That's the crux of it, and I'm glad it got sussed out a bit.

To you, Heath, the Matthew account is a faith-building story, so it only makes sense that the historicity doesn't matter.

To others it is also, and just as importantly, history.  That matters to those people but not to you.

There's nothing wrong with you feeling it's only a faith-building story.  However, people's hackles get up when you claim that it shouldn't have any effect on someone else's faith, because then you are making the decision for them as to whether it is history or not.

No, I am not saying whether it is history or not.  I am saying whether it is history does not matter to their salvation.  It might matter to their personal beliefs; it might matter to their own idea of their religion...but not to their salvation.

I do not want this message lost.  Salvation is about an individual's destination of his soul.  What happened thousands of years ago, whether true or not, whether the basis of faith or not, whether part of scripture or not, is absolutely irrelevant to the person's salvation.  That is someone else's story, someone else's salvation.  This should not even be controversial.

What a person looks at for salvation is how to run his own life -- what it means to be a good person, what is required to save his own soul (whether it be baptism, faith, repentance or whatever).  These are principles, not historical facts.  The historical facts do not affect the destination of my immortal soul, and they should be regarded as much.

Time for me to step away again.  I can 100% see your view Heath and why you PERSONALLY hold it.  I frankly find it the height of arrogance that you want to impose your own view of salvation on others.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:05, Mon 10 Mar 2014.

It's not a viewpoint at all.  It's a philosophical truth.

If you disagree, please tell me how whether Mary was a virgin affects an individual's salvation.  It is not a principle of action (like the 10 Commandments), nor is it a necessary rite for salvation (like baptism), nor does it instruct one in behavior (like the Sermon on the Mount), nor is it a fact directly related to a person's salvation (like believing Christ is the Savior for one's personal salvation).

It is nothing more than a prophecy and a historical fact that can build one's faith.

But it's pretty relevant to whether you beleive he was the Christ or not, which will impact your actions, which will impact your salvation (or if you're protestant, changing your beliefs is enough, whether it changes your actions or not).


But whether you accept those principles or not depends heavily on whether the account is true or false.


But false stories about Mary's identity will influence whether you actually believe Jesus was the Christ or not.  And if your beliefs about Jesus being the Christ change, how you live your life will change, right?

It's very simple, and goes like this:
1.  IF Matthew lied (or retold-a lie) about Mary
2.  THEN it's much more likely that he'd lie (or repeat a lie) about Jesus.
3.  WHICH IMPLIES Jesus is much less likely to have risen from the dead (or done all the other miracles attributed to him).
4.  WHICH IMPLIES he's not the son of God
5.  WHICH IMPLIES your religion is wrong and you shouldn't be worshipping him
6.  WHICH IMPLIES your actions will change
7.  WHICH impacts your salvation (or really whether there even is "salvation" at all)

You're trying to tell people that the bible could be chock full of outright lies and falsehoods, about miracles as well as boring history stuff, and that shouldn't affect their beliefs at all.  That seems pretty absurd to me, and to most christians.

Earlier I brought up the idea of what if undeniable proof was found that Joseph Smith lied the golden plates and the seeing stones, and actually just made up the whole book for Mormon out of nothing.  Wouldn't that affect your life in some way?  Would still carry on with your religion in exactly the same way, even if you believed that Smith was a fraud?  I really can't see why you would.  But Smith being a liar (for you) isn't any different from Matthew being a liar (for most Christians).  Certain parts need to be true in order to believe the rest of it in each case.  What are your thoughts on this?  Are there many Mormons who believe that it doesn't matter if there were any golden plates?  Are there any Mormons who believe that even if Moroni didn't exist, their religion is still A-okay?  If a sect of Mormons emerged that rejected the idea that Joseph Smith had golden plates or ever spoke to an angel, would you view them as misguided?  Would the church elders tolerate such a view?

