I agree completely and I did not mean to imply that.
I guess that to a certain extent I overstated my point. I was mostly responding to the universalist/relativistic tendencies that seemed to be present there. The standard idea under these world views is that everyone is right, and no one is wrong, and anyone that claims that they actually are RIGHT (and by implications others wrong) is intolerant. I was merely trying to point out that by that definition of tolerance their viewpoint is also intolerant because it does not allow for others to believe things.
In reality, I believe that tolerance is simply accepting people for who they are and what they believe. As a Christian this means that I have friends who are atheists, Budhists, homosexuals, and agnostics. Do I believe that these people are wrong and that there is an eternal consequence to their choices? Yes, of course I do. That does not mean that I do not tolerate their opinions and their beliefs however. It just means that I listen to their point of view and attempt to explain to them why I believe I have a better option. They are free to choose from there. I did not mean to fall in to the modern trap of intolerance accusations and I apologize for that.
No that is not what I said. What I said was believing that everyone must be right (which is what you are claiming unless I am misunderstanding you) is intolerant of those who believe that ONLY they are right. That is their belief, and you are saying that their belief is wrong.
Let me simplify for you a bit:(This is logical proof with several premises that lead to a conclusion. I am hoping this will clear up the logic of the situation)
1. Christianity says that it is the only way to God. 2. You are saying that there are many possible ways to god. 3. There cannot be both one way or many ways to God ---------THEREFORE------------- Either Christianity's claim or your claim must be incorrect.
That seems logical to me. You seem to take issue with that logical progression. Please explain to me why because your points in your post do not seem to address this problem.
I think that you should do a little more research about the methods used to study ancient history as a whole. Your post seems to be saying that the fact that it was copied, and that there are variations in the copies makes the entire text unreliable.
Now, for a second, I will ignore the fact that there is no logical connection between the validity of the entirety of the text and variations in part of the text. (Especially if concepts are reiterated in multiple places)
More importantly, I would like to question your assertion about the variations and dating of manuscript copies. The first question I would like to ask you is if you know how many copies of ancient biblical manuscripts there are? The answer would be somewhere around 5000. The closest runner up of an ancient document in terms of number of copies would be The Illiad, which has a couple hundred copies (it is somewhere between 300-600, but I forget the exact figure) Many ancient documents that we base our information on (the same information that we have all read and learned about in history books throughout school) have only a couple copies of the manuscripts, but are still considered valid sources.
The obvious advantage to having more copies is that you can look at all of the various copies (done by different people) and compare them based on age, number of differences, the source that did the copying, etc. With the Bible there are actually 4 distinct trees of documents that can all be tied back to various different sources. We can compare both one source to another, as well as different documents within a tree to get a very good idea of what something says. It would be kinda like if you found 3 pieces of paper. One said "... is Fun" Another said "We is fun" and another said "This is cool" Now from those, I can look at the grammar and the blank spot on the first piece and think that the original message was PROBABLY "This is Fun." Now obviously this is not perfect, but it can do a reasonably good job at coming to a high degree of certainty, especially when thousands of documents are involved.
No one claims that there is not some different ideas as to what the original scripture was. Any modern bible will have a large number of notations which offers other possible translations or additional verses which may have been in the original. The fact is though, that the large majority of the text is not refuted by any respected scholar, and the portions that are in 99% of the cases completely irrelevant to major Christian theology or are clearly (and un-contested) stated somewhere else in the text.
Finally, I would like to also point out that you seem to not be a fan of the fact that the first manuscripts we have can be dated to the 3rd century. First, I have not seen that validated by a respected historian (and I could not get your link to work) but even assuming that it is true, I don't see it as important. You have to realize that most ancient history was not even written down until hundreds of years after the actual event happened, whereas the original scriptures were written with 30 years of Jesus' death. Regardless, the fact that there are so many copies allows us to deductively determine what the original manuscripts looked like based on analysis of the differences.
This would be known as Unitarian Universalism.
I have two comments regarding that though.
First, Christianity does not fit into your belief structure. Christianity centers around Jesus and there is entirely too much evidence for Christ claiming divinity, and claiming that he is the only way to God/Heaven to allow for a universalist position. The result is that one of two possibilities exist. Either Christianity is correct and all other religions are wrong, OR Christianity is incorrect and all other religions have the possibility of being right.
