Why do Christians pretend they have the True™ exegesis of the Bible, when Truth™ in their terms is nonexistent?
Nobody actually knows what much of the ancient Hebrew is supposed to mean. The word we translate to "prophet", we actually don't understand the meaning of. If Christians seriously assert "prophet" is the True™ translation, then they're doing so on appeal to cultural momentum: we've always translated the word that way, therefore it MUST mean prophet.
Except it might not. You could use the word "intellectual" and the Old Testament would make just as much cultural sense.
Feuerbach is right. Christianity is best understood as anthropology. The entire Christian metaphysic is interpretation turned into Fact™.
It should not be a serious belief system anymore.
>inb4 tips fedora
Check it out
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rWAEY2fi7TU
>>733729
Holy shit, it STARTS with numerology.
>>733747
Yeah, what's your point?
This one's pretty interesting too
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NaXHvM0CR_0
People deep down don't care about truth, they want comforting lies, especially if their demagogues use those lies to foster solidarity and incite hatred for The Other
>>733758
Numerology is bullshit.
>>733802
So you think Christian Truth is simulacra?
>>733703
Why do unbelievers think they have the capacity to understand the things of God?
>>733703
What relevence does Hebrew have? The Septuagint is in Greek, moran.
>>733989
You didn't watch the video did you?
>>734019
Because we have entered the cave and seen the shadow of God. Why are Christians such narcissists?
>>733703
>truth™
>fact™
Anyone who actually says this in an attempt to be "witty" just shows themself to be another smug liberal who thinks that he's got it all figured it out, and that anyone who disagrees with him is objectively wrong.
>>734081
B-but I own an iPhone and b-buzzfeed s-said...
>>734044
I didn't because I was in a topology lecture. Because unlike some people *cough*, some of us have formal education in mathematics and statistics.
So believe me, that video is a prime example of sophism and quackery. Here's his argument:
>some guy analyzed the bible and came up with 75 maps from the Greek language to the natural numbers
>now let's pretend these maps are significant
>now apply these maps to other texts
>wow they don't work, what a surprise that 75 maps map to different numbers on different lists
>the bible is thus supernatural
This is numerology at it's simplest and is obvious bullshit. I could run an analysis on any long text, produce 75 rules involving any one integer, and since probabilistically speaking, it won't hold for any other text, it's thus supernatural!
His argument that we couldn't reproduce the 75 rules if we wanted to is specious. Nobody wrote the books with the intention of meeting 75 arbitrary rules.
Cognitive biases are strong. And if that video genuinely convinced you, I'm sorry but you're probably rather stupid.
>>734081
I'm literally saying there is no true and objective reading of the bible, and yet you throw the opposite in my face. Either don your philological cap and get busy or stop shitposting.
>>734033
That doesn't suggest anything. If anything it suggests Paul probably had an improper understanding of the Old Testament
>>734114
Well it didn't convince me, because I already believe it is the word of God, so yeah I guess there is some confirmation bias going on.
Still, if the probability of that happening were 1 in 7 to the 75th power then the chances of that happening randomly are pretty much nonexistent.
The guy who discovered this had a Ph.D from Harvard
>>733703
>Nobody actually knows what much of the ancient Hebrew is supposed to mean. The word we translate to "prophet", we actually don't understand the meaning of. If Christians seriously assert "prophet" is the True™ translation, then they're doing so on appeal to cultural momentum: we've always translated the word that way, therefore it MUST mean prophet.
Isn't that how words work in general?
A population gives a name to a concept, and barring linguistic drift, that name generally sticks to that concept.
And given that all of judaism and the rest of the abrahamic faiths generally have the same idea of what a prophet is, it probably is kinda like the traditional image, and not, say, a bagpipe player.
>>734221
Dr. Oz is a doctor as well. Having a PhD doesn't exclude people from quackery.
The probability thing is, again, meaningless. Find any 75 rules and the probability they will occur randomly is just as low. It's just poor reasoning.