I think you see this same refusal to accept fallibility in the Mormon church leaders that you do in people refusing to accept that Matthew was wrong.  When we discuss the ban on black men in the priesthood in the Mormon church before the 70s, Mormons always want to stress that "it was never revealed!" and "no one knows where that view came from!" and such, even though people at the time were pretty sure it was revealed, and even had stories explaining the reason for it.  But why do people care whether it was "revealed" or not?  Not because it's an issue of salvation.  But because if it was "revealed," that calls into question the whole system.  It casts doubt on whether the prophets actually get messages from God at all.  In order for them to keep on believing the whole story, they need to believe that this was just some human mistake, not a lie from someone claiming to speak for God.  Because once you allow a single instance of a prophet lying while claiming to speak for God, you can't really trust them when they make such claims anymore.

That depends on the individual, but it still is not necessarily true.

Let's put it another way.  Say that you learned two facts to be true (for the sake of argument):

1) That Jesus was the Christ and Savior; and
2) That Mary was not a "virgin."

Now, how would that affect your salvation?  How would that affect your behaviors?  How should it?

What you are saying is that a person's belief of #1 is hinged on their belief of #2.  That's a subjective value of that individual and is irrelevant as to the direct salvation of the multitudes.  If #1 is true, that is all that is needed.

If your idea of what is important so salvation is based on the subjective value placed on historical facts in the Bible, then we are back at square one.  They are not "essential" facts to salvation (for the most part), even if certain individuals make them "essential" for their own beliefs.

In other words, my point is not about the subjective value of the truth of historical facts.  My point is that we need to get to what is objectively important for the religion.  In other words, which facts, if proven wrong, in and of themselves, would invalidate the religious belief or principle?


Principles are not based on historical facts.  They are independent of them.  Religious truths, on the other hand, are critical as to particular religious doctrines (such as whether Jesus is the Christ).  I think you are referring to religious truths.

In that case, for example, the religious truth of whether Jesus is the Christ is not co-dependent on whether Mary was a "virgin."  It was my point of showing the inaccuracy of the Isaiah prophecy to show that such a truth is not essential.  The Matthew stated facts are not as relevant as Isaiah, because Isaiah contained an accepted prophecy about how to determine if Jesus is the Christ.  Matthew just recounts events that happened as a faith building story.




Again, that is the subjective line of thinking that is not relevant to this discussion.  You can say that your belief in Christ depends on whether the sun was blotted out from the sky for three days, or whether the earth is on the back of a turtle, and it doesn't matter.  The only fact that matters is whether Jesus was, in fact, the Christ, not an individual's personal belief.  That is part of the sifting process of this mortal existence, to have the maturity to sift through facts and truths to get at the eternal and significant ones.  Not every person can or will do that.


What I'm saying is that if they distill their religion down to the absolutely essential facts for their salvation, the other stuff doesn't matter.  You are using the term "lies" and "falsehoods."  I used terms like "figurative language" and "parables."


What Jesus said was also thought to be pretty absurd to most Jews when he revolutionized their entire religion.  What Joseph Smith said to Christians was also thought to be pretty absurd to the Christians, and they martyred him.  "Absurd" ideas in religion tend to separate the wheat from the chaff.


How it would affect my personal life is not relevant.  All that is relevant is whether the underlying principles are true or not.

However, it is a little different in that we have "prophets" now, and they have said that one historical fact critical to our religion is whether Joseph Smith was a prophet.  This is because through being a prophet he restored Jesus Christ's gospel on earth.  If he did not do that, then of course, the ordinances for salvation we find critical would not be so.  That is an "essential" fact.

To bring this more aptly to this conversation, whether Joseph Smith was the same Joseph prophecied of by Isaiah is not an "essential" fact, just a faith building one.

Your statement is false.  Mormon church leaders are very fallible, and this is accepted by all members of the faith, including the prophets themselves.  You cannot build an argument on a false premise.  Sorry.


I think your facts are mistaken here.  Again, you are trying to use a few facts out of context to build an argument on false premises.  Your "people at the time" comment is also pretty far off the mark.

