Non-Circular reasons for believing in the Bible.

[help3434]

I often see people quote Bible verses about scripture when asked why they believe in the Bible. Of course arguing that the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true is circular. Are there any non-circular reasons for believing in the Bible?

[McCulloch]

Reasons often given for believing in the Bible:

1. It's honesty in describing the faults of its heroes.
2. It has been preserved for thousands of years, evidence of God's providential oversight of this holy text.
3. The circular and false claim that the Bible itself claims to be from God.
4. The miracles, witnessed and recorded in the Bible. Again circular.
5. The subjective claim that the over forty writers of the Bible exhibit a profound unity of theme, thought and message. Or that it is a profoundly unique literary achievement, explainable only by divine revelation. That the ethics taught in the Bible are so enormously different from any other ethical system made by humanity that it must be Divine.
6. It's historical and geographical accuracy. Ignore the historical and geographical inaccuracies in order to use this one.
7. The circular reasoning that Jesus himself appealed to scriptures.
8. The incredibly weak and somewhat circular argument from fulfilled prophesy.
9. The subjective claim that the Bible profoundly changes lives.
10. Some even claim that the writers of the Bible had unexplained insights into scientific truths. Again, ignore the scientific inaccuracies. Those are just metaphors.
11. And finally, some make the subjective, but not circular claim that the Holy Spirit attests to the validity of the Bible.

[marketandchurch]

Because the more I read and study it, and the more I compare it to what everyone else was thinking at the time, and even when I compare it to today... it seems to me to have no equal.

I thus conclude that it is too brilliant a text to have just been the work of the minds of many authors, over the course of centuries, assembling and editing what would become the final anthology we have today.

Unless you want to argue that some great minds sat down and gave us the greatest repository ever amassed in human history, in one ongoing collection of books... Which I have no problem with accepting that it is the mind of many super brilliant authors, but it's just too well written, with too many concepts that do not comport normative thinking, certainly compared to human thinking in 3,000 B.C.E., to have just been the works of men.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 3 by marketandchurch]

Can you go into more detail about what is so brilliant about the Bible? What makes it so much better than any other book?

[help3434]

[Replying to post 2 by McCulloch]


As someone who was raised a Mormon number 11 is the reason I am most familiar with for believing in scripture, but it seems to be much less common for other Christians that believe in the Bible than for Mormons believing in scripture.

[marketandchurch]

[Replying to post 3 by marketandchurch]

Can you go into more detail about what is so brilliant about the Bible? What makes it so much better than any other book?

It's radical concepts, for example, are quite extraordinary for human reasoning, 3000 years ago.


Genesis 1:1 is an example of a revolution in human thinking. The Mayans, the Hindu's, the Egyptians, and all ancient made sense out of the Universe by framing it as cycle of death & rebirth. Reality was cyclical to the pagans, not linear, in that nature always existed, and was just continuing this eternal dance of birth and renewal, followed by death, and on and on and on. Genesis 1:1 broke with that tradition, and said that life is on the linear trajectory of history, because there is progress to be made in this existence. God created for 6 days, in a progressive manner, and then rested on the 7th, but we are to continue the act of creation going forward, also in a progressive manner.

One doesn't realize how radical an assertion Genesis 1:1 is. Prior to our body of theories on optics, and the theory of general relativity, there is no way one could have looked at the natural world in those days, and said that it all had a beginning, this all came from nothing, in-existence into existence, by a creator that is outside of the confines of nature. Normative human thinking in those days assumed a Universe that had no beginning or end, no origin, and spread from everlasting to everlasting.


Genesis 9:20 is another example of a revolution in human thinking. In every epic you read, from the Greeks to the Egyptians, to the Chinese, the Gods gave us everything. They were responsible for our narcissism, our anger, our war-waging capabilities, our lust. They were responsible for having given us wine, fire, plaque, famine, agriculture, mathematics, etc.

But following the flood, noah plants a vineyard. This was deliberate attack on traditional Sumer and Babylonian, and even ancient-thinking and reasoning, the world over. God created the heavens and earth in 7 days, but he has rested, and it is now our job as humans to take part in creation.

The message being: We create the world we live in, not the Gods. It is a human-centered text and was a radical humanistic departure from anything that preceded it. How could this have come about, given the primitive state of human reasoning everywhere else in the world. This wasn't passed down from generations upon generations, of keeping myths alive. This was an entirely new approach, one that a person of those times could not relate to.

This is trivial to us, but was a monumental challenge to pagans, 3000 years ago. The attempt on the bible to De-mythologize God & the natural world, and to frame it as an entirely natural physical world, wherein we are mostly responsible for what goes on in life, is not only foreign, but exceptional, found only to have been entertained by one group on earth, and nowhere else.

[marketandchurch]

[Replying to post 2 by McCulloch]


As someone who was raised a Mormon number 11 is the reason I am most familiar with for believing in scripture, but it seems to be much less common for other Christians that believe in the Bible than for Mormons believing in scripture.

