Hawkins

If you don't have the intelligence, then put more faith to the Word of God. It is warned in Genesis that the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil is for someone like you to be tempted to eat to draw the wrong conclusion that the OT God is evil. The OT God is not cruel. He is to secure the survival of the Jews such that they can bring forward God's message to reach today's people, and for humans in the timeline of humanity to be saved through His message of salvation carried forward via the ancient Jews. He removed the already dead to give way for the Jews to survive in the midst of the cruel Canaanites.

My advice is, don't trust you intelligence. Human IQ is low. Bible is made up of human accounts of testimonies/witnessing of who God is. Humans on the other hand may have read it by employing their limited intelligence. Thus they read contradictions or "God is not moral". It's warned that if you choose to rely on your limited knowledge to judge God, "the same day you eat of it, the same day you shall surely die". That said. God's morality is different from that of humans. We humans base our morality on a physical body. That is, it is immoral to have a physical body harmed or killed. God's morality is based on souls. It is thus immoral to leave the souls harmed and unsaved. God ordered to kill the Canaanites or else they will kill the Jews and will put God's message of salvation to an end. If the Jews are wiped out by the Canaanites, we don't have a gospel today for our souls to be saved. All mankind will thus wind up in an eternal hell. God is thus immoral. The history however is, God killed the Canaanites such that the Jews survived to bring forward His message of salvation to today's humans, such that much more human souls are saved along humanity. God is thus moral. Your human intelligence however won't be able to see it this way. So the advice is, quit using your IQ (because it's not reliable and shakes the faith of both you and others when applied), and put more faith in God.

All general truth has exceptions.

The Bible never says that God is the father of everyone. A father will kill a wolf with no mercy if the wolf trying desperately to kill his son. In the Bible, God is a good Shepherd of His sheep. He's not a father of the wolves.

It is warned that if you choose to rely on your IQ which is low, the same day you eat of it the same day you shall surely. No offence. That said. Man's morality is tied on bodies, we count death of a body as the base of our morality. God base His morality on soul. He eliminate the Canaanites for Israel's survival to bring forward His salvation towards today's humans. He won't allow the already dead Canaanites to cause more souls to die due to the salvation message being blocked as a result of the casualty of the Jews. Raping is rare crime of the Jews, unlike western world. Daughters are seldom allowed to be alone in the wilderness. They are slaves in Egypt and have the custom of hiding their daughter, or else they will be taken unconditionally by their Egypt masters. More often, it is the girl who wish to meet her lover in a quiet place but then later her family will report a rape. That's why yelling is used to define whether it's actually a rape. Why can't you just come up with such a reasonable answer. It's because you choose to rely on your limited knowledge/IQ instead of your faith in God. It's your own choice which leads you to see your own doom. Again, no offence, just trying to remind you what has been warned (or prophesied about your today's behaviour some thousands years ago).

Steven could be Hellenistic and may not know Hebrew at all, by his quote of the Septuagint which differs from Hebrew culture. All we can take a look at is how Greek is used today which may not be how ancient Greek using it. Usually, the Greek counter part may be precise enough in terms of how Greek used 2000 years ago. That said, from my perception soul is more often used to describe what left as the identity of a human without a body, while spirit is used as the equivalent description for angels or non-humans. However this is just a general use instead of from the perspective of anatomy. In terms of anatomy, it seems to me that it is a Jewish consensus to think that the general term soul can be subdivided. How so will depend on which sect a Jew belongs to. Back in Jesus' time, the majority of Jews (those Hebrew speakers) adapt a Pharisaic concept very much close to how Josephus the Pharisaic historian describes, From The Works of Flavius Josephus, That God took dust from the ground, and formed man, and inserted in him a spirit and a soul. From my own understanding, soul is our true identity. Humans are designed to live an eternity, thus we need a more permanent part to represent our identity which is our soul. Our body is just an image for us humans to recognize each other. Our soul however allows other entities such as angels to tell who we are in an eternal sense. The soul thus carries what should be permanent to us, including our difference senses and our memory. Spirit is for God to store thing to us during a limited period of time, say, our life time on earth. After the period of time, the spirit is said to have returned to God. It can also be said that our spirit connects us to God or allows us to interact with God in a way. Our earthly emotion may lie in our spirit, such that once we are in Hades we may no longer have the same affection for our close relatives or lovers or children. This kind of affection may be gone with our spirit. Thus in Heaven we have only brothers and sisters. And don't expect those wicked in Hades still treat you as his love.

