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Don't you know, only the *specialists* can ever know what the Bible says, and the rest of us better just shut up and accept it. No matter how stupid the *specialist's* interpretations.

As far as I can tell, the only specialty that Matchett-PI has mastered is the art of the ad hominem and making up false quotes and attributing them to evolutionists.

As far as I can tell, the only specialty that Matchett-PI has mastered is the art of the ad hominem and making up false quotes and attributing them to evolutionists.

That's all covered in CREO-101. Required before proceeding into the regular CREO curriculum. However, based on documented life experience of at least 25 FR posts containing a minimum of 14 lies of which at least one is not discovered by other FR'ers, you may be exemptet from the course.

"Don't you know, only the *specialists* can ever know what the Bible says, and the rest of us better just shut up and accept it. No matter how stupid the *specialist's* interpretations. As far as I can tell, the only specialty that Matchett-PI has mastered is the art of the ad hominem and making up false quotes and attributing them to evolutionists." - CarolinaGuitarman

Sorry, but these are the facts:

"...Whenever you run across any person who criticizes the Bible, claims findings of contradiction or error -- they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. ... Here's why:

It doesn't take very long to realize that a thorough understanding of the Bible -- and this would actually apply to any complex work from any culture -- requires specialized knowledge, and a broad range of specialized knowledge in a variety of fields.

Obviously the vast majority of believers spend their entire lives doing little more than reading the Bible in English (or whatever native tongue) and importing into its words whatever ideas they derive from their own experiences. This process is very often one of "decontextualizing" -- what I have here called "reading it like it was written yesterday and for you personally." Of course if the church as a whole is locked into this mentality, you may well suspect that critics (whether Skeptics or other) and those in alternate faiths are no better off.

Let's anticipate and toss off the obvious objection: "Why did God make the Bible so hard to understand, then?" It isn't -- none of this keeps a person from grasping the message of the Bible to the extent required to be saved; where the line is to be drawn is upon those who gratuitously assume that such base knowledge allows them to be competent critics of the text, and make that assumption in absolute ignorance of their own lack of knowledge -- what I have elsewhere spoken of in terms of being "unskilled and unaware of it."

And is my observation to this effect justified? Well, ask yourself this question after considering what various fields of knowledge a complete and thorough (not to say sufficient for intelligent discourse, though few even reach that pinnacle, especially in the critical realm) study of the Bible requires: [snip]

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