Philo,

Thank you for your considered reply.

You said: “For Christians we make no great deal about specific names, but we emphasise character and behaviour to identify God. Morality only applies to man and his relationship to character. It is our claim that the historical Jesus fully revealed the grace and forgiveness of God by his moral character and behaviour. For us he expressed God incarnate in character and behaviour - not because he was immaculately conceived as a human god that some uphold. God is revealed today in character and the life of those reborn of His spirit.”

Reply: No doubt some broad minded and honest Christians will accept the evolving nature of the Christian deity in terms how humans saw their God via Sumer-Egypt-Hebrews-Roman occupied Israel-Catholicism-The Reformation-Today route. Herein, as I have commented before, the Gods of Abraham, Moses, Paul and, Jesus as a God or representative of God, show different characteristics. Nonetheless, I would suggest many Christians would find it hard to come to grips with this situation: Aslan, perhaps among them. Herein, to have scholars mislead their congregations on matters well known to history and anthropology would seem to serve little purpose and contrary to the goal of appearing credible in our era of open knowledge access.

It would seem from your post that you feel that what Jesus represents is more important than his claim to human deity on Earth. Again, I would suggest that this concept is too advanced for your basic Christian believer. I think many in Italy and Latin America would have a more straightforward and more superstitious approach. Relatedly, I have toured rural Russia and visited Christian Churches, where people line-up to kiss icons. I think these people would hold the heretical the real historical accounts of OT religion(s).

Aslan,

In earlier posts you seemed reluctant to agree to the idea of an evolving deity (spirit, polytheism. henotheism, monotheism,) even though I cited well-known historians. Herein, I now provide this link for your consideration.

http://www.theoquest.com/ubcenter/ubook/96-1.cfm

Should you disagree, maybe, this Forum would benefit from your rationale and proofs on these matters.

Kenny & Neohuman,
Come on you boys down the back of the class, when you have nothing intelligent to say on the subject you start degrading the man.

Pericles,

More wild (and untrue) assertions. I've answered your objections in postings on June 8,9,10. Oliver "clarified" on June 10 (days afterwards) but had to look word up in dictionary first! His "clarification" (change of mind) is irrelevant anyway. He clearly used word as reference to statement of fact yet to be verified.

As evidence of distortion of history you said: "you only need to review your own posts on the meaning you ascribed to the word "belief". Even if this was true, its only evidence of distortion of words/meaning, not history. So who's really being deceitful here?

You said: "In a Forum such as this, the idea is that people offer opinions. If you believe that there are in fact no such things as opinions, and that all issues can be resolved by reference to divine absolutes, why on earth do you post here?"

This proves you are either totally incapable of rational discussion or just plain dishonest. Where in all my posts did I say or imply there are no such things as opinions or that all issues can be resolved by divine absolutes?

Kenny / Neohuman,

Thanks for the ad hominem comments. When I see these I know your intellectual cupboard is bare.

Oliver,

I don't have a problem with exchanging ideas and better understanding each other. For the most part, unlike Pericles and Neohuman, you have been polite and amiable, so I thankyou for that.

You offered a link about deity evolving. I had a look but its just more assertions. Again, assertions are not arguments, are not proofs and are not facts. They are baseless truth claims. And just because certain historians make those claims does not change anything. What is the basis for those claims? What substantiation is there?

Oliver, I do not need to prove any of this wrong. You make the claim of an evolving deity so the burden of proof lies with YOU to show that its likely true!

But Sirrr... he stared it, he won't play by the rules and doesn't even know when he is wrong.

BTW Philo you might as well join his class your respones on slavery put you in the same class as his. Sorry you'll have to repeat the year with Aslan.

Aslan i looked into ad hominem and asked a philosphy lecturer who runs a fallacy blog that pointing out that you are a CS fundie is relevant to an argument & therefore admissible.

BTW you like the Taliban have a right to your views and i respect that right, but rationaly discourse with you or them would be a waste of time. You are incapable of changing your mindset and it is exactly that unquestioning mindset that atrocties are committed.

Oliver,

You ask: "is it not better for say a person, who previously did not believe that Jesus did not at all to tentatively accept that person into history."

What caused the change in mind? Seems to me it is ignorance of the historical data which forms the basis of acceptance/rejection. So if ignorance was the basis of initial rejection, then it appears that ignorance is also the basis for tentative acceptance.

Re geophysical univserse being billions of years old:

The EVIDENCE does not suggest this is the case at all. A mathematical model which has numerous inconsistent parameters, which conflicts with actual observations and whose predictions have been spectacular failures, says the universe is billions of years old.

You assume that evolution is inherently progress. Hitler and Marx thought this way as well.

Re "Christians" who don't believe the World was created in 4004 BCE

Many of them are sincere evangelical Christians who think similarly to me. As people who are usually not trained in science or history and philosophy of science, they are easily intimidated by truth claims of scientists. Many of them know perfectly well what Genesis teaches but try to generalise it so that it does not conflict with scientific consensus.

Then there are liberals who don't believe the Bible much at all - and often not even in God. I couldn't care less what they think.

You ask: "What is wrong and/or frightening about progress?"

Nothing. But is what is called "progress" really progress?

You ask: "Why would you prefer the Dark Ages over the Twenty-First Century?"

I don't. Why do you think I do? Nevertheless, the dark ages were anything but dark. See Rodney Stark's very well argued and DOCUMENTED books "For the Glory of God" and "The Rise of Christianity".

No, science is not automatically wrong, but neither is it 'automatically' right. Many claims are merely philosophical speculations by fallible human beings, and often turn out to be hopelessly wrong. See Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

Not sure what you mean by prove the "religiosity" of the Bible...

You just don't give up, do you Aslan?

>>Oliver "clarified" on June 10 (days afterwards) but had to look word up in dictionary first! His "clarification" (change of mind) is irrelevant anyway. He clearly used word as reference to statement of fact yet to be verified.<<

At least Oliver took the trouble to check in the dictionary that he was using the word correctly. You simply - and unilaterally - took it to mean exactly what you wanted it to mean, nothing more, nothing less. Just like Humpty Dumpty. The difference is that it was Oliver who wrote it, and therefore I prefer Oliver's decision on what it was he meant. It is quite insulting to tell him that he "changed his mind". Tantamount to calling him a liar, in fact.

The fact remains that you selected the "wrong" choice of definition to support your weak-at-the-knees syllogism, and then instead of admitting that you had done so, insist that the rest of the world is wrong. Poor form.

You then ask:

"Where in all my posts did I say or imply there are no such things as opinions"

and go on to say to Oliver:

"You offered a link about deity evolving. I had a look but its just more assertions. Again, assertions are not arguments, are not proofs and are not facts. They are baseless truth claims."

This is of course just another assertion, as in "I assert that assertions are not arguments... etc.", and therefore simply feeds upon itself and is meaningless. If you are able to present the same assertion in the form "In my opinion, the sources you cite are not relevant" and go on to support it with an intelligent rebuttal, I will retract my suggestion that you don't accept opinions