(side note: cheers for being a good sport)
And God made people, are you questioning his divine wisdom?
I often question divine wisdom - look at the state of our world?
My point is that in some areas of your life you are happy to rely on the weight of evidence, why do you draw the distinction where you do?
I think we all do constantly - there are things that will forever be unexplainable
Edit: I'll expand a little. It's God of the Gaps. I assume you accept, for example, the heliocentric model of the solar system. Or modern medicine. Or the existence of dinosaurs. Because the weight of evidence has convinced you of such. If you accept that human knowledge is constantly expanding, then you must accept that at some point in the future we will disprove other biblical theories
I'm not sure what you mean by biblical theories?? Pretty much all those evidential proofs were from people of faith. Clearly the church at the time was so interested in maintaining its position of power (ironic when you look at the humility revered in Christianity) at the time it refused to accept things (we all know how Galileo was treated)
Religion has to keep changing with accepted evidence and social change. Trevel got very angry when I accused him of being homophobic, but the scripture is pretty clear that God don't like gays, however that doesn't fit with 21st century morals so it's discarded. Once you discard that, you're just choosing which bits you want to believe and that isn't "faith" it's choice and making a distinction between things you find believable and things you don't.
I believe you have to learn to understand the bible as a compendium of books rather than an encyclopaedia full of facts. I'm not alive in my opinions within the Christian faith. The books are written by people inspired by god. I believe that God has always been the same (God loves his creation) but our understanding evolves over time in the light of this eternal truth.
I also accept that we will only ever have a very limited understanding of everything and only by listening and engaging in discussion with others to we increase our understanding.
So the different writing styles written over 3000 years to different sets of people in different situations often seems to be contradictory and requires hermeneutics and contextualisation. You see that as cherry picking as does martcov and I respect that I choose a life making sense of big questions within the narrative of a Christian God that loves us all and you choose a life within a post enlightenment science answers all of life's questions narrative.
Edit 2: just some concrete examples I'd ask if you agree with:
Timothy 2:12: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent."
This doesn't fit in the narrative of god loving all people. Of course women should be able to teach
1 Samuel 15:3: "This is what the Lord Almighty says ... 'Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.' "
The Old Testament was written in a different world to point to the coming messiah and also people were, are and seemingly always will be fuckwits to blame some deity for behaving in such a way is as bizarre then as it is now
Exodus 22:18: "Do not allow a sorceress to live."
See above
Psalm 137: "Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us / He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
See above
Romans 1:27: "In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error
There are other passages in the New Testament about men with men. My homosexual Christian friends are fabulous examples of good people who live lives honouring God. I can't continue to believe that the writers of these words understood all we understand about same sec arrractuon. I'm happy to accept I'm ignoring or reinterpreting some scripture with this
Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to you husbands as to the Lord"
The other part of this is husbands submit to your wives as Jesus gave his life for the church-wow!
Submit to one another is the other part
Peter 2:18: "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel."
Crazy stuff eh? I think we get to deal with crazy situations and how do we make sense of faith in those contexts? You have to do more than just read the words to make sense. You don't have to you just need to if you want to take out the wisdom.
Who was it written to?
Why?
What was the context?
Is there anything we can understand for our lives from the lasagne?
How does it fit with the overall narrative that god so loves the world?
I'd assume you wouldn't agree with the homophobia, witchcraft, misogyny, promotion of slavery, child killing, etc. But why can you discount those passages, what gives you the right?
