: 'You've already told us you believe in neither the virgin birth
: nor the resurrection...nor that He performed genuine miracles...'
: Really? Where did I say any of those things?

So then you do believe in the virgin birth? ... even though back in post #692 you said:
For one thing, the verse (from Isaiah) Matthew cites re the Virgin Birth says nothing about a virgin birth. We could have an entire, separate discussion about the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, which could go on for weeks.
And in post #726 you said:
If we permit Matthew the luxury of a literary device, then it is possible (tho' not necessary, of course) to view the Virgin Bírth, the Resurrection, the Divinity of Christ, or anything else in the Bible in the same light.

If you do in fact believe that in historical reality Jesus was born of a virgin, that's great, I'm glad to hear it. It's incredibly inconsistent with everything you've said about the Bible and its reliability, and it conflicts with the sources you've cited as your primary inspiration in interpreting the scriptures. That's why I've guessed that you approach miracles, and Christ in an exitential way, as a leap of faith beyond the pale of rational truth and historical fact.

: 'You don't believe we know Jesus' genealogy as a man...'
: We have agreed that Matthew takes great liberties in order to create
: the 14 x 3 structure, and that Luke gives a much different set of names.

Great liberties? I have said and do believe that Matthew's genealogy is a true genealogy of Joseph. An abbreviation is not untrue, and I previously listed pointers in the text that Matthew included to highlight the way he abbreviated the list, and that the full list was and is readily available for comparison.

: 'You don't believe He spoke or lived without error...'
: If His words are accurately reported, then He made some factual
: errors in casual speech. I agree with you that these can easily
: be written off as 'figures of speech'.

I do fundamentally disagree, and have said so. Figures of speech are basic to effective communication. Use of idiom, allegory, and commonly understood phrases and illustrations do not constitute factual errors, and recognizing their use does not amount to "writing off."

: '"son of god" in an existential sense...'
: I'm not an expert on existentialism; in fact, I've never read Sartre.

Not Sartre. He was an existentialist philosopher, but I was rather thinking of Hegel, Kierkegard, Heidegger, Bultmann, Barth, Brenner, and Gogarten, who had far more influence on modern/post-modern theology than Sartre. If you haven't read them, you've certainly read scholars (theologians) who were deeply influenced by them.

: 'any of us might also be the "son of god"...'
: Jesus Himself quotes the psalmist in this regard.

Not quite, and I commented on that passage, both Jesus' statement and the context of the Psalm, in a previous post.

: 'If God is there, if the universe has a divine origin, then nothing
: in the Bible is impossible or beyond belief...'
: I don't follow your logic here. I believe that the universe has
: a divine origin, consistant with equally divine laws of nature,
: covering everything from intergalactic cosmology to the evolution
: of species. The Bible is another matter entirely.

If (A) God has the power and intelligence to create the universe and produce the living system then (B) God has the power and intelligence to do whatever He will within that system. You seem to suppose that the "laws of nature" constrain God, which is not logical, if He by His power and mind is the source of those laws.

: 'I have a Bible that was delivered a LONG TIME AGO IN A FINISHED FORM TO THE PEOPLE OF God.'
: Oh? Which might that be, and are you saying that no redaction was
: involved in its preparation? That is was miraculously printed and bound? I'd like to hear more.

Given the length of this discussion, I don't think you are quite so obtuse about my position as you aver in this response. I believe that "no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21 NIV) I believe this, and other similar Biblical statements describe the origin of the individual books and the total of the Bible. Redactors? Yes, prophets of God such as Iddo and Jeremiah and faithful scribes like Baruch and Ezra, led by God to produce the volume of scriptures His people would need. Not scholarly interpreters or speculative theologians, and yes, it was done and finished a long time ago.

: 'Translating is very different from redacting...'
: I understand that, and anyone who has used the AB knows that only
: a small percentage of it is the actual text, and the rest is commentary. The translation, however, is quite excellent, and the commentary is unexcelled.

An opinion I do not share.

