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Exactly. One can argue through eternity from a literal understanding of the Bible and never reach this truth. Hell is a metaphor for regeneration. As with all metaphors, this doesn't dismiss a literal application, it merely moves it to a more accurate spiritual venue. Sinners are "punished"...

Here y'are, getcher book to teach those little kiddies all about God's plan to throw them away if they don't get outa that cage, on sale now, step right up and fork over those dollars, teach the young'uns all about the wonderful doctrine of hell! Praise Geeezus!

I agree in essence with the thoughts in the op, though the spirit spoken of isn't particularly 'end times' as it's had ebb and tide throughout history. Much of the problem today is that most Christians no longer want to hear talk about sin. I still like to hear a "fire and brimstone" sermon...

I call the metaphoric standard of interpretation a "standard" because it's able to provide a consistent reading of the Bible with respect to salvation. The same principle of interpretation that moves sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good figs and bad from representing individual people to...

I define existence as 'having the capacity (information) to in-form a perceiving mind'. I also agree with BabylonWeary's comment, "Without truth, there is no meaning to the word at all...", or that there's no meaning to information (and therefore existence) without possession of quality, either...

What does it mean to you that Truth is 'self authenticating'? Do you reject the Bible's authenticity because it doesn't seem true to you?

The reason I give little attention to claims like this is when I weigh concepts like this and the concepts of the Bible with reality, those of the Bible ring true with everyday life. Truth is the two-edged sword in Christ's mouth, the sword all falsified humans hate (religious and non-religious...

What are your motives for understanding that truth "can only be had from within"?

Does the statement correspond to an instance of unicorn? I don't know what you mean by 'truth substance'. Truth is a quality, it's an essence. In his Introduction to Philosophical Problems, Joseph Margolis, speaking to the difference between "...the nature of numbers and...of fictions and...

Assuming the view of truth presented in the op and assuming there exists in biological entities a “life force” I’ll call spirit, it seems justified to make a distinction of the appearance of what I’ll call the soul or intellect in humans as, at minimum, a higher quantity or quality of spirit...

Take rest that all will be saved ranes1. The Bible is a spiritual book that contains literal and metaphoric meaning. Notice in the post before yours how Der Alter brushed off 1Tim 2:4 as "...not the only verse in the Bible", a comment that has no valid meaning in a discussion about the truth...

But this is an emotional appeal. Atheists make "sweeping generalisations" all the time about theists. Liberals make sweeping generalisations about conservatives and vice versa. What really matters in serious discussion is whether statements are true or false. The term "sweeping...

A pet peeve of mine is that atheists and fundamentalist Christians try to force their rules on others as though those rules have the power to dictate what arguments others can use or how we should believe. Epistemology is, from my layman’s point of view, a really interesting field of study. It...

I disagree. You’re certainly free to hold the belief that there are no correct answers or definitions but this seems to me just word play. We all proceed through life on the basis that there are correct answers, or at least answers that contain high degrees of correctness, and we approach it...

Yes, it's methodological naturalism....into which arena the atheist demands the theist discuss religion. Keep on freethinking...

Most information can be falsified, but not all. Theoretically information that exists in space and time is subject to falsification because material stuff is mutable. Falsification is a mutation of truth; we have a multiplicity of informational "parts", hence value-fragmentation. I mentioned...

But this is atheist circularity. The atheist says to the theist, "Come, let us argue our cases together. The rules are, only things in space and time exist. Now then, come, tell me all about your God!" If you get to set the rules, you'll "win" every time. So much for the 'freethinker' title.

I think you're right. Because truth is an abstraction, proofs for or against it seem to be principally logical. But flip side of the coin, if everything exists in a value-fragmented state, our existence, that of other agents and our contact with real things in both material and supernatural...

How are relations like coherence, unity, harmony, etc. able to have a generally universal base of appeal? If truth is decided by the intellect and there are millions of intellects with different ideas, then truth is decided by and applicable to each person. In other words isn't this a...

So in your view is truth something only in the mind about something instead of a quality in the thing being referenced?