I had to listen out for that still small voice, waiting for it to attest to the validity of the church, especially the passages in the D&C the missionaries were having me read, and it never came about because I never let it. What I mean by that is that I can trick myself into wanting to believe that I'm feeling or sensing something, and it's so easy, for me at least, to pretend to hear my thoughts confirm such a mental question as asking God for the validity of the mormon faith, so I don't rest my entire future on listening out for voices or depending on feelings, to determine the validity of the argument for theism, or the validity of scripture.

This was especially true 10 years ago as an evangelical, that I now only ask for just the logical case for things, and nothing else.

Number 11 also seems to be truer for mormons for the constant testament of faiths that they give publicly, of their belief in the faith, faith in the text and religion. I can't go to any mormon marriage or funeral without any person giving a speech offering people a chance to become mormon, that I no longer go, even if I know there's going to be an open bar or decadent reception.

[help3434]

It's radical concepts, for example, are quite extraordinary for human reasoning, 3000 years ago.


Genesis 1:1 is an example of a revolution in human thinking. The Mayans, the Hindu's, the Egyptians, and all ancient made sense out of the Universe by framing it as cycle of death & rebirth. Reality was cyclical to the pagans, not linear, in that nature always existed, and was just continuing this eternal dance of birth and renewal, followed by death, and on and on and on. Genesis 1:1 broke with that tradition, and said that life is on the linear trajectory of history, because there is progress to be made in this existence. God created for 6 days, in a progressive manner, and then rested on the 7th, but we are to continue the act of creation going forward, also in a progressive manner.

One doesn't realize how radical an assertion Genesis 1:1 is. Prior to our body of theories on optics, and the theory of general relativity, there is no way one could have looked at the natural world in those days, and said that it all had a beginning, this all came from nothing, in-existence into existence, by a creator that is outside of the confines of nature. Normative human thinking in those days assumed a Universe that had no beginning or end, no origin, and spread from everlasting to everlasting.

Well kudos to Genesis for getting it right that the universe had a beginning, but aren't you troubled by the fact that science has shown the first couple chapters of Genesis got virtually everything else wrong?

Genesis 9:20 is another example of a revolution in human thinking. In every epic you read, from the Greeks to the Egyptians, to the Chinese, the Gods gave us everything. They were responsible for our narcissism, our anger, our war-waging capabilities, our lust. They were responsible for having given us wine, fire, plaque, famine, agriculture, mathematics, etc.

But following the flood, noah plants a vineyard. This was deliberate attack on traditional Sumer and Babylonian, and even ancient-thinking and reasoning, the world over. God created the heavens and earth in 7 days, but he has rested, and it is now our job as humans to take part in creation.

The message being: We create the world we live in, not the Gods. It is a human-centered text and was a radical humanistic departure from anything that preceded it. How could this have come about, given the primitive state of human reasoning everywhere else in the world. This wasn't passed down from generations upon generations, of keeping myths alive. This was an entirely new approach, one that a person of those times could not relate to.

This is trivial to us, but was a monumental challenge to pagans, 3000 years ago. The attempt on the bible to De-mythologize God & the natural world, and to frame it as an entirely natural physical world, wherein we are mostly responsible for what goes on in life, is not only foreign, but exceptional, found only to have been entertained by one group on earth, and nowhere else.

Surely people planted stuff before that verse was written, so I don't see what is so extraordinary about a verse in the Bible saying that someone planted something.

[Dantalion]

[Replying to post 3 by marketandchurch]

Can you go into more detail about what is so brilliant about the Bible? What makes it so much better than any other book?

It's radical concepts, for example, are quite extraordinary for human reasoning, 3000 years ago.


Genesis 1:1 is an example of a revolution in human thinking. The Mayans, the Hindu's, the Egyptians, and all ancient made sense out of the Universe by framing it as cycle of death & rebirth. Reality was cyclical to the pagans, not linear, in that nature always existed, and was just continuing this eternal dance of birth and renewal, followed by death, and on and on and on. Genesis 1:1 broke with that tradition, and said that life is on the linear trajectory of history, because there is progress to be made in this existence. God created for 6 days, in a progressive manner, and then rested on the 7th, but we are to continue the act of creation going forward, also in a progressive manner.

One doesn't realize how radical an assertion Genesis 1:1 is. Prior to our body of theories on optics, and the theory of general relativity, there is no way one could have looked at the natural world in those days, and said that it all had a beginning, this all came from nothing, in-existence into existence, by a creator that is outside of the confines of nature. Normative human thinking in those days assumed a Universe that had no beginning or end, no origin, and spread from everlasting to everlasting.


Genesis 9:20 is another example of a revolution in human thinking. In every epic you read, from the Greeks to the Egyptians, to the Chinese, the Gods gave us everything. They were responsible for our narcissism, our anger, our war-waging capabilities, our lust. They were responsible for having given us wine, fire, plaque, famine, agriculture, mathematics, etc.

But following the flood, noah plants a vineyard. This was deliberate attack on traditional Sumer and Babylonian, and even ancient-thinking and reasoning, the world over. God created the heavens and earth in 7 days, but he has rested, and it is now our job as humans to take part in creation.

