Title: James Carville explains everything about Mike Johnson Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Nov 12, 2023 Author:James Carville Post Date:2023-11-12 23:48:41 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:3711 Comments:48
Above is a video on the subject you were talking about. I know it's a long video. If you don't have time to watch it I understand.
I would ask if you believe the Bible to be the word of God do you think a reasonable to believe the earth is thousands and not billions of years old? If you don't why not?
I believe it because of a variety of time markers in space and on earth seem to indicate it. The "time candle" quasars appear to indicate certain ages of star systems. Uranium dating seems to indicate that certain things on earth are hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Carbon-14 dating seems to indicate the age of things back to 50,000 years. Continental drift occurs at a measurable rate. Looking at the gaps between the continents, which clearly were once connected, works out to the continents having separated several hundred million years ago. Dinosaur bones, uranium dated, give us indications of life a hundred million years ago. To me, this is convincing, mutually reinforcing evidence that the world and universe are very old, so that's why I think that.
Uranium dating seems to indicate that certain things on earth are hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Carbon-14 dating seems to indicate the age of things back to 50,000 years. Continental drift occurs at a measurable rate.
Do you even know what assumptions are made in this non scientific theories?
You have to assume the decay rate is constant. There are no contaminations. And you have to assume the ammound or argon and other things had at the beginning. That can't be known. So that isn't science.
To me, this is convincing, mutually reinforcing evidence
No. Actually it is circular reasoning. Asumptions about X. So the assumptions about X make Y true. Since We claim Y is True. Assumptions can be made that Z is true.
Then you have to assume life evolved over millions of years and lots of dead things before Adam and Eve.
Certainly a very aged world and universe conflicts with an exacting literal read of the Bible. And since I think the world is very old, that inevitably diminishes in my mind any belief that the old parts of the Bible convey scientific truths about the origins of the world. Both beliefs cannot be right.
This does not mean that I reject the Bible in totality. I think that the things nearer in time, when people were there watching, the New Testament specifically, are likely to be more accurate than creation stories about times when literally no one was there to see. Those things I take as the true belief of very ancient people, that don't work as scientific truth, but that still work as metaphors - yes, God made it all, yes, the world existed before the rise of man, yes, man passed from being innocent animals into sapient beings, and got themselves twisted morally in the process (no, humans getting twisted did not cause death to enter the world), etc.
When I read the Bible, I disregard most of the law of Moses. Kill people for working on the Sabbath? Kill people for eating pork or shellfish or mixing fabrics? Kill people for having sex? Kill people for witchcraft? Beat your slaves with a rod no bigger than your thumb, and if they die after two days, you are not responsible? Kill all of the children in various wars? Take the young women as sex slaves? No. No. No. No. And no. This is frank barbarism, and unacceptable. The Christians say that Jesus did away with some of these rules (Jesus says that not a jot nor a tittle of the law would pass away, that he was there to fulfill the law, not to destroy it). Muslims still uphold most of it. Jews, well they claim it while ignoring everything but the silly and easy-to-keep parts. (No bacon.). Obviously I don't think that these are the words of God. And since in Malachi God says that he never changes, I don't believe that either. The Old Testament is history, but the things that God demands in it are, in many cases, completely immoral. I reject that God.
Jesus is better, but it depends on WHICH Jesus. Each of the Gospels and Revelation has a Jesus who is different, and Paul's Jesus is unrecognizable when compared to Mark's.
In summation, I don't give the Bible the authority you do. I don't think it is infallible or inerrant. I think it's a record. Of course, the Church hasn't been a great paragon of moral virtue either, with all of the burnings and the stake for crazy things like witchcraft, and all of the power and dominance. Lately, I have been unimpressed by the pedophilia of Catholic priests, and by all of the crazy snake-handling Protestants who oppose things like higher education or cancer treatments.
You don't like the way I look at the Bible, at the Church, and at what we know about God. To you, this means that I don't believe in God, because God and the Bible are inextricably linked in your mind. I don't believe much in the Bible, that's true, and I cast a very jaundiced eye at the churches because of all the bad they have done historically and continue to do today. I believe firmly in God, and take Jesus at his word when he says he will send the Holy Spirit to us. To me, the final authority on these things is not what Jesus is said to have said a couple of thousand years ago - I don't know for sure what he said, because I have five conflicting accounts (I personally think that Mark is closest to the truth, because of its age and other things I won't go into here), it's not what the Church or churches say (they are all over the place, and violent, and venal, and petty), and it's certainly not the Bible. It's what the Holy Spirit says to me right here, right now. THAT is right and true. In this respect, I suppose I am more like a Quaker than anything else. But the Quakers have a stupid dogma of absolute pacificism, and the Holy Spirit tells me that absolute pacificism does not work in a world where the wolves are at the door, and won't be killed with kindness.
