newtype_alpha

There is no such thing as absolute certainty; for that matter, there are no absolutes except in the realm of mathematics and numbers and even then not always.

How can you "know" anything? If you step off the roof of a ten story building there is every possibility you are going to hit the ground. But until you do, you don't actually "know" that you are going to hit the ground. Everything you have come to understand about the nature of the world, the laws of physics, gravity, and anecdotal information about what usually happens to people who jump off the tops of buildings gives you a very strong belief that if you step off the edge of that building, you are going to hit the ground and probably die. Anything is possible; there might be a safety net you can't see, or the roof might end in a very well polished glass surface you didn't know was there, in which case stepping off the roof at all is impossible. Anything you "know" is just a set of beliefs you have and the reasons assosciated with believing them. So Christians don't "know" the Bible is the inspired words of god, I don't "know" that it isn't.

I believe one point if this discussion is whose beliefs are more reasonable based on the information at hand? I could maintain that if I step off the roof of a building, gravity will suddenly reverse its pull and I will be thrown into low orbit, never to return--but this isn't a reasonable belief (amusing as it may be) unless I have some reason to believe that this could or would happen.

Columbo

Hi Newtype Alfa. The difference is that you cannot know what happens between God and a man. For example, unless he testifies of it. Even when we testify of this happening - no one can "test" this.

You cannot even have a good idea if he is not inspired by God or is, because you cannot test it - you don't even know what the prophet looked like. It was thousands of years ago.

It's like me saying - "listen, he said it was 2-nil to Nottingham, I believe him" but if no one recorded the match and all the witnesses die off - we sure as hell cannot establish AT ALL the score. How can anyone say God din't speak to someone - if God chooses to appear to someone? Say me - imagine if he appeared to me in my room, or inspired me - how can you know AT ALL whether he did or not? YET these things were thousands of years ago!

newtype_alpha

We can make some inferences based on what was said and what wasn't said. For instance, we can't really test the relationship between God and Mathew Hale, but if Matt says something like "God told me he has selected whites as his chosen people and Jews and Negros need to be eliminated" then you can draw one of two conclusions: either Matt Hale is a man of very low character who has never actually spoken to God, or God is a being of very low character who has actually spoken to Mathew Hale.

In terms of the Bible, I can and have drawn alternating conclusions based on different contexts, but in general I categorize them into one of four positions:
1.) God did not speak to Prophet X, and Prophet X is putting his own words in God's mouth to make his own point
2.) God did speak to Prophet X and Prophet X is bending the message to make his own point.
3.) God did speak to Prophet X and the message was conveyed accurately.
4.) God did not speak to Prophet X, but Prophet X believes he did--thus this prophet is insane.

Some of the passages in the Bible make a few of these positions highly problematic. I'm inclined to think at this point that most of the non-violent and non-warlike religious movements recorded in the Bible probably took place appart from the will of God for a number of reasons. In other words, the more peaceful and loving the message of a particular section of the Bible, the less likely it is that God had a hand in it.

This, of course, is just my belief based on the reading of it.

Columbo

So if it's peaceful God didn't say it? (Huh?)

Forgive me, but if it's peaceful then I think God did. But - our thoughts cannot establish whether it is or isn't accurate. It comes down to belief, because you either believe in God and look to his understanding - or don't and look to your own.

So - no one can say "the bible is wrong" as the bible cannot be proved wrong.

How can a ten year old person say "It is wrong" if a thing happened hundreds of years ago?

No logic can rid the bible - because man still wrote it, so it can possibly have errors. If God wrote it with his literal hand - there would be no error. Also - our modern understanding could warp our mindset - and bias our outlook.

Asha'man

When things happen in the real world (as opposed to fictional ones), they leave traces. Physical traces that can be observed by anyone who looks (if they know where and how to look).

If a prophet claims that Moses lead a few million Hebrews out of Egypt, and they then conqured Caanan, there should be physical traces that can be verified by archeology. When modern archeologists say that the traces don't exist, and counter-evidence shows that the Hebrews developed out of native Cannanites, then you know the prophet was simply wrong.

If the prophet claims that the Hebrews knocked down the walls of Jerhico, and archeology shows that the city had no walls at the supposed time of the event, then you know the prophet was wrong.

If one inspired prophet claims that Joseph's father was a man named Jacob, and another inspired prophet claims that Joseph's father was a man named Heli, you know that at least one (if not both) of these inspired prophets is wrong. If one claims that Judas died by hanging, and another claims he died in a fall, you know that at least one (if not both) is wrong.

If the prophet insists his story is true and inspired by God, you have good reason to believe the prophet is simply lying.

If you get enough of those types of evidences, all proving that the prophets were wrong, you have good reason to reject everything else they say, even if you have no proof about each specific claim. The pattern of forgery and lies is enough.

Classical

We've discussed this issue quite at length in some other threads recently, but in case you have not heard my reasoning, I'll begin.

First, I have to say, I don't grasp the purpose of your using the logic: "you cannot prove it isn't." This type of logic could be applied to almost any claim and one could cite endless examples. Shall I? Suppose I say that I went upstairs to my music room and saw an elf sitting at my piano and he said "there really is a santa claus." Obviously if I tried to spread this as truth, one would require proof that it did happen, not that it didn't. I'm sure you'll agree it is not necessary to expound on the obvious just for the sake of doing so. I don't believe in tangling arguments needlessly or changing the definitions of words.

Secondly, I appreciate your politeness, and I regret my initial response because I thought from your post you were "just someone playing around with the question." But obviously since you are serious about having a meaningful discussion, I am more that happy to. I am very reasonable in discussing this because I have a long history of thinking about these issues. If you'll look up the threads I've started, you'll see where I am coming from in greater detail.