The message being: We create the world we live in, not the Gods. It is a human-centered text and was a radical humanistic departure from anything that preceded it. How could this have come about, given the primitive state of human reasoning everywhere else in the world. This wasn't passed down from generations upon generations, of keeping myths alive. This was an entirely new approach, one that a person of those times could not relate to.

This is trivial to us, but was a monumental challenge to pagans, 3000 years ago. The attempt on the bible to De-mythologize God & the natural world, and to frame it as an entirely natural physical world, wherein we are mostly responsible for what goes on in life, is not only foreign, but exceptional, found only to have been entertained by one group on earth, and nowhere else.

Lots of assertions in this one though.
Like 'an approach that a person of those times could not relate to'
because obviously, if you entertain the possibility the bible was actually written by human beings, they most certainly could relate to it now couldn't they.
Let's say I can't be bothered with looking up all mythologies for all cultures of that time and give you the 'it was a new way of looking at things' argument.
Well, fair enough, it was a new way of looking at things.
Ancient Greek philosophy was a new way of looking at things, new ways of looking at things actually happen all the time, that doesn't give them any extra validity or credibility.
But you have the show that 'a person of those times could not relate to that approach', because my argument is, they developed the stories, so evidently they could.

[Filthy Tugboat]

[Replying to post 3 by marketandchurch]

Can you go into more detail about what is so brilliant about the Bible? What makes it so much better than any other book?

It's radical concepts, for example, are quite extraordinary for human reasoning, 3000 years ago.

Genesis 1:1 is an example of a revolution in human thinking. The Mayans, the Hindu's, the Egyptians, and all ancient made sense out of the Universe by framing it as cycle of death & rebirth. Reality was cyclical to the pagans, not linear, in that nature always existed, and was just continuing this eternal dance of birth and renewal, followed by death, and on and on and on. Genesis 1:1 broke with that tradition, and said that life is on the linear trajectory of history, because there is progress to be made in this existence. God created for 6 days, in a progressive manner, and then rested on the 7th, but we are to continue the act of creation going forward, also in a progressive manner.

I'm not entirely sure this distinction is as meaningful or radical as you make it sound. Nor, to me, is it any basis to suggest truth. Could you elaborate on how this difference of thought to many other religions of the day adds the meaning you claim to the document?

One doesn't realize how radical an assertion Genesis 1:1 is. Prior to our body of theories on optics, and the theory of general relativity, there is no way one could have looked at the natural world in those days, and said that it all had a beginning, this all came from nothing, in-existence into existence, by a creator that is outside of the confines of nature. Normative human thinking in those days assumed a Universe that had no beginning or end, no origin, and spread from everlasting to everlasting.

This isn't entirely true, the creation story in the Bible does not state that "it all" had a beginning. Similar to most creation myths, something existed and that something brought everything else into existence. Furthermore, the something that existed had a form and existed in the same space as it's creation. Despite your rejection that Hinduism is dissimilar in this regard due to their beliefs concerning birth, death and rebirth, the similarities of the creation are undeniable. The beings that create/maintain/destroy the universe exist, from there Brahma creates the universe that Vishnu maintains and Shiva eventually destroys. Unlike Christian beliefs, two of these deities do not exist within the universe or otherwise interact without outside of creation and destruction. So I'm not sure what you mean to imply by saying, "a creator that is outside of the confines of nature," but I took it to mean, separate from the space in which his creation exists, which is, not true according to Genesis.

Genesis 9:20 is another example of a revolution in human thinking. In every epic you read, from the Greeks to the Egyptians, to the Chinese, the Gods gave us everything. They were responsible for our narcissism, our anger, our war-waging capabilities, our lust. They were responsible for having given us wine, fire, plaque, famine, agriculture, mathematics, etc.

But following the flood, noah plants a vineyard. This was deliberate attack on traditional Sumer and Babylonian, and even ancient-thinking and reasoning, the world over. God created the heavens and earth in 7 days, but he has rested, and it is now our job as humans to take part in creation.

The message being: We create the world we live in, not the Gods. It is a human-centered text and was a radical humanistic departure from anything that preceded it. How could this have come about, given the primitive state of human reasoning everywhere else in the world. This wasn't passed down from generations upon generations, of keeping myths alive. This was an entirely new approach, one that a person of those times could not relate to.

This is trivial to us, but was a monumental challenge to pagans, 3000 years ago. The attempt on the bible to De-mythologize God & the natural world, and to frame it as an entirely natural physical world, wherein we are mostly responsible for what goes on in life, is not only foreign, but exceptional, found only to have been entertained by one group on earth, and nowhere else.

I think you might be reading a little too far into the text. Humans have been utilizing agriculture for approximately 15,000 years, planting a vineyard(and other crops) occurred long before the author(s) of Genesis wrote and has influenced many philosophies and religions. Further to that point, in Genesis and many other books that Jews and Christians have decided belong in their holy books, God regularly steps in and acts on their behalf, implying that no, he is not "at rest" and that we are not entirely responsible for ourselves. Modern Christian beliefs are even more different to what you imply here. These people believe that they "leave their life in God's hands" which appears to be the very opposite of your statement regarding God being at rest and humans being in control (or so to speak).