Anyways, one thing I’m sure you haven’t done is actually read the Bible without the presupposition that it’s lying. Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I have yet to see any skeptic really do that.
Um… I read the Bible as a child, as I would expect most skeptics who were raised by Christian parents did. I actually turned against Christianity because I did not like the God depicted in the Bible, which happened because I took the Bible at face value. It wasn’t until later that I built up the materialistic worldview which sees the Bible as a piece of literature rather than a collection of historical claims.
If I had just treated the Bible as clothing that my family and friends chose to wear, it would have been easy to continue wearing that clothing, while not actually holding the implied belief system. (I like my family and the friends I grew up with!) Instead, I treated it as actually constraining my expectations of God and the universe, and the resulting beliefs clashed against each other until they were destroyed. (My materialistic beliefs work together much more nicely.)
Just because you find the God of the Bible unpalatable to your personal tastes of what God should or should not be, doesn’t make it any more true or false, does it?
Just because you find the God of the Bible unpalatable to your personal tastes of what God should or should not be, doesn’t make it any more true or false, does it?
Your claim was that you had not met a skeptic who read the Bible while expecting it to be true. I provided evidence that I am a skeptic, and that I had read the Bible while expecting it to be true.
You are, of course, free to take the No True Scotsman route and declare that I didn’t really presuppose that the Bible was telling the truth, but I might as well declare now that doing that would end this conversation.
Um… I read the Bible as a child, as I would expect most skeptics who were raised by Christian parents did. I actually turned against Christianity because I did not like the God depicted in the Bible, which happened because I took the Bible at face value. It wasn’t until later that I built up the materialistic worldview which sees the Bible as a piece of literature rather than a collection of historical claims.
If I had just treated the Bible as clothing that my family and friends chose to wear, it would have been easy to continue wearing that clothing, while not actually holding the implied belief system. (I like my family and the friends I grew up with!) Instead, I treated it as actually constraining my expectations of God and the universe, and the resulting beliefs clashed against each other until they were destroyed. (My materialistic beliefs work together much more nicely.)
Just because you find the God of the Bible unpalatable to your personal tastes of what God should or should not be, doesn’t make it any more true or false, does it?
Your claim was that you had not met a skeptic who read the Bible while expecting it to be true. I provided evidence that I am a skeptic, and that I had read the Bible while expecting it to be true.
You are, of course, free to take the No True Scotsman route and declare that I didn’t really presuppose that the Bible was telling the truth, but I might as well declare now that doing that would end this conversation.