: 'The "scholars" involved have no particular concern about what effect
: they have on anyone's faith...'
: If you're saying they are non-sectarian, I agree. I'm not sure
: why 'scholars' is in quotes. Scholarship, in fact, has little to
: do with faith, which is mainly concerned with what we cannot know or understand. Also, it's important to point out that commentary, in this context, and redaction are not the same as interpretation. The editors of the AB are giving us insights into the Bible's history and the nuances of the original languages, not telling us how to interpret its inspirational message.

No, I'm not saying they're nonsectarian, and I don't think they are. You have a very limited definition for the word, I think. I'm saying what I said, by and large they have no particular concern about what effect they have on anyone's faith. The word "scholars" was in quotes to indicate those you in particular call "scholars" because you use it rather consistently to describe a subset of those people who might be identified as scholars, namely those people with whom you agree, but not those with whom you disagree.

: 'I'd want good navigational aids, I suppose. Oh, you didn't mention that option...'
: I didn't? Go back and read it again.

OK, I went back and read it again. In post #742, you said, "If you had to cross the ocean in a small boat, would you use the latest navigational aids, or maps from, oh, let's say, 1611? Why should one's journey through life be any different?" You didn't mention good or bad, you mentioned "latest" or old. You didn't mention the option of good or proven or tested. Your persumption was that newer is inherently better, which is what I replied to.

: 'Would you rather have recent theories than ancient truths?'
: The Pythagorean theorem goes back a ways and has held up pretty
: well. Apart from that, I don't know of many 'ancient truths'.
: I know of a lot of things like were accepted as factual which have
: since been proven false, and we have already discussed many of these.

It is amazing that the human race has survived at all, apparently. But the future must be brighter than ever now, since we have exceeded the truths of the ancients in so many ways. Moral clarity has at last been achieved. (If it is not obvious, sarcasm is intended.)

: '...the recent theories conflict with the ancient evidence and known facts...'
: Give me examples, other than from obvious crackpots, of recent theories that conflict with known facts.

I was speaking specfically in respect to Biblical interpretation and historicicity, but fine. A recent theory that conflicts with known facts, but is still taught in many biology text books, is "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". Or, did you know that the famous white moths on brown trees (and brown moths on white trees) in industrialized England, demonstrating "survival of the fittest" were a complete fraud, phony pictures with dead moths glued to trees and all, but is still included in many biology textbooks? No, those probably aren't the right kind of exmaples. Maybe examples in theology? Or Biblical interpretation? Maybe Biblical characters and places that have been dismissed as myth in modern times until delving in the dirt and the relics turned up corroborating evidence?

: 'Your contentious slander of people who believe that God has spoken
: is insulting...people whom you say "must be opposed"...'
: Well, caf, when God starts speaking to people, I get nervous. My cousin personally knows a man who is serving two back-to-back live terms (he ain't gonna get out anytime soon) in Kansas. He knifed two people to death because 'Jesus told me to' after they had had an argument of some kind. That's an extreme example, but people who want nonsense taught as SCIENCE in PUBLIC schools, to MY GRANDCHILDREN are extreme in another direction. Of course they must be opposed - in your own words, public schools cannot teach religion well. 'Creationism' is religion, with a large dose of politics mixed in. We'll come back to this later.

Is that a purposeful misreading or accidental? I was referring to people who believe the Bible to be a revelation from God, not people who are hearing voices. I think the context, in direct quoted reference to your previous remarks, should have been clear enough.

: '...violence and moral carnage it has fostered.'
: Examples, please, of violence and moral carnage fostered by the evolution of species.

I doubt you would agree that there has been a general moral decline in our culture, associated with redefining the nature of man, not as "created equal and endowed" but as one brute among many brutes. I believe there has been. If the guiding force of natural and cultural "progress" is competition and "survival of the fittest" then whether you are theistic or not, your motives and methods and world-view are bound to be considerably different than a world-view that believes God created everything "good" and authored a process of redemption. But back to the examples. I doubt I can cite any that will be meaningful or useful, and not merely denied. I'll stick with two generalities. Darwinian "selection" set the philosophical stage for Marxism and the Nazi eugenics programs. Sources? Not tonight, just assertions tonight.

: 'Evolutionary science is intrinsically a religious philosophy...'
: An outrageous and ridiculous statement. It has NONE of the characteristics of religion.

