Killing 42 children for mocking a prophet is hardly justice. We
assume that the young are foolish, and we don't hit them with big
punishments for youthful transgressions. God's mercy is of a
different kind than man's.

We can deal with *that* objection in a different post. I am trying to
deal with the specific atheist claim that God punishes people for
making a theological mistake. I challenged that claim. You are
conceding that point?

The New Testament says that
entry to God's presence is through Jesus alone. Christians define
"Heaven" as being with God, in God's presence. So failure to know
of and accept Jesus condemns a man.

I wouldn't agree with your spin. What is punished is sin, what
allows you to escape punishment is Christ. Perhaps it's the case
that if you never heard of Christ ythere'd be no chance that you'd
avail yourself of the way out of the punishment your sin earned
you, but even on that case your punishment is for your sin. If you
were sinless, you'd not be punished.

SPIN??? "John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth,
and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." What else
could that passage possibly mean?

It means that Christ is the only way; I didn't say *that* was spin.
Your spin was that failure to know the truth condemns a man. Not so;
*sin* condemns a man.

having said that, God created the universe from nothing; it would
not be difficult for him to somehow bring it about that everyone
who would actually benefit from knowing the truth ends up finding
the truth. And nothing in the bible implies that God will not do
just that.

And what about those who will not benefit by knowing the truth? As
creations of God, their flaws are on his hands.

I'm sorry, but I think it is childish to blame God for the bad things
freely choose to do. "YOU made me God, so I'm not to blame" is a sorry
excuse in my opinion.

This is the belief of the vast
majority of Christians. Why else would missionary work matter?

Missionary work is one way to get the message out, that's why.

Why get the message out if a good man will be rewarded with or
without hearing Jesus' message?

Because none of us are good *enough*. All of us are bad in that all of
us sin, we are selfish, lazy etc.

If it's lack of sin, not faith that gains
salvation, why push faith?

because none of us is without sin.

(Note that you are out of step with the
express word of Jesus as quted in the Bible, and 2000 years of
Christian tradition.)

No I'm not. For 2000 years Christianity has taught that *sin* is what
we're punished for. you won'r find a single bible passage that says we
are punished for our ignorance.

That's a separate issue from what is being discussed right
now (we can address it later if you want). Even without
addressing the point yo uare making, the *punishment* is
still for sin, not for honest mistakes. Unless there's a
sinless person who ends up in hell, you have no reason to
think the punishment is for honest mistakes.

How can you possibly know what is and is not a "sin" without
referring to the Bible, and since you don't believe the Bible
is correct as a whole, how can you know what God has in mind?

Where do you get that I don't believe *anything* in the Bible.
For that matter, where do you get that *I'm* not a biblical
inerrantist? I'm not, but nothing I've said in this thread would
indicate so.

It indicated it to me, and it seems to be the case.

When did I indicate it to you (until immediately above)? I thiknk
you misread what I said.

Perhaps.

But I never said
you claimed that the entire Bible was wrong, just that the entire
Bible was not correct. If this is the case, that part is true and
part is false, how can you know which is which? How can it be a
guide to your thinking, your life, if you don't know for certain
which is God's word and which is mans?

Inerrancy is not relevant to the question you pose. Suppose the
bible is inerrant; still there's the question "how do you know it's
true?". Supposing that it is posisble to know the whole bible is
true, that same "way" could allow you to know that some parts are
true.

It could allow YOU to know? And perhaps ME? And if we disagree, yet
we both KNOW, what then? And what is this "way" of knowing which
parts are true?

Obviously, if we disagree about something then at least one of us only
thinks he knows. But that's the way it is for everything. What is your
point?

[Snip lots that falls when the Bible is admitted to be false.]

An admission I never made. You pose a false dilemma between
being inerrant and being false. It;s the same dilemma the
fundamentalists often make.

Unless you have a method for sorting out the true bits from the
false, then you can never know which parts are true and which are
false.

Unless you have a "method" for determining that it's true, you
can't use it as a guide either. But if you have a method, then the
method could apply to parts of the bible; it needn't be an all or
nothing thing. A math book can be trusted even when there are
mistakes in the book, all you have to do is understand the
principles and minor errors don't matter.

(1) A math text does not claim to be the word of God.

Correct. But you seemed to say that if a book had errors you couldn't
know which part to trust. My example shows why that's not the case.

(2) There are methods for identifying errors in a math text.

Exactly.

(3) Passages in a math text have never justified murder, rape,
genocide.

That's a red herring. Your claim was that if a book contained errors
all of it was untrustworthy. The specific content of a specific book
is irrelevant to the general principle you were claiming.

(4) "Minor" errors in the Bible depend on what you
consider "minor". Hundereds of thousands, perhaps
millions, have died over the "minor" question of
whether a cracker symbolizes the body of Jesus or
is supernaturally transformed into the body of Jesus.

I owuld not agree that that's why they died. They died because some
humansthought it was proper to kill people who disagreed with them
about that question. That's a dumb thing for these humans to have
done, and quite contrary to the teaching of Christ.

If you have some method for sorting the wheat from the chaff, lets
all see it.

You don't believe any of it, so I'd say that's the more important
issue right now.