Quoted:
God inspired the words Moses wrote, He was there, and you weren't.

Quoted:

I don't believe it says God gave him all of the old testament only really the commandments and jewish law. Moses speaks to God on several occasions through exodus.

Quoted:


I am not questioning that God spoke to Moses.

Did Moses ever see God's face?

Quoted:




Did God only inspire the words, or did he give the words to Moses verbatim?

Quoted:

as far as the science goes, nobody knows.

first of all time is not stationary. what passes for an hour on earth is nowhere near an hour on jupiter. indeed the example often given is that standing on an event horizon, you would watch the entirety of earth from its formation to its cold thermodynamic conclusion in a few seconds. if people on earth could see you, you would be frozen in. . . time. this really makes it confusing as hell - because god could have easily made everything in a few minutes. it would have passed as billions or trillions of years here in this universe. so would you write 'from gods reference frame it was a few minutes' or would you write 'from a 3rd party observer' or what you write 'in the current universe billions of years'? would a deity speak from its own reference frame to establish its unique position or would it speak in the terms of its audience?

let's assume all time is perfectly synchronized. that is, let's assume gravity doesn't affect time like the above examples and just assume we all have the same time. we still don't know what time it is for several reasons. first - isotope dating is not a peer reviewed methodology. that is, you can't take uranium's halflife and divide until it makes sense. this is because all isotopes are grounded on assumptions that are provably untrue. this is what most old earth evidence is based on. and of course the most damning of all: james webb telescope. apparently, all planets used to have a date because we thought we understood time and planet formation. we at least had 'minimum requirements' for planet formation. but apparently, the JWT found a bunch of planets that can't exist in our current timeline. this is why we know we don't know - all of our theories on time were proven inconsistent. it's very much like someone proving 1+1 = 3. our entire foundation of adding and multiplying needs complete renovation.

this also goes into some really interesting interpretations of god creating stuff. for example, god created plants. and THEN he created shores and the moon. and science now corroborates that - the official curriculum of any university - usa or europe or asia now teaches that plants on earth were created first before the earth. necessarily, evolution took much longer than the age of the earth. so the DNA and the environment for evolution must have preceeded earth by an extreme margin. which means we are all aliens - just like the bible says. the bible doesn't say earth plants were on earth. just that earth plants were created long before earth. and that weirdly checks out.

the people who claim there is a 'young earth' or an 'old earth' are people who failed out of college.

Quoted:
If you needed heart surgery now vs 150 years ago I don't think you would feel the same way. How about an x-ray or MRI? Need some blood, hope they give the right blood type.


Also, the advances in the medical field do not attack your faith or religion. SOME scientists may be against a god and religion, but don't throw out the scientific method.

Quoted:


I didn't say any of them were erroneous (as they aren't scientific texts, Genesis is under no obligation to be scientifically accurate......although, all but a directly-no-exceptions Literalist reading of Genesis still allows it to line up neatly with our understanding of the Universe, the prehistory of Mankind (hell, there's more evidence for a Deluge-like event now, and a seperate-but-Biblically-congruent population bottleneck in homo sapiens, than there was 50 years ago).  In terms of guidance towards Salvation (which is the purpose of the Scriptures, with literally every other bit of info in there just context for that Instruction), the accepted books of the Bible appear perfectly error-free (especially after exegetical study, where apparent contradictions resolve themselves), in that the moral lessons of Genesis are perfectly aligned (in a historical, gradual fashion) with all the following Books.

The fact that Genesis doesn't come out and inform us of the laws of Quantum Mechanics, by which our constituent atoms are structured and brought into existence and then transformed.....isn't relevant to the instructional purpose of the Book of Genesis (God created the Universe, made Earth, made Man, gave him preeminent status in Creation, Man Fell, God begins the moral instruction of Humanity, Wickedness, Deluge, Patriarchs, etc).



We know that we are missing, from the NT, at least two Epistles (Paul directly refers to "earlier" letters to the Corinthians and Ephesians, in 1st Corinthians and Ephesians).  The Book of Enoch (not lost, but only canonized by the Ethiopians....and nobody in the Orthodox or Catholic churches wants to revisit which books are canonical) is mentioned by name in Jude, 2 Peter, and John.  The Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres is mentioned in 2 Timothy.

The OT refers to things like the Book of Jasher (in Joshua, Samuel, and Timothy in the NT), by name.  Missing. Numbers refers to The Book of the Wars of the Lord, by name. Missing.  At least (IIRC) a dozen other missing books are mentioned by name (mostly in Chronicles).