Oh, it is certainly a relgious philosophy. Rather than bandying the language though, let me just offer again a standard dictionary definition, for the American Heritage Dictionary. I call your attention in particular to #4.
re·lig·ion n. Abbr. rel., relig. 1.a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe. b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship. 2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order. 3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader. 4. A cause, a principle, or an activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

#1 really applies, it's just that the power has been rendered impersonal chance, Mother Nature, "uniformity of natural causes in a closed system." In fact #3 is also quite applicable, the "spiritual leader" just happens to be cloaked in the jargon of science. In view of definition 4 though, I call your attention to Stephen Gould's The Blind Watchmaker or almost any of his writings, or Simpson's The Meaning of Evolution or scores of articles and documentaries that regularly use the loaded language of religious faith to describe premises, assumptions, and conclusions, and to describe obligations and propose moral direction. In many cases evolutionists are not alarmed about creationists because of differing interpretatons of data or questions of fact, they are alarmed in large measure because of a threat to their professed faith.

: 'My stomach literally churns...'
: I recommend Maalox liquid, with a simethecone chaser.

I appreciate the sympathy, but your antagonism is nonetheless disturbing.

: At this point, I'd like to comment very briefly on your synopsis
: of religious persecution in the middle ages, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything else in our discussion.

Actually, it has everything to do with your vitriolic assertions about people who believe that the Bible is true. Folks who fear other folks because of what they assume they believe often take ugly steps to limit the perceived threat. Your vehemence against whole classes of people is inappropriate and needlessly threatening, but consistent with people who have sometimes in good conscience in the past been repressive and vicious. You keep talking about extemists, but you are the one who advocates fear and repression.

: Let me ask you this, caf: Whom would you sentence to death, if you had the power? Homosexuals? Women who have had abortions? There is a movement within Protestant fundamentalism called Christian Reconstructionism who would do just that. I'm not sure how to embed the HTML tags, but here's their website address:

Despite the innuendo and insult by association, I'll give a straight answer. I would deplore being responsible for the administration of justice and would find it very difficult to disassociate emotions from pragmatism, but I do believe in capital punishment as an appropriate penalty for murder. That's the end of my list of certainties. I do believe both abortion and homosexuality are wrong, and that their normalization is devastating to lives and cultures, but would not impose a death penalty for either. Anticipating an objection, let me say that ancient Israel was a theocracy, a fundamentally religious nation with a particular purpose in God's plan of redemption. No nation today is in any way analogous, nor can be.

: http://www.chalcedon.edu
: Do you share their future vision of America?

Here we go with another straw man to attack. Essay, that's not me, not us, not even a glimmer of the reality of people who seriously accept the Bible and try to follow it faithfully. Jesus' kindgdom cannot be advanced by violence, except in the perverse sense that the blood of martyrs is sometimes the seed of the kingdom.

: '...the Bible, the source of all truth...'
: Really? ALL truth? What does the Bible say about relativity and
: quantum physics? atomic structure? higher mathematics? viruses?
: DNA? cybernetics? lasers? I must have missed those parts.

I'd say that was lifted out of context, but that's OK, it wasn't completely clear. God does have two testimonies, as in Psalm 19: the declaration of His word and the declaration of the cosmos. However, in fact, we would have no modern "scientific method" apart from the Bible. I suppose you'll probably reject that, but the founders of modern science, men like Isaac Newton, were people who believed we had a rational universe created by a rational God and therefore open to investigation. They approached the world of physics and chemistry and biology with an expectation that it was ordered and capable of analysis.

: 'Believing in (intelligent) design and purpose is the only trustworthy basis for the human rights you would surely espouse, the right to choose to believe and live as you desire. Freedom... '
: Surely. And I have said that I believe in intelligant design (within
: the laws of nature) and purpose. I fail to see much connection
: with human rights and freedom. How much freedom are the 'Christian
: Reconstructionists' offering? The various muslim terrorists?

If rights are endowed by God, then they are immutable. If they are bestowed by governments, then they are variable, transient and revocable. But go ahead and attack the straw man, again.

