I find your statement difficult to believe, particularly when you read articles like this www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1557124/Tiny-tablet-provides-proof-for-Old-Testament.html and this www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1550943/Tomb-of-King-Herod-discovered-in-West-Bank.html. I’m not sure if the guys involved here are even Biblical scholars. And a very significant point is that the Bible characters they are talking about are not even major characters in the Bible. Maybe if you looked a bit harder, you will discover that the rest of the Bible is true as well, and there is indeed work going on out there in the world that supports it.

Regards,
Mathew Markey

Now to address another point you made, Steve. You said “It is quite revealing that the only way evangelicals seem able to defend their faith is by spewing forth personal insults at their critics.”

Has anything I have said in my previous entry here been a “spewing forth” of “personal insults” at you? I hope the answer is no (if yes, then I guess we’ll have to discuss that separately). So given that I am an evangelical (at least by my own definition of that loaded word), and I have not insulted you, and I have defended my faith – I believe that means that you now are obliged to reconsider the accusation you have made.

Perhaps you interpret intelligent and reasoned comments from people who debate with you as personal attacks, because you don’t have a response to their clear logic and the implications of their arguments? Is it possible that a “personal attack” can be translated by other observers as a “good point”, and that your only way to deal with the “good point” is to ignore it and then claim a “personal attack” was made? As an example, I hope my calling attention to your poor logic doesn’t strike you as a personal attack. That would be sad, because then the point I wanted to make – ie that just because people argue about the Bible doesn’t make it wrong – would be lost on you, and you may not respond to it or benefit from it.

Mate, I need to reiterate – just because people argue about the Bible does not make it wrong, or indeed irrelevant. It is only irrelevant to those with a particular heart position with regard to God, and who don’t want to hear its message. Please don’t be one of those people.

Regards,
Mathew Markey

I take it that you think that because people can’t agree on what the Bible means, then it must be wrong, and none of the groups claiming to be right can be correct. This is illogical, Steve. If each group claims to be right, and also claims that every other group is wrong – then the logical conclusion to this is merely that all such groups are wrong except possibly one. There is no validity in arguing on this basis that NONE of them are right, and that is what your position clearly is. You see people arguing about the Bible, and you conclude that it must be wrong just by virtue of the presence of debate over its interpretation.

But have you stopped to wonder that maybe this is such an important book that it NEEDS to be argued about? If it is the word of God, then it is essential that we debate what it means. That does not make the Bible wrong. You can’t blame people for doing this. Moreover, you can’t blame God for inspiring a book that provokes vigorous argument. If the Bible was lame enough for everybody to accept, then it wouldn’t be worth believing or following anyway.

In light of this, I understand that you were defending your use of Biblical quotations to make your point by effectively claiming that each person has a right to interpret the Bible however they want. Fine, that’s your right. But your usage of the Bible is disturbing. For example, it is laughable for you to have suggested that the Bible even hints of condoning David’s adultery with Bathsheba, and his subsequent murder of her husband. Laughable, but also disturbing in the sense that you were willing to twist the obvious implications of the passage in question around to your own point of view. This neglects to comment on the other passages you listed, but I believe that similar comments could be made about many of them.

Regards,
Mathew Markey

But I am afraid you are still reading from the same old atheist comic books. All the standard tired, silly complaints which are so easily answerable, for those who are really looking for answers. But one wonders if you in fact are.

The intellectual objections in coming to faith are readily dealt with. But for many people, the rejection of Christianity is not because of intellectual concerns, but moral and volitional ones. What is the real reason for your rejection of the Christian faith? Honest answers are available for those asking honest questions, and I am quite happy to discuss them. But those who simply refuse to believe will find nothing I have to say to be of much use.

The truth is, life is too short. People are heading for a lost eternity, and I want to help rescue those who are looking for help. But those who just like to engage in vain intellectual arguments, for whatever reason, are simply not my priority.

You have said nothing in all your comments that has demonstrated the irrationality or lack of coherence of the Christian faith. Your real objections, it seems, must lie elsewhere. All I can do in that case is remind such people of the warning of Jesus when he said, “You will not come to me that you might have eternal life”. Or of Paul’s warning about those who are “ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”.

Engaging in intellectual gymnastics for its own sake is really not my interest here. It is to testify to the truth claims of Jesus Christ. If people are simply looking to have their intellectual palates tickled, they might try elsewhere. Our eternal destiny is too important to trivialise and ignore in the interests of mere debating games.

Scripture promises that the true seeker will find God. So you might ask yourself what is really motivating you here. Are you an honest seeker, or just someone intent on playing mind games?

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I must suggest that you must actually know in what context those scriptures were written. It is to my understanding that it was directed to the Corinthian church. The women of those days were actually causing quite a ruckus and commotion when they went to look for their husbands in the temples by shouting for them and so forth thus disrupting the services.

Also women were not allowed to teach in that day because of their lack of education in spiritual matters. Now do you see that happening in most bible believing churches today? You see many women in positions of leadership and in fact recently a woman was appointed bishop in the Anglican community here in Melbourne.

Also does not 1 Cor 11:11 say “In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman” ? Or even Ephesians 5:25 which urges husbands to love their wives as well as verse 28 which says husbands should love their wives as their own bodies and he who loves his wife loves himself.

Steve I urge you to soften your heart a little. Because I sense what you really want to do is fight and not actually have a proper discussion.

Jonathan Ngan

And if evolution were true, then why should men and women have equal status? After all, males and females face very different selection pressure, and sexual dimorphism is rife in the animal kingdom. No wonder that the leading evolutionists at the time of Darwin believed in the inferiority of women.

However, anti-slavery activist Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wrote:

The object of the following pages will be to show, in a series of biographical sketches, a history of WOMANHOOD UNDER DIVINE CULTURE, tending toward the development of that high ideal of woman which we find in modern Christian countries. [Introduction to Woman in Sacred History (1873)]

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

We could argue forever about the meaning and interpretation of the Bible, but who’s opinion is “correct”? The splintering of Christianity into hundreds of sects and denominations is testimony to the futility of arguing about what the Bible actually means.

Biblical scholars themselves, at least those without a particular religionist bias, have basically given up trying to find historical verification for most of the Bible legends and characters.

Don’t you find it the least bit odd that God could have “inspired” a book that is the subject of so much furious argument and debate about its meaning and historicity? The books that make up the “Bible” were cobbled together by human committees, selecting from amongst hundreds of candidate writings at the time. There are disputes even today among Christians about whether certain books should be included. New “translations” appear regularly, trying to paper over the uncomfortable bits, leading to even more argument and dispute. How can any of this be of God?

Despite the mess that is biblical scholarship today, evangelicals continue to proclaim “Bible believing Christians” as the only true Christians. Every other Christian denomination thinks that they too have exclusive possession of the truth. Is it any wonder that so many people now consider that religious dogma is nothing more than foolish and subjective interpretation of the opinions of unknown writers from an era and a culture that is far removed from today’s world?

It is quite revealing that the only way evangelicals seem able to defend their faith is by spewing forth personal insults at their critics.

Steve Angelino, WA

But your understanding of the New Testament is is as atrocious as your understanding of the Old. The first two passages do nothing to detract from the elevated status of women as found in the NT. Hierarchy in relationships need not imply inequality. And the final passage has to do with teaching roles in the church, and needs to be read in context with other passages on the subject. But of course ripping a passage out of context is the best the atheist brights can come up with.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch