What is your tablet for discrediting the Bible?

[sawthelight]

The Bible should stand alone as truthful without any error to be deemed as the true word of God. However, what happens when just one error in the Bible is found? Does it take just one error or is more of them required to discredit the Bible? How about having 8 solid errors to rock your faith?

One error may seem inconsequential but it still would deem God in error and the Bible as fallible and finite. But to add insult to injury when 8 blatant errors show up, it is safe to discard the Bible as nothing more than the sole concocting of human beings.

What is your tablet of Biblical errors that you find contradictory and have caused you to dismiss the Bible as a fallacy? What debates did you have that included these tablets of errors you had with Christian theists that left you disenchanted or in utter disappointment?



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Here is my list of debates with theists that came to an unsatisfactory conclusion:

1) The marriage parable [Matthew 22:30 VS. Revelation 21:9, Ephesians 5:25-27].
Jesus says no marriage will occur in heaven yet the Lamb (a.k.a Jesus) is standing with his bride in heaven after the Day of Judgement. No marriage is supposed to occur in heaven.

2) The mustard seed parable [Matthew 13:31-32].
Jesus claims as a fact that the Mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds in the Bible. Yet we know the Orchid seed is smaller than the Mustard seed. Jesus failed to be correct.

3) Faith VS. Deeds [Romans 2:6-10, Galatians 2:15-16 VS. James 2:14-24].
The Bible contradicts when Paul says ONLY FAITH allows a believer into heaven when James says that faith AND WORKS together earns salvation. Both contradict.

4) The Law is to be upheld. The Law is abolished [Matthew 5:17 VS. Ephesian 2:15].
Jesus came NOT TO abolish the Law but to uphold it. Paul says that the Law HAS BEEN ABOLISHED. Two opposing doctrines.

5) The Trinity is polytheism rather than monotheism [1 John 5:7-8 VS. John 14:28].
Somehow the Trinity is supposed to mean that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are all equal as one. Yet Jesus says "the Father is greater than I". Indication of unequal standings.

6) God is against God [Luke 4:5-7 & Revelations 11:16-18].
God gives away all authority on earth to Satan his enemy. He is also the suspect who killed his angels for destroying earth. A house divided against itself will not stand.

7) Children punished for sin of parents VS. The children no longer punished for parent's sin [Deuteronomy 5:9 VS. Ezekiel 18:1-30].
Shows that God has a changing nature.

8) God has a supposed unchanging nature [Hebrews 6:17].
Point # 7 indicates a change of nature. Being a distant and indifferent God in the OT to becoming a more approachable and accessible God in NT is a change of nature.


-----------------------------------------

These 8 points I bring up show blatant forgeries, contradictions, and errors that indicate that the God of Israel is nothing but an indecisive, inconsistent, charlatan who professes the supposed truth to the right way.

The word "right" however is synonymous with the words honest, legitimate, proper, and appropriate (Thesaurus.com).

The 8 points I listed above show me that the God of Israel is anything but "right." He is sporadic with his decrees which cost the lives of people for mistakes that God has made. God is not taking responsibility for the action he takes. The blame is shifted unto his creation who have no clue when things go awry.

This sounds a lot like big business being bailed out in US when they commit fraud on an international scale which results in tax payers paying for the mistakes of big business. How is that right at all? This example illustrates the God of Israel.

This allows me to leave Christianity with confidence and be certain of the choice I made as right. Writing out a list like this helps me compile my thoughts better to know why I left rather than have it all jumbled in my head. This is my tablet if you will.

What are your reasons for being disenchanted with Christianity? Can you make a list?

[sawthelight]

How does that follow that if the Bible is not perfect, then God is not perfect? Non-sequiter.

Here you could make the connection from the first sentence from post# 1:

The Bible should stand alone as truthful without any error to be deemed as the true word of God.

Obviously if the word of God is not 100% true/correct then he is not a perfect God because his word is not perfect. Simple really.

Do you have imperfect words coming out of perfect human beings? Does that make logical sense?

Put another way, you have errors coming out of a supposed perfect God. Because a perfect/flawless God makes mistakes. That makes total sense now! Christians love a god who's word is in error! I get it!

[Elijah John]

How does that follow that if the Bible is not perfect, then God is not perfect? Non-sequiter.

Here you could make the connection from the first sentence from post# 1:

The Bible should stand alone as truthful without any error to be deemed as the true word of God.

Obviously if the word of God is not 100% true/correct then he is not a perfect God because his word is not perfect. Simple really.

Do you have imperfect words coming out of perfect human beings? Does that make logical sense?

Put another way, you have errors coming out of a supposed perfect God. Right...

The perfect God created imperfect humans, did he not? And that perfect God used imperfect humans to write the Bible, and arguably the Qur'an too.

Difference is Divine dictation is claimed for the Qur'an, not so the Bible.

