Tracer Tong wrote:Agrippina wrote:I want to put this on record that while I fully support the right of anyone to become very educated without even attending formal primary school, I do not apply this method of learning to sciences that involve the general public's health, security, and right to life. In the sciences, it is vitally important that all learning, and certainly that which applies to treating illness, should be done under the auspices of accredited institutions who then become responsible for validating the student's right to call themselves proficient in their particular field of study.
When it comes to the humanities, anyone who has a brain can educate themselves if they have the willingness and the enthusiasm to become an authority on whatever it is they choose to learn. Despite the reluctance of this member to accept that 50+ years of studying history, I doubt any person within the community of people who make a living out of studying the Bible is going to be prepared to challenge my claim that I know a lot about that particular piece of writing. Especially since he hasn't bothered to even make an effort to read what I've written, since although I do not accept the existence of a deity as explained in the Bible, I do not condemn the writing that supports the explanation, but rather view it as yet another in the collection of writings from the first century BCE.
Tracer Tong, would you care to enlighten us about your own opinion on the existence of the main character in the Bible. Your opinion would help us reach a conclusion about why my claim of being a bit of a "scholar" or "authority" bothers you so much.
I didn't claim that it bothered me.
Of course it's bothering you. If it wasn't you would've let it go, long ago.
I merely suggested that it was problematic to be making claims to competence you do not have.
I am not making claims of "competence" I "do not have". I am amply competent to argue my point of view about the Bible. I am amply competence to discuss the Bible. I am amply competent to lecture on the contents of the Bible. So there is no problem whatsoever about my competence when it comes to the Bible, anymore than I lack the competence to discuss any other ancient work I have studied for a length of time. Please explain to me how you are competent to discuss my own competence when you haven't actually taken the time to read what I've written.
I'll suggest a wise response would have been to admit you merely got carried away when talking about your intellectual journey. Instead, you seem to be attempting to justify your claim, by e.g. appealing to the length of time you've been "studying history". This is regrettable.
I'll tell you what is regrettable. It is that someone who has no knowledge of me, except for what they have read on the internet, and who has not participated in the forum to any great degree despite long-standing membership , imagines that he/she has the competence to judge my own competency when it comes to my study of the Bible.
My position on the "main character in the Bible", which I assume is a peculiar way of referring to Jesus, is irrelevant to our exchange, and apropos of nothing I've said to you. You're welcome to ask me the same question in the "historical Jesus" thread, mind you.
There you go. In your first sentence you demonstrate your own ignorance of the Bible. The main character of the Bible is the character named "God" by modern theists, also known as "Elhoi", "El", "Jahweh" "JHWH", "I am that I am", and so on. Jesus is a minor character in four books of the entire anthology, he is not the main character.