591 replies to this topic

[Pupp3t]

The only sections I read is the teachings of jesus. Other than that, the book is just created by the flawed hands of humanity. There are many mistranslations, who knows which ones are the real deal? Then you have the other religious texts of other religions, each one containing stories that contradict the beliefs of the religion itself. Who knows which text is the REAL Word of the Lord, who I feel would want to express himself through more than just mere paper.
No sir, a simple defiance of logic and physics in the world would be nice. Like the existence of dragons in the cloud or something.

[Ben Masada]

Pupp3t, on 13 November 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:

The only sections I read is the teachings of jesus. Other than that, the book is just created by the flawed hands of humanity. There are many mistranslations, who knows which ones are the real deal? Then you have the other religious texts of other religions, each one containing stories that contradict the beliefs of the religion itself. Who knows which text is the REAL Word of the Lord, who I feel would want to express himself through more than just mere paper.
No sir, a simple defiance of logic and physics in the world would be nice. Like the existence of dragons in the cloud or something.

So, the only sections you read are the teachings of Jesus. Did you know that everything about Jesus was written 50+ years after he had been gone? And IMHO, everything he said or is said about him, was written by hellenists who never saw him. That's what we have today in the NT because it was canonized and preserved by the Fathers of the Church. The Catholic Church, there is. Anything non-hellenistic that possibly could have been written by the apostles of Jesus did not stand the test of admission into the canon in the 4th Century. Nevertheless, I do find possible to accept about 20% worthy believing. The other 80% is made up of anti-Jewish interpolations with the intent to promote Replacement Theology.

Ben

[scowl]

Jesus spoke Aramaic. There are no quotes from Jesus in Aram

Pupp3t, on 13 November 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:

The only sections I read is the teachings of jesus. Other than that, the book is just created by the flawed hands of humanity. There are many mistranslations, who knows which ones are the real deal?

Jesus spoke Aramaic. There are no quotes from Jesus in his native language. The ones we have today have been translated from Greek. How do you know which ones are mistranslations and which ones are "the real deal"?

[calaf]

Bling, on 12 October 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:

I love the way the bible contradicts itself as it adds to the argument I have that it was not inspired by God but written by storytellers.

Here's a good example:

Has anyone seen God?

• John 1:18 "No man hath seen God at any time."
  
• Exodus 33:20 "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live."
  
• John 6:46 "Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God [Jesus], he hath seen the Father."
  
• I John 4:12 "No man hath seen God at any time."

  vs

• Genesis 32:30 "For I have seen God face to face."
  
• Exodus 33:11 "And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."
  
• Isaiah 6:1 "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple."
  
• Job 42:5 "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee."

Not to state the obvious, the Bible is not one book but 66 books written over a thousand years apart and none of it having any real provenance.

[Bling]

calaf, on 14 November 2012 - 11:33 PM, said:

Not to state the obvious, the Bible is not one book but 66 books written over a thousand years apart and none of it having any real provenance.

And your point is?

[eight bits]

Quote

And your point is?

The poster will answer for himself, but I will comment on one of the points he raised.

It is entirely expected that any multiply authored anthology will have its authors contradicting one another. Umm, otherwise the book could be a lot shorter. This is particularly routine in a book which is two dependent but distinct anthologies bound together in one volume. There are three intergenerational conversations going on within that one volume:

A Jewish conversation about the temporal and spiritual signficance of an alleged revelation of God to the Israelites at Sinai,

A Gentile conversation about the temporal and spiritual significance of an alleged revelation of God to the Jews in Judea and vicinity,

A Gentile conversation about the relationship between the two revelations, which includes a re-reading of parts of the earlier anthology

Each participant in these conversations expresses his own view, both of the subject matter and often enough of the other commentators as well.

The Bible is not the Koran, which is singly authored and said not to be "inspired" by God (whatever that means, and opinions differ), but rather dictated by God privately to one man. There is a minority of a minority within Christianity (Protestant Fundamentalists) who treat the Bible as if it were the Koran. The Calvinist approach was especially close to the Muslim, but seems to have softened since the good old days, leaving an inerrantist-literalist school that mostly dates to the Nineteenth Century, more than a millennium and a half after anything contained in the Bible was written.

This crackpot minority within the minority provide the political cover for anti-Christians to pull apart the straw man of an inerrant Bible which they read as if it were email spoofed to be from God, and more recently as a supposed divine archeology, astronomy, and biology textbook.

Were it not for that political cover, then the anti's assault on their straw man would be seen for what it is, the inability or unwillingness to read with comprehension a text mostly written at high school level. The remarkable contradiction is between the crackpots' interpretation of an easy read and what is actually there to be read easily.

But to say that would acknowledge that most Christians aren't crackpots, and that will never do. Silence also gets anti's off the hook for discussing any dsitnctive Jewish reading of the Bible (and yes there are distinctive Jewish readings of the New Testament, too). Like any other denominationalist, the anti-theists just know that their sect's reading of the Good Book is the only reading that could possibly be right. 'Cause after all, Westboro Baptist and the Discovery Institute agree. Who could be more accomplished Bible experts than those folks?