The answer is simple. When you try to plant a tree in your backyard, you need first to remove all the weeds before burying the seed. After that you need intensive care to make sure that the newly germinated tree won't go the wrong direction which you don't want them to grow to. If the tree grows towards a wrong direction, then you will use a fixture to pull them back in position. After the tree grows strong enough, you no longer need to do anything. Israel is the seed of God's salvation. It grows like a tree such that it reaches today's humans. The Canaanites (as weeds) are removed before Israel can settle in Canaan. After that strict measures are taken against the Jews for them to go the correct path. Then they remain loyal to God for His message of salvation (the Scripture) to be carried forward. The end effect is that the Jews are the only ethnic group keeping its religion (loyalty to God) in a 2000 years exile without their own home nation. What a tough tree!

The question, "where did God coming from", The 'coming from' in this question is a human conception about something coming to exist from absence. 'Coming from' is a human conception about something which doesn't exist at some point but is brought to existence later on. So if the atheists cannot find out the first point where God didn't exist, it's no point to ask at which point God was brought to existence.

You made a point. But still that's not direct enough. You don't need to 'geo line' stuff. You can ask directly in terms of time. That is, If you can tell me at which time God doesn't exist, I will tell you at which time He's created. Since no one can point out at which time God doesn't/didn't exist, that's why God is there all the times. did God exist 10000000000000 years ago. Yes He's there. 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years ago. But still He's there 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years ago. Still He's there too. So if an atheist can't point out WHEN God didn't exist, it's pointless to tell WHEN He's created.

It's more about the canonization of the NT. It's almost nothing to do with the OT canonization. The legitimate authority to canonize the OT is the Jews. The book of Enoch is not in the canon of the Jewish OT as well as the Catholic OT. So it's not part of the canon disregarding how it was treasured by early Christians. That said, personally I think that it's removed (by God in the end) because the contents are not from a true account of witnessing. It may contain some truth which can be used as a reference though. The canonization of OT started with King Hezekiah. 17 out of the 22 books in Jewish canon are said to be with a mark of Hezekiah. Some of these 17 books were finally edited by Ezra after the Babylon exile. The book of Enoch is never part of whole process of canonization which last for more than 700 years.

The point is , it's never about this reality which you can perceive. Religion is almost exclusively about the next reality lying ahead. And the only way which could possibly reach such a "next reality" is by putting trust in human accounts of witnessing. Or what else do you think that you can possibly reach such a truth. For the sake or argument let's assume that afterlife exists, then how can you reach this truth. Your perception of this reality never leads to any possibly truth of your next reality! That's the point!

It means that you have no truth or you need to believe a witnessing to reach such a truth. You can't stand neutral as long as your own life is concerned. We believe so because we trust humans such as Moses may have direct contact with someone we call God to get to the conclusion, a conclusion which science cannot refute! More importantly, as long as the biblical claims concern our death or alive which science can never refute, I see no point in rejecting the claims especially under the situation that 10 out of the 12 disciples of Jesus chose to martyr themselves in order to convey the truth of Jesus Christ.

It only shows that you have a misconception (as as result of modern education) about what human witnessing is and what the reliability of science is. Why science is reliable? Science isn't necessarily reliable in all cases. Science has a reason to be reliable under certain conditions. Science is considered reliable because it is (originally) about the discovery of existing sets of rules governing a repeatable behavior. Scientific theories are about to bring up a predictable model in explaining a repeatable behavior without error. So that, We can predict without error before each and every single experiment that water will dissolve into oxygen and hydrogen. It is because this prediction never fails (or else you deserve a Nobel Prize) that we can confirm that it's a scientific truth. Similarly, we land on the surface of moon or Mars because we have an infallible physics theory which can predictably and reliably bring us there. We don't risk on "the physics theories could be wrong". That's why whenever a rocket explodes in such a mission, we won't say that "the physics theories are wrong". It can only be human errors or unpredictable factors making the precise calculation not possible, such as the force generated by the burning of fuel cannot be precisely calculated by our current technology of applied science. That is to say, the physics theories themselves will have a 100% successful rate. That's the reason why science is reliable. Not because how it is applied to non-repeatable historical events such as the Big Bang. Not because how it is applied to non-predictable end-to-end processes such the evolution claims. It is because of how it is applied to repeatable behavior and to make the end-to-end repetition predictable. It is the infallible predictability which confirms its truth.