I know you don't believe any of this. I don't like it when you level the accusation that I don't believe in Jesus or God because I don't believe as you do about a book. This is simply not true at all. But I also know that you think it is true. So I could get mad about it, or I could just shrug my shoulders at it and let you be you. As I get older, I try to do the latter.
Well, the dinosaurs lived millions of years before men, and died, and when men and animals eat plants, even before Adam and Eve fell, the plants died. So there was death before sin.
I reconcile what the Bible says to what happened by thinking that the Bible is telling a story for the purpose of teaching something, but that it is not literally true.
I'd be fine with that. But so many people have forced the conflict into my face and told me that No, I cannot be gentle with the text that way, I cannot read it as a metaphor, that I have to CHOOSE between accepting it all as literally true, or rejecting it all.
My answer to that is really "Who are you to pretend that you can demand such a thing?"
But my answer to other men, who anger me by their stance, is "Easy then, I reject it all."
I don't, really, but if my choice is between believing the inane, or believing the evidence that I trust, I'll choose the evidence and reject the inane. This is not something I actually do, internally, it is in response to the all-or-nothing approach of Protestants, which really strikes me as rather desperate and pathetic. I don't believe what they believe about the Bible. To THEM, this means that I can't believe anything. I do anyway. But in annoyance at being shoved into that stupid dichotomy, I'll tell them that I reject the Bible.
It is actually true to say that I understand the Bible to be what it is: a book, with contradictions and errors in it, but nevertheless something that carries in it some of what God said, and needing to be studied - carefully. If you take it literally, you will oppress women and burn witches, and it would be better to never have read it.
Certainly a very aged world and universe conflicts with an exacting literal read of the Bible. And since I think the world is very old, that inevitably diminishes in my mind any belief that the old parts of the Bible convey scientific truths about the origins of the world. Both beliefs cannot be righ
Yep
36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
So rather than carping about it, this is what I really believe:
We are spirits that inhabit bodies. When we die we leave our bodies and go on. Ten thousand consistent NDE's tell me this. About 10% of those NDE's are hellish, and those hellish experiences tend to skew heavily towards suicides, and towards people who consciously did hellish things on earth (murderers, rapists - not people who had illicit sex).
My own contacts with God confirm this basic structure. I'll call God "the Holy Spirit" to line it up with Christian thinking, so that others can understand what I say. To me, God is God.
I don't fear death, or worry about my "salvation" (meaning, my going into the light at the end), because I don't murder people, rape them or otherwise intentionally hurt them. I don't have guilt. Sex? Men care about sex. God doesn't. I don't like the endless whining about trans- issues, but to me sex is not the issue - I care as much about actual sex as YHWH did about male masturbation (wash whatever you get spooge on with water and be unclean until evening) or female masturbation (he did not care at all).
In terms of moral judgment, I rely on God (the Holy Spirit) who speaks directly to me. I recognize that I am more violent and implacable than God. God restrains my worse nature in that respect, and I listen to him, because he's God and I know it will be better for me if I do, rather than let my own anger carry me to extremes. I am a military man by training and at heart - I want to see my enemies DEAD. It is God who reminds me that what HE wants is reconciliation, where possible.
That's my religion. I listen to God.
I note that the Shroud of Turin really does seem to show a miracle, and so I allow that Jesus probably was resurrected, and was in some sense the Son of God. So I am drawn to know what he taught. I have every church, and practically every Christian, telling me Jesus taught me what THEY thing. And when I read the Bible for greater clarity, I find eight different Jesus' in the text: Mark's, Matthew's, Luke's, John's, Revelations', Paul's, James', and Peter's. Jude doesn't really talk about Jesus, but he talks about Enoch, which should (therefore) by all rights be included in the canon.
I see the conflicts between these Jesuses, which is to say, between what these men thought about Jesus, and what they asserted was the most important thing. I think that Mark's Jesus is the closest to what Jesus himself actually SAID (it is much closer in time to him, at least). Paul never met Jesus, so what Paul is giving us is his own view of God through his encounters with the Holy Spirit.
If I want to be inspired by Jesus, I read Mark, and I look for passages in the rest that don't conflict with what Jesus says in Mark. And that's as far as I can go.
For actual day to day living, I rely on the Holy Spirit, and do what it tells me is best.
You: According to scripute. begat begat....The earth is aprox 10 thousand years old. If you believe in science fiction and reject Christ. It is billions of years old. Do you go with Carville the athiest who thinks the Bible is a joke or the Bible?
Me: Ken Ham says the Universe is 6,000 years old.