[scowl]

eight bits, on 15 November 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

It is entirely expected that any multiply authored anthology will have its authors contradicting one another.

Several books have contradictions within themselves. That is not expected.

[Coffey]

The bible was based on the same things as the hebrew bible and Qu'ran. Originally it was early civilisations trying to make sense of astronamy. All early religions/civilisations are connected in this way. All the way back to Babylon. Men who didn't know that edited and chnaged it based on their interpretation or for specific reasons.

and then, on 12 October 2012 - 07:55 PM, said:

Bling I for one don't get too concerned about such things.  This text is in some cases 3000 years old and while the majority of it has been very carefully transcribed I'm sure that errors could have been made - humans and all...
But I use as my pattern my grand father.  He was a good man.  Honest and fair dealing with all.  Avid church goer at a time and in a place (very rural south Alabama) that church going was not a convenient thing - it took great effort, walking long distances, etc.  Anyway, my point is that he put in the effort and was uneducated to the point that he couldn't even begin to be the scholar that many here at UM are.... but he had a very strong faith and centered his life on the words of Jesus.  I believe the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.  I try ( and fail a lot) to live my life from it's precepts.  When the end comes for me and I discover the answer to the mystery for myself then all I will leave behind is the memory of how I treated others and whatever inspiration my faith gave them.  That book and my grandfather's belief in it and his actions toward it make me a better person than I otherwise would be.  No saint for certain, but better than I would be without it.  So my point is why is it necessary to demean and call it into question when so many other things in this life are already so destructive?  It's almost like trying to blow out the last few candles in a rapidly darkening cave with pits everywhere one could fall into.

I don't want this to sound rude or harsh, especially cause i don't see how you described what you said as a bad thing at all.

But why do you need a faith in a religion to do that?


I don't base my reasons for doing good things and not doing bad things on a judgement or afterlife. I base them on empathy and my morals. Surely a better person is someone who does these things without fear of judgement or a horrible afterlife?

This is just something that has always bothered me.


I read someone on here say without christianity nobody would be good. That was one of the stupidist things I have ever read personally.

Edited by Coffey, 15 November 2012 - 10:26 PM.

[eight bits]

scowl

Quote

Several books have contradictions within themselves. That is not expected.

Why not? The books don't correspond with authorship boundaries, either. Job appears to have at least two authors, who lived centuries apart. Isaiah appears to have at least three. Just the first three chapters of Genesis appear to have two, and I believe three. And so on.

There is nothing unusual about the individual items in an anthology being multiply authored, or that people who do not agree with each other on all points would sometimes collaborate. Documenting disagreement is an excellent use of bandwidth, in my opinion.

You know that story about the seven blind men and the elephant. The solution, if there is one, is for them to compare notes. One guy telling the other six to shut up won't help understand the elephant, although it does promote consistency. The Bible is the seven guys comparing notes. The Koran is Mohammed telling everybody else to shut up. Fundies split the difference, applyng Mohammed's method to a collective work.

[Arbitran]

I've come to view the Bible rather similarly to the way I see the Arabian Nights; a compilation of folktales, all originating from oral traditions, all originating at different times and places, and which were never intended to be taken as parts of a single work. The Bible is just that: a compilation of folk stories from various locales in the Middle East, originated in different historical periods, and which are, generally, not intended to be taken together.

[CelestialStar]

Whenever i would bring up contradictions in the bible, my pastor would say, "there are none"
and be able to dismiss it because i couldn't remember where they were,
I wonder.....what shall his response be now that i can finally flag it in his face.
I stopped believing a year ago and had a discovery.......my life is better now than ever and i am a lot more at peace of mind.
also, i asked another religious leader a question like this : "if you were a mass murderer but still 'christian' and believed in Christ and then there was a little atheist girl who's family refused Christ but each member of the family volunteered for community service, helping the homeless and taking care of the elderly, you would go to heaven but they wouldn't, why?"

him: because only Christ can bring purity and save people from hell
me: but only Christians worship Christ, by that definition, only Christians are worthy of heaven, and everyone else to hell by that definition, So even if you were a mass murderer, and she was a sinless little girl, she would go to hell because she didn't believe despite her good while you get to go to heaven even doing such wrongs?
me:So in other words she is condemned just for not being a Christian?!?


the response that came back was: Exactly

I stopped believing after that, that was terrible and i felt sick thinking about all the people i condemned for not being christian.

Edited by CelestialStar, 16 November 2012 - 04:47 AM.

[eight bits]

Hi, CelestialStar. Welcome aboard

I'm an agnostic, so I don't advocate anybody becoming or remaining a religious person. I'm surely not one. But I do try to keep straight what the various arguments are, and who argues what.