Why couldn't the Bible be the product of Divine inspiration, written by fallible humans as the recipients? A Divine-human partnership with the bad parts resulting of human bias and cultural limiatations?

So your argument only makes sense if you claim the Bible was dictated word for word..It was not.

Even then, Divine dictation would be limited by the limitations of human language. There was no "Divine language" with which to communicate the message. Unless of course, "speaking in tongues" is considered a "Divine language". But most humans do not understand those Charismatic utterances.

[postroad]

[Replying to post 22 by Elijah John]
Why should someone else's divine revealation become my problem? Implicit in the concept is the idea that something urgent and necessary must be brought to humanities attention. Therefore by default those that resist are the enemies of God in a life and death struggle. From there is but a short step to a new revealation concerning the judgement of the reprobate. If something of absolute urgency must be revealed let the revealer reveal to all.

[sawthelight]

The perfect God created imperfect humans, did he not? And that perfect God used imperfect humans to write the Bible, and arguably the Qur'an too.

Difference is Divine dictation is claimed for the Qur'an, not so the Bible.

Why couldn't the Bible be the product of Divine inspiration, written by fallible humans as the recipients? A Divine-human partnership with the bad parts resulting of human bias and cultural limiatations?

So your argument only makes sense if you claim the Bible was dictated word for word..It was not.

Even then, Divine dictation would be limited by the limitations of human language. There was no "Divine language" with which to communicate the message. Unless of course, "speaking in tongues" is considered a "Divine language". But most humans do not understand those Charismatic utterances.

Interesting. What are the 10 Commandments other than divine dictation? What are the various Laws found in the book of Moses other than divine dictation? How about Jesus' divine dictation? It was all just a metaphor? They were, as you say, just speaking in tongues? That makes even more sense now! No wonder Christians don't even follow their own rules given by God. It's all just a metaphor to them while God was just speaking gibberish the whole time!

Thank you for confirming that God's words are in error because he speaks in gibberish. What a perfect god. Perfect in gibberish. Now that I can understand.

[Divine Insight]

My list of reason why the Bible discredits itself is quite long. I'll give a short list here.

1. God created animals that prey on each other and eat each other in horrible ways and saw that this was "good".

Genesis chapter 1. Already discredits the Biblical God. The fact that animals eat each other does not discredit the God of Buddhism by the way. The reason is because the God of Buddhism didn't "design" animals. The God of Buddhism simply allowed them to evolve, and that's a totally different thing. Also the God of Buddhism didn't look upon this and say that it was "good".

2. The Biblical God curses the evil serpent Satan to crawl on his belly and eat dirt.

There are two problems with this. The first being that this isn't an intelligence solution to anything. And the second is that according to the whole rest of the Bible this curse was totally ineffective anyway. Satan continues to wreck havoc with humans the whole rest of the way through the Bible.

So this God's curses are not only ignorant, but totally ineffective.

3. God curses an innocent Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in childbirth.

First off innocent Eve should have been granted forgiveness since she confess to her sin and even testified against the evil serpent who the Bible clearly proclaims had indeed beguiled her.

Secondly, cursing Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in childbirth would, IMHO, be an extremely sick and demented curse coming from a God who is supposed to be the "Creator" of all life. Why should a God use procreation as a curse?

Also, who wants humans to procreate anyway? God or humans? What's in it for humans? All they would be doing is creating more souls for God to potentially curse. I can't imagine why Eve didn't just turn to God and say, "Fine then I won't have anymore children. Tell Adam he'll have to become celibate."

I mean seriously, the whole idea of a God cursing Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in procreation is beyond sick as far as I'm concerned.

Also we can ask, "What good did this violent a sick curse do?" Clearly it didn't have solve any problems because we see later in the Bible that humans (including women) continue to sin anyway. So this God's curses are totally useless.

4. The story of the Canaanites gives the Bible away as clearly being false. You can't have a culture who supposedly rejected the creator of the universe sacrificing their babies to appease the creator of the universe.

If the Canaanites had truly rejected God they shouldn't have been sacrificing their babies to God. So the Bible is clearly a false collection of absurd stories.

5. During the Great Flood the Bible proclaims that God repented that he had ever created mankind.

What? Isn't this God supposed to have a Master Plan and also be omniscient of all future events? If so, then why in the world would he be repenting that things are going along just precisely as he had expected and Planned?

A dead give-away that the Bible is nothing more than very poorly thought out fables. Never mind the multitude of other problems with the story of a Global Flood that clearly never happened based on modern day knowledge of the Earth.

6. By the way, I forgot to mention that the whole "Fall from Grace" story tries to pin the ills of the world onto humans, but science has shown us that death, disease, and all manner of natural disasters had already been happening long before humans ever appeared on planet Earth.

7. Just to jump ahead to the New Testament. The very idea that having humans crucified an innocent demigod Son of God (or an incarnation of God himself) would somehow make them eligible for amnesty from sin, has to be the most absurd part of the whole religion. Since when does committing the greatest sin of all pay for having committed tons of lesser sins?

