Religion is for cowards and pedophiles of childrens minds

Why should it? One may agree with the Bible but the Bible does not have to agree with you.

 

Actually, you are wrong.

Once again you show your lack of understanding of God and the Bible.

Thanks for the warning, awful nice of you.

 

You are the one that’s being misleading, since you are the one that said:

not me.

But you are correct to assume that I, to the best of my ability, try to agree with what the Bible says.

Once again a person may agree with the Bible, there is no reason for the Bible to agree with anyone except God.

 

Once again, the Bible is a text. It doesn't "agree" with anyone.

As for what I'm saying being "wrong", I'm sorry, but it's not. I won't pretend I have the definitive absolute reading of Barthes' theory - that would be rather anachronistic, wouldn't it? - but if we assume that he's right, there is no reason to believe that the Bible is somehow exempt. I would accept you not believing that Barthes applied to the Bible only if you believed it didn't apply to any other book. But you seemed happy enough to believe that it does. You're showing a lack of understanding of language.

 

I know that, I never said it agreed with anyone, with the possible exception of God but you are the one who brought it up.

So why do you keep arguing with yourself?

I don’t assume he’s right, for one thing and even he was, just because it applies to every book written by man, why couldn’t the one book written by God be an exception?

 

I don't know if you're trying to be obtuse or if you're just expressing yourself poorly, but neither of these responses add anything.

Because the fact that an author is human is not the reason why it applies to every book written by man. Every version of the Bible I'm aware of is written in a human language, and it's that, not the nature of the author, that causes what Barthes observes. It's totally irrelevant whether God wrote the Bible or not (although I will add that he definitely didn't - he at best dictated it to some very human writers) as to whether it is as open to interpretation as any other book. I don't think I even really understand what you mean by "the Bible interprets itself", and you certainly aren't making it any clearer.

Why do you think a book written by God could be an exception? What about it - that's the book, not the author - makes it special?

 

Please show be anywhere that I've said the Bible agrees with me?

You are the one who said it and have been arguing with yourself about it ever since. I don't know how to make it any simpler than that.

What do you mean by open to interpretation? That people are free to interpret anyway they want and all the interpretations are correct?

Please read post #250 where I give a simple example of how the Bible interprets itself, maybe that will help you.

It’s exactly that, it's the author that makes it special.

What man knows the human mind better than God?
What man knows language and how to use it better than God?
What man knows down to the neurons that will be fire by a certain symbol better than God?
What man knows why or how scribbles on a piece of paper can make a man cry or laugh? God does!

I know you don’t believe in God but at least intellectually you should be able to recognize that God should be able to do things that a man can not, such as author a book that has only one correct interpretation.

 

the problem with your arguments/evidence is that it itself is also in question.

looks to me like you suggest some kind of self interpreting effect from the bible put there by "God".
the problem is that:

- i don't see that effect
we are obviously still having this discussion. it looks like the neurons didn't fire for all of us.

and

where did that come from? did it say that in the bible? it looks made up

 

You are presenting a false dichotomy here which I have already addressed. You are saying that you have never said that the Bible agrees with you. I have not said that you have said this. I have simply said that, based on everything else you have said (and the fact that you have only rebutted with "I never said the Bible agrees with me", rather than "I don't think the Bible does agree with me"), I would expect you to hold that view. It is interesting in light of Barthes that you think the fact you haven't said something means no-one should be speculating about it.

So I will ask: do you think that the Bible does agree with you?

 

Honestly sometimes you can be so dense.

No, I do not now nor have I ever thought the Bible should or has to agree with me.

Is that plain and simple enough for you or are you and Barthes still having trouble interpreting human speech?

 

I had already read the article and thanks for the synopsis.

I just don’t happen to agree with it.

Yes, there are times when an author writes something, usually fiction and has no clue what it means, maybe it just sounds nice to his ear and thus has no correct interpretation and is open to interpretation but there are times when an author writes something with a purpose and wants it interpreted one way, then there is a correct interpretation and all others are incorrect. Despite what you or Barthes might think.

 

You are currently dicussing it, why is this something you're studying for school?

Maybe you could move on to something that makes more sense.

 

Yeah, right.

 

Getting a little testy, I must say.

Nothing about what you say means that God can't use those same languages to get his message across to all of mankind and that he wouldn't know better than anyone else how to use those languages to do so.

 

Now, you're really grasping at straws.

His first book?

You've got me now!

Please have mercy!

 

Why not? I mean we are talking about God aren’t we? Why wouldn’t he be “skilled” at that?

The whole point is that when the author is God, then author's intended interpretation IS the "correct" one.

If I believe Barthes applies at all to anyone, it would be in a limited sense and not to God at all.

You’re using the Either/Or Reasoning fallacy. This fallacy reduces what may be a wide range of options to only two. The weakness of this line of reasoning? It excludes other valid possibilities. Ask yourself, ‘Are there really only two possible choices? Might there be others?’

Does it really matter what I think or thought, believed or didn’t believe before this discussion? If God is omnipotent, all powerful, isn’t it a little late to say that God has every power in the universe, oh, except this one?

 

I never said that you had to see those effects but what does that mean? Does that mean it’s not there or that you just don’t see it?

I give up. You’ve got me now. I just made it up!

Oh, by the way does that make it untrue?

 

Well then I don't really understand why you were bothering to argue that maybe God can defy Barthes' theory with his writing, if you don't believe it applies to anyone.

 

I understand that that is your point. But I do not see any way that it could be true. God effectively destroyed the only universal language we had before writing the Bible, and since he's omnipotent and omniscient he was presumably aware that this would cause problems later as far as writing the Bible was concerned. Unless we consider God capable of making a mistake, then the only other conclusion I can draw is that God was happy for the Bible to be interpreted in many different ways. If he had one intended correct interpretation, why would he react to the Tower of Babel situation in such a way as to render that reading virtually impossible?

Not all dichotomies are false just because some of them are.

Yes and no, respectively.

 

So how would you account for the vast ambiguities created by numerous translations of the Bible? Surely if God wrote it to have one correct interpretation, he would have ensured that that interpretation was possible in every language and/or written a version in every language right from the off.