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"In other words, "Shut your mouth (and mind) and believe what I say!!" You are blowing smoke." ~ CarolinaGuitarman

Is that what you thought I posted? Let's see if any logical person would think your translation is accurate, or just blowing smoke. Here it is again:

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."

"Is that what you thought I posted?"

It's EXACTLY the message of the text you copied. Nobody can question obvious inconsistencies in the Bible because only the select *specialists* can ever know what the Bible really means. It sounds like Tom Cruise telling Matt Lauer that he (Lauer) didn't REALLY know the history of psychiatry, that only scientologists like Cruise truly understood. It's the same thing. Like Scientology though, Creationism is the emperor with no clothes.

So no, we won't shut up and let someone else dictate to us what the *truth* is when it flies in the face of the physical evidence.

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."

BAM!

I think we are far more knowledgeable on the Bible than you are on evolution. Fairs fair. If you mean what you said, I expect to never see you post on evolution again. Thank you.