In fact, I suppose this strengthens my position.  We believe in continuing revelation, and that many things we believe true may not be true.  But the principles will not change.  Blacks holding the priesthood was not a principle.  At worst, it was an interpretation of ancient prophecy; at best, it was an issue that had not been taken to God by the priesthood leaders until the 70s.  Neither of those is important to salvation.

It is important to note that LDS members themselves don't really concern themselves with this issue.  It is not important to their salvation.  What you are discussing here is simply the anti-Mormon attacks and the apologetics which answered them.

Sure, *IF* you magically learned both those facts, completely independently from one another, then I'd absolutely agree with you.  However, pretty much no one does learn those topics independently of one another.  Pretty much everyone learns them (or, rather, the first, and the opposite of the 2nd) from the same exact source.  In fact, how many people have ever learned #1 without looking at the bible?  Not many around today, I would wager.  So in the real world, these aren't two completely independent ideas that someone could learn from two very different sources.  Instead, the claims about Jesus being the Christ, and Mary being a virgin are made in the exact same place (the bible).  For pretty much everyone in the world, if they believe #1, it's because of what the bible says.  And another thing the bible says is that Mary was a virgin.  So it's all well and good to say "If you learned these two facts...", and assume you could someone how learn Jesus was the christ without reading the bible, but most people haven't done that.  For them, if you call the credibility of the bible into question, they have no other reason to believe that Jesus was the christ.  For most people, the bible is all they've got.  I feel like you really need to address that fact if you want to move the conversation forward here.


[emphasis added by Tycho]
Your whole point was originally that people shouldn't make them essential for their own beliefs.  I'm just explaining why they are rational to do so.  It's no good saying "well, they just don't matter" at this point.  If it didn't matter, you shouldn't have told them what they should or shouldn't do in the first place.


Perhaps, but whether anyone believes it *IS* dependent on whether their source contains lies and mistakes.  Remember, you didn't just say "it doesn't matter if they believe it or not, they'll be fine either way!" you said "they shouldn't rest their faith on something like this".  You made a statement about what they should care about and what they should believe.  That's a stronger statement than saying "it doesn't matter what they believe," right?  So all the things you're saying could be true, but still be sort of irrelevant to the issue I'm getting at.  In order to convince me of what you said, you don't need to talk about what actually does save people, but instead you have to tell me why anyone should believe that Jesus is Christ if the bible is full of lies and mistakes.  Saying people could believe X and still believe Y is all fine, but it doesn't answer why they should.  And if your answer is "well, because Y is all you need for salvation," that sounds like a horrible reason to believe something to me.  We should believe what the evidence leads us to believe is true, not what we want to be true.  If your argument about why people should believe something is based on the pay-off and/or costs of believing it, we'll probably just have to agree to disagree.  But if that's the case, stating it explicitly would at least let us clarify the point of disagreement.


For the record, I disagree with this, as I don't think Isaiah was talking about that at all, but that's probably a can of worms we're best avoiding for the moment.


I don't feel like you can unilaterally declare that "not relevant."  You can't really say "people are wrong to think X" and then have someone say "they think X because of Y", and then turn around and reply "well, it's not relevant if they think that."  If people have a reason for their belief, and then you say their belief is wrong, you really need to address their reasoning.  Declaring it not relevant won't convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you.  If you want anyone else to believe you, you have to address the objection (which, in this case, is "why believe what the gospels say about Jesus being the Christ, if they get wrong stuff like Mary being a virgin?").


No, really, for that person, it DOES matter.  It's why they don't believe what you tell them they should.  You can't just ignore it if you want them to believe you.


But some people will do that sifting, and come to the conclusion that Jesus wasn't the christ, didn't raise from the dead, etc.  Part of that "sifting" is deciding which sources you can trust, and which you can't.  You seem to be saying "believe the important stuff, but feel free to ignore the rest," without considering the issue of credibility.  If a source (ie, the bible) makes a spectacular claim (such as Jesus rising from the dead), you need to really, really trust it in order to believe that claim.  The more amazing the claim, the more trust you need to have in order to believe it.  A source that lies about "unimportant stuff" isn't a source most people will trust, and with good reason.  I stress that so far, you haven't said why people should believe the important stuff, only that they should.


