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The Bible: Bullshit or Sacred Truth?
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Here you go, Apo.
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There were at least nine Troys, stacked one on top of the other. I think that means the Illiad is nine times as likely to be true.
Q is simply the parts of Matthew and Luke that are identical to each other and not found in Mark. It is a shorthand, and it could consist of a variety of sources. It's also possible that Mark, Matthew and Luke all had several common sources.
Calling Q an "attack on the innerrency of Biblical scriptures" is rather silly because these are the same methods of textual criticism scholars use to explore the history of other ancient texts, from Plato to the Mahabharata. Praytell, why shouldn't scholars also use these methods on the Bible?
(The Ramayana claims, among other things, that a magical talking monkey grey super-big, jumped accross the ocean to a mountain, tore off the top of the mountain, jumped back across the ocean, and set the mountain down on a battlefield so warriors could be healed by magical flowers that grew on the mountaintop.)
1) Any part of the new testiment other than half of the letters of Paul were written prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE (and the the man was writing letters here, messages to his friends and aquaintences, not divine scripture)
2) That the author for any of the NT other than the aforementioned authentic letters of Paul is known at all.
All of the gospels make reference to the destruction of the Temple. But more importantly all of the gospels in structure and tone are attempting to construct a version of the Temple religion of YHWH where the Temple itself was utterly destroyed. That is their purpose and the theme that runs throughout.
I agree that most scholars of the Q hypothesis are bunk. There is a lot of bad scholarship in this area. But only because they take their argument too far. Q is not a physical document and even if it did exist (big if) there is no way to reconstruct it. It is a thought experiment to examine the areas of overlap and contradiction between the different parts of the NT. Because although it is tempting to think of the NT as a multiple source problem it is not. It is a single source that has gone through a common editorial process.
Edit: I am going to be offline for a while now (work and such) but I implore anyone reading this thread who is interested in the subject to look into some of the real scholarship on the subject. Oxford University Press is a great source that publishes many fine historians. I especially recomend Dr Elaine Pagels if you are interested in Gnosticism and Dr. Donald Akenson for an absolutely masterful look at the origins of the Gospels. I can't recall the author but I also highly recomend "The Earliest Christian Artifacts" for a fasinating look at the actual physical manuscripts (or more often scraps thereof) which have survived to the present day. Also "The Christians as the Romans Saw Them" (again, cannot recall the auther at the moment). I'm not at home so a fuller bibliography is not possible at present (writing from memory here).
Further Edit: Just remember that eathless is espousing one very narrow view of Christianity and one not at all well received in actual scholarship. The matter of dating any Gospel prior to 70 CE in particular is a view only held by a tiny minority (in my rather extensive reading on the subject) and generally only those who are arguing from Faith rather than scholarship.
You only need to open the Bible to page 1 to see that it's bullshit.
God creates the world by separating out "the waters" (which are already there).
He makes a raqia, literally "that which is hammered out," into a solid dome or firmament which separates the waters above it from the waters below it.
This raqia is called "the sky."
He then places the sun, moon, stars and planets in the sky. The sky which—remember—he created to keep out the water above it.
This is the same creation myth shared by the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and pre-philosophic Greeks. To a primitive mind, it makes sense because it explains why the sky is blue and why rain falls (there's an ocean of water above it). That doesn't change the fact that it is bullshit.
Short Answer: Bullshit
Long Answer: Bullshit because of the blaring contradictions, historical fabrications and inaccuracies, and factual errors which irrefutably identify the bible as a book written by ancient civilizations with very limited knowledge of the world, and no divine inspiration.
I can't get enough of the story of Jacob.
Speaking of which you never addressed my post in the other thread.. where I called you out on those kind of statements.
Culled from many sources but compiled, edited, translated and preserved as a single source. Not edited extensively; especially early on the genuine desire was to preserve as much as possible. But still there has been the desire and small nudges with each translation in the direction of syncretism. Of trying to reconsile Mark, Matthew and Luke with John or the gospels with Paul etc...
The only deliberate acts of religious sabotage that I am aware of was in the the creation of the King James bible (thankfully that occured rather late and there are many other existing sources). But the text has a long and tangled history. And after the 300s it was treated by believers, copiers and preservers as a single text.
Funny how you probably accept a lot of other ancient manuscripts with no where near the same evidence and accept those as accurate. Just something to think about.
If people took Shakespeare as "sacred truth", we would be having the same discussion.
I think the bible is bullshit, but also great literature. Though I hear the Koran in the original Arabic is a rather more sublime book of bullshit.
I prefer nonfiction, myself.
Such as?
You know something is great literature when it's the only religious text to command multiple genocides.
Treat the Gospels just like you would any other historical document. Subject it to the same criteria. Treat it just like Ceasar's Gallic Wars, Josephus' Jewish Wars, or Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome. If you accept them as generally accurate, on what basis would you discount the claims/reliability of the Gospels?
