Hi everyone,

I see that Tinker did a handsome job in answering the question of what is meant by "etiological" for Zeb, so I'm going to answer some of Zeb's questions as briefly as I am able. First, I do believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but I do believe that men (and women) were the vehicles through which that word was proclaimed. That's probably a lengthy discussion for another quite long thread!

Secondly, there is the issue of whether my belief would be changed if parts of the Bible were to be challenged. The premise of this argument is that old song, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so..." Now, I've got nothing against that as a song for children. It is just that as one matures in faith, there is a liklihood that the grounding of one's belief is apt to become more complex. Maybe it is because life as an adult becomes more complex. The grounding of my faith is not really based on the Bible, but is more existentially grounded. The short course might be to say that the overwhelming evidence leads me to a life of faith, and I am glad to read in the Bible about those others who struggled with and tried to live that life of faith. Again, this could be the subject of an entire book, but I'm not going to go on more about it here. I figure 'nuff said!

Greg