You: No he doesn't. He says about 10 thousand.
Me: At 7:18 in the video he clearly says 6000 years.
Ken Ham does NOT say the earth is 10,00 years old. You are retarded and a liar.
Lucifer means light...so that is where you are going...to be with Lucifer.
Lucifer has tricked you...it wasn't hard for him to do. You want Lucifer instead of the omnipotent God of the Bible...and that is who you'll end up with.
I, on the other hand, want God (of the Bible) Who is Jesus Christ. I want God who created the world in 6 days. I want God Who created the teeming life forms of this earth. I want God to resurrect me from the misery and death of this life into His presence and show me an eternity of eye peeling adventure and never-ending happiness. It will be so glorious that mere words fall short of describing it.
You could have the God of the Bible too, but no, you sift through religious stuff looking for a god of your choosing, a god you can dictate to, because, well, you know better than God. You want a god who can't do much.
If you use the Massoretic text, the world ends up being about 6000 years old. If you use the Septuagint, the world ends up being about 10,000 years old. Jesus and the Apostles used the Septuagint, mostly.
What you want and what I want are irrelevant. I am interested in what IS.
I have seen much evidence, collected over a lifetime, that what I believe, is. That's why I believe it. I have no innate desire to believe in God; the evidence persuades me. By contrast, I have seen no evidence whatever, anywhere, that what you believe, is.
So, I have the evidence of my entire life, versus your angry, repetitive words.
I expect that, at the end, we will both go into the light.
You can turn to God and demand "What is HE doing here!"
What you will find is that my God is who you are speaking with. And that your God does not exist at all.
I have no innate desire to believe in God; the evidence persuades me.
I see no innate desire in you to know God. You cannot tell me much about God because you don't know Him or want to know Him. You only want to know a little about the god of your choosing.
Your god cannot create.
Your god causes no holy reverence in you.
Your god is who you say he/she/it is based on your whim at that moment.
If, in heaven, I see you and say "What is HE doing here!" it will be with shouts of great joy. I will be surprised, but I will celebrate for all eternity.
And if I don't see you there it will be the greatest of sorrow.
Well, the dinosaurs lived millions of years before men, and died, and when men and animals eat plants, even before Adam and Eve fell, the plants died. So there was death before sin.
I don't fear death, or worry about my "salvation" (meaning, my going into the light at the end), because I don't murder people, rape them or otherwise intentionally hurt them.
You sound like this
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
You are new age who tries to incorporate his beliefs into the Bible. You take your beliefs throw out 90 plus percent of the Bible and add what you want to it.
We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
I have faith that the evidence of my eyes, ears and mind do not deceive me, and that there may be something of value in the stories of primitive people, but not anything of scientific value.
I like Santa Claus, he's the spirit of Christmas, but I know he's not real.
The only thing I have that makes any of the stories in the Bible REAL is the Shroud of Turin, which contains a miracle, that points to Something inexplicable, supernatural, happening to Jesus' body. The Shroud points at a resurrection in great energy (maybe).
So, I have the resurrection, or the physical dissolution of his body, as the one scientifically demonstrable thing in the Bible. And THAT makes me focus on Jesus. Now, all I've got about what he said are the Gospels, and they contradict. So I look at the oldest gospel, Mark, the one closest in time to Jesus, and I read that as probably the most authentic. And I find (predictably) that the tales about Jesus get taller as we go down the line. The Jesus of Mark calls himself "Son of Man" and hides his divinity and miracles. The Jesus of John, written 70 years later, has Jesus proclaiming himself to be God, and the soldiers sent to arrest him falling back before him.
John tells a great story. So does Luke and Matthew and Mark. But they are all DIFFERENT stories, incompatible in the details. I choose Mark as the oldest and closest and probably most true.
But I only look at Mark at all, as opposed to just setting the New Testament on the same pile of tradition that I set the Old Testament, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, etc., BECAUSE of the physical evidence of the Shroud of Turin. Absent THAT, the only thing I have indicating it's true are people like Watchman, who is so unpleasant I wouldn't want to touch his "God" with a ten foot pole. Any God who causes people to be THAT NASTY to me, when I have never done them any harm at all, looks a lot more like some sort of demon from imaginary Hell. Christians very often make Christ absolutely repellent.
But I have that Shroud with that evidence of...resurrection? So I take Jesus seriously. And the spirit of God that speaks within me. And I inquire about that.
The Churches are no help. They're all out there denying the Shroud of Turin, or shrugging their shoiulders and saying it doesn't matter. But there's no science in those minds, just superstition and mean nastiness that, in early ages, burned witches and taught that blacks have the mark of cain, and all sorts of other evil superstition. Follow THAT? Fuck off.