Yep, and I'll say it again:  if Mary wasn't a virgin, the stories in the bible saying she was are lies, and falsehoods.  I'll also add that calling them "figurative language" and "parables" would be deception.  I agree that the bible contains figurative language and parables.  The story of Mary being a virgin wasn't either of those.  It was either true, or a lie.  Read Matthew and Luke.  They make the claim that Mary was a virgin.  It wasn't a parable, it wasn't figuratively language, it was given as evidence that Jesus was divine in nature.  If it's not true, it's a straight-up lie.


Heh!  You said it mate, not me!


And yet, over and over again, you kept asking "how would it change your life if Mary wasn't a virgin?" before.  You can't really have this both ways.  Does it matter if something changes someone's life, or not?


Awesome, then you can relate to how people feel.  This isn't something critical to your salvation, it's critical to your beliefs about salvation.  It doesn't change whether you're saved or not, it changes what you think about salvation.  And this is exactly the same for people when you tell them about Mary not being a virgin.  For them, it's an "essential fact" as you call it.  Because if Mary wasn't a virgin, then the bible isn't a trustworthy source of information about Jesus' miracles, including him raising from the dead.  So for many christians, Mary being a virgin is just as important to them as Joseph Smith was a prophet is to you.  Neither is directly responsible for anyone's salvation; but both have a huge impact on what people believe about salvation.  So you need to know that when you tell people they're wrong to care about Mary being a virgin, that they feel like you would feel if someone said "Mormon's shouldn't care if Joseph Smith was a prophet or not!"

I don't think you two are disagreeing with each other. Heath, when you said:



I think that really summed it up. No question, some people have no issue with a false item in the Bible. But also, some people do. And if someone lost faith because he discovered there was a false item in the Bible, that is probably pretty important.

I think there may be some question as to HOW MANY people would have issues. Speaking for myself, I would.

The issue with religion is a question of "should."  With this issue, the question is "should it" affect someone's behaviors or salvation?  I think any reasonable person would say "no."  But that doesn't mean that some individuals won't hinge their entire salvation and behaviors on such a detail, which is only a fact from thousands of years ago.

It's not like the earth will unravel and the heavens will close if, for some strange reason, Mary was not a "virgin" in the sexually pure sense of the word.  It's not like any Christian religion will suddenly collapse under its own weight if God came down and said, "What Isaiah meant was a young girl.  The writers had that point wrong, but the principles they taught are right."

I mean, I can't really understand why this is controversial at all.  The Bible was written by human beings, not God.  Even worse, it has undergone numerous translations, and they don't all concur.  You can say it was written through revelation or inspiration, certainly, but anyone who insists on their personal interpretation of the book being true or else it's all a sham is simply deluding themselves.

The objective fact is that it does not matter if Mary was a virgin because that simple historical fact does not affect a person's salvation (in an objective sense).  How that person behaves affects his salvation.  The promises he makes with God affects his salvation.  His exercise of faith affects his salvation.  People who base their faith on historical facts instead of the eternal principles in the Bible are simply wrong.

Does it happen? Yes.  Should it happen?  Not for any reasonable person.

Do you really not understand why, or is this hyperbole? I ask because if you truly don't understand, I'm happy to explain. I feel like it's pretty self-explanatory, so I don't imagine it would take long :)

But if you do understand why reasonable people would have a crisis of faith resulting from errors of substance and direct contradiction of the gospels, I'll save my breath.

Well, now we get to the crux of it.  A "crisis of faith" does not affect one's salvation.  What a person does and how that person handles the crisis of faith is what affects his salvation.  Even Mother Theresa said she had crises of faith, yet she didn't let that be an excuse to sin, did she?  Her salvation was not affected.

