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It would have been nice if you had asked these questions at the beginning instead of making demonstrably false assumptions accompanied by multiple tangents that took us far away from the subject matter at hand. "If you reject PFAL as God-breathed on any basis," vs. "If you reject PFAL on any basis." You can reject PFAL as God-breathed without rejecting PFAL. I dare say many of us found ourselves in that position most of the time. I certainly did. I thought PFAL was quite valuable in attempting to understand the Bible and God. But I never thought it was God-breathed, and certainly not by its own "definition." So yes, there is an enormous difference between "rejecting PFAL as God-breathed" and "rejecting PFAL." In this thread I am specifically focusing on the idea that PFAL is God-breathed, and the basis on which we reject that thesis. Do we have to define God-breathed to continue the conversation? Sort of. If you're going to accept one document as God-breathed and reject another, then it's axiomatic that you are using some criterion (or criteria) to make that assessment, some standard that you apply to both documents to find one worthy and the other wanting. You, for example, do not consider either "God-breathed" in any sense defined by PFAL. You do find the Bible historically valuable in a way that you do not find PFAL. I could go through your posts and explain how you inadvertently proved my point more than once. Do you believe in a being called God? Do you believe He is a person, or an idea? Do you believe in Him as Creator? A Father of Jesus Christ? Do you believe He inspired the writing of the Bible? If so, what does "inspired" mean to you? Do you reject PFAL as similarly "inspired"? Why? History does nothing to address the question because the Quran shaped history. The Iliad and the Odyssey shaped history. Lots of books shaped history. The claim that the Bible is inspired by God has to do with its origin and integrity, not its role in history. The Magna Carta had a profound effect on history. No one is arguing that it's therefore God-breathed or inspired of God. My position: If you are going to reject PFAL as "inspired of God" or "God-breathed," and you are going to say the Bible is uniquely inspired of God, I submit it's incumbent on you to explain the basis of your reasoning. And I submit that if you apply the same scrutiny to the Bible that you apply to PFAL, you would be compelled to some to the conclusion that neither is God-breathed, however you define it. Do YOU believe the Bible is God-breathed? If not, there is nothing to discuss. If so, how do YOU define God-breathed? And on what basis do you reject PFAL? I'm not going to presume what you believe about divine inspiration.

"God breathed" does not mean perfect unless you want it to. Of course, if it means perfect, it is as easy to show the Bible is not God breathed as it is to show PFAL is not God breathed. But I submit that if you reject PFAL as god-breathed on any basis, that basis, when applied to the Bible, will disqualify it as well.

Good heavens, mark the time. He won't be right again for another 12 hours.

Is it multisyllabic words? Is that what stumps you? When you hear "Good morning," do you get upset because it's not morning in Japan? Unless it is morning in Japan? When you watch Law & Order, do you get worked up because police departments aren't necessarily "law" and courts are not necessarily "order"? Do you park on parkways and drive on driveways because that's what they're named dammit!?

Seriously guys. Seriously. How the F!@! am i supposed to have an intelligent conversation with someone showing such a deliberate lack of intelligence. How? HOW?

I would sincerely like to know, Bolshevik, why you are so passionate about derailing every damn concersation we have. People accept the Bible as God-breathed and don't accept PFAL as the same. Not one person accepts the Magna Carta as God-breathed, but dammit you HAD to ask about the Magna Carta to make some esoteric point that the document exists WHICH WAS NEVER IN QUESTION. You SERIOUSLY need to get the flip off threads I start because you clearly lack the skill to engage without going off on irrelevant tangents. eNOUGH already. Damn.

Again with the f'ing babbling. Dude, enough.

No. No he did not. And he TOLD us as much when he said he no longer believed the words Holy or Bible on the cover of the book. From that point on, every. single. thing. he. dud. was. a. self-serving. con.

For those who ached for an end to this thread: You're welcome.

That really is the key question, isn't it? But there seems to be passionate agreement that WHATEVER God-breathed means, PFAL does not qualify. How do we proceed? Define God-breathed first [a scriptural term, not one invented by a cult]? Or propose a standard first? Either way works with me. One makes a right turn and the other makes three lefts.

Stepping back: by what standard do you reject PFAL as "God-breathed," however you define that term? And are you willing to apply that same standard to the 66 books that make up the Holy Bible?

