The Bible is not a science textbook.........

[CSLewis]

In other words you worship an idol- a manmade object

instead of worshipping God you worship a book granted it is a good one but you attribute this specific library with innerrancy and your specific understanding of the texts to be exact - the message is correct but the messenger is fatally flawed and you completely miss the entire point of the scriptures by making it infallible. When Jesus said I am the

vine and you are the branches is he saying that he is a plant? Why don't you go study exegesis Of genesis and see if you can figure out what the point of the creation myths and flood myth was and why it was included - maybe to show the Jews that they were children of God and that this God wanted to have a relationship with them in terms that they understood.

I have read the text of Genesis on many occasions and it remains what it has always been

[Sir Gareth]

So the bible says not to worship false idols, which you claim we make the bible into with our doctrines of innerrancy.

But lets take away innerrancy, how do you know the bible even really forbids idol worship, maybe thats just something that was 'added in' overtime.

you can't tell us to follow one biblical teaching as true and another as false, if you take the bible as only a good book full of moral metaphors than how do you know which we should and should not follow? If you do not hold that the bible is God's true, uncorrupted Word given to man than how do you know that you should follow it at all?

If the bible is not God's word-as I believe with all my heart it is-than we should throw it out because we'd never be able to tell what part is right to follow and what part is wrong to follow, why we wouldn't even know if we should believe on Jesus in the first place, because all the OT prophecies he fullfilled would be garbage.

[~candice~]

In other words you worship an idol- a manmade object

instead of worshipping God you worship a book granted it is a good one but you attribute this specific library with innerrancy and your specific understanding of the texts to be exact - the message is correct but the messenger is fatally flawed and you completely miss the entire point of the scriptures by making it infallible. When Jesus said I am the

vine and you are the branches is he saying that he is a plant? Why don't you go study exegesis Of genesis and see if you can figure out what the point of the creation myths and flood myth was and why it was included - maybe to show the Jews that they were children of God and that this God wanted to have a relationship with them in terms that they understood.

I have read the text of Genesis on many occasions and it remains what it has always been

[CSLewis]

So the bible says not to worship false idols, which you claim we make the bible into with our doctrines of innerrancy.

But lets take away innerrancy, how do you know the bible even really forbids idol worship, maybe thats just something that was 'added in' overtime.

you can't tell us to follow one biblical teaching as true and another as false, if you take the bible as only a good book full of moral metaphors than how do you know which we should and should not follow? If you do not hold that the bible is God's true, uncorrupted Word given to man than how do you know that you should follow it at all?

If the bible is not God's word-as I believe with all my heart it is-than we should throw it out because we'd never be able to tell what part is right to follow and what part is wrong to follow, why we wouldn't even know if we should believe on Jesus in the first place, because all the OT prophecies he fullfilled would be garbage.

That's why God gave us reason and the

Holy Spirit. For us to reason and understand this collection of works

[Sir Gareth]

So if you believe in the Holy Spirit why couldn't the Holy Spirit have been guiding the writers and those who decided on biblical cannon?

Is the Holy Spirit only powerful enough to teach us but not powerful enough to preserve God's word as he intended it?

I must say I do not understand how you can support some doctrines of Christianity but throw others out to fit your own idea of how things should be.

[CSLewis]

"so myths grew about menstruation, myths that included such things as the assumption that a womans hair would not curl during the cycle and the fear that the male organ might actually break off if intercourse took place during menstruation.

The only thing certain about these mysteries was that the woman possessed a power that was a threat and a thing to be feared. Women could lose their blood and not die; they could also produce new life and, in the process stop the menstrual flow. Men envied this power and sought some means whereby to capture it"... Through this misleading mysoginy " circumcision entered the human and religious arena." circumcision became an unnatural rite of passage while the menstrual flow "was used in our patriarchal history to keep her in domestic roles, rather than in vulnerable roles reserved for men"

However the mysoginy so apparent in the Torah is reinterpretted by Christ himself

"in Christ there is neither male nor female"

Gal 3:26-28

[CSLewis]

So if you believe in the Holy Spirit why couldn't the Holy Spirit have been guiding the writers and those who decided on biblical cannon?

Is the Holy Spirit only powerful enough to teach us but not powerful enough to preserve God's word as he intended it?

I must say I do not understand how you can support some doctrines of Christianity but throw others out to fit your own idea of how things should be.

The same way that we all do not believe in exactly the same doctrines to be Calvinist one must throw away the doctrines of Wesley and to be one denomination one must believe things about the Bible soterology and hermenutics that are quite different than the way someone else sees the same.

[Sir Gareth]

But if the bible is not the word of God, then we have no doctrines at all, we have no way to know what doctrines are which. if the Holy Spirit lacks the power to preserve God's word we would not know anything of God or his divine revalations.

[leoxiii]

I am not suggesting throwing out the Bible but it must be understood in the context in which it was wrote - I mean it was written by several authors over a huge time span rewritten over and over again- we have more than just the scriptures to base our faithon we have tradition and we have reason to interpret the "word of God" but saying the bible is infallable puts your faith in people and not in Christ.

For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it -- this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last:

"The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author."

Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write -- He was so present to them --- that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture. Such has always been the persuasion of the Fathers.

"Therefore," says St. Augustine, "since they wrote the things which He showed and uttered to them, it cannot be pretended that He is not the writer; for His members executed what their Head dictated."

And St. Gregory the Great thus pronounces: "Most superfluous it is to inquire who wrote these things-we loyally believe the Holy Ghost to be the Author of the book. He wrote it Who dictated it for writing; He wrote it Who inspired its execution. "

*Edit links*

[CSLewis]

Thank you for your astute reply - the Catholic Church's position on the creation story is not in conflict with biological evolution and the big bang theory of the cosmos. But the points you make are very good ones - I have trouble sometimes blindly following doctrine prescribed by the church especially doctrine after the first few centuries of the early church.

The council of Trent upheld the validity of the deutero canonical books as being inspired by God , which is an entire section of literature not realized as "God's Word" by the protestants.

I would have to question some of the doctrine of the

Church this being one of the problems I have with it - the infallibility of the pope and the scriptures - but both are not as fallible as I am so what do I know?

I guess I do believe in the

scriptures being "infallible" just not literal especially in regards to the creation myth.