Everyone has a crisis of faith.  But that is not relevant to their salvation.  How they behave is relevant.  What they do to overcome that crisis is relevant.  Do they pray for enlightenment?  Do they realize that maybe they themselves have been mistaken?  Or do they let their ego and pride lead them to cast away their beliefs and behave contrary to the rest of the book.

In reply to Heath (msg # 93):

Heath, I think you need to realize that a whole lot of christians think you need to believe Jesus died for your sins to get salvation.  For many christians, faith is a critical thing.  For most protestants, its the critical thing.  If faith goes out the window, many will say that sinning or not sinning doesn't matter.  Many christians (most, I'd wager, but I'll let katisara speak for the catholics on this) believe that no matter how good you are, if you don't believe Jesus died for your sins, then you don't get into heaven.  For them, faith is a salvation issue (or again, the salvation issue), much more so than actions.  So anything that makes them think Jesus wasn't the son of God, is about as big a deal for them as it gets.  And accepting that there are straight up lies in the bible about Jesus, put their to make Jesus look divine makes it very hard to accept the whole "died for your sins and rose from the dead part."

If you really don't understand this, we could try to explain, but it sort of just sounds like you don't think lies about Jesus' divinity making it into the bible isn't a legitimate reason to question its veracity.  If that's the case, I'm not sure how much more is to be said here.

Yes, this is true.



Yes, and what is faith?  Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

You can have faith without every historical fact in the Bible being literally true.



You are not accurately stating my point.  "Faith" is critical to salvation.  The question is, "Faith in what?"  Is it faith in the world being created in 7 days?  So in other words, if the world was created in a million years, your entire faith structure SHOULD crumble?

"Faith" and whether Mary was a virgin are two separate things.  Apples and oranges.



Irrelevant to my point...



Still irrelevant to my point...



Here is where your logic falls apart.  The critical thing for salvation is whether Jesus was the Son of God.  I accept that.  But for your point to be accurate and mine to be wrong, they would have to believe that BOTH of the following MUST be true, and that taking away one MUST take away the other:  (1) That Jesus is the Son of God; AND (2) that Mary was a virgin.  In other words, if Jesus came down to them today and said he is the Son of God but Mary was not a virgin, just a "young woman," how would that affect their salvation?   If it wouldn't, then the Mary virgin issue is irrelevant.  If it would, then I consider that to be unreasonable because Jesus being the Son of God affects one's actions (and faith is an action, by the way), whereas Mary being a virgin is not a statement of dogma, principle, or a code of behavior, and should not affect behaviors.

Do people believe that Mary being a virgin is necessary?  Yes.  I get that.  The question is not one of their subjective and precarious faith in an often misinterpreted scriptorial reference, but of the objective reality of whether that fact SHOULD affect their faith if Jesus is the Christ irregardless of that factual, historical statement.

So here's the question:  If Jesus is in fact the Christ and this could somehow be proven, SHOULD the fact of whether Mary was a virgin affect your behavior/faith?  My answer is a solid and objective "NO."

Here you are misstating the points again, calling them "lies."  As I stated above, there is no necessity in calling any of it "lies."  Don't alter the facts to try to tear down my basic argument.  At worst, they were misunderstandings by individuals of faith who recorded the record to the best of their beliefs, not "lies" at all.

Calling them "lies" is like calling everyone who debates on this site a "liar" if it turns out their closely held beliefs are not 100% accurate historically.  That's simply not fair.

Again, I feel like you guys are saying the exact same thing and disagreeing with each other :) Heath's last response to me really clarified things for me.

I feel like Tycho and I share views so closely that I honestly can't explain it without tripping over the same blind spots as he has, so I won't try.

Heath's point though suddenly makes sense to me.

The important part is Faith in God. That's it. You can believe in the FSM and cars are demons and anything else, but faith in God seals the deal.

Things can shake our faith in the Bible. That's okay, it'll happen no matter what; we'll have crises of faith in the Bible, in Mary, in God, etc. However, that alone isn't the end of the story.

