Febble

I'm a catholic. Try me.

cajela

I agree with Vorkosigan (Miles? Mark? Piotr?). In my experience catholics don't care a lot about a literal bible; nor do anglicans. The bible is good for those weird literalists who seem to flourish so much in the US. All my ex-catholic friends basically dropped it over other issues. The list includes: the Pope's idiocy over contraception; other Papal stupidities (they despise JP2 but I can't recall why); the whole guilt thing ("I am personally responsible for the agony of christ"); ridiculous attitudes to sex & marriage; sexual abuse; contempt for drunken gambling priests laying down moral laws; violent nuns & priests with excessive relish for the cane; the church's greed and riches and preying on less well-off parishioners. There may be more; that's all that springs to mind right now.

FatherMithras

Many non believers can understand the Bible better than believers. We simply do not ACCEPT what it says as valid. For example, I know of several Christians who did not understand the story of the prodigal son until I explained it to them. I know plenty of people who didn't know the context of several individuals in the Rapture (two witnesses) and many others.

I've read the "scriptures". I simply don't accept them as valid, due to the preponderence of evidence. You seem to think upon reading the Bible people magically have to simply agree, despite the ridiculousness of false history like the exodus and false science like bats being birds and rabbits chewing cud.

Lazarus Long

In case David does not reply to you, having much experience with David on another fourm, I can say generally that David has some Calvinistic beliefs, and believes in predetermination and "the elect." I can offer this thread on another forum as simple evidence for that. There's more there, but it will bore you to tears to wade through it all. I don't recall his exact denomination, but it's pretty much a "god wrote the plan and nothing we can do will change it" depressing kind of belief system.

LL

Ubercat

It destroyed my faith, like a nucular bomb. -Ubercat

Ubercat

No, bible god does that. He likes having more excuses to damn people.

-Ubercat

Unbeliever

I was deconverted in large part by reading the boring, confusing, morally repugnant Bible, and I've had some success getting others to think more critically about their faith in it, and I figure nothing else will come close to working with some Christians; if they can still believe after learning of the inadequacy of their scripture, then they're doomed to imbecility for life. I recently read an article (I'll find it, if anyone's interested) that reported a significant decrease in the number of Christians who are Bible-literate. The vast majority of Christians never read it at all, not even the huggy-fuzzy stuff.

That's a good list, but it's not very user-friendly, because the contradictions are all jumbled up in a disorganized heap, making it difficult to locate specific contradictions when the need arises.

[shameless plug: I've ordered my list by category in order to make it easier to find a particular contradiction when it's needed:

Biblical Contradictions - by category

The list is still under construction, but a large part has been finished, except for the proof-reading. [/shameless plug]

Unbeliever

Ha! Yes! I've done exactly that, and no matter what verse they try to pawn off on me, I can show them other verses that say the exact opposite. Very few will persist long enough to deconvert, though, more's the pity!

But I carry my Bible everywhere with me, in case the other person doesn't have theirs; plus, mine's massively annotated, since I haven't got everything memorized yet.

mirage

You don't believe in Catholic doctrine though!

Febble

The Inquisition has yet to try me.