8. If death is the wages of sin, and obtaining a gift of eternal life is the reward for sainthood, then Jesus was awarded the reward of sainthood and most certainly didn't pay for the wages of sin anyway.

Dying for a mere 3 days before being resurrected to go to heaven can't be the wages of sin. And there were supposedly many saints resurrected on that day too. And they had been dead for a lot longer than just 3 days.

The story is ridiculous. Why anyone takes this religion seriously is beyond me. I mean, I can understand children believing it who had been indoctrinated by their parents from a very early age. But why any educated adult continues to believe in this religion in adulthood is truly baffling to me.

[sawthelight]

[Replying to post 1 by sawthelight]

None of the (8) points discredit the bible, they simply boil down to how one interprets the words. I personally am not a bible literalist and recongize that people don't always speak in absolute terms.

We have had many a healthy discussion on these theological points over in TD&D as to what these and scriptures like them actually mean, this no more discredits the bible than discussing a song lyrics discredits the song.


JW

More proof Christians do not think the Bible is literal in it's expression. Just metaphorical and gibberish. No need to take the Bible seriously then if you do not take it as literal as well.

[Justin108]

Why would you need "enlightenment" on the point? You have already committed yourself to saying he wasn't always speaking in absolute terms, so naturally I presume you know what him speaking in absolute terms would look like.

Oh this is such a cop-out. You insist that Jesus was not speaking in absolutes but you refuse to support your claim?

okay, and if he was speaking in absolute terms (about seeds) then he would be speaking about what....?

You are stretching this out far more than it needs to be. Instead of asking me leading question, just give an answer.

Did Jesus speak in absolute terms in Matthew 13:31-32? Yes or no? If not, please support your claim.

All you're doing at this point is trying to make it sound like you're right by being condescending. Except that you're the only one here who actually thinks you're right. So please, I ask again, enlighten me... what does it mean to speak in absolutes and how was Jesus not speaking in absolutes in Matthew 13:31-32?

[sawthelight]

okay, and if he was speaking in absolute terms (about seeds) then he would be speaking about what....?

You are stretching this out far more than it needs to be. Instead of asking me leading question, just give an answer.

Did Jesus speak in absolute terms in Matthew 13:31-32? Yes or no? If not, please support your claim.

All you're doing at this point is trying to make it sound like you're right by being condescending. Except that you're the only one here who actually thinks you're right. So please, I ask again, enlighten me... what does it mean to speak in absolutes and how was Jesus not speaking in absolutes in Matthew 13:31-32?

It's almost as if JW is trying to stall for an answer.

To lead you to try and find an answer when he doesn't even finish his own answer.

I still went with seeds though. That's the only thing that makes sense.

I can't help but laugh how funny this is when the answer is so obvious.

[marco]

[quote="[url=http://debatingchristianity.com/

Unless theists actually enjoy the idea of God having some errors in his word. They still like God; they see errors in his book; they don't really care about the errors evident but still enjoy serving God.

I don't have a problem with people serving their God in a pleasant way, praying for themselves, their family and the rest of us. I am having the same sort of discussion in an Islamic context and there we are examining the instruction to kill apostates. One can move round this or one can accept it. Those that accept it may also find they want to kill me, and that brings me into direct conflict with them and their God. I suppose were I a scientist a few centuries back I might worry that my studies contravened the Bible and thereby put my life in danger.

The trouble is not with God, who doesn't seem to care if we kiss babies or kill them but with those who place their minds in the care of the books he has supposedly inspired. And then we are at the mercy of those very fallible minds.

[JehovahsWitness]

:

1) The marriage parable [Matthew 22:30 VS. Revelation 21:9, Ephesians 5:25-27].
Jesus says no marriage will occur in heaven yet the Lamb (a.k.a Jesus) is standing with his bride in heaven after the Day of Judgement. No marriage is supposed to occur in heaven.

Revelation is using marriage as a METAPHOR, you yourself call it a "parable" so obviously even you already know it is not literal. We know it is not literal because a marriage (biblically) is a union between a man (human) and a woman (human) in the sight of God and there are no humans in Heaven, so whatever Revelation 19 is speaking about it cannot be a literal marriage*.

To illustrate: Emily Dickinson (poet) wrote "Hope is the thing with feathers" but hope is a mental attitude and it certainly doesn't have feathers, there are no hope feathers they do not exist. It is a metaphor (she is likening hope to a bird) this is not a real bird it is a metaphoric bird, the "hope bird" does not exist.

In a similar way, there are no marriages in Heaven. The bible is speaking metaphorically, marriages in Heaven do not exist but metaphors evidently do.

*Revelation 19 is speaking about the start of the point when all spirit anointed Christians are finally united with Jesus in the Messianic Kingdom.




JW




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