Second, your assertion that all religions are valid is making a truth claim. This truth claim says that God is a certain way (he is unconcerned with the path you take to him, all religions are from him, etc). You cannot say that your truth claim is above or trumps the truth claim of another religion (such as Christianity) just because your truth claim attempts to be all encompassing. Christianity makes a truth claim that the Christian God is the only true God. You are making a truth claim that there are many paths to God. Both can be evaluated and examined logically to determine which makes more sense. I just want you to realize that your belief is simply that, a belief. On the level of all other beliefs which may or may not agree with yours. Claiming that all paths are valid and that there should be no specific path to God is being intolerant of those who believe in a God who has set down specific rules and ideas for conduct and salvation.
I think that you misunderstand the situation that the game is set in. The game is set in a universe which interprets the last book of the Bible (Revelation) as being literally accurate and applicable to a time the is coming called the Tribulation. This school of interpretation that tends to be viewed with a fair amount of skepticism by more conservative scholars, since the book of Revelation does not appear to be trying to be literal (among many other reasons that I don't want to go into here).
Regardless, the view that Left Behind is based on is that there will eventually be this thing called the Tribulation (that is Biblically sound, it is just their view of WHAT and WHEN it will be that is questionable) and that during the Tribulation there will be this figure that will take control of the world governments and eventually start trying to hunt down and eliminate Christians. This essentially creates a holy war where Christians are fighting to stay alive, and convert as many people as possible to their cause before the seven years of Tribulation are over and Christ comes again taking all of his followers (Christians) to heaven and condemning the non-believers to Hell.
The point is that you are criticizing the idea of people killing those that are on the opposing side in a war. Not only that, but if you actually read the books you see that the Anti-Christ is a dictator and tyrant on the level of Hitler or Husain. Now, if you had a problem with killing Nazis too, then you are being completely consistent. Otherwise, you are just confused about your thinking about this topic, or uniformed as to the situation.
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I agree completely and I did not mean to imply that.
I guess that to a certain extent I overstated my point. I was mostly responding to the universalist/relativistic tendencies that seemed to be present there. The standard idea under these world views is that everyone is right, and no one is wrong, and anyone that claims that they actually are RIGHT (and by implications others wrong) is intolerant. I was merely trying to point out that by that definition of tolerance their viewpoint is also intolerant because it does not allow for others to believe things.
In reality, I believe that tolerance is simply accepting people for who they are and what they believe. As a Christian this means that I have friends who are atheists, Budhists, homosexuals, and agnostics. Do I believe that these people are wrong and that there is an eternal consequence to their choices? Yes, of course I do. That does not mean that I do not tolerate their opinions and their beliefs however. It just means that I listen to their point of view and attempt to explain to them why I believe I have a better option. They are free to choose from there. I did not mean to fall in to the modern trap of intolerance accusations and I apologize for that.
No that is not what I said. What I said was believing that everyone must be right (which is what you are claiming unless I am misunderstanding you) is intolerant of those who believe that ONLY they are right. That is their belief, and you are saying that their belief is wrong.
Let me simplify for you a bit:(This is logical proof with several premises that lead to a conclusion. I am hoping this will clear up the logic of the situation)
1. Christianity says that it is the only way to God.
2. You are saying that there are many possible ways to god.
3. There cannot be both one way or many ways to God
---------THEREFORE-------------
Either Christianity's claim or your claim must be incorrect.
That seems logical to me. You seem to take issue with that logical progression. Please explain to me why because your points in your post do not seem to address this problem.
I think that you should do a little more research about the methods used to study ancient history as a whole. Your post seems to be saying that the fact that it was copied, and that there are variations in the copies makes the entire text unreliable.