>>733703
The bible is full of contradictions, metaphors and poorly translated books. The bible should never have been taken seriously.
BTW I'm Catholic.
>>734330
Of course, but then it runs religion into anthropology. Which is exactly my point: religious people use the words probably incorrectly because it suits their intuitions and impressions. Every religious reading is a dishonest reading.
>>734369
Why do you remain a Catholic? Do you just like the ceremony and ritual? Do you like the Aesthetics? Is it a political thing? For the community? Your family?
As an atheist I'm always interested in why liberal Christians (by which I mean liberal interpreters of the Bible) stick with a denomination.
>>734390
Not him but the Bible is not the Quran. It's an icon, not a giant monologue that God came up with.
>>734359
How is the probability just as low with any 75 rules?
The numbers have to be divisible by 7 which means there's a 1 in 7 chance of even one rule being met randomly. If 75 of these rules that are divisible by 7 were to happen the odds of it happening randomly are insanely improbable.
If the numbers were all divisible by numbers smaller than seven it would be more likely but still very unlikely
Do you even math bro?
>>734369
>The bible should never have been taken seriously.
As a Catholic. Cultural Catholics are only just behind Southern Baptists on the list of people who annoy me to no end.
>>734408
Well yeah but most people's interpretation of the bible is usually what leads them to a particular denomination, or vice versa. So I like to hear people's reasoning for why they stick with a denomination when some of their interpretations may run contrary to it.
>>734423
>when some of their interpretations may run contrary to it.
Such as?
I'm Orthodox for what it's worth
>>733703
Why start there?
A significant amount of the books included in the Bible and the authors they are attributed to are based entirely on cultural momentum, despite contradictions.
The Gospel of Mark has always been attributed to Mark for no particularly good reason.
>>734411
>How is the probability just as low with any 75 rules?
>The numbers have to be divisible by 7 which means there's a 1 in 7 chance of even one rule being met randomly. If 75 of these rules that are divisible by 7 were to happen the odds of it happening randomly are insanely improbable.
>If the numbers were all divisible by numbers smaller than seven it would be more likely but still very unlikely
You're right explicitly but you're wrong in what you're getting at. You can find 75 rules involving multiples of 7 in any sufficiently long text. Doesn't have any meaning at all.
>>734411
Not to mention, you're implying the exact probability matters. It doesn't have any meaning at all. None. Pick 75 mathematical characteristics of ANYTHING and it's going to be impossibly low chance to be exactly the same as anything else. It's a complete non-point.
>>734049
Probably because we will see God face to face, and know Him as He knows us.
Enjoy your cave!
>>734162
Then nobody ever understood it.
>>734369
Typical.
>>734520
>I know le true god!
>>734522
The author probably did. We can just never know their intention. If there is a "true" reading we can't know it.
In the end, what matters is the Christian delusion is driven by bad philology.
>>734509
I kind of see what you're saying...but not really. I don't see any book having so many instances of the amount of instances these things occur being divisible by the same number. The geneaology of Christ which is only 11 verses meets 9 of these rules. There's only a one in 40,353,607 chance of that happening randomly. It doesn't matter how long the book is, the odds of the total being divisible by 7 is the same
>>734562
Listen you dummy. There's nothing "special" about those rules. They are entirely, completely, 100% arbitrary. They are not significant and have NO meaning in themselves. The space of maps between any text and the natural numbers is IMMENSE. There's quite literally trillions upon trillions of numbers you can "find" in texts. All you have to do is pick a couple that sound spooky, and you'll trick dumbasses into believing it's special. That's all the pathological obsession of the Harvard idiot produced. It doesn't matter how """probable""" the SPECIFIC set of rules is, because there's nothing significant, special, or important in those rules compared to other rules. It's literally like saying, there's trillions of colors, so how probable is it that this grass is this hue?
