Flat Earth and the Bible

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Only you, Ragtime and JohnnyBGoode, obviously, because that would give you the argument you want. Everyone else here would try to give you an opposing point of view to yours from what they would know, but you would dismiss it because it doesn't agree with your entrenched viewpoint. Why then bother to have a discussion at all? Seems as pointless an objective as trying to raise the Titanic.

Last edited by The_Chosen_One on 28 Aug 2007, 9:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, indeed. I have, and I know many others who also have. Actually, my grandfather read it more than 60 times, straight through. He also started his own small Bible college.

That's amazing, I've only read it 1.5 times. Hadron says he's found many contradictions. I hadn't noticed any. Had your grandfather noticed and "contradictions"?

But did he get the meaning as he was meant to? Or did you? Ever notice in church that they say 'and now we will read from such-and-such', meaning that if it were supposed to be from Genesis to Revelation, those that only go to church in fits and starts would never get the passages they were meant to. At least those that go to church and study it in meetings (prayer groups for eg) get what is given then via the Lord's teaching, which comes from the Priest of Minister. Even though I'm pagan, I know enough about what is said by all the Christians I know personally to be able to work out how it all works.

If you're not willing to read a text - any text - the way it was supposed to be written, it really doesn't do any good to read it at all. You (the "other side") give us verses, lifted out of the context they were meant to be in, and say "aha! you silly christian-types! Look at how silly this stuff is!" Then we calmly show you how it makes perfect sense if you put it back into the context of the whole.

One thing you might keep in mind, if you do decide to read the Bible (and no, I don't recommend reading it from cover to cover, not at first... perhaps the New Testament but certainly not the Old, or you'll get bogged down and bored in by the 3rd book) is that it is divided into two sections: The Old Testament and the New Testament.

Or more precisely, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. (A covenant is like a contract or a treaty.)

So basically what we're talking about is the old contract with God, or the old way of his dealing with us, and the new contract. While the basic principles of the Old are still in play (God hasn't changed, sins are still sins), his way of dealing with us has (no longer by laborious keeping of strict laws, but out of love through faith).

Paul explains that to a Christian, the Old Covenant is now our "schoolteacher." While it is no longer legally binding, it is still morally binding - it teaches us what God's standards are, that we might strive to live up to them. But it also makes it clear that no one ever can live up to them on his own, which is why we are now saved through our faith rather than our works.

Last edited by JonnyBGoode on 28 Aug 2007, 9:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.

the earth is not 10,000 years old people. man and dinosaur didnt live together and the sun doesnt revolve around the earth.

Ok, so you admit that the bible is full of allegory and hyperbole; do you also believe that it is the literal word of god at the same time?

And if you've been paying attention to the thread here - which it's obvious you haven't - none of the Christians here have said anything of the sort. Or said that the Bible did.

If you have an argument or point to make, show some support for it, and stop throwing up straw men.

duplicate deleted.

Last edited by LKL on 29 Aug 2007, 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not making a point, I'm asking a question. Do you believe that the bible is full of hyperbole, and also that the bible is the literal word of god?

The response to my list of bible quotes was to 'not take them literally,' but I've always heard christians talking about how the bible was the literal word of god. Is it just that there are two sets of christians: those who think the bible is hyperbole, and those who think it's the word of god? Or is it the same people, somehow doing both at the same time? I'm genuinely curious.

And if you've been paying attention to the thread here - which it's obvious you haven't - none of the Christians here have said anything of the sort. Or said that the Bible did.

If you have an argument or point to make, show some support for it, and stop throwing up straw men. It's very annoying when we spend our time making detailed and well-thought-out arguments and the responses from the other side are "hur hur hur Christians are stoopid hur hur hur." Not to mention that it makes the Christians actually look smarter, which I'm sure is the opposite of your intent.


"Full of" is a bit much. Yes, it has a lot of allegory and hyperbole. Just as a great many literary works do.