It's part of it. Maybe a jumping off point. But it's more complicated than that. Because all that establishes is that PFAL must be wrong about what it means to be God-breathed. If so, by what standard can anyone reject PFAL as God-breathed? And what happens when you apply that same standard to the Bible? For example: The history of the Khazars in Eastern Europe as presented in JCOP [borrowed with proper attribution from Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe] is demonstrably and dangerously false. It's presented as history, but it's not. Not by a longshot. Does the fact that PFAL contains a discredited "history" disqualify it as God-breathed? If so, hold the Bible's beer!

no, you're good. thx

The alphabet probably makes no sense to you. That does not confer upon me the burden of explaining it to you.

To be abundantly clear: NO SUCH THING IS BEING IMPLIED. Now I have to discuss the difference between this batcrap stupid extrapolation of my point abd my point itself. Because that's what Bolshevik does in every @#$!ing conversation. I am tired of clearing up every misconception that he introduces in response to everything I post. E flipping nuff

Bolshevik obsesses over definitions and alternative definitions and esoteric definitions to which he and only he subscribes in order to make a reasonable duscussion impossible. By the time you're done chasing his red herrings the original point of the thread and conversation are long lost.

Bolshevik, Everyone understands my terms but you. Stop derailing the thread. If someone says they didn't know VPW was a sex predator, the burden would be on me to prove that person DID know. Otherwise the best I could do is demonstrate that the person could have or should have known. Which has nothing to do with scripture being God-breathed. Again you are derailing the conversation with a tangent to satisfy your obsession with defining the terms of a discussion to the point of making said discussion impossible. You're not being targeted. Your bulls hit tactic of derailing every damn thread is being called out

Your comment appears to be directed at me and I am pretty sure that is in error

Stop derailing the thread

The game is you babbling to derail the thread and me refusing to participate in it. Stop. Derailing. The. Thread.

I can't believe this needs to be said to someone with a measurable IQ, but I'll try: The role of the Bible in the development of Western Civilization is not in any way, shape or form dependent on the Bible being "God-breathed" by any definition. It is therefore IRRELEVANT to this discussion, which, I assume, is the reason it enthralls you so much, because there is NOTHING you enjoy more than exploring an issue to death that is completely UNRELATED TO THE TOPIC AT HAND. While we're at it, "God-breathed" in the sense of the Genesis account of the creation of Adam, is not related to God-breathed in the discussion of inspiration of Scripture, but since you so thoroughly enjoy derailing conversations so that we exhaust ourselves chasing your red herrings to your satisfaction, it has to be discussed here and now. Stop. Derailing. This. Thread.

I rest my case.

Bolshevik, I'm going to try to be polite here: You derail threads with a skill that puts Mike to shame by trying to reduce everything to definitions that YOU accept, many of which have NOTHING to do with how the rest of the world defines those terms. It is exhausting and has derailed EVERY SINGLE conversation you and I have had. I'm not putting up with it again. "Rebuild all of society" to escape that I just wrote? That's absurd. And I will not have this thread derailed before it's even had a chance to start just because you aqre determined to make every thread about your inability to draw a straight line from one concept to the next. Enough. If you don't understand the points being raised, sit back and enjoy the conversation among those of us who do. Somebody had to say it.

I tended to use PFAL's definitions of the characteristics of God-breathed scripture, as they were the only ones for which we all had a common frame of reference. Whether a scripture can be "God-breathed" and not have those characteristics is a whole other issue. I think if anyone is going to make a case that a work is God-breathed, it's incumbent on that person to define it in a way that's falsifiable. You don't get to just say "It's God-breathed and you can't prove it's not." You have to prove it IS. That's how burden of proof works. If you make an affirmative claim, the burden is on you to prove it. Give PFAL credit for defining the characteristics of the God-breathed word, even if you don't agree with it. PFAL does not live up to those characteristics. Neither does the Bible. If you have an alternate set of characteristics, I'm happy to entertain them. If you have a definition of God-breathed we can explore, I'm happy to explore it.

Originally posted in the Absent Christ thread... There is no basis for rejecting PFAL as God-breathed that does not apply equally to scriptures that have been considered God-breathed since there was a canon.