From: Jim Eisele (jeisele@starpower.net)
Date: Mon May 26 2003 - 11:34:41 EDT
Paul writes
>>A work credited to an omnipotent being of truth doesn't misrepresent
>>reality
>If you have no objective basis for your major premise, you have no
objective basis for your conclusion that Genesis was not inspired by God,
and hence you have no objective basis for your decision to turn to atheism.>
Paul, I just don't know how much more objective it gets
than this. My next response may be off-list as I don't
feel like being seen as a trouble maker. As I've said
before, this doesn't seem like a "friendly" environment
to discuss atheism-Christianity.
>Consider this:
There really was a missionary once who went to a primitive tribe in New
Guinea. He knew that in fact (in truth, in reality) the text of John 1:29
referring to Jesus says, "Behold the _lamb_ of God." The Greek word cannot
be correctly translated any other way. But, this tribe had no knowledge of
lambs, and pigs were the basis of its social and economic existence. Pigs
were very highly esteemed. So, the missionary translated the verse and
presented to this tribe as the word of God, "Behold the pig of God."
When the tribe grows up intellectually and finds out that the missionary
knew better and still misrepresented the actual facts (what the text really
says), will what the missionary did be a good reason for no longer trusting
him with regard to the religion he set before them?
Or, given the original primitive state of the tribe, was this
misrepresentation of the facts a testimony to the missionary's wisdom and
love?>
Considered. Unfortunately this just points up the
"sloppiness" of Christianity. Christians disagree with
each other about just about everything, including Bible
translation.
Your heart is in the right place, but you are making a
large stretch that I couldn't make in good faith (pardon
the pun :-)
Jim
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