How should a "Christian" deal with "heretics"?

cvanwey said:

Of course it is, because you refuse to even acknowledge my very last point

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ToBeLoved said:

Honestly, atheists on this thread are not very good.

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ToBeLoved said:

We never started a conversation.

You never addressed my point that you have no valid theological argument.

It’s really simple and somehow hard for you to understand. Go see the definition of apologetics. This is not rocket science

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cvanwey said:

But is it intellectually honest to state you believe in a resurrection, even if the evidence does not seem to follow as such, just like the many whom don't believe in a flood claim, because the evidence does not follow as such?

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ToBeLoved said:

Because you have made no valid claim that I need to defend my faith from.

Get out your Bible and make a valid Biblical claim.

I can’t help if you want to talk physical science. Show me that it is proven geographically that there has never been a flood.

Right. You can’t.

Your not challenging the Bible. Go get out your Bible.

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Petros2015 said:

I think it is - in my case I feel like there is comparitively good evidence of a resurrection occurring (which involves 1 person) vs the global flood (which involves the whole planet and every species on it) and has (to my thinking) very little positively weighing evidence and a lot of negatively weighing evidence.

On the side of the resurrection, from a completely impersonal surface view, there's 2000 years of Christendom, churches everywhere, still worshipping the event. SOMETHING appears to have happened. And then a bunch of Jewish fisherman start something that is still going, enduring through Roman oppression.

I don't think Jewish fishermen normally do or are capable of this sort of thing. Not unless they meet God and God gives them an awful lot of help.

I'm pretty sure they stay in Israel and fish.

I am not a biblical literalist, or sola scriptura though. I think it is probably the best written account of that SOMETHING that happened? I consider the Bible to be pointing to the infallible, but not infallible itself as a whole as far as being a guide to human history or cosmolology.

There is the question of human nature too. I'm pretty convinced that if Christ appeared and didn't defend himself, and spoke Truth, He would be killed (in any age, by any people, by the powers that be). That part of story, the part about human nature, seems to be True. At least, it has been from my own personal experience.

So, I needed for the rest of it to be True too. And the more I followed it, the Truer Christ got.

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cvanwey said:

You have again navigated directly around my repeated point(s). Which is...

It is inconsistent for individuals to accept a resurrection claim, but reject a flood claim; being both claims apparently came from the same authority?

Furthermore, you are requesting the exact opposite of my request. Which is...

The Bible IS the claim. Why would I get out my Bible to prove this claim, unless you are claiming the Bible does not assert a flood?

My initial question to you was what references support the Biblical claim, outside the assertion from the Bible? The onus is on you, if you assert the flood actually happened. Once you provide a reference, which appears to support a flood claim, then we can discuss. In the mean time, I state there exists no evidence to support such a positive claim.

I am not able to provide evidence of absence

1. So until you present a rationale as to why it is not inconsistent for individuals to accept a resurrection claim, but reject a flood claim - being that both claims apparently came from the same authority.

And...

2. Provide an apparent valid source to support the claim from the Bible, because you cannot use the claim to prove the claim....

Then yes, we are finished...

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Freodin said:

Consider the following analogy.
You have a family gathering. I am just a neighbor, over the street. Now your crazy uncle starts to spread vile slanderous lies about me.
I don't like that. I come over to your gathering and ask the people: hey, you claim to be such nice loving people... and here in your midst is someone who lies about others. What are you going to do about that?

The response that I get is basically: We? Nothing! It's not our job. He's family. You are not. His lies about you don't bother us. We don't care about that, we have other topics that are important to us. What are you even doing here, attacking us?

Do you think I should see that as "caring about me"?

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ToBeLoved said:

I’ve tagged you for prayer .

I am going to pray for you that God shows you His Truth.

May the Lord God Almighty bless you with His wisdom and grace.

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Freodin said:

I find it amazing how you are able to equate "worshipping God" with "lying about other people". It tells me quite a lot about your faith.

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cvanwey said:

I would assume you believe Jesus is God. So before the trinity, God commanded a flood. If you half way acknowledge that evidence leads to the contrary, regarding a claimed flood, then I find your last statement in direct conflict:

'So, I needed for the rest of it to be True too. And the more I followed it, the Truer Christ got.'

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cvanwey said:

Intellectual honesty does not mean that something is true because you want it to be. It means you instead follow the evidence, and accept the conclusion, where ever that may actually lead. So we appear to have an conflict. God asserted both stories, and one of them appears to not be substantiated. And the other, being the resurrection, is not falsifiable.