Religion is the most reliable way for humans to carry forward an important theory (theology to be more specific) through the timeline of humanity. That's why you can't have any human writings older than 2000 years for you to reconcile its contents with what we read today. The Chinese have more than 5000 years of history, however we don't any ancient scrolls older than 2000 years supporting the history books we read today. That is to say, we have no way to reconcile to tell whether the contents we read today remain the same contents written more than 2000 years ago. On the other hand, we have a whole library of Red Sea Scrolls for us to tell that the contents of the OT Bible we read today, remains theologically the same as humans read 2000 years ago. Similarly, we have 2 independent sources of NT Bibles, namely the NIV and KJV, which are theologically (not necessarily contextually) identical for us to tell that in terms of our salvation through the New Covenant (a whole theology) what we read today remains the same as humans read some 2000 years ago. To put it another way, if God exists and He has a crucial message (i.e., human salvation theology) to convey. It is thus witnessed that the same message of salvation we are conveying today remains the same message conveyed by humans some 2000 years ago. This verifiable witnessing can only be achieved through a religion we call Christianity (and Judaism) . This is so because we don't have a large amount of humans keeping the history books seriously. However we have a large amount of humans keeping the religious Bible seriously. That's how the contents of the Bible conserved with its theological content intact throughout humanity, or otherwise this is simply impossible through the imperfect hands of humans. Humans are never good keepers of original documents!

Science is experiment/observation based. The limitation of science is that we can only do experiments and observations inside our own realm (time-space). Religious claims are almost exclusively about existences/entities lying outside of our realm which science is never the right tool to reach. You feel more comfortable of relying on an incapable tool, while we choose to rely on a more powerful and fundamental tool, that is faith! ====== The fundamental way for humans to get to a truth of any kind is by putting faith in human witnessing. 99.99% humans don't have the evidence that black holes exist. They trust with faith that the scientists as the direct contacts (eyewitnesses) have the evidence. That's how 99.99% humans get to a scientific truth by faith. 99.99% humans don't have the evidence for whatever historical events/figures happened in the long past. They trust with faith in what have been written down by the historians as direct or indirect witnesses. That's how 99.99% humans get to a historical truth by faith. If you randomly grab a history book and read through section by section with the same question "how this section is evidenced", then basically you can ignore the book as a whole. You can ignore human history as a whole this way. 99.99% humans don't have the evidence of events happening around the world. They trust with faith in what have been broadcast by the media with reporters/journalists as direct or indirect witnesses. That's how 99.99% humans get to a truth of recent occurrence in this world by faith. We don't have serious witnessing/witnesses for the deeds of a flying unicorn. However we do have serious witnesses for the existence of God. They are as serious as having martyred their own lives for the witnessing of the truth of Jesus Christ. We have faith in their witnessing. That's what Christianity is!

Apples and oranges. The fundamental way for humans to get to a truth of any kind is by putting faith in human witnessing. 99.99% humans don't have the evidence that black holes exist. They trust with faith that the scientists as the direct contacts (eyewitnesses) have the evidence. That's how 99.99% humans get to a scientific truth by faith. 99.99% humans don't have the evidence for whatever historical events/figures happened in the long past. They trust with faith in what have been written down by the historians as direct or indirect witnesses. That's how 99.99% humans get to a historical truth by faith. If you randomly grab a history book and read through section by section with the same question "how this section is evidenced", then basically you can ignore the book as a whole. You can ignore human history as a whole this way. 99.99% humans don't have the evidence of events happening around the world. They trust with faith in what have been broadcast by the media with reporters/journalists as direct or indirect witnesses. That's how 99.99% humans get to a truth of recent occurrence in this world by faith. We don't have serious witnessing/witnesses for the deeds of a flying unicorn. However we do have serious witnesses for the existence of God. They are as serious as having martyred their own lives for the witnessing of the truth of Jesus Christ. We have faith in their witnessing. That's what Christianity is!

How do you know that it's myth, other than it's a definition by your own faith? You have a full record of the whole of Jonah's life for you to be sure that it's not his true experience. Or simply because it's not a common experience that you conclude with faith that it's not possible? Science is never as close minded as "because it's not a common human experience such that it's not possible". It is in the very contrary that science is very often exploring in the realm where human experience itself has no bearing on.

500 years ago, our scientific knowledge was virtually zero. Now how much percentage of total knowledge have humans acquired in and out of this universe, 100%? For the sake of argument, I assume that we humans have already acquired 90% of the total knowledge in and out of this universe. Then what will you call the 10% knowledge which we may be clueless about, unscientific? That said, other than science do you have some knowledge about what metaphors are?