In all my years of discussing with skeptics, atheists, agnostics, etc - those that know and are not ignorant to such evidential standings for the Bible, will acknowledge that the Gospels offer us accurate historical information, but they out-of-hand reject the idea of miracles.
This issue goes beyond the matter of historical evidence and shifts to the world view one will allow. If you reject belief in God/Jesus and the possibility of miracles outright, then no amount of evidence will persuade you to believe otherwise.
Okay, I'm not sure if we're actually disagreeing on anything substantive. But I do think multiple-source criticism is the best way to understand the Bible. Especially the Old Testament.
Do you think the Ramayana is generally historically accurate?
Part of the problem is other than one small portion we have no idea who wrote the differnt pieces of the NT. Were they edited in common (probably not). Did authors of one gospel have access to one ore more of the others (several relationships are possible given the relationships of the texts, none are definitive).
There is no way to know if a piece of information showing up in two gospels is because two authors wrote it or because one included it because the other did.
Oh boy, all right. I first wanted to avoid wall of texts by just linking to a few websites, but I'll try this instead. I'll propose just a few issues, and you can answer them. After that we can discuss those further, or move on.
We'll stop when we've changed the other person's mind, eh?
The creation of the world begins with earth, and expands to the light in the sky. The stars are made to seem like almost trivial creations, when in fact they are much, much more, and predate the earth by billions of years.
How is this compatible to the way the universe was very obviously formed as has been proven so many times before? Or, perhaps, it's far more reasonable to conclude it was written by ancients humans with no actual understanding of astronomy, or any actual divine inspiration/gifts/intelligence. Was God just dumbing it down for those writers? Or were they writing based off what they thought, which was wrong.
Actually, I'll only ask that one question. I'm sure there are ways of interpreting this all. Maybe Adam is the current human species. Maybe by "creation" he meant the "creation" of the universe to our race. When he told Adam to name every creature in existence, he meant our species would, as a whole, come to name every animal.
Maybe... It's a stretch (a huge stretch), but maybe. However, the "inerrant truth" crowd of the bible, the young-earthers, are horribly, blatantly and comically wrong.
I don't reject the idea of God/Jesus and possibility of miracles, I just have yet to see any definitive evidence. I tend to take most historical documents with a grain of salt, by the way. The only difference is those tend not to try and tell you an absolute truth, how to live your life, and that there's a all poweful being in the sky who controls everything, and that if I just buy into it, I'll live for all eternity. Whenever anyone attempts to sell me something like that, I like to see some proof.
You must be talking about a different religion.. because the Bible says that I am saved by God's grace (Jesus) not because of anything I did, can do, or will do.
Good thing I am not a young earther and good thing the Bible does not make an absolute case for the 6,000 year old earth crowd. Ultimately, the age of the earth cannot be proven. Whether 6,000 years or 4.6 billion years – both viewpoints (and everything in between) rests on faith and assumptions. Those who hold to 4.6 billion years trust that methods such as radiometric dating are reliable, and that nothing has occurred in history that may have disrupted the normal decay of radio-isotopes.
Those who hold to 6,000 years trust that the Bible is true, and that other factors explain the “apparent†age of the earth, such as the global flood, or God creating the universe in a state that “appears†to give it an very long age. As an example, God created Adam and Eve as fully-grown adult human beings. If a doctor were to have examined Adam and Eve on the day of their creation, the doctor would have estimated their age at 20 years (or whatever age they appeared to be) - when, in fact, Adam and Eve were less than one day old. See the point?
I do have to ask though, do you want me to address the distant starlight aspect of your post? I can do so and have done so in the past, but it will take me a bit of time to write it all out. Let me know.
Granted, if you're a Calvinist or somesuch you believe that the only reason you make this decision is because of God's grace. Nevertheless, your salvation corresponds to an action which you choose to make.
Allow me to disagree based on what the Bible says about this point - we're all born in sin and worthy of hell (eternal separation from God). So the punishment of hell is not because we didn't accept Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross - but because we are in disunion with God.
God doesn't send anyone to Hell. We send ourselves.
The decision to accept or reject God's grace is entirely up to you.
Hell is the natural consequence of one's rejection of God. To force someone into heaven who would hate the presence of God would be like compelling someone who cannot rise above rap music to listen endlessly to the works of Bach and Handel. It would be horrible! Hell is both a punishment and the outcome of a mind-set against God.
Heaven would be Hell for those individuals that did all they could in their free will to distant themselves from God. Why would some people deem it unfair for them NOT to be forced to be with someone they want nothing to do with?
Except where it says faith alone cannot save you.
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You could likewise make the argument that the sun has "the appearanance of heliocentrism." Certainly it is in god's power to make the earth appear to orbit the sun, just as it's in his power to make rocks and fossils appear billions of years older than they are and arranged in a way that supports gradualism/uniformity.
