Solomon,
I did not say that the bible was “the only foundation for truth, values” science produces truth, what I would say is that it is the best source of knowledge about “being-in-the-world” that we have, not because of any mystical reason but because of the 2000years of human experience that it represents. “Inerrant” is an abused word and I used it in a very narrow sense.

Sure there are many whose faith has been changed by new interpretations, but that is quite a different thing than new material produced by linguistic or archeological data. Theology is a work in progress but its datum is scripture just as the datum of natural sciences is nature.

Sorry about the confusion about God and Israel. My point is that societies that have religious notions that are inaccurate descriptions of being-in-the world, that are mired in superstition, that attempt to escape from the world, that are burdened by arbitrary law (fill the names of the religions in for your self) will not be successful, many will fail and some will limp along. Israel is the only society that I know that has had a continuous identity for over 2500 years during which time it held fast to a religious conception of the world. This says something about those conceptions and something of the character of the God they worship. History is full of dead gods, but YHWH is still around and has become Father Son and Holy Spirit and, whether you like it or not is the basis of Western civilization.

Solomon
I would go with your mother!

Bosk.
You seem to think that there is a conspiracy under every bush. This really is Dan Brown stuff. If you read the history of the composition of the OT and NT canon you will not come up with a bunch of blokes rigging them to suit their purposes in a back room. You will find two hundred years of discussion and decision that ended up with the churches, even when they were rent in schism, holding to approximately the same canon and thus giving hope for ecumenism. These were not arbitrary decisions.

Theology is faith seeking understanding and you will not come to grips with the Christian tradition unless you walk a little along the way. While faith is not gullibility, cynicism is a dead end

I've been reading all the posts on this topic and wish to comment on Luigi's statement that "i think it's safe to conclude that Jesus' claim to godly status is profoundly unconvincing."

The authors of the New Testament claimed that Jesus of Nazareth was a normal man in every respect but one - his extraordinary qualities of character. Christian church doctrines regarding Divinity, Trinity, Virginity, etc were introduced by later church fathers for two reasons: (a) to appeal to the pagan citizens of the Roman Empire whose mythology abounded with divinely-impregnated virgins and (b) to conceal what two new testament authors state quite plainly - that Jesus of Nazareth was born out of wedlock. Let's not attribute to Jesus any claims to divinity - the man himself would have regarded such absurdities as profoundly shocking.

vynnie, thank you for some down to earth common sense. Jesus was a man - end of story. To ascribe virginal birth, miracles (walking on water/loaves&fishes etc) is clearly biblical 'spin' to rope in the masses - gullibility indeed.

To maintain a degree of scepticism towards any outrageous claim such as Creationism is to maintain a sense of the real world - something we need to do to remain responsible for and aware of our actions. Else claiming 'it is god's will' and taking a superior moral stand to others on this basis is essentially a cop-out and the last refuge of the scoundrel (apologies to Samuel Johnson).

No, no, no, no. I am the first to concede that the bible contains mythological material such as the virgin birth, the miracles and the resurrection. But they are not mythological in the way that the Tiamat creations stories of old Babylon were or the dreaming of Australian Aboriginals because they do not include spiritual identities that have a life of their own. That is, they are rather legend than myth because they are constructed from ordinary reality. Our problem, living this side of modernity, is that we dismiss much biblical legend because it is physically impossible and rightly so, however when we do this we miss the author’s original intent and are impoverished by that loss. This is true for the doctrine of the two natures of Christ as it is for the virgin birth etc. The question is: how do the texts understand the divine. This cannot be read from the Greek notion of divine beings like Zeus etc because in Jesus (and in Israel) the divine is radically different from that understood by the nations. Being divine in the case of Jesus means being truly human, the tables have been turned. Religion and divinity has been redefined. By simply going on about the impossibility of the miraculous or of divinity misses the point.

The point I made has been missed! What I am saying is that the new testament does NOT contain these myths or legends, call them what you will! In all cases, the new testament authors regarded Jesus of Nazareth as a normal man, born in humble, disadvantaged circumstances and therein lay the point of the entire exercise i.e. that an ordinary person can rise to 'divine' heights through strength of character. Man had to become 'godly' not god become 'manly'.

They did NOT say he was born of a virgin, nor that he was the literal son of god or anything else of that ilk. Such doctrines are worse than pointless because of their implication that unless one is endowed with VERY special qualities, one cannot hope to emulate the standard set for us in the person of Jesus. Doctrinal Christendom arose through ignorance of Jewish modes of thought and expression.