The Bible is perfect in God's terms, not human terms. The Bible as a true account of human witnessing terms of how it is written, how it is conserved and how it is conveyed. It's a true account of human witnessing under the inspiration of God even when standing the court of Heaven. It is a true account of human witnessing for God to convey His intact message of salvation. Theologically we read the same Bible today as humans read it 2000 years ago. Contextually consistency is actually a defect as it's not how humans can keep their 2000 year old documents. You won't be able to find a single human document which can be kept contextually consistent today and 2000 years ago. As a matter of fact, you won't be able to find any human document with its original writings exist for you to do the reconciliation. In a sense Bible is the only human document which is reconcilable for us to tell that the Bible we read today is the same Bible humans read some 2000 years ago, theologically speaking. That's how perfect the Bible is. The Bible serves precisely the purpose of allowing His Elect to read to be saved, and those out of His Elect to read to be condemned. There's not a single one of His Elect will fall short His Grace this way. And there's not a single one out of His Elect can benefit from His Grace this way. That's how perfect the Bible is! Canonization is a process of how God authenticates the books through His authorized entity on earth. As a result, the Jews as the first authority only made the OT Canon authenticated, but not the NT Canon. The Catholics as the consecutive authority can only made the NT Canon authenticated, but not the OT Canon. Only the Protestants now can have both an authenticated OT and NT. This is the end result.

I believe this is about right. I also believe back then God wanted the Jews to be the first wave of spreading the gospel. However Jews from outside Palestine area don't speak Hebrew or Aramaic, they shared the same religion though. Tongues thus is more like a witnessing delivering the message that "this is to prove that the gospel is the authenticated truth from God". The converts are thus also the chosen witnesses of God as they witnessed how the miracle performed by God. If tongues as a gift still exist in other occasions, an "interpreter" must exist to show that what is spoken is truly a tongue serving the purpose of letting the the unbelieved to believe. If no one there acting as an interpreter, it is thus at best a spiritual prayer to God which no one understands, not even the speaker himself. If so then the speech won't edify the church thus should be kept between the speaker and God, as instructed by Paul. I had the experience of hearing different entities all speaking in my native tongue. I believe that the nature of "speaking in tongue" is how humans (human souls to be more precise) communicate with each other without a body (that's the situation in Hades at least). To simply put, I believe that the Pentecost event is how God performed a miracle to establish a speech directly from souls to souls by bypassing the physical bodies.

The formal canonization of the OT is said to be from King Hezekiah. That's why 17 out of the 22 books of the Jewish Bible are said to be with a Hezekiah mark or stamp. During the Babylon exile it is expected that the different versions of the Scriptures may flow around due to the lack of a central authority to do the publishing. Ezra then, under God's permission, re-united the Scripture after the exile. Then it is strictly guarded by the Jewish authority, this authority in Jesus' time is the Sanhedrin (i.e., the temple court). Only scribes authorized by the Sanhedrin can 'publish' the authenticated copies of the Scripture. The last 2 to 3 books were written in Aramaic instead of Hebrew as Aramaic became a more common spoken language. The canonization itself finished after the death of Jesus Christ. The Septuagint is not a maintained copy of the Scripture. Any Greek or Hellenistic publishers can base on any copy of the translations to produce any books at will without much control. That's why there could be a fundamental difference, even conceptually, between the Septuagint and the Jewish Bible. An example could be St. Stephen (a Hellenist) quoted the number of Patriarchs is different from the Jewish custom. On the other hand when a Jewish writer, such as Paul, tried to quote an OT verse but in Greek the best source is still the Septuagint as long as he verified that the verse to be quoted is consistent with the Jewish Bible. Or else he may have to translate the verse by himself, but with the Hellenistic Jews may consider that it's wrongly or improperly quoted. The Sanhedrin is composed of mainly the Sadducees and Pharisees and some others. However since the Sadducees only authenticate the 5 books of the Law, the Pharisees become the ones supervising and authenticating the OT Canon as a whole. That's why the Pharisees but not the Sadducees have the most influence over the Jews in majority. The Dead Sea Scrolls are actually a library of the Essenes instead of the Pharisees. So it can't be told with certainty that whether they use their own version of the OT scrolls or those from the scribes of the Sanhedrin. Whether it is 22 or 24 books may b a matter of scroll arrangements. The Pharisees may keep the 22 book version of the bible while the rabbis may have re-arranged them into 24 books as the teaching Bible. The contents may remain the same. After the AD 70 siege, all Jewish authorities were gone. No one keeps an authenticated copy of the Scripture. However, the good of a religion (created by God) is that every single Jew keeps at least one copy of the Scripture with most of them from the authenticated scribes. It is after AD 200 or later that a group of rabbis tried to revive Judaism. Though by then the Catholics are supposed to be the authenticated authority, it's not difficult for the rabbis to acquire an accurate copy of the Scripture. It's 24 books may be because it's based off a rabbinical source. Later, it may have become the Masoretic Text and the Jewish Bible we read today. By the imperfect hands of humans, we don't seem to have anything today which can be confirmed to be fully original. However not only the Bible we read today conveys the same messages humans 2000 years ago had read, but also that it is the way how God makes things perfect through the hands of the imperfect men. Besides the Bible, there's no any other human books allow us to trace its original contents as we can with the Bible. The Bible could be the only book which allow us to tell that theologically the same Word we read today is the same Word humans read 2000 years ago. The same message of salvation we convey today is the same message delivered to humans some 2000 years ago.

