on 27/11/02 5:58 pm, Reggie Bautista at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > William T Goodall wrote: >>>> No, all lies are still evil. > > I replied: >>> Fiction is a form of creative lying (fictional stories are, by >> definition, >>> not true, and anything not true must be a lie, right?). So is fiction >> evil? > > William responded: >> Lie - a false statement made with the intention of deceiving: anything >> misleading or of the nature of imposture. >> >> Fiction doesn't pretend to be true, and therefore isn't a lie. > > Not all Christians are fundamentalists who insist on the literal truth of > the Bible. Many Christians interpret most of the stories in the bible as > parable and metaphor. > > Therefore, for those people, the Bible doesn't lie. > > And if it turns out that portions of the New Testament are literal truth > (portions, because it can't *all* be true -- it contradicts itself), then > the Bible doesn't lie.
That would mean that portions of it weren't lies, not all of it. > > The only people for whom the Bible is a lie are the people who insist that > it is literal truth, and those fundamentalists are obviously misled anyway, > because the Bible can't *possibly* all be literal truth, as evidenced by the > contradictions I mentioned above. > > If you take issue with fundamentalists, I'm right there with you 100%. If > you take issue with all Christians because the Bible is not 100% literal > truth, then you are making a straw man arguement. Some Anglican clergy in England (or so I have heard) have the position that the Bible is parable and metaphor, that some of the historical events *may* have taken place (although that doesn't really matter), but that none of the miracles actually happened, that there was no actual resurrection, that Jesus (if he was a historical figure) was not literally the son of God (since God doesn't literally exist) and so on. Under this interpretation the Bible could be interpreted as not making any counterfactual claims and therefore possibly not lying. But I don't think that is the interpretation of all Christians who are not fundamentalists. -- William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