The next step is how we deal with this crisis. Do you then let your faith in God diminish? If so, THAT is the point where things are going bad. Yes, credibility issues in the Bible can result to a crisis of faith, which can result in loss of faith in God, which is what Tycho and I see as our entire argument. However, you can also say 'whelp, I guess I just won't trust the Bible so much, but my relationship with God will pull me through'. So the failure in step 1 does not have a super-strong relationship with the decision in step 2 (at least, in Heath's view).

For some people, I can absolutely see Heath's view as being correct. I think if I scientifically proved the Bible to be completely imaginary to the last word, he'd still go to church and be faithful, because his faith isn't about that; it's about tradition, relationships, identity, and his subjective experiences.

For me, I am very sensitive to falsifiability. I don't think Christianity justifies its own existence, so I want to find evidence to support it or disprove it. I don't trust subjective experiences, I don't feel like God calls me on the phone and we chat, and I want stuff I can reference and double check whether I'm in love with life or the entire world has gone dark. So for me, yes, toppling biblical evidence is a huge item, and I'd consider it (perhaps not this particular issue, but lack of credibility in general) full grounds for walking away from Christianity.

Do you guys think I'm more or less seeing things correctly?

In reply to Heath (msg # 95):

I think you're really missing the key point that I've been trying to make here, Heath.  The bible is the sole source of information for many christians.  Even those who accept other sources, the bible is still the top one.  If it contains deliberate lies about Jesus' divinity, that calls into question the whole story, really.  Many people will find it pretty much impossible to believe that Jesus was the son of God if they don't consider the bible a trustworthy source.

So yes, you're right, if Jesus showed up today and said "hey guys, my mom wasn't a virgin, but I'm still the son of God!" people might be able to get over that story and still have faith in Jesus.  But Jesus DIDN'T show up today and say that.  Because of that, the vast majority of christians depend on the bible for their information about Jesus.  Take the bible away from them, and they've got little-to-no reason to believe Jesus is anything special anymore.

As for the "lies" bit, we've been over this several times now, and I'm sticking to my guns.  A story where an angle has a conversation with Mary about the holy spirit getting her pregnant, and her saying "how can this be, since I'm a virgin?" and another story about an angel coming to Joseph and saying "hey man, I know it looks bad, but don't kick Mary to curb here, it's all legit, 'cause God did it!" and the whole nine yards isn't just an honest mistake someone could come up with if Mary wasn't a virgin.  If Mary wasn't a virgin, those stories were made up by someone to convince people Jesus was divine.  When you make up stories that aren't true, we usually call them lies.

Some mistakes could be honest errors, I totally agree with you on that.  There are plenty of things in the bible that I could happily accept as just an honest mistake, or a mistranslation, or whatever.  But whole stories about conversations between people and angels aren't simple misunderstandings or mistranslations.  That's not an honest mistake you can really make.  You would never accept it if a baptist made up stories about evil deeds by Mormons in order to discredit your religion.  You'd never hesitate to call that a lie, even if the baptist really, honestly believes that Mormons are evil.  Making up stories about stuff that didn't happen and trying to pass it off as true is lying, plain and simple.  Whether you're a "person of faith" or not doesn't come into it.

So as I said before, and as I'll keep saying if you keep challenging it, if Mary wasn't a virgin, the stories that tell us she talked to an angel about it are lies, not mistakes.  Maybe the people who wrote them down weren't the source of those lies, but someone at some point made up a fictional story and tried to pass it off as fact, and that deception made it into the bible, right along with all the stuff about Jesus rising from the dead, curing the sick, walking on water and all the rest.  And if one of the big miracles related to him turns out to be a lie, people are really going to doubt all the other stories too.

100% right on about my point up until this:


Not actually.  The principles and truths of the Bible must be true, and certain facts, such as "Jesus is the Christ" must be true.  But the historical facts that must be true are few and far between, particularly the nitty gritty details that are subject to multiple interpretations.



