Bible Questions?

I really don't know I'm only speculating.
But it seems to me that if we consider God the standard of perfection, and then we consider two people who have never sinned but obviously had the capacity to sin, it seems a bit off to call them perfect.

 

Not to mention the fact that there's no evidence outside the Bible that people ever had those kinds of lifespans and every indication that they didn't. The notion of thousand year old people seems to me to be in the same category as talking snakes (of course the snake could talk; he was Satan and Satan is magic. Of course Santa can come down chimneys; he's Santa he's magic too; and is it just a coincidence that their names are so similar?) We have a choice of saying the Bible is right and science is wrong, or that science is right and the Bible (literally interpreted) is wrong. I go with the latter view or rephrasing it: science is right and the Bible (metaphorically/historically interpreted is also right--a win-win situation for both of us.

 

You say they never sinned? Wouldn't that make them sinless, seems Jesus was sinless and people called him perfect, wouldn't that seem to imply that sinlessness is considered prefect by the God of the Bible?

 

I think the whole "people lived longer because they were holier" is an extremely unhealthy attitude. How can we say that "sin" causes us to die when death is a necessary part of life? Everything must be in balance. Imagine if nothing ever died. What kind of world would we have? And so we get this attitude that death results from evil....
The only cause of death is physical manifestation itself.

It's just an all around weird concept. People are living longer today than they did in the 1920s, and I'm pretty sure it isn't because we are holier today.

 

I said they never sinned yet.

 

You asked the question;

So I elaborated and provided some support. If you don't like the answer, fine.

As for your saying; "science is right and the Bible (metaphorically/historically interpreted is also right--a win-win situation for both of us.", what if science is wrong, it has been in the past? Then it would be a lose-lose situation for you, because then you've been changing the meaning of the Bible to fit human thinking and by the time you find out, you might be a long way down the wrong path.

 

and that would make them without sin.

 

and they sinned.
Don't you see a contradiction there?
Take Jesus for example.
Do you really think he lived his life constantly on the verge of sinning, constantly thinking about it, but never DOING it?
It just isn't compatible. Actual actions aren't the only thing that matter.
In order to be sinless, one would have to reflect the qualities of "sinless" in thought, word, AND deed, and since Adam and Eve eventually sinned anyways, it must have been somewhere in their heads the whole time anyways.

 

I wonder what liberal Christians have to say concerning the numerous prophecies being fulfilled to the letter. Even the part where it mentions by name the king that would free the Jewish slaves and help them to rebuild Solomon's temple. It seems that this is just shrugged off as either an extremely lucky guess or a mere coincidence, or something along the lines of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread.

 

That isn't how I read it.

To me, he was someone was trying tempting him, or trying to goad him into doing it, but he wasn't actually tempted to do it.

I mean seriously, this is the one and only great son of god (HALLELUJAH) we are talking about here guys. You think he is standing around back in the day thinking "Yeah...maybe I really should turn these stones into bread...hehe, that'll show him....yeah..."

 

It's not exactly a question of not "liking" the answer. It's that the answer doesn't seem to be supportable. As far as I can tell, you're just parroting the Bible, when the issue is the reliablility of the Bible. Is there any evidence other than the Bible for the notion that people lived longer once upon a time than they do today, and that this is because they were closer to perfection? I don't even think the Bible supports that position. It certainly doesn't state it. It's your speculative inference, like the inferences scientists make from fossil or embryological evidence to the theory of evolution. So you also might be a long way down the wrong path.

 

No one said anything about living longer because of being holier and have no idea where you came up with it.

As for sin causing death, the Bible says at Romans 5:12 That is why, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned—. . .

As was discussed before people are "living longer", not because their life spans have increased but because more people are living later in life, for example if in a group of 100 if 99 live to 50 and one lives to 100 the average live span is about 50 but if you take that same 100 and 99 live to 100 and only one dies at 50 the average life span is about 100 but but the length of the longest life span has not increased.

 

being holier as in being closer to perfection.
wow, you sure are one for semantics, huh..

........what?

if the average life span goes from 50 to 100, then yes, more people are living longer, lol.

 

I had the same impression neo did. You were talking about people back then being closer to perfection. Or are we playing one of your word games where closer to perfection doesn't mean holier?

I thought Paul was talking about spiritual death. Do you actually believe that the reason people die is because they sin? Does the same thing hold true of other animals?

But you're saying there once was a time when people lived to be 1000? And this is based not on empirical evidence, but on the Bible which is a more reliable source? Why do you want to believe the Bible is more reliable? I know, it was written by God. But why do you want to believe that?

 

Contradiction? A person who has never sinned is sinless and a person who has sinned is no longer sinless. That seems pretty straight forward.

The only problem you seem to have is that you think sinless means something more than not having sinned and that being a perfect human some how involves not being able to make a mistake but it only means they have not made any mistakes.

No but that doesn't make him incapable of sinning.

While that is true, you can't get arrested for what you're thinking.

Actually no, God does not require perfection in thought, God does not police our thoughts. As for sin being in their thoughts the Bible does not indicate that sin was in their thoughts.

 

Last time I looked, this thread was called Bible questions, not Bible reliability. That means that the Bible will be used to answer questions people have about what the Bible says. So of Course I'm just "parroting" the Bible, that's kind of the idea, to see what the Bible says about things.

And yes from time to time I do make inferances from what the Bible says but when I do, I always try to indicate it by saying so. Such is the case with this subject.

 

Is Jesus Christ and Yeshua one in the same?

 

Yeah, because cops can't read minds.

I am saying that what you think is reflected in your actions. Thought, word, and deed. All of these things build off of each other. You can't live an entire life free of sin and constantly be thinking of "evil" things inside your head. It's a package deal.

 

And this could very well be true but at least I'll be there because I trusted Bible and not science, which no one argues is anything but man's thoughts.