Similarly, in any volume of gas, every exact organization of the molecules is infinitely improbable. But it still HAS to have an organization. You could take a thousand random points in space and generate dozens of """""spooky""""" coincidences in the positions. It's literally nothing because you're constructing the significance post hoc.
If someone predicted that there would be a text with 75 exact rules involving 7 in these exact ways, and THEN the bible was written, you might have a leg to stand on. But as it stands you just picked random rules out of an extremely large set of rules that have a commonality and sound spooky. It's literally not significant at all and no information theorist would be spooked by it.
>>734599
I still find it pretty interesting
>>733703
>God divenly inspired the translaters of the KJV
> The KJV corrects the greek
> God divinely inspired me when I was writing my book about this subject. It's like "God And" I wrote it :D :D :D :D
/close thread
>>734614
But it's not really interesting.
It's like rolling a 7-sided die 75 times and then saying "Oh my, Isn't this result interesting. I had a 1 in 7 to the power of 75 chance of rolling that result".
>>734633
If I rolled the same number 75 times in a row, yeah that would be pretty interesting
>>734670
But you don't.
You just roll a same sided die 75 times.
Unless I'm totally fucking up this numerology thing.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
>The rules are arbitrarily determined
>The rules have a 1 in 7 chance of being true each
>The rules have no predictive quality, but rather are selected to match up with the text they are describing
Even if the chance for a rule being true was lower then stacking rules would still increase the odds exponentially, provided there is no contingency of one rule upon another.
>>734708
I get what you're saying
I'm just saying there's a whole lot of "coincedences" with the number 7. These 75 rules aren't all of them
I find it pretty interesting
>>734738
This is only relevant if you assign any value to the number 7.
Because otherwise you can just cherrypick things in your favor and say "Well it fulfills the pattern" any time something confirms your bias.
That and several perpetrators of oral traditions and authors of included written books, translators and editors could simply favor the number 7 which would still have no significance unless there is intrinsic value to the number 7.
>>734626
Kek
>>734670
More like if you rolled 10000 75-sided dice at a time, and each roll had at least one 75, the probability of which is probably like 99.9%
>>734626
This
>>734535
Authors. Plural. About 40 men wrote the bible, over about 1500 years, all 66 books inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Since the Holy Spirit inspired the bible, and compiled the bible, and maintains the bible, He is also available to explain what the bible means.
While you are correct that none of us understand it perfectly, as God does, and see it as though through a glass, darkly, you are incorrect in abandoning it, and thus abandoning all hope.
It doesn't take a perfect understanding of "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
>>734791
In the bible, 7 is the number of completion/perfection.
>>735265
>nobody understands it perfectly
Then you admit you can't have true knowledge of your own faith? How pathetic.
>>735265
So if the holy spirit has that kind of influence over people and it wants a specific interpretation based on the book, author, and time period.
So what is the problem and why can't we all seem to be divinely inspired?
Am I not inspired or am I ignoring holy inspiration? If said holy inspiration speaks for itself then why is it so easy to ignore?
And if the message isn't being passed onto me whenever I feel like writing something about theology, why the fuck do those chumps get to be divinely inspired? In god's grand scheme of things where all men are equal, they are somehow more worthy of more compelling inspiration?
>>735286
I can have better. I can have God dwelling in me. And do.
Knowing that I will know His Word perfectly in heaven is a wonderful thing to me, not a discouragement. The bible is not difficult to understand.
It is difficult to follow.
>>735290
Because it's infinite, and we're not.
>>735302
If you're not infinite then how can you know anything is infinite? Because you can't actually span it's infiniteness to test whether it's finite.
>>735294
It's difficult if you have any sort of self-respect or noble nature within you, if you're an ugly, ignoble slave then it might be worth following.
>>735302
Well then I guess that if I call you a retard, you have no way of refuting whether or not it was divinely inspired.
>>735307
Because I know God, I know God to be infinite, and I know His Word to be infinite, again, on His word.
See, God is not wrong, and God does not lie. If you want to know anything about life at all, you need to learn it from God.
