Easily. It's the same story from two different perspectives. The first chapter is on a more global level. The second zooms in and focuses specifically on how man was created.

The animals were created globally first. Once Adam was created, God created animals again so Adam could see the process, understand that God is Creator, and participate in ruling over God's creation.

Interesting website choice. I spent a year as an agnostic because of that website before I started to realize there must be another perspective to consider.

Okay. So you don't believe that the bible is utterly true. You believe that the bible, plus some supplementary explanatory material is utterly true.

I certainly believe interpretation is necessary and that some interpretations are more faithful than others.

I believe there are resources out there that can help someone to faithfully interpret. And the converse also. The skeptics annotated Bible being in the latter category IMO.

To a disinterested outsider, this dialog reads like:

A: everything in this book is literally true

B: what about this passage where it says 3+4=9?

A: my interpretation of that passage is that the 9 represents a 7 in that particular context

The salient point being: that even if A has arrived at a literally true interpretation of the passage, the truth came from A, not from the passage. Further, although A believes they're arguing that the book is inerrant, what they're effectively claiming is that their interpretations are inerrant.

> the truth came from A, not from the passage How can an interpretation attesting the truth of two passages exist while the passages are individually untrue? There seems to be a logic error here.

> what they're effectively claiming is that their interpretations are inerrant.

I don’t think A is claiming that, as the most basic understanding of Christianity understands that the individual is terribly flawed and errant.

If your presupposition for this conclusion is based on your earlier point might have either misstated something or you’re claiming a conclusion without an expressed premise.

The passages are interpreted incorrectly.

Humans aren't rational beings that form conclusions by logically composing facts into a singular point. Instead humans are more prone to construct a scaffold of logic in order to support and existing belief. That site is picking and choosing passages in order to support a misguided belief.

Instead a person must start with no beliefs and formulate a conclusion from the facts. If you do this, it is undeniable that the bible is real.

I once told this to an atheist and he was astonished because my description of his subconscious behavior and lack of awareness was 100% what he thought I was doing.

This makes me wonder do atheists even realize how unscientific and illogical they are? Are they constantly thinking that I'm the one that's illogical? Are humans so unaware of their own biases that we can never ever truly determine what is real and what isn't?

To answer your final question - no, we probably cannot actually determine absolute truth about the universe. There is quite a long history of epistemology that indicates this. In addition, we've got the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_th... which lets us know that there will ALWAYS be true things that we cannot prove with any set of axioms. Coming to a full reckoning of truth or reality is impossible. We're each doing the best we can with the perspective we've been given and the information available to us.

I also think you are being quite uncharitable to most atheists. The majority of us grew up in the church, have read the bible, utterly believed the bible was true, were devout believers, and generally were at some point quite indistinguishable from you or any other truly intellectual believer in terms of worldview.

It really was the kinds of contradictions the comment you replied to indicates, along with hundreds of others, and the absolute mental knots that had to be constructed in order to justify them that set me on the path of disbelief. This is the path for millions of people as they take a serious reckoning of their beliefs and with their holy books and do a fundamental reexamination of their entire worldview and belief structure.

I don't think that either of us is being disingenuous in our portrayal of our beliefs. That said, I really do think that your interpretation of what people are doing when they examine these contradictions and draw the conclusion of disbelief is, in fact, the theological equivalent of p-hacking is fundamentally untrue.

I wasn't referring to something that profound. It's more like am I right or are you right?

>I once told this to an atheist and he was astonished because my description of his subconscious behavior and lack of awareness was 100% what he thought I was doing.

>This makes me wonder do atheists even realize how unscientific and illogical they are? Are they constantly thinking that I'm the one that's illogical? Are humans so unaware of their own biases that we can never ever truly determine what is real and what isn't?

You're an atheist too, towards other religions like Islam, Hinduism etc. When you truly understand that your arguments against those religions go against Christianity too, you will understand atheists.

I think I see what you're trying to say, but there is a bit of term confusion in your argument.

Just using the linguistics of the word, "Atheists" are definitively people who do not believe in a theos, ie: a g/God. It would be nonsensical to call a polytheist or monotheist an atheist.

> When you truly understand that your arguments against those religions go against Christianity too...

Christianity is relatively unique[1] in the sense that it claims exclusivity to salvation through Jesus Christ. As it relates to your argument, this tenant allows Christians to make claims to spiritual supremacy. Interreligious comparisons are moot at that point.

[1] Conditioning that statement here, I can't keep up with all the world's religions

My arguments against Islam and Hinduism are identical to my argument against atheism. My reasoning is internally and externally consistent.

> My reasoning is internally and externally consistent.

I don’t think you should be so confident that everyone else sees it this way.

Why do we need to refer to everyone else? What matters is my own argument not everyone else's.

If what everyone else thinks is a factor, than the majority of the world is not atheist.

I suppose the thing about faith is there is nothing I can do or say that could convince you from it. Your unwavering belief in the myths told in a collection of old books written by the barely educated in spite of a lack of evidence for the more magical parts (which is a significant chunk of it) is indeed a core moral value in your belief system. The extent to which you believe is somehow a virtue, and not a vice. This is obviously in reverse from my perspective.

