Going back a fair ways to the below quote, let me first say that I have been extremely hesitant to enter this thread. It is, first of all, not really Tolkien-based anymore. Secondly, it has gained a very anti-Christian feel to it. LMP has bravely stuck it out, but for the most part it feels like he's just standing here taking the blows for Christianity, doing his best to apologise and admit the validity of other people's questions, while the non-Christians seem to just be standing there inflexibly, willing to throw out monkeywrench after monkeywrench, while refusing to admit the potential "maybe it could be" validity of a single Christian viewpoint.
Anyway, I've hesitated to get involved here, and I think there's something about anti-Christian thought in general that I could learn from this...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man
But myths nevertheless. And accepting that fact surely does not in itself mean that one must relinquish one's belief in God.
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If that is your convinced opinion, Master Saucepan Man, nothing that I say is very likely to change it. However, allow me to try and explain WHY we take the Bible- or most of the Bible, anyway- as fact, or close to fact. (For most Christians are not fundamentalists. We admit the existence of story and metaphor- something that Balrog-wingers do not...
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In the 4th Century, the Church in an Ecumenical Council, selected the books today known as the Bible, assembled them officially into one, and declared -using their authority as the representatives of God on Earth- that these books were the Inspired Word of God. This was not done hastily, but after careful consideration, and the books they canonised were by and large books that had been held in reverence by Christians since they were written- or in the case of the Old Testament, since Christ Himself.
If you do not adhere to the Christian faith, there is no reason in the world for you to believe the Bible. If you DO claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, then it would be well to exhaust all the options open to you BEFORE deciding that the Inspired Word of God is a "myth", "legend", or "distorting of the truth".