These weren't rejected non-canonical books (because, hey, if the Prophets and Apostles are mentioning them.....that's a pretty strong recommendation), tossed out by the Church Fathers.  They were books that, by the time we first sat down to assemble the Scriptures ('member, the Early Church likely didn't have 100% of the Canon at any one time in any one place, so different groups of Christians would have had different sets of Scriptures, some Books of which were later deemed apocryphal, for the first 300+ years of the Church), nobody had access to anymore.  They were lost.  So seemingly valid/canonical Books of Scripture are lost to us.....so Infallibility (which is a supernatural quality, which would perforce include a divine protection against being "lost") of Scripture is kind of out, as a concept.

Quoted:
After reading this, all I'll ask is do you believe God is omnipotent? Do you believe God would have and could have #1 preserved His word, and #2 transmitted His word intact to His people?

Quoted:
Before creation there was nothing, an empty dark space. However, in this emptiness, there existed a spirit of their creator, Kishelamàkânk.

Quoted:
The canon was influx when the Septuagint was being translated. Jesus, nor the Apostles ever quoted or referred to those sections. Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms are referenced and quoted from. Don't think it's canonical except in the RCC, maybe the EO. I'm neither.

Quoted:

In order to be an atheist who doesn't believe in some guy in the sky and only believes in science, you MUST believe this creation story.

Quoted:


It's canonical in essentially every pre-reformation church. Orthodox bibles contain additional books not found in Catholic bibles. Protestant scholars claims there are no references to the deuterocanonical books in the New Testament; Catholic scholars claim otherwise.

Quoted:


Absolutely.  God is Omnipotent, and could easily make His Word totally accessible at all times to every Human, if He wished to do so (He obviously does not wish to do so, since he relies upon Men to write Scripture, assemble Scripture, translate it, print it, distribute it, etc). Hence, if the Scripture was protected/preserved by an Infallible character.....we wouldn't have chunks missing (and wouldn't have required a Committee, or several, to figure out which Books were legit and which were not....and Translations from the original would be....problematic).

But Scripture is not Infallible (QED), because Man is in the chain of production.





BTW, it's a well-used rhetorical tactic to respond to a long explanation with "After hearing that, all I'll ask is.....[simplistic question that either moves the goalposts or is a non-sequitur/red herring]".  You responded to my post, which I did you the courtesy of putting some thought into, with a lawyerly leading question, not a rebuttal.
How do you account for Infallibility, if we've lost actual chunks of Scripture that other parts of Scripture reference?  
How do you account for Infallibility if mortal Men are the ones who decided which Books of Scripture you should read (and you, implicitly, accept their Authority to do so)?  
How do you account for Infallibility if we've lost knowledge of what specific (sometimes important) words or terms in the Scriptures actually mean or refer to (gopher wood, which type of cubit, etc)?

Quoted: Even that does not make it true. The theory has evolved over time as more evidence becomes available and will continue to do so until it is either confirmed or is thrown out in favor of something else.

Quoted:


Aha! That is a reasonable position (although the Big Bang has held sway for decades with little to no progress on major changes years), simply believing in nothing.  Though I would think that level of incuriousness would be unfulfilling.

But then, you have to figure out where your moral basis for living comes from, which is the next deep rabbit's hole to plunge into.

As I am sure that you are aware, but for those here that don't, there is a small minority of atheist physicists who believe in super-determinism.  They believe that every single thought and action is a physical result of the initial conditions of the Big Bang.  There is no free will, no one makes any decisions, there is no soul, it is simply a mirage, everything is predetermined.  These are not stupid people, and they really believe that and they go about their day picking out groceries believing that they didn't choose how the Corn Pops ended up in the basket instead of the Wheaties.

Quoted:

Aha! That is a reasonable position (although the Big Bang has held sway for decades with little to no progress on major changes years), simply believing in nothing.  Though I would think that level of incuriousness would be unfulfilling.

But then, you have to figure out where your moral basis for living comes from, which is the next deep rabbit's hole to plunge into.

As I am sure that you are aware, but for those here that don't, there is a small minority of atheist physicists who believe in super-determinism.  They believe that every single thought and action is a physical result of the initial conditions of the Big Bang.  There is no free will, no one makes any decisions, there is no soul, it is simply a mirage, everything is predetermined.  These are not stupid people, and they really believe that and they go about their day picking out groceries believing that they didn't choose how the Corn Pops ended up in the basket instead of the Wheaties.

Quoted:


Fun creation story.  Here's another one:

Before the Big Bang, there was a primordial foam (which no one understands and we can never know if this is true).  Infinite numbers of universes began and collapsed because they just weren't quite right or they had different laws of physics that prevented them from starting.  OTOH, infinite numbers of universes did start, ours is just one of them (and we can never detect any of these other universes, they are in different dimensions that we will never perceive).  When the Big Bang happened, matter and anti-matter were created in almost exactly the same quantity, then cancelled each out, and what we see today is the result of an infinitesimal difference between the two types of matter.