Everyone else is just guessing.
>>735313
You have no reason to respect yourself, or to be noble. You have nothing but filthy rags to offer a holy God.
Your offering will not be accepted, and as you are a slave to sin, so you will go where the sinners go, into a lake of fire.
Meanwhile, everyone adopted into God's family will be living life like nothing ever imagined on earth; better in every possible way.
But you, so respectful of yourself, and so noble. Your end will be shame, and destruction.
>>735325
About 30% of the bible is prophecy, and tells the future as though it were the past. Only God sees the end from the beginning; only God could make the call that 483 years, to the day, from the declaration to rebuild the Temple, the Messiah, Jesus, would be cut off.
>when Truth™ in their terms is nonexistent?
It isn't.
>Nobody actually knows what much of the ancient Hebrew is supposed to mean.
Yes, we do.
>The word we translate to "prophet", we actually don't understand the meaning of.
We actually do.
/thread
>>735332
God is holy. And transcendent. You honestly think I care if some Anon says I sound like a clown when I talk about God?
>>735362
Not if you're a Jew.
2 Corinthians
Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech— unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away.
But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.
>>735357
And only god, two thousand and sixteen years after Jesus, deigned that I, anon, ought to say you're dumber than the wood pulp bibles are made out of it.
>Protestantism
>Literal interpretation of scripture
>>735381
>implying the meaning of that word isn't significant even if you go for a "metaphorical" interpretation
What would a "metaphorical" prophet even be?
>>735379
And God knew you would be so foolish before He made the world.
>>735381
Yes, literal first, as intended.
And if that leads to an absurd result, look to the symbolic, or metaphorical.
>>735407
kek
Nobody "deconverts". If you are not a born again Christian today, you never were one.
Caterpillar: Honest, I used to be a butterfly! honest Injun!
>>735435
anonymus non est doctus
go away.
>>735430
There's another option. You could just not look there at all.
All I want is to hear a debate between a biblical numerology believer and a Qur'anic miracles believer.
>>735474
Shit, I wish we could have a 4chan thunderdome and do fun stuff like that.
>>735457
Yes, run from the light. Run from learning. Hide from God.
>>735466
I find that ignoring God is not just the act of a busy person, but an act of rebellion.
I found that in the bible.
Shall I regale you with stories of what happens to people who rebel against God?
>>735474
There's really not that much of the miraculous in the quran.
6 is the number of man.
Happy?
>>735512
Absolutely, tell me what happened to them.
>>735517
Checkmate anon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KPEiGqDQHg
>>735524
Let's see. Bad things.
Rebellion of Korah
Numbers 16
But if the Lord creates a new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord.”
Now it came to pass, as he finished speaking all these words, that the ground split apart under them, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods.
So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly.
>>735537
But the Koran doesn't make sense
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nNAS0aaViM4
>>735546
SPOOOKYY!!!!
What's the metaphor being communicated here?
>>735537
> Post number is palindromic
> First and last number is 7
> 73 - 55 + 37 = 55
Truly this is a sign of God's miraculous power
>>735537
Pfff, that doesn't even come up to the fact that
in Chinese is the pictogram for boat is "vessel eight people", as there were 8 people on the ark.
You want names? I'll give you names. The names of the first ten men alive.
Hebrew English
Adam Man
Seth Appointed
Enosh Mortal
Kenan Sorrow;
Mahalalel The Blessed God
Jared Shall come down
Enoch Teaching
Methuselah His death shall bring
Lamech The Despairing
Noah .........Rest, or comfort.
That's rather remarkable:
>>735564
Rebel against God and die.
>>735572
That's not a metaphor!
>>735590
True.
I have often wondered why the people who hate God also seem to hate metaphors. It's a weird paring, but true.
>the Bible is a collection of books
We might treat them as if they were books, but most divisions of the Bible are unlike books in form.
>>735598
I love metaphors. I do read Nietzsche, after all.
