Are you a believer?

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They call it The Holy Bible.

Science is going to have to find a way to harvest the energy generated by continuous, incessant arguing, then use this forum to power a small city.

No opinion had been voiced. It is a simple fact that anyone can make any statement without having proof ... and I will be back in the morning to share a little more here. See, opinions never change facts, and yet many people do seem to believe things are only true if they happen to agree ...

Nope.

Friend, either you are nutso or you are using a totally different edition of the Bible or you have a very idiosyncratic system of exegesis.

I suppose you are figuring on rationalizing the post resurrection appearances.

Well, they do that sort of crit.

But it is JUST a tad irrational to take rewrites of one part of a text as refuting the straight statement of the same text.

By that standard, we can deduce that Pinocchio actually started out as a fles and blood child.

Personal experience is typically only really useful when someone else is actually asking/wanting to hear it for his or her own use or consideration ... kind of like one beggar telling/asking another beggar where to find bread. The rest of the time, and especially in any kind of debate setting, personal experience is of little value to anyone other than oneself.


Correct ... and there is where many people are being bamboozled by some preacher "using 'the Bible'" to "support" his or her own "position" on something ...

"Damnable", I say, and here is what is happening there:

Someone goes into a church and hears some preacher present a seemingly-convincing sermon about one thing or another, and then the listener hears other people saying/shouting "Amen!" or "Hallelujah!" or whatever else all the way though, and then the "closing music" is at least equally pleasing to the newly- or refreshingly-tickled ear ...

... and then if the listener might feel impressed by all of that, s/he accepts the "Onward Christian Soldiers" (a hymn) marching order to "go out into the highways and byways" and "tell the lost" ...

... and if anyone among the alleged "lost" might then question anything, s/he is told, "Well, the bible says ..."

... but in fact, no, only the preacher had said.

So then, I again say this (and even add a bit of experiential "proof" of my own):

Any kind kind of statement can be made without proof -- preachers do it all the time!


Nah, just get 'em all "plugged into 'Jesus'", eh?!

Jesus was/is really real folks, and he really did die and then come back up out of the grave ...

... but that is just *not* the message of Scripture.

Let's start by defining terms. Let's forget all the pop culture references ( a bearded guy who sits on a cloud) and go back to the world's great scriptures and the more thoughtful theologians.

Who or what is God? God is omnipresent, the ultimate lawgiver, personal, provides answers, uses human avatars, etc., etc.

Interestingly, all these descriptions apply to the physical universe. If we applying Occam's razor (i.e. we select the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions) then the God described in the Bible and other core texts must be the universe. Where is the evidence for God? The evidence for the universe is all around you. The problem is not with God, but with people who make themselves feel important by claiming to represent her.

Details: http://www.answersanswers.com/pantheism.html

It's every version of the bible. I linked to the NIV when I said:

You can't really sit there and tell me that somebody coming along 100 years later and vandalizing the text with the addition of some pretty far fetched claims that completely change the meaning of the story is just some harmless editing or something.

It's right there under your nose, and you refuse to believe it. They pulled off some super slick moves.

Jesus was being tortured, and was going to die if they didn't act fast. They whipped up a chemical concoction to anesthetize him. He fell into a deep sleep, and appeared to casual onlookers to be dead. They enlisted the help of a sympathetic roman soldier to go tell his boss that Jesus was dead. Pilate finds it hard to believe, because it takes people a lot longer than that to die of crucifiction... But, he has to put his faith in his men, and says fine. Jesus's dad goes and takes him into a cave and starts treating his wounds. His friends leave and let him rest... Then, when they come back they are told, "Hey, he woke up. He went that way."

He didn't come back to life after dying, because he wasn't dead. He healed up a bit, woke up from his induced coma, and walked off.

Then a hundred years later, somebody decides they'd rather tell a different story... then over the next couple thousand years, people exploit it.

It's right under your nose, whether you choose to believe it or not.

"Vandalizing the text"? First of all, why are the claims made by additional text really so far-fetched? The statements made there are completely plausible and within the character of everything else the Bible describes. It very well could be that the events described actually did happen, surviving in an early oral tradition of the church. It could also be that the story was included in an earlier manuscript that has unfortunately been lost to us.

And EVEN IF the events recorded are untrue, our modern copies of the Bible explicitly state that those events were not recorded in our oldest and best manuscripts. It is then at the discretion of the reader whether they are believable or not. If later editions of the Bible phase out those passages, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time something in the Bible has been changed in order to preserve it as a reliable document.

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Someone else brought up using the Bible as evidence. The issue here is there is no reason to think of any religion as credible without some kind of evidence to back up its teachings. A Muslim, for example, has no reason to believe that what someone says is the words of Mohammed UNLESS we actually have the words of Mohammed. Without the Koran, Islam is just "made up." I mean, it could be "made up" anyway, but without some scriptural anchor there is no factual basis for any faith. Even the ancient Jews in Roman times recognized the danger of leaving their long oral tradition un-codified. Pharisaic Judaism survives in the Talmud because of that.