The problem I see with this is that falsifiability as to shaking a person's faith must be looked at in context...and let's say "inaccuracy" because "falsification" implies intentional misrepresentation or misleading, and I really don't see that at all in the Bible.

So with inaccuracy, if it is a small one about a date or an interpretation of something, or if something is figurative instead of literal, that shouldn't (again, SHOULD is the word) shake someone's faith because the Bible is not perfect and has gone through many imperfect hands and translations over the centuries.

As I said previously, part of the purpose of this life is for us to have our faith tested, to sift the truth and engage in fact-finding.  Just because God would let imperfect facts remain in the Bible is part of its beauty because we are all here to sift the truths of mortality for ourselves, and why would God make that too easy for us?  Only after great trial comes the reward, so the greater the trial, the greater the reward.  Allowing imperfections in the Bible is a way for Him to sift the wheat from the chaff, those who are really "faithful" (in the faith sort of way), and those who require proof and perfection before they will believe.

In reply to katisara (msg # 96):

I think that summarizes things fairly well, I just have a really hard time relating to the idea of being able to just over look the fact that the primary source for the religion contains a deliberate deception.  That'd be a game breaker for me, even in something much more mundane than a religious document.

Heath, we seem to be getting hung up on the "lies" part, so let's put that slightly aside for a moment.

Do you agree that IF there were deliberate lies in the gospels, and not about something small-change like a date or a place name, but about something big like a miracle, that that would be a good reason to question the credibility of the rest of the story?  Is the issue just that you don't see making up that story about the angels as a "lie," but I do, or is it that even if there are deliberate falsifications about miracles, you still think that shouldn't lessen people's trust in the sources at all?

In reply to Tycho (msg # 97):

You're making my point for me.  He also didn't show up today and say the opposite (i.e., that Mary WAS a virgin).  So that is simply a faith based story of no consequence to salvation.


Again, I said that I believe she actually "was" a virgin, and that these stories are likely true, which means they weren't lies in any event.  My point was that the fact of Mary being a virgin or not is not a principle of salvation, and therefore is irrelevant to one's salvation, regardless of the importance placed on it by individuals.

Also, talking to angels could be figurative or literal.  It all could be part of a parable, or part of a great belief of the early Christians that may or may not be accurate, but is just part of their tradition, as it is in ours.

Whether something affects other people's faith is irrelevant to my point.  What they do is relevant.  If you get maimed in a car accident tomorrow and that takes away your faith, it is the fact that you lost faith that is relevant to your salvation, not the fact of the car accident.  Thus, the point is whether the car accident "SHOULD" affect your faith.  I would say it shouldn't, and therefore is not part of God's plan of salvation.  Rather, it is a test of your faith, which you lost.

So too is the fact of Mary's virgin birth, or any other miracle.  If they are not true, that alone is irrelevant to God's plan and is not a necessary truth for salvation.  It is how people react to those truths (their showing of faith or not) that is important.  Their subjective beliefs do not alter God's plan, no matter how much they may want it to.  God's plan is what is objective, and requires certain behaviors, including faith.  If you lose faith, that is the fact which affects your salvation, not the underlying fact that tested your faith and which you were too weak to withstand.  That is simply your subjective weakness.

Under your point, God's plan can be altered by every individual based on the individual's subjective beliefs.  I am saying that God's plan is an objective reality, and our subjective weaknesses lead us to follow that plan or not.

In reply to Tycho (msg # 100):

I think you're too hung up on the truth or falsity of facts.  Whether they are true or false is irrelevant.  God's plan is objective and independent of 99% of the facts in the Bible.  Those are faith based stories to help us and lift us up.  They are possibly factually true, or figurative, or whatever.  I am not concerned about that, but about the principles espoused and the few facts that are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to salvation (ordinances, whether Jesus is the Christ, the code of behaviors, etc.).  Everything else (miracles, etc.) is just fluff.

Where does it end though Heath?

If I was to claim that 100% of the Book of Mormon is false, I assume that would be too much 'falsity' to maintain faith, but perhaps I am wrong.