: Once more, caf, and then I'll 'hang it up': 'Creationism' is a BUSINESS. The authors of the various 'Creationist' textbooks know that it's all garbage. The publishers of this material know that it's all nonsense. The only people who don't know this are, sadly, people like yourself. I should also add that, as far as I know, it's purely an American phenomenon, completely unknown in the rest of the world, except, as I have mentioned, no doubt the terrorist Muslims teach something similar.

It is clear that you have not participated in the debate, haven't seriously read the material, apparently not even much of the opposing material. Way back at the beginning of this discussion you made the claim that it was all about money. I certainly stand by my reply at the time. People are motivated by many things to take positions of matters of faith, some of them noble, some of them ignoble. You, by your prejudice and willful exclusion, have hedged yourself about with a determination not to understand why people can confidently believe the Biblical account of creation, which is affirmed, supported and depended on all through the Bible, in connection with virtually every major doctrine of scripture. Oh, FYI, there is an active Australian creationist movement too, whatever that has to do with anything. And I guess most muslims, whether terrorists or not, do believe in divine creation, whatever that has to do with anything.

: The evolution of species is not merely a fact, caf, it is the central fact of modern biology. Without it, nothing in modern biology makes any sense at all. If the biology textbook has 30 chapters, and you remove the one on Darwin, evolution is there in one form or another in the other 29. In order to rid the world, or at least the American classroom of this 'menace', the entire textbook will have to be thrown out, and replaced by...what, caf? Who is going to write it? Marion Robertson? Jerry Foulwell? And once it is written, who is going to teach it? I have faith in American educators - they will never tolerate teaching folklore as science. You would have to enact a law that Biology may be taught ONLY by fundamentalist Christians.

That's one of the big lies of modern evolutionary faith. Not only is "evolution of species" not a fact, not supported by any evidence whatsoever, it is certainly not "the central fact of modern biology." It is compeletely irrelevant to modern biology. You don't need to believe in evolution in any sense to do molecular biology or genetics. In fact those sciences make a mockery of standard evolutionary theory. I recommended consideration of "Darwin's Black Box" many posts ago. It is not written by a creationist. You could completely eliminate evolution from biology textbooks and lose nothing, because the theory has been a dry well. It has contributed nothing, but has consumed monstrous amounts of dollars, and will continue to do so. That money trail you keep pointing at for creationists is very real, but you need to look over your shoulder to see where so much money is going and why. Macro evolution is "folklore." I'd be delighted to have it taken out of the history books, and math books, and sociology books, and geography books, and even the biology books, but it is the monolithic myth of our time, and it will take a long time for clear thinking to displace it, despite the fact it produces nothing helpful and is in no way related to useful research.

: Once you have done that, why not go all the way, and have...
: American history taught ONLY by Mormons?
: Medicine taught ONLY by Christian Scientists?
: Emergency room procedures ONLY by Jehovah's witnesses?
: Marriage and family ONLY by Shakers?
: Auto mechanics ONLY by Amish?
: Bowling ONLY by Holy Rollers?
: ...and girls' career counseling ONLY by Taliban?

Done what? Oh, yes, your thing about who should teach. Actually, I'm quite a believer in parental responsibility for education. If that means home schooling, well and good. If it means private schools, OK. If it means involvement in the local schools, that's fine. I believe parents, not bureaucrats or politicians, should take responsibility for their children's education.

: I have a 'modest proposal': Let's each make a BRIEF closing statement and wrap this discussion up. Of course, other readers are welcome to contribute.

Here's the deal, SA, I'd welcome a close, I'm tired of an exchange that doesn't look particularly helpful and seemingly makes little difference. However, if you or anyone else posts something that I think needs a response, I will do what I can to provide a response. I haven't responded to everything you've said, but I don't expect to leave too many things dangling when all is said and done.

One thing I have left dangling is an earlier request regarding Genesis 1 and 2. I haven't forgotten. For the nonce, perhaps a review of the Keil and Delitsch commentary would suffice. It is German, more than 100 years old (definitely not Zondervan or Moody Bible Institute in origin), and mindful of the then current historical-critical arguments. I suspect the information they present, or that I would, will be sloughed off anyway.