Is Jesus's "this generation will certainly not pass" valid grounds for scepticism?

theprestige said:
But you still saw fit to correct Greg, for some reason. What did Greg get wrong?
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He said millions of Christians ignore the flaws in the Bible. I said millions of Christians rationalise the flaws in the Bible. You quite rightly pointed out that there are billions of Christians and I agreed. Therefore what I said was not a correction, and Greg didn't get anything wrong. QED.
 
Poem said:
Borg cube?
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Yes. If you don't recognize the phrase Google can help you.

Revelations describes a "city" that's 1,400 miles long and wide but also 1,400 miles high. That's a cube. Even if it happens to be set somewhere on the surface of the Earth, most of it would be outside Earth's atmosphere, so it needs a pressure hull (and to be subdivided into individually pressurized compartments to prevent Earth's gravity from pulling all the air inside the cube to the bottom). But its weight (check out what Revelation says it's made of) would melt the Earth's crust under it and sink it into Earth's molten interior, so it makes more sense for it to be in space instead anyhow. It could be in orbit like the moon. But it's no moon, it's a space station!

ETA: If it's divided into floors each a hundred feet high, it has 74,000 floors, with a total floor space of 145 billion square miles. If God could find 100 billion worthy resurrected humans to live there, each of them would have more than a square mile of living space, giving it less than half the population density of present day Mongolia.
 
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arthwollipot said:
I don't see why it's relevant to the conversation, but no. I am as atheist as you are. I had experience with church, and it taught me a lot about what that church believes, but I left that many years ago.

I've been talking about religion on this forum for many years now. I'm surprised that you still don't know my background, which I have spent a not-inconsiderable number of my almost 94,000 posts talking about.
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It is relevant to the conversation because you presented the Christian explanation as your explanation. When I questioned you about that, you tried to divert me into semantics, and stated that you had been deliberately unclear. I note you still have not said why. And, yes, I thought you were an atheist. That's why I was so surprised at your stance defending your former church's teachings.
So, to ask yet again: do you agree with your church on this matter? Do you accept their claim that the OT laws don't apply any more, and their reasons for that?
 
theprestige said:
Maybe you mean it could trigger a crisis of faith in some individual Christians? In my experience, it's not any one thing that triggers a crisis of faith in an individual believer. It's a steady accrual of things. Inconsistency upon inconsistency in the scriptures, not any one inconsistent passage by itself. Something fundamentally objectionable about a core doctrine, in the eyes of that individual. Etc.

Could this verse be the final straw? Sure. But so could any other aspect of the religion. Seriously, what did you expect?
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Sure, it's not limit to one particular passage.
 
acbytesla said:
Spreading the word by the sword started pretty much with Constatine and goes on to this very day. Actually, before Constatine. Sure, there are lulls in violence by Christians from time to time. But I don't believe for a second that we have seen the last of them.
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What is your point here?
 
acbytesla said:
Yeah, it is. This is a single verse in just one book in the Bible. The faithful will either not care at all or rationalize it in some way.
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...that happens to be the subject of the OP...don't be irritated that I focus on it.
acbytesla said:
Granted, Francis Collins is a very smart man. But have you ever read why he believes? The reason is truly moronic.
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In your words - it's moronic because?
acbytesla said:
Smart people are not immune to having dumb beliefs. Isaac Newton may have been the most intelligent person to draw breath. And yet he was a devout believer. He even attributed to God why some of his calculations in Principia Mathematica weren't quite right . Calculations that he was more than capable of solving. Which forced La Place to take up the mantle.
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That would also apply to atheists presumably?
acbytesla said:
Was he? How would you know? How do you know that all of it wasn't a total fabrication of Paul's? How does any of us know that Paul wasn't just the first century's version of Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard?

I wonder??
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I was answering why Paul discouraged what you consider 'thought'. You assumed those verses you cited, so why shouldn't I assume Paul's dramatic conversion story? Both of us are assuming Paul thought and wrote of such things...not necessarily that such was truth.
acbytesla said:
I see this as I do the Emperor's New Clothes. Except with a more realistic ending. When the kid points out that the King is naked, the parents shush the kid or the kid is arrested and executed.
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Not following you.
 
Myriad said:
Yes. If you don't recognize the phrase Google can help you.

Revelations describes a "city" that's 1,400 miles long and wide but also 1,400 miles high. That's a cube. Even if it happens to be set somewhere on the surface of the Earth, most of it would be outside Earth's atmosphere, so it needs a pressure hull (and to be subdivided into individually pressurized compartments to prevent Earth's gravity from pulling all the air inside the cube to the bottom). But its weight (check out what Revelation says it's made of) would melt the Earth's crust under it and sink it into Earth's molten interior, so it makes more sense for it to be in space instead anyhow. It could be in orbit like the moon. But it's no moon, it's a space station!

ETA: If it's divided into floors each a hundred feet high, it has 74,000 floors, with a total floor space of 145 billion square miles. If God could find 100 billion worthy resurrected humans to live there, each of them would have more than a square mile of living space, giving it less than half the population density of present day Mongolia.
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Interesting. Do we assume the new heaven and earth would mirror the current heaven and earth...in physical laws etc?
 
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This may or may not be relevant to some here - so just throwing it out there....

Deuteronomy 12:31:
You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
 
theprestige said:
And yet here we are. What's the point of this thread?
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This thread asks about a specific passage - nothing wrong with that....but sure, there are other seeming anomalies in the Bible.

I'm a little confused as to why you are so hung up on what you have been arguing about.
 
Myriad said:
Yes. If you don't recognize the phrase Google can help you.

Revelations describes a "city" that's 1,400 miles long and wide but also 1,400 miles high. That's a cube. Even if it happens to be set somewhere on the surface of the Earth, most of it would be outside Earth's atmosphere, so it needs a pressure hull (and to be subdivided into individually pressurized compartments to prevent Earth's gravity from pulling all the air inside the cube to the bottom). But its weight (check out what Revelation says it's made of) would melt the Earth's crust under it and sink it into Earth's molten interior, so it makes more sense for it to be in space instead anyhow. It could be in orbit like the moon. But it's no moon, it's a space station!

ETA: If it's divided into floors each a hundred feet high, it has 74,000 floors, with a total floor space of 145 billion square miles. If God could find 100 billion worthy resurrected humans to live there, each of them would have more than a square mile of living space, giving it less than half the population density of present day Mongolia.
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Apart from its use in horror movies and a few choice quotes preachers like to throw out about the antichrist and the end of the world I think Revelations is the most "ignored" book of the New Testament - it is absolutely ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ barmy.
 
sphenisc said:
He said
"The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that he really was so. "

It would seem that Lewis regarded Jesus' ignorance as being indicated by him making an erroneous statement. Do you interpret it differently?
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Given the rest of the essay, yes.
 
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