In saying that it is the "literal" word of God, we need to define what we mean by literal. If by "literal" you mean that we're supposed to take the allegory and hyperbole literally, well that's just stupid, isn't it?

The Bible should be read in the manner the writer intended, taking the words the way the writer expected them to be taken. I take the text at its plain, literal meaning unless I have some good reason to do otherwise, like when it's plain that it's allegorical, hyperbolic, a dream or vision, etc. When you think about it, this is the basic rule we apply to everything we read: from novels to newspapers, from periodicals to poems. Philosophers call this "hermeneutics." I call it "common sense."

"Taking it literally" doesn't mean divorcing your own reasoning processes and taking it ultra-literally. For instance, in the verse you quoted above about the earth being set on pillars. I showed where you quoted half a verse, and where the rest of the verse clearly put it in perspective that we weren't talking about literal pillars that the literal planet was sitting on. I take that verse literally. In that the earth (the kingdoms of men) are literally founded upon pillars of great leaders. In that respect, it's literal truth. Taking half the verse out and making nonsense out of it, that's taking things ultra-literally, literal to an absurd extreme.

It's like saying you went to a bar and got sh*tfaced and hammered. Do I take it to mean you literally had sh*t on your face and got hit with a hammer? No, of course not, it's figures of speech. But I take you literally that you got quite drunk. Or some Brit is joking with me and says they're taking the piss, do I assume they're really urinating? No, but I take them literally in that I believe they are messing around with me, being sarcastic.

Last edited by JonnyBGoode on 29 Aug 2007, 2:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Have a look at some of the YouTube videos skafather84 has posted on a couple of other threads. They explain how Christianity borrowed heavily from if not plagiarized astrological beliefs. Pay close attention to the SUN of God and the 12 helpers/houses part.

They are in the Biblical evangelism thread as well as the Bar & Grill one.

Well, yeah. We atheists DO hear christians saying that the bible is the literal word of god, though, and has to be taken literally ('If you discard any, you discard all' or something like that, is the cry of the YECs). That's why we go, 'hur hur hur, christuns stooopid.'

Thoughtful christians do not generally speak very loudly in the public debate.

A lot of times, that just isn't phrased well, and isn't really what they mean by it. I absolutely believe the Bible is "the literal word of God." Even the allegorical parts; I believe them insofar as they are allegorical and literally meant to be taken allegorically.

What Christians mean by "the literal word of God" is you can't pick and choose what parts you want to believe, and what parts you want to consider "made up, invalid, not applying to me." If the Bible says "God says X is a sin," I don't believe I have the right, as a follower of Christ, to choose whether it's personally a sin to me or not. It's not a smörgåsbord, unlike other religions where you can pick and choose what you like and chuck the rest.


Which is sad, because the ones that don't think are the ones that are the loudest, and give the rest of us a bad name.

I'm not even going to dignify Chosen One with a response. Because no matter what I say, he's not listening. That last post was so non-sequitur with the rest of this thread it wasn't even funny. (Not to mention easily disproven, but I'm not even going to bother.)

Right? Who gives you the right to say what rights I have? I have the right to choose whomever I wish to argue with or not argue with. I have the right to leave this forum and never come back if I choose. I also have the right to ignore trolls that aren't even following along with a debate people are currently having but just come in out of the blue with a complete derailment onto something else entirely. And then when you don't take their derailment bait, they throw ad hominems at you.

The debate in this thread is whether or not the Bible espouses a flat earth cosmology. If you wish to start another thread and discuss something else, feel free to. But we're having a sensible debate in this thread, and even seem to be reaching some understandings, and I for one don't feel like allowing people to come in here and disrupt and derail the progress being made simply because they have an anti-Christian agenda. So no, since you obviously show no respect whatsoever to either me or my opponents in this current debate, I'm not going to respond to your earlier post.

And you can't make me. So there.

I'm a late arrival again, looks like... but no, it was never dogma.

Some of you seriously need to go chill out in the Ceasefire.