I spent many years, from early childhood, until about age 27 as a fundamentalist, evangelical christian. The very day I got "saved" at the age of 10, I kept it a secret to myself that I didn't understand one word of it. To make a long story very short, as I grew older I had nagging questions that would not go away. Eventually I stepped outside of the fundamentalist circles I was in and went to the library of the university where I was getting my Ph.D. in music to explore what others thought.

What I pinpoint as the very moment of my deconversion happening was when I saw among rows and rows of books, a book entitled "Is It God's Word?" by Joseph Wheless. Reading that book not only cleared up many questions I had, but it completely collapsed my religous viewpoint. Now trust me, I did not want this to happen. I did not change my mind just casually or carelessly. I desperately hoped that I could find christian writers who could convince me back, but after hundreds of books, articles and essays, nothing ever could "re-convince" me that the bible was the word of god.

About those nagging questions, one was about the bible itself. It is an indisputable fact of history that the bible was written by many writers over the course of many years and eventually men sat around a room and voted which parts of the ancient texts would be included in the bible. There was also dispute in this vote which still exist today. But my main problem was the facts as follows:
a.) the bible was not available to anyone before it was written
b.) the bible was available to a few more people after it was written, canonized and translated, but not to massive amounts of people until after the invention of the printing press.

This seems to me to be a very lousy way to communicate truth to the world and I would think that god would have chosen a much more efficient way of getting his message to the world, and would have done so at the very beginning of recorded history and that everyone would have a copy of it at birth automatically in their native tongue.

Further, the book I referred to earlier ultimately convinced me that the bible was not the word of god, because I became convinced of what it was - namely a historical document with a lot of primitive mythology and poetry with hundreds of conflicting reports and contradictions. This was my personal conclusion based on the information I studied. Others are welcome to come to a different conclusion, but it appears to me that in all fairness, people who openly investigate the claim of the bible being the word of god generally come to same conclusion I did.

So as I said in an earlier post, I cannot utterly claim that the bible is not the word of god, but from my studying this question, I would bet at least a billion to one that it is just a manmade historical document. That's how sure I am. :wave:

Killer Mike

Id recommend "The Mind of The Bible Believer" by Edmond Cohen, PhD (Case Western Reserve University". The underlying psychological pathology is that of dissociation. There are more subtle mind control mechanisms similar to those found in modern cults that lead one to believe the Bible is the word of God. Imagine taking the scholarship about the origins and development of the Koran (Ibn Warraq has some good books on this) to a Muslim fundamentalist and trying to convince them the koran is not the word of God? You cant educate people that are uneducatable!

Mathetes

Very good post, Asha'man. :thumbs:

Columbo

Thanks Classical. I understand why you believe it isn't the inspired words of God. This discussion is a good insight onto why you reason like this. I have different reasons in my discussion - for why I do believe it is inspired by God. I certainly don't worship the bible, and I have had many arguments with Christians, about the bible, because of my view.

If read Genesis when I was 10, and had a terrible desharvoo (can't spell the word )....At first - a lot of the bible didn't make sense to me. I don't like the violence etc...But one thing that I found, is that when I didn't look to my understanding - revelations start to occur. I watched a Christian tv program, and one Christian said that he struggled to understand the book of Revelation - and finally, he understood after many years, yet another woman said she - when she first believed, undertood completely - the book of Revelation. But the key to understanding IMHO - is to throw away your "opinion" or "disagreements" - and open the mind to the possibility or premise, that it is inspired. Even Christ said "my sheep hear my voice".

Yet you failed to understand the bible - and tried to refute it logically.

Now I'm very logical IMHO - - it seems my only given trait of intelligence.

Now if we say "the whole bible is true" - it's like saying "this whole leaf is green". The law of none-contradiction, means that the leaf cannot be "NOT green" and the bible cannot be "Not true" in any places - if we assume this.

This is why to say the bible is all perfect and true - is most believers "condemning premise". If the bible is not all true and perfect, then it can be "not true" in places- in the same way the leaf can be "not green". I see the bible as basically a green leaf, with brown spots. The brown spots are a given because men wrote it. Therefore - contradictions in the bible, do not automatically suggest that it isn't inspired, because as you said, it's a post decided collection/canon of books. If it was written by God's actual hand, I would accept no less than perfection. But then, is perfection with me, a subjective outlook. Because of this, I have a personal logical philosophy of my own which states, My own opinion will not effect the reality of any situation that happened. This can be observe logically with many examples. For example - if I say "evolution didn't happen" and then changed my mind and said "it did happen" - obviously my opinion had no relevance pertaining to that reality.

So everybody doesn't accept the bible - for different subjective reasons. This post is long, so that's all I'll say for now.

Philippe*

There are already thousands churches that believe that the Bible is the strict word of God. I have already participated to Bible discussions, just among a few persons who agree with all the main theological points you can find more or less differences of interpretations. If you don't trust the Bible as reliable then all becomes difficult, it is the door open to everything. And that's why some are still creatonists and teach their children to be careful face to the "propaganda" their teachers tell them at school. Since if you don't trust the Genesis then you have to admit that it is not the pure word of God otherwise you fool yourself.
But I agree it is a strange affair to admit it is the word of God, since we know men have written it, and not God. Plus it has been written on several centuries by dozens of writers, and it was arbitrarly chosen. These are serious facts to think it is not the pure word of God.

Plus I ask myself why a God of a so vast and complex universe, would have put his only word in one book, it doesn't make sense. Why would he have stopped speaking two millenia ago ?

Philippe