Cloudyday, Scriptures have meanings and the meanings have Scriptures. Too few christians use cross-references which are the Bible's "intranet".
Words (in every context) allude: when several statements and meanings intersect, we can equate.
There are definitely a lot of unpleasant "christians" around.
In the event Jonah had been in a coma in trapped gastric gas in some large creature (the "Big Burp Theory") something like 26 hours could qualify as "three days and three nights".
Debate about the species Jonah may or may not have got swallowed by doesn't affect Holy Spirit power for potentising the gift of our brother, so that he can mature in adversity.
Jesus called the Pharisees Assyrian-like in their superiority. Jonah was the triumphal prophet of a triumphal king and the story was that when the ship's crew (agnostics of the day) intuited that he was refusing to do something unhabitual for his own growth (give the worst enemy a chance) (in other words he had to square something he was refusing to square) they wanted to throw him overboard but were intent on exploring humane alternatives first, for their own consciences. The story portrays them as at once superstitious and addressing the God of Jonah: at any rate it is the meaning that was uppermost.
Who knows he didn't come by his injuries some other way?
When Jesus says he will only give this generation that sign He means some churches and some church people are Assyrian like in their hostility to those they consider inferior to them (including some other believers).
Gen 1 v 2 to end of chapter portrays as far back as people could remember but intends the meaning of creation to be
hung onto it.
In post 275 of the flat earth thread (
) I delineated some of my views about science.
For me, a major chunk of evidence for God is His action in some human individual personalities. This kind of evidence seems to not be within the spectrum of the non-individuating nor individuating sciences except if maybe when experienced pastors trace what is happening to their fellows (something pastoral?) Hence inference and falsifiability only work if you know the criteria and then not if a person doesn't "let off" enough for us to go on.
When we have a relationship with Jesus, continuing to receive meaning through Scriptures is part of that. Almost all Scripture has several layers of meaning. This is how we can test for ourselves (existential inference) the quality of any "secret knowledge" some church teachers may wish to imply (I've followed some rum ones most of my life).
I hope people with experience in these areas will join in.
Over 99% of what one hears about this topic is so facile, thank you Cloudyday for raising it. I am comfortable that you may not believe you will intend to change your various viewpoints.
I'm not an evangelist and I think truly solid evangelising has been neglected. It's
not about "making" people lose arguments.
