alexis31055

I justed wanted to know about the bible.how can there be so much evil in it .men beating and rapeing girls and men eating their own kids.also if their were only 2 people put on this earth as adam and eve how did we all get here?the bible says incest is a sin?i have been wandering for years can i some one please tell me?

Izmir Stinger

The authors wrote it that way, that how.

The passage is fictional. It is not an accurate description of the origin of man.

If you have been "wandering" (wondering?) for years I'm sure you have come up with a lot more objections than that. There are an abundance of wild claims, noxious ideas and blatant contradictions in that book. Your list reads like someone who has been "wandering" for a few hours.

Edited to add: My last comment was glib and probably not very helpful. If you look you will find many people who will "tell you" the way it is, and they won't all tell you the same thing. Rely on your own reason and intellect and come to your own conclusions. You are the only person in your life that definitely doesn't have an agenda when they decide what you should believe.

David B

Hi, Alexis, and welcome to the boards.

My view is that treating the bible as literal truth is a very silly thing to do, as indeed, if to a lesser degree (?), is treating any supernatural claim in the bible or elsewhere seriously.

I don't rememember the men eating their own kids bit, though. Could you point me to it?

You are probably right about this, but I can't recall where the bible says that incest is a sin, either. Is it implied in the story about someone's daughters? Was it Noah's daughters, or someone else? Lot?

Can't remember. One or the other, I think.

David B

HarryStine

The evil in the bible better reflects the Jewish people than it does God. Many of the OT leaders were not very moral, though Sunday School made us all feel as if they were only to be disappointed when we learned more.

There are many ways of looking at these things. Not all Christians believe in biblical inerrancy, and those who do are not all agreed on what the Bible is inerrant about. I'm Catholic, and, though I'm not sure what I believe, I've meet other Catholics who claim that all of the Mosaic law simply came out of Moses' head. The inspired purpose behing Deuterononomy, Leviticus etc. was something other than certain tenets of the law.

As for incest, it may not have been a sin for reasons inherent in the natural law. It could simply have been something that God figured should not be done in most cases. Anyhow, God can allow for incest if he wants. He had his reasons for making it okay, and he had his reasons for making it a sin. Until you find his reasons you shouldn't concern yourself with paradoxes. I once thought I had found a paradox when studying physics;it turned out I simply did not have the whole picture.

Don't worry yourself about biblical contradictions. Some seemingly obvious contradictions have good explainations, which are often very difficult to find. If you obsess over problems with the bible you will find the problems arise faster than they are resolved. This is not because they can't be answered. It's simply because they are so easy to come up with and so difficult to explain. Small dosages of them can stimulate research and lead to a better understanding of the bible, but obsessing over them will simply overwhelm you and obscure the truth.

one allegiance

Whether evil is in the bible or not it doesn't matter. Free will is the cause of evil. No one forces anything, we have choices. Evil existed back then as much as it does now.

Julian

Contrary to the typical christian nonsense in the previous post, god did, indeed, create evil:

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Julian

HarryStine

Footnote in one of my bibles: “Create Evil The evils of afflictions and punishments, but not the evil of sin.” This is not quibbling. Hebrew, I hear, has many different words for many different levels of meaning for words, for which we have only one form. This specific kind of evil got translated as evils in general though it was far different from the kind One Allegiance was talking about.

Two things in the context serve as evidence for this:

1. First, contrast “light” and “darkness”. No problem. They are polar opposites. Now contrast “peace” and “evil”. Not quite the same, is it? You’d think it would be “good” and “evil” if Isaiah was talking about evil as a metaphysical concept. Why then doesn’t it read “peace” and “war”? Well, it sometimes does say something like that. The Ignatius says, “weal” and “woe”. “War”, however, is way too specific, so is “strife”. “Suffering” has all the meaning we need, but it’s vague enough that a sincere and naïve translator (who had no clue what people would do with the passage) could have not thought to use it over “evil”, because he was in a hurry to get the rest of the 1000+ page book finished.
2. Just following the verse is a call for “righteousness”. “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness.” Does it make sense to claim to be the author of everything crooked in the world and then ask that things be set right? That’s like saying, “Stop me. I can’t help myself.”

Steven Carr

The same word is used in Isaiah 45:7 as is used for the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

JEST2ASK

I agree in general but disagree on a very important issue that is god's ultimate responsiblity for the state of the world ... First let me say that I do not believe that the enity described in the bible actually exists or that the deeds, motives and pronnocements attributed to him either by the orginal writters or todays theologians are accurate ... The god of the bible not only has no problem killing or ordering others to kill without restrainant but takes pride in claiming it is his right to do so without anyone or anything to question those actions.

I can not express just how much this worries me mostly because it is expressed in such a matter of fact manner ... Did it occur to you that they might be easy to find and difficult to explain because the bible is not divinely inspired but the creation of fallible humans ... There is a bible verse that I think illustrates this regarding "a House built on Sand".

I agree one can easily get lost in reconcilling small details but the "big picture" of the bible god can only be coherent through the blanket statement God works in mysterious ways and it is not for us to understand, we must walk by faith. ... sorry if I can not do that, nothing against you but to each their own ...

HarryStine

Not too palatable, I'll grant, but that says nothing about reality. Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be. God has absolute rights over us, and at times has gone to extremes in exercising them. That doesn't make him arbitrary, however. I'm sorry that have to tell you that God works in mysterious ways like you've heard so many times before, but that's the case. Still, I think you'd agree that if God does exist then it would make sense for suc a transcendental person to be a bit eccentric in our eyes. It's only natural.
It has occured to me, but it also makes sense that a book written over the period of a millenia (during which Hebrew and literary styles probably changed drastically) and then translated through multiple languages before reaching us is going to have some problems which can only be worked out by going back to the sources. Which would involve finding the original translation, identifying the time period it was written in, and using the correct dialect of Hebrew or Greek and noting taking note of the completely foreign literary style it was written in. That's a real daunting task. Quite something compared with sitting down and reading the book like it's a recent novel and taking notes everytime it doesn't make sense. It wouldn't take long before you filled several pages with one of those "incomplete" lists of "obvious biblical contradictions".
I support rigor when seeking the truth when building an edifice in support of it, but answering every single objection is something very different. Not every objection strikes at the foundation. Most just make you uncomfortable with what you believe in.
It is also coherent in saying, "God made us, has power over us, wants us to do this, this, and this, and has performed these and these actions to demonstrate that we should take him seriously.
[JEST2ASK]sorry if I can not do that, nothing against you but to each their own ...[/QUOTE] I wouldn't ask you to flip a coin to deetermine what to blindly trust in, but I would expect you to start looking for some positive evidence concerning the nature of reality. Having an idea as to what you should believe is not the same as guessing, nor is it the same as knowing why all those little quibbles about why shouldn't believe are just nonsense.