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Petros2015 said:

I'll do better than that. I'll 99.9999% acknowledge that evidence leads to the contrary. There might be some out there which is credible that I am not aware of. And maybe I'm wrong, there is perhaps I feel a slim chance that I am, but I think it's on the order of a mega-millions chance. The supporting evidence in favor of a flood of the scale described, so far as I know, consists entirely of 3 chapters in the first part of this funny little book.



It does leave a bit of a dilemma. Because of it, I considered burning the whole book for a while. In the end, I decided not to. It contained too much that I do consider truth and too much that I loved.

Hopefully, God will feel the same way about me.

I will say this. You can, if you choose, investigate the flood from a scientific and empirical level and (I think) you will almost certainly find it to be false. You can also, if you choose, investigate Christ from a personal and spiritual level using the Gospels and prayer as a guide, and I think you will find Him to be true.

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” -Herbert Spencer

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Freodin said:

I wouldn't dare to assume that I could define who is who... but I guess you Christians of all stripes have no problems with that.

So how do you suppose to deal with someone who teaches a "false" version of Christianity? Would it matter if it was a "false" version of "basic doctrine" or just different interpretations of "marginal details"?

I have heard that Christians should not correct their fellow believers "in public"... so that unbelievers can see the differences that exists between them. (Oh my, we would need to be so blind not to notice. )
But what about when a fellow believer teaches his "false doctrines" to unbelievers? Do you have a duty to correct them, so that the unbelievers do not get a wrong image of your religion?

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• But Irenaeus, in the first book of his work Against Heresies, illustrates to us some more abominable false doctrines of the same man, and in the third book relates a story which deserves to be recorded. He says, on the authority of Polycarp, that the apostle John once entered a bath to bathe; but, learning that Cerinthus was within, he sprang from the place and rushed out of the door, for he could not bear to remain under the same roof with him. And he advised those that were with him to do the same, saying, "Let us flee, lest the bath fall on account of the presence of Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, who is within."

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  • Irenaeus wrote several letters against those who were disturbing the sound ordinance of the Church at Rome. One of them was to Blastus, On Schism, and another to Florinus, On Monarchy; and because he was being drawn away by the error of Valentinus, Irenaeus wrote his work, "On the Ogdoad", in which he shows that he himself had been acquainted with the first successors of the apostles. At the close of the treatise we have found a most beautiful note which we are constrained to insert in this work. It runs as follows:

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  • "I adjure thee, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and in light of His glorious advent when he comes to judge the living and the dead, that may copy this book, to compare on what you shalt write. Correct it carefully by this manuscript, and also to write this adjuration, and place it in the copy."

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  • "These doctrines, O Florinus, to speak mildly, are not of sound judgment. These doctrines disagree with the Church, and drive into the greatest impiety those who accept them. These doctrines, not even the heretics outside of the Church, have ever dared to publish. These doctrines, the presbyters who were before us, and who were companions of the apostles, did not deliver to thee."
  • "For when I was a boy, I saw thee in lower Asia with Polycarp, moving in the splendor of the royal court, and endeavoring back then to gain his approbation. I remember the events of that time more clearly than those of recent years. For what boys learn, growing with their mind, becomes joined with it; so that I am able to describe even the very place in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed to us, as well as his goings out and his comings in, and the manner of his life, and his physical appearance, and his discourses to the people, and the accounts which he gave of his discussions with John and with the others who had seen the Lord. And, as he remembered their words, and what he heard from them concerning the Lord, and concerning his miracles and his teaching, having received them from eyewitnesses of the 'Word of life,' Polycarp related all things in harmony with the Scriptures. These things being told me by the mercy of God, I listened to them attentively, noting them down, not on paper, but in my heart. And continually, through God's grace, I recall them faithfully. And I am able to bear witness before God that if that blessed and apostolic presbyter had heard any such thing (as being proposed), he would have cried out, and stopped his ears, and as was his custom, would have exclaimed, O good God, unto what times hast thou spared me that I should endure these things ? And he would have fled from the place where, sitting or standing, he had heard such words. And this can be shown plainly from the letters which he sent, either to the neighboring churches for their confirmation, or to some of the brethren, admonishing and exhorting them."

Chesterton said:

[original post deleted]

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Silmarien said:

I assumed he meant that no Christian had deigned to weigh in on the original thread, not in this one.

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Freodin said:

Now if I were to claim that the Bible makes it absolutely clear, divine truth which you would deny if you were to believe otherwise, that there was NO such flood here on our Earth... would you accept that as a valid theological argument?

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