You think I’m illogical. I think you’re illogical. In the end we’re just two Spidermans, pointing at each other.

>Instead a person must start with no beliefs and formulate a conclusion from the facts. If you do this, it is undeniable that the bible is real.

What verifiable facts are in the Bible?

Can any of the claimed miracles be replicated today? Say handling snakes or drinking poison, which has resulted in multiple deaths of believers.

Two religious people can't agree which parts of the Bible are literal and which are just a story, so it's funny to see accusations at the other side.

Astronomy makes outlandish sounding conjectures that can't be replicated either and it is not considered a religion. For example, the big bang cannot be replicated.

Lack of the ability to replicate something means that it is just hard to prove that something is true. Not being able to prove something to be true via replication does not mean it is not true.

> Humans aren't rational beings that form conclusions by logically composing facts into a singular point.

But you’re proceeding to form a logical, rational argument in saying this. How are we to ever understand what you’re intending?

I am simply saying that humans by nature are irrational. You have to deliberately discipline yourself to be dispassionate in constructing logical arguments. Atheism is illogical and unscientific. It is a collection of people deliberately and unconsciously picking and choosing specific evidence to validate a pre-existing belief that they already staked so much of their identity on.

A person born into atheism isn't just going to change sides as soon as he's presented with evidence that Christianity is real. Rather he will twist and bend the existing evidence in a way so as to support is current world view.

When you do place together all the facts, logically speaking, what follows is that the bible is real.

Atheism isn’t a belief.

Atheism is non-belief.

That isn't true at all. Atheism is a positive belief that the statement "there is no God" is true.

For example, I don't lack a belief that an elephant is in my living room, I have a positive belief that there is no such elephant.

This leads to absurdity. There are infinite non-existances, but finite existences (modulo the infinite of the universe, but the observable universe/the ~13.7 billion lightyear bubble around the Earth or so is finite). To assert that you have a positive belief that things that do not exist do not exists is to assert that you have infinite positive beliefs in the non-existant. To encode these infinite positive beliefs in reality would require infinite storage space, even in something as powerful as the human brain. I instead assert that you have positive beliefs in things that exist and, only upon it being necessary, do you assert the factuality of non-existences in an ad hoc as needed basis as the result of the conjugation of your positive beliefs of existence.

This is pedantic. You could say you believe in not believing in certain things. Does it even matter? You know what I mean, no need to get pedantic here.

I don’t really wish to continue arguing with you, because as I wrote earlier, your heels are dug in and there’s nothing I can say or do to convince you.

I do think it’s useful to highlight here though that the difference between belief and non-belief is not pedantry, and it’s not inconsequential.

The entire scientific method is about challenging ideas to discover the truth. When a scientist makes a claim to another scientist, the default position is “I don’t believe it. Please show substantial evidence to support your claim.”

This is different from faith-based scientism, which is more similar to any other faith-based ism in that the method is to protect ideas from challenge in order to preserve the “truth”.

I'm sorry but you're the one that is biased and have your heels dug. I don't wish to to communicate with you either. However you're the one that decided to respond to me. I'm up to talk but if you say something as rude as, "I don’t really wish to continue arguing with you" then I have no interest in anything you have to say. I kindly ask you to stop if you do not want to continue arguing with me, you're the one that responded to me in the first place.

>I do think it’s useful to highlight here though that the difference between belief and non-belief is not pedantry, and it’s not inconsequential.

If you don't wish to continue arguing with me why the heck are you still highlighting things? The difference is pedantic. It's like talking about the difference between adding a negative number and subtracting a positive number.

    You believe something exists.
    You disbelieve something doesn't exist.

    You believe something doesn't exist.
    You disbelieve something doesn't exist. 

These are linguistic phenomenons and you are just adding negative qualifiers to words thinking that it has a profound affect on meaning. It is 100% pedantic. Additionally my religion is not a belief. It is a logical conclusion built from the composition of facts.

>The entire scientific method is about challenging ideas to discover the truth. When a scientist makes a claim to another scientist, the default position is “I don’t believe it. Please show substantial evidence to support your claim.”

The scientific method cannot ever discover the truth. Proof is the domain of math and logic. In science and therefore the real world, nothing can be proven. To quote Einstein: "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

Science is not about proving things to be true. The entire endeavor of science is an attempt to prove something false. Repeated failures to prove something false only indicates that something "might" be true.

This coupled with the fact that all observations tools in science have limited accuracy and limited precision makes it such that even the act of disproof is done through the lens of probability. Or in other words, nothing can really be disproven either. This is a bit philosophical and a bit too pedantic but the point is to illustrate that I understand the scientific method to a degree greater than even most atheists.

>This is different from faith-based scientism, which is more similar to any other faith-based ism in that the method is to protect ideas from challenge in order to preserve the “truth”.

Let me reiterate my point. My stance is not faith-based. It is self-evident logic. Every religious person you talk to parrots the buzz word of "faith" but really what they are saying to you is that their "belief" to them is as logical and rational as science is to you.