Where did the Catholics get the OT Canon then? The OT Canon is ultimately from the Jews who God no longer authenticate their authority or otherwise we should convert to Judaism. Similarly God can re-authenticate the Protestants when the Catholics may have failed its mission at some point. The end result is, The Jews can only have a correct OT Canon they were authorized to craft The Catholics can only have a correct NT Canon they were authorized to craft Only the Protestants can have both a correct OT and NT Canon

Modern humans are brainwashed by education to think that everything should be evidenced for them to believe. This is not how this reality works. In this reality, humans have to rely on faith to reach a truth. First, there are different categories of truths and not all of them can be evidenced. History, especial the part older than 2000 years, can hardly be evidenced. The nature of history as a category of truths is that it is a result of human witnessing which can hardly be evidenced. An event or a figure was famous enough in the past for humans to choose to record them down, that's basically what history is. All today's humans even lost almost all the first hand documents written in ancient scrolls for any piece of history older than 2000 years. We have to put our faith in believing the existing second handed writings to get a clue on what could possibly happened. Human history as a whole demand faith to believe. Do black holes exist? Is the earth revolving around the sun? 99% humans don't even bother to examine the evidence. Or will you be able to show me your evidence of the existence of black holes ? In the end, we choose to swallow with faith about what have been said by a small group of humans acting as direct witnesses (i.e., those we call scientists) in order to get to such a truth. So even in the case of science, 99% human actually don't have the direct evidence before they get the truth that black holes exist (or do they?). That's the typical way of how a truth is conveyed among humans in our reality!

They are not significant differences, especially from a theological point of view. KJV and NIV are two streams of Bible translation from two independent sources. The consistency of these two independent sources actually shows that the Bible is consistently conveying the same messages today and 2000 years ago, in comparison to other human history books written 2000 years ago. Most human history books don't have the original manuscripts to reference, they don't have two independent sources for comparison either to ensure their consistency. Ever since the invention of paper, it is not unexpected we lost all the original manuscripts. Once transplanted to its paper form, it will become the legitimate copy and people no longer keeping the cumbersome manuscripts in other formats. Moreover, human languages advance with time, say, today's English is not the same as the English 2000 years ago. Whenever a legitimate copy in paper form getting old and decaying, people need to re-transplant it using new papers. If the wording used in the old copy becomes linguistically not understandable to the ones who do the transplant, they will adjust such that at least a sentence will be understandable to average humans at that time. This can even be by God's will, as even God doesn't want His Bible written in ancient Greek with its contents not understandable by modern humans. That is to say, each updating of a legitimate copy, it is possible that certain wordings may be updated using up-to-date linguistic usage for the sake that they can be understood by average humans at that time. That's why the KJV may use different wordings from those from NIV, however both are theologically the same. That said, KJV is a translation preserved by a church in Greece, while NIV is from 2 artifacts of manuscripts dated back in the 4th century. KJV may be a result of translation subject to linguistic moderation mentioned above, while NIV is a translation from copies of copies found in Egypt. They both can be legitimate. They are theologically the same anyway. Humans are incapable of keeping things "original" however God makes the Bible perfect disregarding the imperfection of humans. This is a typical example.

Romans 2:16 says that the gentiles are not judged by the same set of law given to the Jews. Although the gentiles don't have the law (Mosaic Law), they will still be judged by law but another set of Law which are written in their hearts. To be more precise, God needs only one set of Law to be used on the Judgment Day which is reserved for the unsaved. The saved will be saved though God's Grace displayed in the various covenants. Basically, the gentiles will be saved by God's Grace through Christ if they are deemed qualified by their efforts in observing the Law written in their hearts. The Jews will be saved by God's Grace through Jesus Christ if they are deemed qualified by their efforts in observing the Law given by Moses. The rest will be deemed unqualified by the covenants granted and thus will be judged by God's universal set of Law which Adam broke in Eden. The above applies to all mankind along the history of humanity. The best of the best, of course is to accept the New Covenant brought us by Jesus Himself.