The confusion in the Bible being true "because the Bible says so" is that the Bible is not a "holy book" in the typical sense. It is the record left behind by those who worshiped Yahweh and experienced Him firsthand in remarkable ways. It is eyewitness testimony, not unlike courtroom testimony given by those who witnessed the events on trial and were personally affected by them. As a juror hearing testimony, it is your job to decide whether the evidence presented proves someone's case. No one can compel you to believe it or disbelieve it--it is your choice to review the evidence and decide for yourself.

I think what is recorded in the Bible would be less believable if it were given to a single person to write down. According to ancient Hebrew law, AT LEAST two witnesses were required to prove a case, three was preferable. The testimony of two witnesses had to be in agreement or the case had to be thrown out. Matthew was personally present to witness many of the events that occurred, and he of course could have learned events prior to his arrival from the other disciples. It is not known whether Mark was the John Mark among the disciples or someone else, but it's reasonable that Mark at the very least was a secretary to Peter, the de facto spokesman for the disciples directly under Jesus' tutelage. Mark might very well have compiled his account of the gospel at the private dictation from Peter or from Peter's public sermons. Luke was Paul's companion and no doubt knew many of the people involved in Jesus' life and ministry. There is indication from the New Testament that Mark and Luke had become acquainted over time, and Luke's gospel account does seem to borrow heavily from Mark. It is certainly more thorough and extremely well-written. John's gospel seems to have been written later than the others, though within a reasonable-enough time frame to be considered an accurate representation of the events he records. While the three Synoptic Gospels record events, especially overlapping events that tie them all together, John's gospel seems to presuppose the earlier-written gospels and attempts to complete them by focussing on actual theology.

The epistles give us a clear picture of how the early church "fathers" viewed the teachings of Christ and put those teachings into action. They give us, among other things, instructions on how the church as an organized body should be structured. Early heresies are addressed. Distinctions between the Jews and Gentile converts are addressed. The relationship between Christianity external to the Jews and the Torah are addressed. And on and on...

When the New Testament started circulating in the early to mid 100's, early (2nd generation) Christians understood the Bible as a compilation of documented evidence intended to support their faith. Only two things really separate us today from ancient Christians, those being time and language. With those documents having been faithfully preserved in the copying process, together with new archeological findings that support copying accuracy, we actually can check the original language in order to verify that the words recorded in modern translations are equivalent to ancient languages. Personally, I like the Holman CSB as it is quite thorough AND easy to understand in contemporary language. I'm not AS impressed with the NIV because I think it makes too many concessions to modern language, those concessions being largely unnecessary. The NKJV is also quite good and does differ slightly from the "Authorized Version" in that it is not oblivious to archeological evidence, not to mention abandoning archaic language conventions.

So, yes, the Bible IS evidence--not by virtue of what it says about itself (it doesn't claim itself to be evidence OF itself; that is a mistaken conclusion based on circularities drawn by some believers), but by nature of what it itself IS. If one can come to the conclusion that certain things contained within it are reliable and true, then one may also find other things or the whole thing to be reliable and true. It is evidence. But nowhere in any field--law, science, religion--does evidence compel the examiner to believe it. You have to make up your own mind about that.

Yeah, it's pretty far fetched. It might not be a whole lot less believable than some of the other stuff you'd find in the bible, but that is hardly saying that it's firmly based in reality.

It's also well documented that there was widespread persecution of early Christians, by the church itself. They violently suppressed any expressions of Christianity that didn't fall in line with their chosen account. Frankly, all of Christianity was corrupted...

I don't believe in God. I can't understand why anyone would. The whole concept is absurd.

What I like most about Buddhism is that it doesn't have any dogma one must believe. Instead, Buddhism teaches a method to transform one's consciousness so one can have mystical experiences DIRECTLY, not secondhand from some book or preacher. Buddhism emphasizes direct experience, not concepts. Personal experience is for many the most convincing type of evidence, yet at the same time the least able to be shared with others.

As for the Bible, I believe it teaches the exact same message as most (possibly all) other religions but expressed in terms of the culture by and for whom it was written. That culture believed the earth was flat, and if one is going to insist on a literal interpretation in Genesis about creation versus evolution, such a position is inconsistent unless one also insists the earth is flat as the Bible clearly teaches.

I don't think the Bible is very accurate if one uses it as a history or science textbook, but I don't think that is the primary reason it was written anyway. In my opinion, if one insists on focusing on such details one misses the whole point of the spiritual teachings the Bible is meant to convey. That said, the Bible is at least as good a historical document as anything else we have from that period, but that's not saying much. And eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. I can accept there are deep spiritual truths expressed in the Bible and that it can help many people cope with the experience of being human. Obviously my take on it is different than most Christians'.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 18 May 2011, 5:43 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I take it you are familiar with the gnostic gospels. They taught that Jesus was spiritual and therefore did not die on the cross. Some go so far as to say that Jesus was physical, but a replacement died. I don't have the references to hand. The Gospel of Thomas?

I do not THINK that is Thomas, but the idea was widespread at one point. I place it very much in the same file as the beamed-up baby theory, though with different motivation.