Same place as where you can see what historical documents are relevant and which are merely propaganda. By analysing the relationship with the source material and other sources. You seem to be stuck in the same delusion as the fundies, that whatever translation you're citing is the source material.
Is missing the point what you do for living? You actually believe that this is the way they choose what they regard as meaningful?
And you then present a false dichotomy: accept the full text or none of it.
So you can believe that paradise existed, but there's no god? You either believe the whole story or none, that is exactly why selecting parts as you see fit is ridiculous. If you just want to embrace christian values, that's different story.
You have not read a single word of what I wrote, have you? As soon as you saw the word 'rational' in what you believed to be a defense of faith, you went into attack mode, didn't you?
Your post makes it obvious where you stand: with the uninformed parrots.
Not much to comment on that, you are wrong. Let's break it down for you.
If you take a basic postulate of Christianity, that only God is perfect, and humans are imperfect, and you are then confronted with scientific evidence that your scriptures are written and compiled by humans then you can do two things:
1. The nutjob way: postulate that these people were divinely inspired and their utterings thus infallible.
2. The rational way: accept that humanity's knowledge of God is imperfectly transmitted.
My point exactly. The problem with 2. is that you can then interpret the bible as you see fit. That is what I was writing about.
I see no reason why a rational Christian should abide by a primitive 'sola scriptura' when it is obvious that even scripture is God's word as relayed by intermediaries. I mean, it is not as if there are not warnings against that in that very scripture itself, starting with God's admonition to Job as to where he gets his authority to speak on behalf of God.
Once you start to interpret there's no coming back. At the end of the day you have a nice collection of teachings comfortable to follow. Hardly the original meaning of the bible.
Only in America is a rational way of looking at scripture seen as either heretical or hypocritical, by fundamentalists of both sorts. Otherwise, judging the relevance of certain parts of scripture is as unscientific as making a distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources.
So cutting off unpleasant parts is now scientific? Where I can see why some parts are wrong interpretations and some are correct? It looks like you just want to justify the removing of unwanted material.
Only in America is a rational way of looking at scripture seen as either heretical or hypocritical, by fundamentalists of both sorts. Otherwise, judging the relevance of certain parts of scripture is as unscientific as making a distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources.
You forget that faith is by no means scientific. Basically this "rational" way of reading means that you try to adapt the teachings to match the present moral and ethical views. Lets look at it this way, first bible was holy and direct voice of the god, now the popular view seems to be that bible is the voice of god as written by man. Another popular view is that bible is a collection of stories teaching various moral and ethical values. There's a big difference between the first and the last methods. The last way of interpretation does not even require the existence of god.
Faith is not rational (in scientific sense), as soon as you try to apply logic to faith it becomes something else.
It is funny how there are basically two kinds of believers. The Fundamentalists and those who interpret the bible. We always make fun of fundamentalists but often forget that picking the 'best' parts parts is equally ridiculous. It defies the meaning of faith. Why is some particular part 'holier' than the others? Most believers fail to answer this. I laugh at fundamentalists as much as the next guy, but lets not forget that denying parts of your texts is just damn ridiculous.
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It is funny how there are basically two kinds of believers. The Fundamentalists and those who interpret the bible. We always make fun of fundamentalists but often forget that picking the 'best' parts parts is equally ridiculous. It defies the meaning of faith. Why is some particular part 'holier' than the others? Most believers fail to answer this. I laugh at fundamentalists as much as the next guy, but lets not forget that denying parts of your texts is just damn ridiculous.
The biggest WTF is that somebody is still using javascript. Oops. Wrong site...
(Captcha: backtotheweb1.0)
The next obvious step will of course be a XML-native processor !
The encryption bears no difference to the bomb programmed to blow you up.It can as easily identify you as 'John Smith' or 'G/)#weY347wTf'.