ceres

I guess this is a good enough place to start. Here I am... I've been in the process of deconverting for several years and I keep taking breaks where I no longer thought about it but just lived my life, I even tried to prevent "losing my faith".... it was hopeless. My issues began with the Bible, and really they end with the Bible too. No one has had answers to my questions.... I wonder if others here have had the same issues.... like how the taking of the "promised land" was immoral ... or how the story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac is seriously skewed.... what are your issues with the Bible? Thanks

GenesisNemesis

Here's a good source: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/ It's pretty good, and that's pretty much my issues with it.

jeffevnz

If by losing your faith, you mean no longer believing in God, then IMO it shouldn't have much to do with the Bible. It could be that God exists and yet the Bible is a bunch of nonsensical fiction. It could also be that much of the Bible is true or useful, but that God doesn't exist. For my part, I don't believe in either one, but I see them as largely separate issues.

ceres

Hmmm well that was interesting but as a person who's taken more than my fair share of theology classes back in the day I'd say they got some of it wrong and it makes them look uninformed. :huh:

ceres

I think they are related since I was always told the Bible was "infallible"... once you start questioning that issue, the questioning just continues into all other realms. :devil3:

Gooch's dad

I couldn't agree more. The SAB is an unfortunate piece of web reference to have around. As you said, it gets a lot of stuff just plain wrong.

Welcome to IIDB, ceres! :wave:

pharoah

I disagree with this. If the main source of claims about a god is provably false, then the most reasonable option is to believe that god doesn't exist, otherwise to be consistent then you'll have to be agnostic about the existence of every god that's ever been conceived.

Malachi151

By issues with the Bible I assume that you don't mean simply pointing out logical errors, or immorality, etc.

I actually want to write a book that touches on this subject because I think its important, but I have 3 or 4 other books in line before that one.

Anyway, my biggest issue is with the cultural role of the Bible, especially in America. It completely skews people's idea of history and reality because for most people in America, the Bible is the only "ancient literature" that they have ever read. Their view of the past comes only, or primarily, from the Bible.

To these people, The Bible tells us what the past was like, and the little bit of stuff that they see about Egypt or Greece or Rome, is like, just a story or a prop or something, its meaningless.

We still always hear the phrase "Biblical times", which people's don't even know what that means, does that mean OT or NT times, and many people don't make a distinction.

So, when many people think of "Biblical times", they think of people running around in the desert in sandals, when people must not have known much of anything about how the world operated, etc.

But the reality, of course, is that the Old Testament is largely fiction at that, but in addition it is actually poor quality literature and is the product of a largely uninformed and relatively undeveloped people. This is not meant to be any kind of insult or slander against the Jews, after all my heritage is northern British/Irish, my ancestors were running around with paint on their faces and doing really stupid stuff at this time, so its not even about that at all.

But really, the Bible is a poor quality work when compared to the other works of its time, and it presents a very low view of the ancients and of the past.

Most of the OT was written between 700 and 300 BCE. By 500 BCE the Greeks were already developing atomic theory, had already developed the idea that there are many worlds, that the universe is infinite, and that everything has a natural cause and effect.

By 300 CE a theory of biological evolution had already been developed, there were extremely complex and insightful philosophical debates taking place between the Epicureans, Stoics, and Platonists, which are still more advanced than most Americans get into today.

The Greeks and Romans, by the "time of Jesus" had already developed machines, mechanical robots, semi-automated factories that produced grain and pottery, advanced astronomy, and the heliocentric theory had already been proposed, in fact we know think that the Antyketherya (sp?) mechanism was a heliocentric mechanical model of the solar system (though this is still being verified).

Galen was already performing brain surgery, they already had hospitals that were more advanced than anything until the 19th century in Europe, they already understood disease and how it worked, they already used sterilization, etc.

The world was a very sophisticated place "in Biblical times", yet the Bible gives no clue of that, because the Bible was written by some of the least sophisticated people in the region, the NT being written by people who hated civilization and wanted the world to come to and end.

Rationality, logic, reason, and evidence were all well established, at least among the educated, by the time of the writing of the NT, yet the NT is a treaties AGAINST everything that had been developed by civilization to that time, against everything good.

The NT is a work against reason, against evidence, against logic, and against philosophical debate. It is a work against everything that had created civilization.

I think that these words by Celsus, the 2nd century Christian critic sum it up nicely:

That was the state of affairs before the Christians and the accursed Bible took power, that is what they destroyed, and that is what this horrid religion and this book continue to destroy today.

kurosaki

Malachi151, if you don't mind me asking I would be very interested in seeing some of your sources for how advanced the Greeks and other early civilizations were. It would be useful for my discussions with Christians. I am very concerned about the state of the world today too. Looks like we will have a repeat soon if things don't change.

John Kesler

You may be interested in Farrell Till's series of articles.

I mention what I consider to be Bible contradictions in this post. Even leaving aside contradictions, what is there to commend the Bible as something of divine origin?