Thoughts on the Flat Earth folks

Quote: Wizard

Conservative Christians believe the bible is 100.0000000% without error. However, ask most about passages arguing .

FrG breaks out his dancing shoes and tophat
when you want talk literally about the Bible.
He dances around everything like we can't
see that he's avoiding the subject.

Quote: Evenbob

FrG breaks out his dancing shoes and tophat
when you want talk literally about the Bible.
He dances around everything like we can't
see that he's avoiding the subject.

I can't speak for FrG but at another forum I was active at a devout Catholic would sometimes say, "Jesus left us with a church, not the bible." He frequently would say that when cornered about a passage he didn't want to defend. It isn't just him. The many Catholics I've known didn't put nearly the emphasis on the bible that Protestants do but certainly put more of an emphasis on church doctrine.

To be honest, the Catholic way would appeal to me more if I had to choose a religion.

Quote: Wizard

The many Catholics I've known didn't put nearly the emphasis on the bible that Protestants do
.

When it comes to the NT they are
identical in their beliefs. FrG has
made it clear that all the wacky
stuff, like virgin birth, walking on
water, healing the sick, turning
water into wine, rising from the
dead after 3 days, all that stuff
really happened. It all flies in the
face of universal law and common
sense, but doggone it, you better
believe it or it's hell and damnation
forever, you heathen..

Quote: Evenbob

When it comes to the NT they are
identical in their beliefs. FrG has
made it clear that all the wacky
stuff, like virgin birth, walking on
water, healing the sick, turning
water into wine, rising from the
dead after 3 days, all that stuff
really happened. It all flies in the
face of universal law and common
sense, but doggone it, you better
believe it or it's hell and damnation
forever, you heathen..

That is not an accurate statement of Catholics I have known.

Even I can buy the premise that if there is a god he would be above the laws of physics. Even within the laws of quantum physics things can appear out of thin air, as long as an anti-matter version appears elsewhere.

Quote: Wizard

The many Catholics I've known didn't put nearly the emphasis on the bible that Protestants do but certainly put more of an emphasis on church doctrine.

That is sort of the crux of the whole Reformation.

The largest single group that defends inerrancy is Baptists (roughly 33 million in the USA).

The First Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival that swept Protestant Europe and British America in the 1730s and 1740s. At the time the population of the USA was less than 1 million.

The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800 and, after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. Population of the USA during 2nd Great Awakening was under 30 million.

Pentecostalism emerged in the early 20th century among radical adherents of the Holiness movement who were energized by revivalism and expectation for the imminent Second Coming of Christ.

Textual inerrancy is not the only kind. It seems to me that many of the Greek, Turkish and Syrian orthodox also believe in an institutional inerrancy. I had a teenage friend who became an orthodox priest, and he explained to me that pieces of the True Cross were organic, and that's why if you assembled all the wood form all the churches you could make a hundred crosses. The more logical explanation is that throughout the centuries hucksters found pieces of wood and identified them as pieces of the true cross to bolster their position. There is no biblical story about the cross being preserved at all. I thought it was kind of sad that an intelligent human being should have to suspend his rational mind like that to pursue his goal.

Quote: Pacomartin

I thought it was kind of sad that an intelligent human being should have to suspend his rational mind like that to pursue his goal.

To believe any part of Christianity you
have to leave rationality at the door.
Most religions, Christianity especially,
are all about emotionalism, not about
logic or being rational. They pander to
the basest human instincts, and ignore
reason and logic.

Quote: Wizard

You are the one missing the point.

Conservative Christians believe the bible is 100.0000000% without error. However, ask most about passages arguing a flat earth and suddenly the bible becomes poetic and figurative. However, change the topic to the story of creation or the death penalty for homosexuals and suddenly it is to be taken literally.

I can see that.

I am still going to say that in the case of the flat-earthers, it is argument for the sake of argument; no one picking up the Bible should all of a sudden be struck by the realization that it argues for a flat earth [because I will still say it does so obliquely].

If there is a motivation to do this outside of mischief, it might be that the flat-earthers think it is a slippery slope to acknowledge any area where Science has overturned prior beliefs, even ones that are not by any stretch Christian* in nature to hold. The thinking might be that once modern astronomy is accepted you slip down the slope and land in the hands of the Evolutionists.

On the other hand, it is possible the prolific Mark Sargent of so many of the youtube videos is non-religiously motivated, see link for short bio. Who knows? But I have to think he is someone who does not believe what he is propogating.

http://marksargent.com/marks-bio/

*I wonder if some fundamentalist Jews are flat-earthers? Surely not many?

Quote: Evenbob

Most religions, Christianity especially, are all about emotionalism, not about logic or being rational. They pander to the basest human instincts, and ignore reason and logic.

That is true of just about any issue in our society. Crime, zoning, voting, etc.

"... the Catholic way"....
Rich churches, wealthy staff, poor parishioners, lies, sexual abuse.... .

Quote: Wizard

You are the one missing the point.

Conservative Christians believe the bible is 100.0000000% without error. However, ask most about passages arguing a flat earth and suddenly the bible becomes poetic and figurative. However, change the topic to the story of creation or the death penalty for homosexuals and suddenly it is to be taken literally.

You actually know professing Christians that advocate for homosexuals to be put to death? Wow. I've met a number of Christians in my time and never heard that from any of them. Not even Westboro Baptist.