How do you, personally, decide where that line is?

I repeat:  the important things are the ordinances (like baptism), the key doctrinal points (like whether Jesus was the Christ), the code of behaviors (10 Commandments, Sermon the Mount, etc.), and similar principles.

We have a saying in the LDS church that even if every scripture was gone tomorrow, it would not affect our faith one bit because we have a living prophet of God.  That statement is a principle statement of fact because it requires belief AND completely affects one's behavior toward salvation.

To reverse your point, where do we stop the other way?  Do we say that if Methuselah really lived to be 970 years old and not 969 years old, that the Bible is false and we should abandon all faith?  Do we say that every single fact in the Bible must be true 100% factually and literally or we must throw out the baby with the bathwater?

No.  This is why, as I said, one of the purposes of this mortality is to ourselves do the work of sifting truths and determining what are essential to our salvations.  By doing this work, we strengthen faith instead of just blindly believing (which is also the kind of faith that fails upon one inconvenient truth).

Heath, you seem to be starting with the assumption that God exist, Jesus was his Son, died for sin, etc.  You're taking that stuff as given, and saying "okay, since all that's true, what is the minimal set of other stuff you need to believe?"  Whereas I'm not taking all that stuff as granted.  I'm saying that people need a reason to conclude all that stuff is true.  For most people who believe, that reason is the stories in the bible.  Tell them that the bible contains lies, and they're not going to trust the bible, and they're not going to believe all the stuff that you're taking as given.

And, I would stress, that it's entirely reasonable and rational for them to do so.  We should change our beliefs if the evidence that led to them turns out to be false.  Like katisara said, falsifiability isn't a bad thing!

Your argument seems to be that people shouldn't change their beliefs if the evidence their faith rests on turns out not to be credible.  You're saying that all that other stuff isn't what gets them into heaven, so they shouldn't be hung up on it.  Which is fine IF they already believe all the stuff that does get them into heaven for some completely independent reason, and can still go on believing it when the evidence turns out to be false.  But many christians consider the bible to be the only source of evidence.  If it's not credible, then they've got no reason keep believing all the stuff that you say is important.

I'll try to use your terms, so forgive me if I get them garbled here:  believing the "facts" doesn't get you salvation, but the "facts" are why people believe/follow the "principles" which do get them salvation.  The facts are what led them to the principles.  Take them away, and they won't trust the principles either.  Whether they "should" or not depends on what we mean by "should."  You mean it in the sense of "will they be better off if they do?" (and are assuming that your religion is true).  I'm meaning it in the sense of "is it the correct logical conclusion based on the facts they have?" (and leaving the question of whether the religion is actually true or not as an unknown).

Think of it this way:  say your friend is getting older, and his eyesight is going bad, and you've noticed his driving getting steadily worse.  He gets up to leave, and you consider saying "lets call you a cab, rather than you driving, eh?  I just don't think it's safe for you to be driving right now, you might kill someone!"  Now, what "should" the friend do?  Drive himself, or call a cab.  My argument is that we don't know for certain whether he'll crash his car and hurt someone, so he should do the safe thing and get a cab.  Your argument is more along the lines of "well, lets assume we know for certain that he won't crash.  Therefore, he 'should' drive himself because that will save some money."  One is talking about the rational thing to do in the face of uncertainty, the other is talking about the most beneficial under an assumed knowledge of the outcome.  Does that make sense?

Heath,

Thanks for clarifying.  I can see why you hold the opinion you do, even though I cannot hold that view myself.  What you find irrational (that all facts must be important), I find totally necessary.

Just a difference in how we view the world.

So for example Heath (and I'm only speaking of total hypotheticals here), if in historical fact, Jesus was a Libyan woman, but still shared God's core message that we read, and was still died and was resurrected for our sins, you would be able to maintain your same, strong faith in God and Jesus, correct? Since we're hitting the basic points of Jesus being a historical person and the same principles.

(I'm not trying to test what you're saying, just verifying I'm understanding correctly.)