some reason? or maybe you do believe you'd get universal agreement, you've surprised me before.

and to be clear i'm taking about the game, not practice, not sophisticated theology, not theory but the game, How Christianity actually looks in the world, what people actually believe, the conflicts that actually exist, the actual lack of a unified concept of what the core of Christianity is, not practice, the game XD

Are you going to stick around Oscar? I don't want to spend time replying if you're going to nope on outta here.

[Fenris]

I never argue with a man with a Space Laser.

Good, I can cancel the aiming now.