Now, for a second, I will ignore the fact that there is no logical connection between the validity of the entirety of the text and variations in part of the text. (Especially if concepts are reiterated in multiple places)
More importantly, I would like to question your assertion about the variations and dating of manuscript copies. The first question I would like to ask you is if you know how many copies of ancient biblical manuscripts there are? The answer would be somewhere around 5000. The closest runner up of an ancient document in terms of number of copies would be The Illiad, which has a couple hundred copies (it is somewhere between 300-600, but I forget the exact figure) Many ancient documents that we base our information on (the same information that we have all read and learned about in history books throughout school) have only a couple copies of the manuscripts, but are still considered valid sources.
The obvious advantage to having more copies is that you can look at all of the various copies (done by different people) and compare them based on age, number of differences, the source that did the copying, etc. With the Bible there are actually 4 distinct trees of documents that can all be tied back to various different sources. We can compare both one source to another, as well as different documents within a tree to get a very good idea of what something says. It would be kinda like if you found 3 pieces of paper. One said "... is Fun" Another said "We is fun" and another said "This is cool" Now from those, I can look at the grammar and the blank spot on the first piece and think that the original message was PROBABLY "This is Fun." Now obviously this is not perfect, but it can do a reasonably good job at coming to a high degree of certainty, especially when thousands of documents are involved.
No one claims that there is not some different ideas as to what the original scripture was. Any modern bible will have a large number of notations which offers other possible translations or additional verses which may have been in the original. The fact is though, that the large majority of the text is not refuted by any respected scholar, and the portions that are in 99% of the cases completely irrelevant to major Christian theology or are clearly (and un-contested) stated somewhere else in the text.
Finally, I would like to also point out that you seem to not be a fan of the fact that the first manuscripts we have can be dated to the 3rd century. First, I have not seen that validated by a respected historian (and I could not get your link to work) but even assuming that it is true, I don't see it as important. You have to realize that most ancient history was not even written down until hundreds of years after the actual event happened, whereas the original scriptures were written with 30 years of Jesus' death. Regardless, the fact that there are so many copies allows us to deductively determine what the original manuscripts looked like based on analysis of the differences.
This would be known as Unitarian Universalism. I have two comments regarding that though. First, Christianity does not fit into your belief structure. Christianity centers around Jesus and there is entirely too much evidence for Christ claiming divinity, and claiming that he is the only way to God/Heaven to allow for a universalist position. The result is that one of two possibilities exist. Either Christianity is correct and all other religions are wrong, OR Christianity is incorrect and all other religions have the possibility of being right. Second, your assertion that all religions are valid is making a truth claim. This truth claim says that God is a certain way (he is unconcerned with the path you take to him, all religions are from him, etc). You cannot say that your truth claim is above or trumps the truth claim of another religion (such as Christianity) just because your truth claim attempts to be all encompassing. Christianity makes a truth claim that the Christian God is the only true God. You are making a truth claim that there are many paths to God. Both can be evaluated and examined logically to determine which makes more sense. I just want you to realize that your belief is simply that, a belief. On the level of all other beliefs which may or may not agree with yours. Claiming that all paths are valid and that there should be no specific path to God is being intolerant of those who believe in a God who has set down specific rules and ideas for conduct and salvation.
I think that you misunderstand the situation that the game is set in. The game is set in a universe which interprets the last book of the Bible (Revelation) as being literally accurate and applicable to a time the is coming called the Tribulation. This school of interpretation that tends to be viewed with a fair amount of skepticism by more conservative scholars, since the book of Revelation does not appear to be trying to be literal (among many other reasons that I don't want to go into here). Regardless, the view that Left Behind is based on is that there will eventually be this thing called the Tribulation (that is Biblically sound, it is just their view of WHAT and WHEN it will be that is questionable) and that during the Tribulation there will be this figure that will take control of the world governments and eventually start trying to hunt down and eliminate Christians. This essentially creates a holy war where Christians are fighting to stay alive, and convert as many people as possible to their cause before the seven years of Tribulation are over and Christ comes again taking all of his followers (Christians) to heaven and condemning the non-believers to Hell. The point is that you are criticizing the idea of people killing those that are on the opposing side in a war. Not only that, but if you actually read the books you see that the Anti-Christ is a dictator and tyrant on the level of Hitler or Husain. Now, if you had a problem with killing Nazis too, then you are being completely consistent. Otherwise, you are just confused about your thinking about this topic, or uniformed as to the situation.