I've got the Shroud, and I've got God, and I know there's an afterlife from 10,000 NDEs, and I know that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists go there. I know that some people go to hellish afterlives too.
the Bible is not a reliable authority on this to me - too much crazy, violent and evil things in it. But it does contain accounts of Jesus, who is on the Shroud, and who appears to have been...resurrected? Bodily dissolved? Whatever happened, it was a miracle. That makes him worth study. That does no recommend other stories in the Bible to me. They are stories. If I want to know about the origins of the earth, I will look to the evidences in the earth, not stories by ancients who knew nothing at all about it.
I have faith. But not much of it in an old book that I know is full of hooey. To a Protestant like you, that means that I don't believe in God, or have Jesus, and am doomed to Hell. You believe that, for whatever reason. I don't. And I'm certainly not going to be intimidated into it by madmen like watchman.
Yes. Thomas insisted on proof. Christ gave him the proof. And then Thomas believed.
He believed so fully that he went on to India alone, created the Christian community in India which endures to this day, and which was not discovered by the rest of Christendom until the Portuguese sailed there 1500 years later.
Thomas was martyred in India for his faith.
So yes, Thomas is the perfect example. "Show me!" he asked. And Jesus did.
So he went, alone, to another subcontinent, and, alone - no other apostle to support or help - created an intensely faithful Church that was found to burn brightly with the true faith when the other Christians finally caught up with them 1500 years later.
Jesus asks that we believe in something otherwise impossible. And he left the Shroud proving that it IS possible. Faithful people wrote conflicting things about him that can't all be simultaneously true. So I use my mind and rationally discern what is closest to the real Jesus, and that's Mark. I don't completely reject the rest, but I read it in light of Mark being the base of authority when they conflict (and they do). If I have some disciple of Christ demanding things of the faithful that differ from what Jesus said, I go with Jesus (sorry James, sorry John, sorry Jude, sorry Paul). Doesn't mean they're bad men, just means that they are substituting their own wills for Jesus.
I do that myself, when Jesus tells me that unless I hate my family and walk away and follow him, I'm not worthy of him. Well, then, I'm not worthy of him, if that's right, because I love my family and I'm not abandoning them for him. Asking me to choose, if you're really asking that, is asking too much on too flimsy evidence. Now, I don't really think you ARE asking that, but the book says you are. So I do what A K A Stone says I do: I substitute my own judgment for what is written in the Bible. And I don't have the.slightest twinge of guilt or concern about that.
Likewise, Jesus' whole war on thrift: don't save, don't store up, sell everything you have and give it all to the poor? No. I have a family to take care of, and if I were to give it all away like that, there would still be poor, and we would be part of the poor, and I would have made us that by following what I consider to be an unwise precept. Not doing it.
Paul asks me to be a misogynist, but Jesus let women teach (example: the woman at the well). I go with Jesus and dismiss Paul.
Paul hates gays. Jesus said nothing about them. I'm going with Jesus.
Paul says that long hair on a man is disgraceful. Jesus had long hair (per the Shroud). Once again,, sorry Paul, you're full of your Roman culture there, but not speaking for God.
Jesus advises self-mutilation to avoid sin (in Mark and Matthew). I read that as hyperbole, and even if it isn't, no Jesus, I'm not doing that.
Jesus says that divorce and remarriage is adultery in three of the Gospels. And perhaps it is. But as to the woman caught in adultery, he said "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone", and that he didn't condemn her either. So, if people need to commit adultery by divorcing and remarrying, that is their business. The Catholic Church position is untenable. Yes, Jesus said it. He also forgave the woman caught in adultery. So if you have to get divorced because of an abusive husband or wife, do it, get the hell out of there, and Jesus will understand and forgive you - even if Churches who should, won't.
Yes, I do pick and choose, based on reason and compassion. Where people in the Bible say insane and violent things, they can go pack sand. Where Jesus demands me to leave my family and hate them to follow him, he can go pack sand. No.
If you don't believe in that, then you don't believe in the book of Mark either.
Well, if that REALLY is the choice, between believing Genesis is science and what Jesus says in Mark, or believing neither, then I'm going with neither.
As you point out, the Shroud of Turin isn't in the Bible (actually, it IS, the burial cloth is mentioned in all four gospels), and it's the only evidence I have for anything miraculous about Jesus.
So,if I took your position, I'd put the Bible down and stop talking about it. I don't think it's a choice I have to make. You clearly do. Put to that choice, I'll set down the Bible and walk away from it. If one part being wrong makes the whole thing wrong - not my philosophy but yours - then the whole thing is dragged down by its contradictions and errors.
Not much for us to talk about without the Bible. So, good day!