One bit of shennanigans that comes up all the time is to attribute a minority view within a group to the group as a whole. One version of that is to portray a distinctively Protestant teaching as "the Christian" teaching. Sometimes the promoted view isn't even typical among Protestants.

That comes up twice in your posts. First, when you asked the pastor about contradictions in the Bible, and he said flatly that there weren't any. That's baloney. The book is full of them. But inerrantism "solves" a peculiarly Protestant (and in this case, non-Anglican Protestant) problem, How can the Bible alone provide all the information you need for salvation, if the Bible contains any error at all?

Denying that there is a problem is a very human response. It even works sometimes, as when a boo-boo gets better all by itself. But it's obviously not a very reliable go-to strategy. About three out of four Nicene Christians (those NC's who aren't non-Anglican Protestant, plus some others, too) solve the problem by taking the Bible to be part of their deposit of faith, not the entirety of it. The Anglicans articulate that as "Reason" and "Tradition" complementing "Scripture."

In other words, readng the Bible for these Christians is like reading any book. Your brain is supposed to remain in gear. Seeking answers doesn't mean you don't ask more questions.

The second time it comes up is in your contrast of the Christian murderer with the atheist girl who helps her neighbors. Again, it is a peculiarly Protestant view, mostly based on a reading, but not the only possible reading, of Paul, that the one thing that matters to a person's final destination is his or her "faith," not "works."

Living Protestants are apt to see what the girl in your story does as "works." Personally, I think that when Paul disparages works, he is thinking of Second Temple Jewish rituals, most of which literally nobody performs anymore anyway. Otherwise, you're stuck with Paul disapproving of helping other people out, when he organizes a massive relief effort personally (speaking of contradictions "in the Bible" which aren't in the text, but only in the reader's interpretation of it.)

The rest of Christianity sees your comparison very differently. For one thing, where is it written that the central concern of God is where you personally spend eternity? Both typical Jews and many Chrisitians think you're here to make this world a place fit to live in. There is nothing whatsoever "unBiblical" to think that whatever happens at the end of days will happen. In the meantime, you're here, so get to work.

Anyway, I am not arguing that you ought to re-adopt a religion. What I am saying is that you may want to look on these questions with a broader perspective than the one that you grew up surrounded by. Broader, that is, than what comes from looking at a book as something its authors never intended it to be, and which it was rarely thought to be until about 1500 years after it was finished.

[Bling]

CelestialStar, on 16 November 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

Whenever i would bring up contradictions in the bible, my pastor would say, "there are none"
and be able to dismiss it because i couldn't remember where they were,
I wonder.....what shall his response be now that i can finally flag it in his face.
I stopped believing a year ago and had a discovery.......my life is better now than ever and i am a lot more at peace of mind.
also, i asked another religious leader a question like this : "if you were a mass murderer but still 'christian' and believed in Christ and then there was a little atheist girl who's family refused Christ but each member of the family volunteered for community service, helping the homeless and taking care of the elderly, you would go to heaven but they wouldn't, why?"

him: because only Christ can bring purity and save people from hell
me: but only Christians worship Christ, by that definition, only Christians are worthy of heaven, and everyone else to hell by that definition, So even if you were a mass murderer, and she was a sinless little girl, she would go to hell because she didn't believe despite her good while you get to go to heaven even doing such wrongs?
me:So in other words she is condemned just for not being a Christian?!?


the response that came back was: Exactly

I stopped believing after that, that was terrible and i felt sick thinking about all the people i condemned for not being christian.

I was involved in a simliar sounding church group and the pastor was the same kind of character....and I too realised he was talking alot of rubbish! And now I'm a very happy atheist!

[scowl]

CelestialStar, on 16 November 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

Whenever i would bring up contradictions in the bible, my pastor would say, "there are none"
and be able to dismiss it because i couldn't remember where they were,

This is a huge difference from Hebrew school. If you asked a Rabbi about contradictions in the Torah, he'd ask you how much free time you have. It's a religion that knows it's based on a flawed document and can only help its members understand the flaws to make their own decisions.

[and then]

scowl, on 17 October 2012 - 08:52 PM, said:

Interesting that Jethro was the only name that passed into Christian use. I think Reuel is exclusively a Jewish name unless there's a variation of it.

I only ever heard of one person with this name and he wasn't Jewish so I'm not sure your statement is correct.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wasn't Jewish:
" Although it might seem unlikely that anyone would wonder whether the author of The Lord of the Rings was Jewish, the Nazis took no chances. When the publishing firm of Ruetten & Loening was negotiating with J. R. R. Tolkien over a German translation of The Hobbit in 1938, they demanded that Tolkien provide written assurance that he was an Aryan. Tolkien chastised the publishers for “impertinent and irrelevant inquiries,” and—ever the professor of philology— lectured them on the proper meaning of the term: “As far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects.” As to being Jewish, Tolkien regretted that “I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”

Read more: http://www.cross-cur.../#ixzz2CQ4T0fsv
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