re the doctrine of original sin in article may athos rutgers edu eugene bigelow ebay sun com writes if babies are not supposed to be baptised then why doesn t the bible ever say so it never comes right and says only people that know right from wrong or who are taught can be baptised this is not a very sound argument for baptising babies it assumes that if the bible doesn t say specifically that you don t need to do something then that must mean that you do need to do it i know there s a specific term for this form of logic but it escapes me right now however if it were sound then you should be able to apply it this way if the bible doesn t specifically say that something is wrong then it must be ok which coincidentally leads perfectly into a question i ve often pondered this is no less logical than the assumption that if something is not in the bible then it must not be done but i don t really think that s what he s saying anyway see below if slavery is immoral which i believe it is can i assume that everyone else in this group does too why doesn t jesus or any of the apostles speak out against it owning slaves was common practice back then paul speaks about everything else that is immoral he apparently thought it was important enough to talk about things like not being a drunkard why doesn t anyone mention slavery if god s morals are eternal and don t change like the morals of society then it must have been just as immoral then as it is today what about the letter to philemon in it paul at least hints that a certain slave be released also slavery in those times was not the same as the type of slavery we had in the u s i think a better comparison would be to indentured servitude i don t really want to get into a discussion on slavery anyway although it does demonstrate your point i don t think it is relevent because the original poster did not say that absence of specific condemenation proves something is not immoral back to the original poster s assertion he is not in fact making the logical error of which you accuse him he stated the fact that the bible does not say that babies cannot be baptized also we know that the bible says that everyone must be baptized to enter heaven everyone includes infants unless there is other scripture to the contrary i e an exception since there is no exception listed in the bible we must assume to be on the safe side that the bible means what it says that everyone must be baptized to enter heaven and so we baptize infants to summarize you accused the original poster of saying if something is not forbidden by the bible then that proves it is ok i e if something cannot be disproven it is true he rather seemed to be asserting that since the bible does not forbid you cannot prove using the bible that it is not ok there is a difference between proving whether or not something can be proven or disproven there are theories on provability in the field of logic by the way and actually proving or disproving it the other logical error we must avoid falling into is the converse that if something cannot be proven then it is false this seems to be the error of many sola scriptura believers i think the only thing that can be proven here is that one cannot use scripture alone to prove something either way about infant baptism although the evidence seems to me to favor it steve creps indiana university creps lateran ucs indiana edu
