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In reading some of your previous posts, I had the impression that you were a serious person.
Your attempt to set -up a straw man argument here, disabuses me of this notion.
On this entire thread, most of the Roman Catholics are routinely smug and frankly, ridiculous.
The character named Salty Joe mixes the KKK, George Bush and Calvin into a lunatic brew.
The man who calls himself Cronos puts Bible believing Christians with Moslems rather stupidly.
And you make a false statement about how my position does not allow for any textual understanding of the Holy Bible because I do not agree that brothers and sisters means not brothers and sisters.
You know that you are simply avoiding the facts that I offer. I do not ask that you agree with my belief. Frankly, I agree that these are things that are debated, as are all the major theological differences between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Your tactics are easy , cheap and false.

In reading some of your previous posts, I had the impression that you were a serious person. Your attempt to set -up a straw man argument here, disabuses me of this notion.

You are the one attempting to set up strawmen. A very simple point about Semitic languages and what they may have meant by the terms that were translated into English becomes, to you, an attempt to say that we say the entire Bible is therefore unintelligble.

The man who calls himself Cronos puts Bible believing Christians with Moslems rather stupidly.

No, he merely pointed out that Islam began as a Christian heresey, exposing the historical ignorance of a "Bible" Christian.

And you make a false statement about how my position does not allow for any textual understanding of the Holy Bible because I do not agree that brothers and sisters means not brothers and sisters.

Why didn't you say that, instead of:

To make a snide comment about how the reader does not understand the terminology used in the Middle East is rather lame. If this is a prerequisite, then the whole Bible- thing is out since it is kind of based there and the terminology of THE ENTIRE THING would be , in your view, unintelligible.

In this passage you make no attempt to make a linguistic argument about what the words may mean. Instead, you call a Catholic pointing out that the words are not original in the English and may have a different meaning "snide" and "lame."

So who's using cheap tactics?

You then use the word "prerequisite" and dismiss the notion that one needs to have a knowledge of the original languages in some places to help us understand the English. You jump from there to saying that if we ask others to consider what the original words in some key sections mean, this means we are saying the entire Bible is unintelligible in English.

You know that you are simply avoiding the facts that I offer.

What facts have you offered? Do you mean this?

However, Islam holds this position, it is mentioned in the quran (3:47) that Mary remained a virgin, unlike the heretics who cannot understand the middle-eastern conotation of Matthew 1:25 and Luke 2:7 and come away thinking that the words mean what they say.

Pardon me for thinking this through, but it seems if other Semitic people can follow the language and conclude that Mary was a perpetual virgin this actually argues for our interpretation of the text and against your "plain English" methodology.

Your tactics are easy , cheap and false.

I merely returned what I saw from you.

Bainbridge -- I merely point out that the fashion of taking random verses from the Bible and quoting them out of context leads to fallacy -- take Paul saying that Wives should submit to their husbands. Even a non-feminist would bristle at that if JUST THAT WAS QUOTED. but the verse goes on to say that husbands should love their wives like their own bodies. It implies a partnership if read IN WHOLE and IN CONTEXT. Ditto with Semitic culture and language -- taking snapshots leads to fallacies -- the commonest one being what I pointed out about Christ's brothers and sisters. Islam falls into the same problem -- Mohammed seems to have mixed up Revelations with the Gospels when he talks about Christ's birth -- Mohammed thought that Christ was born in a desert far away from everyone. See -- we mortals make mistakes. That's ok, we are mortals after all, but leading people to follow our mistakes is really bad.