that this "Godless" gang (not my interpretation of us) on a board dedicated to the "King Atheist" (again not mine but the king of rock 'n' roll was already taken so it's gotta be good to be the king of something, David) is so interested in God and the bible. Personally I think it's a great subject and I love this discussion and honestly I think if you want to write about life (fiction or nonfiction) you should have some kind of familiarity with the bible. I also think because our society is such that it is almost as a means of self defense you should have read some form of the bible.

That said I don't think we should study it just to argue its flaws with Christians. The quote from the bible that I posted was posted with the specific idea that in order to believe in "the rapture" or specific interpretations of Revelations you need to be in direct contradiction with something attributed to Jesus. He is asked in a rather interesting setting by a great authority of his day when the kingdom of god would come and he does not mince words. It's within you. You are not going to look around and see a city of gold descending from the sky or bodies being thrown into a lake of fire. It seems to me that if you are going to "believe on Jesus" this is one point where the guy wanted to be perfectly clear and in the context of the situation I can see why he would not want to leave anything to chance. Also I find it a beautiful passage and pretty good advice. Don't look around for God or wait around for him to drop his city of gold out of the sky, find the kingdom inside yourself. That's pretty good stuff.

The big difference here is always going to be your personal approach to the bible and, as Mr. Ehrman points out in the Q & A after his talk, what you are looking to get out of it. There is no definitive version of the bible and one technically could not exist so it is funny when people point to one version as "the book"...and it's often the King James. Using an academic approach this idea of a "definitive book" is, as Peter pointed out, sheer nonsense. Using a faith based approach God has preserved his ideas and what he wanted to say (even if he inspired man to edit on many occasions this was really God editing...hey, all writers like to edit!) and so they do not need to know what science or academics have found, this is only the knowledge of man which is not on the same plane as the knowledge of God.

Where we (I include myself and the rest of you "Godless" clowns taking the academic approach) are lost to those that "have faith on Jesus" is where we are placing our faith in their eyes. We have sided with the knowledge of man over god. Of course you can say they are lost on us in the same way, they have placed their faith in God. Each of us finds our own very significant flaws in the other. They cannot be reconciled because for either of us to give in we'd have to take a "leap of faith" in the other direction.

The academics keep providing "evidence" that there are flaws. The born again side argues that God "preserves" despite these flaws. We like evidence, they like faith. When you add the bitterness and anger into the argument that this stuff generates we have our own little spiritual cold war, each side ready to drop "bombs" on the other. Ehrman is not trying to disprove the existence of god in his talk he's trying to analyze the existing data. The bible is the door to some great discussions but the answers to many of the questions that come up may be within you.