But if we trust the Bible is true then we must hold that the sun, along with the moon, planets, and stars, is a light that is "set" into the sky, and that the sky is a solid dome which keeps out the water above the sky.
I'm curious as to why you reject geocentrism, earthless. (or do you?)
That was me. I can see how you'd get confused.
I'm going to take an immense amount of care in this, because I get myself banned frequently when dealing with people like you.
Technically, I only need one example of inaccuracy on the Christian bible's part to refute the claim that you hold so dear that it's divine. If it's divine, according to the Christian/Hebrew concept of divinity, then it must be accurate, because your God inspired it, and your God is infallible. So how much do I have to say? God was wrong about rabbits chewing cud, he was wrong about pi, he was wrong about the shape of earth, he was wrong about earth's positioning in the universe. Those are all pretty basic, and I'm sure you're familiar with them, having been an atheist yourself.
By the way, everybody used to be an atheist. Everybody. Kirk Cameron was an atheist for even longer than most people, by his account, but it lends absolutely no credence to crocoduck. Cut it out with that fucked up appeal to authority, or whatever it is.
Each of the four gospels report a different number of women coming to see the rock moved after Jesus' ressurection. Mark and John give two different accounts of what Jesus did after his baptism. There's a handful of others, but those come to mind most immediately. I'd have to whip out my dog-eared KJV to get a fuller list, but as I said before, only one is needed to easily call into question your spurious claims about the divine inspiration of the bible. If it was actually divine, don't you think they would have gotten these basic, factual accounts correct? This isn't about interpretation or meaning, this is about facts, and your God failed to accurately portray it, apparently.
Not a Calvinist, sorry. We have to acknowledge (be made aware) of our sin and accept God's provision for that state. Many people view Christianity as attending church, performing rituals, not committing certain sins. That is not Christianity. True Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Accepting Jesus as your personal Savior means placing your own personal faith and trust in Him. No one is saved by the faith of others. No one is forgiven by doing certain deeds. The only way to be saved is to personally accept Jesus as your Savior, trusting His death as the payment for your sins, and His resurrection as your guarantee of eternal life (John 3:16).
People who don't think they are sick do not seek out medical attention. So unless a person sees the sinful state they are in and keep thinking "I'm a good person....." they won't see the need for Jesus.
Yeah, this's pretty much what it boils down to.
Bible: "Accept god, and worship him, and take him into your heart or you're seriously fucked"
Me: "Why? Who's god and when can I meet him?"
Bible: "When you die. But you need to have accepted him before you die..."
Me: "Why?"
Bible: "Because I said so, that's why!"
Now, prove beyond any reasonable doubt that god himself inspired it and I may believe it. You may find this rather hard, take a few centuries and get back to me.
I don't have religion, sorry. Religion is a set of rules, laws, mandates, rituals, etc.. that must be done to make me "good" to God. Your analogy misses out the point of grace - an undeserved gift. It's akin to scolding and belittling a beggar for acknowledging he is: a) hungry & b) taking food from someone freely giving it to them.
Think about that for a moment.
D:D:D:D:D:
What?! I might be willing to understand your viewpoint if we had only ever taken one method of dating seriously, and only ever dated one rock, but... but no! First of all, the age of the Earth more recently has been estimated to be closer to 4.5 billion years, as technology has grown more advanced. Second of all, the exact number we've come up with has been refined by hundreds of measures taken of dozens of different samples. And we already knew the earth was at least a few billion years old before by almost any archaeological method. It we're not even just testing meteorites and earth strata. Fossils, too!
I might ask about evolution next.
No, I don't. You're telling me that God created the world in such a way that it would only appear to be 4.5 billion years old? He placed the dinosaur bones there and fabricated these meteorites? I didn't know God was into that sort of deception. You're saying that the way in which the world was created might give it the appearance of being older than it is. That's quite a claim, but I think it's based more on figurin' then science or logic.
Yes, I would like you to explain this.
The amount of ritual periphery surrounding this central action is immaterial. Your religion is ultimately no different from any other cult that demands obedience to its tenets.
And then said beggar walking up to someone else and saying, "you are hungry." They respond, "no actually, I'm not." To which they reply, "yes you are. You must be, he didn't give you bread, your going to die a horrible terrible death of starvation. seeing as how you are hungry and all but not asking for bread." To which they reply, "no really, I'm not hungry, please go away." Etc.. round robin over and over.
Woah, what? The Bible doesn't say the earth is flat, actually the contrary. The Bible doesn't say the earth is the center of the universe. It's a bit unfair, in a supposedly honest discussion, that you go off on all these different tangents and then expect the person you're addressing to even be able to keep hacking away at all these different things.
And the only reason I brought a little of my past is because in the other thread I was IMMEDIATELY jumped on with the classic attacks of "you're simply repeating what you heard on Sunday... blah blah.. you're brain washed and know nothing else.. blah blah.."
Which is pretty immature to do when you do not know the person you're discussing with.