Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
"don't read too much into the text"? ..or.."don't read nonsense into the text"?
"alternative theory"?..alternative to what?..to the truth?..what does that make it?..a lie..yes, I think so..what does that make you?..a false prophet?...well..I'll let you answer that.
Oh, brother, brother, brother...God have mercy on you!
hope we see you when you get back from your journey up the garden path, bro.
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An alternative theory does not necessarily mean alternative to the truth. If we are discussing to arrive at truth, then you have to start with the assumption that you are not already determined to know what it is and are therefore reasonably willing to entertain alternatives and seek to flesh-out what is actually true.
Now I will assert that some of the alternative theories surfacing in that hidden and locked forum are fairly clearly not worth spending a lot of time on. One thing is certain. If you start with the assumption that the Bible is the word of God (even if you can't stomach some of the assertions concerning "inerrancy") then some can be fairly quickly set aside as not true. That does not mean that of all the items on the table, one of them is true. The truth may still not be on the table.
And while I am a rather conservative Christian with no major changes in my thinking about things in the past number of years, I believe that there are things that we accept as simply right that may not necessarily be so. Therefore entertaining an alternative theory is a way to either establish that what you already thought is more likely correct, or that something else may actually be correct.
And simply quoting a verse is not the answer. The verse must be considered in its context and then compared to the question at hand to determine whether it is really talking about the same thing. We are too easily swayed by a verse that simply has a key word in it when the topic of that verse is actually irrelevant to the question at hand.