In the first tiny fractions of a second after the bang, the universe expanded much quicker than it did before and then a few more tiny fractions of a second later went back to the original rate.  No one knows why and if the start or stop were different by trillionths of a second, the universe would have collapsed.

This is just the start, there are even weirder things that happen later.  It sounds nuts and we don't know everything, but the difference is that this explanation is consistent with every known physical law.

In order to be an atheist who doesn't believe in some guy in the sky and only believes in science, you MUST believe this creation story.

Even the atheist physicists admit that there is a huge "infinities" problem, that their theories result in far to many infinities to make sense.  But again, physics demands this explanation.

Quoted:


Aha! That is a reasonable position (although the Big Bang has held sway for decades with little to no progress on major changes years), simply believing in nothing.  Though I would think that level of incuriousness would be unfulfilling.

But then, you have to figure out where your moral basis for living comes from, which is the next deep rabbit's hole to plunge into.

As I am sure that you are aware, but for those here that don't, there is a small minority of atheist physicists who believe in super-determinism.  They believe that every single thought and action is a physical result of the initial conditions of the Big Bang.  There is no free will, no one makes any decisions, there is no soul, it is simply a mirage, everything is predetermined.  These are not stupid people, and they really believe that and they go about their day picking out groceries believing that they didn't choose how the Corn Pops ended up in the basket instead of the Wheaties.

Quoted:
It is true that Big Bang has been the most widely accepted theory for decades. That doesn't mean it isn't constantly being questioned. Take inflation for example. It has been questioned since it was introduced, and there is a growing group of doubters. Some of these doubters point to the CMB map, the very thing touted as conclusive evidence for inflation, as having other possible explanations. Explanations that may be easier to test for and verify than inflation. Not to mention there are two schools of thought on the timing of the Big Bang. Traditionalists say there was a Big Bang followed by inflation. The dissenting school of thought is there was something, then inflation, then the Big Bang.

As far nothing goes that sounds like a misunderstanding of what Big Bang theory is. Big Bang theory makes no claims about the origins of the universe. It is a model that attempts to explain the evolution of the universe. Not what caused the it to exist. According to to the theory everything in the universe existed in a small super hot point. Then there was a Big Bang.

While people like Krauss may say things like it may not make sense to ask what came before the Big Bang. That doesn't mean there was nothing before. HE is just saying that a term like before may not be applicable if time as we understand it began at the Big Bang. The simple fact is we don't know.

It doesn't seem all that hard to me. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Seems simple enough. I don't want to be lied to, cheated on, stolen from, or physically harmed so I try not to do those things to others. And no, the god of Abraham does not hold exclusive rights to the golden moves

I have no reason to believe my decision to put original Cheerios in my cart instead of chocolate coated sugar bombs has anything to do with anything other than my desire to eat a little healthier.  

Quoted:

The breakfast cereal is a simple analogy. Your experiences and brain structure are such that you think cheerios are healthy and that you need to be more healthy you didn't actually decide to have cheerios regardless of if you contemplated the decision your brain was already in the state that was going to chose Cheerios.

This would extend to moral choices as well... Or so the theory goes.

What's interesting is that there have been studies introducing the concept of predeterminism and the illusion of free will to people and then a separate group where they were given an article supporting free will. Then they were asked to make some sort of moral decision. The former group was more likely to make the less moral decision.

This sort of lends credence to the concept that you may not have free will as it essentially shows how easy it is to pre program people.

At least that's how the theory goes.  Looking at it from the perspective of an omnipotent creator the idea of a predetermined eternity sounds pretty lame.

Quoted:
I understand the analogy. I just see no reason to believe superdeterminism is true. It is a hypothesis proposed to account for unknown variables that affect the apparent randomness in quantum physics. Basically it says we don't know what causes the randomness so maybe it isn't random at all. It may be a possible answer. It just isn't one I find very likely. There are other possible answers. We don't know enough about quantum mechanics to know what many of the possibilities are. Einstein didn't like superdeterminism. Apparently John Bell, the guy that came up the idea didn't either. He considered it a reductio ad absurdum proposition and once described any interpretation of quantum mechanics as like literary fiction.

Meanwhile, I believe I made a choice to respond to your post just as you will make a choice to either read this post or not and respond or not. Therefore, free will.

Quoted:

Did Jesus give his apostles authority? Are you against them?

The term you are searching for is Church Councils. You can start with the Council of Rome and the Council of Trent.
It would do you well to understand how the books of the Bible were transmitted by the faithful over the last couple millennium.
The inerrant Word of God handed down through history is worth your earnest search.
The inerrant Word of God wasn't suddenly 'discovered' by protestants in the 16th century.
You may be surprised what you find.