>>>>...
>>>>>
>>>>>Of course, I believe that God was around before the Egyptians...so...His teachings (which is what I believe to be true today) began with His communication to Adam and Eve.
>>>>
>>>>I was considering replying to your last message, although I found it hard to reply t0o the allegories about programming, and that. Now, having read your above para., I realise it's pointless having a discusion with someone who still believes in the allegory of Adam & Eve, as if it were a true story, in the face of irrefutable scientifif evidence to the contrary, AND the huge gaping holes in the story anyway.
>>>
>>>You're probably right...but then again...you profess to believe the teaching of someone who believed that Adam and Eve were real.
>>
>>What Jesus believed is a matter of conjecture. While I don't want to speak for Terry, I will anyway.
>>
>>He chooses to believe in the things Jesus is supposed to have said that make sense to him. He chooses not to believe in the things Jesus is supposed to have said and/or believed that don't make sense to him. Those things, I assume he believes to be embellishments.
>>
>>It's like picking up any writings. Those things that make sense, we choose to believe, those things that appear to be fantasy (to our own minds) we choose not to believe. I believe that there is war in the middle east even though I haven't directly experienced it, but I do not believe in flying saucers and ghosts. Both get written up, but we make our choices according to our own general leanings.
>>
>>You believe the bible, and that's fine as far as I'm concerned, but you do tend to use it in debates as though it is simple proven fact, and there, we part company.
>
>That's the best explanation I've heard (so far) on how people can believe part of the Bible and not others. That does make sense to me now - thanks for helping me understand where Terry is coming from.

Cheese! I wish I'd just written what Alan has 2 days ago, rather than wasting my time explaining every bit.
As to where I'm coming from ... I doubt if you'll find my stance unique. It's just that I've been botered to explain it to you.

Cheers Alan - you more-or-less summed me up :-)