rhutchin

You do not have to presuppose the truth of the Bible. You need only recognize that you cannot show that the Bible is false so you can acknowledge that the possibility exists for it to be true. You can easily qualify your statement and say, "Even though I know that I cannot prove that the Bible is false so there is a possibility that Bible can be true, I freely choose not to believe it, and understand the consequences of doing so."

You can look at it that way. However, you could still, if you chose to do so, acknowledge that you cannot get into heaven because of your sin and ask for mercy. It may be a brutal game and you have no choice as to playing (you cannot opt out) but you can submit to the rules rather than continuing challenging your inability to get out of the game.

You get to investigate them and choose for yourself. If you eliminate all religions that don't include negative consequences at death, I think you are basically left with Christianity and Islam so you shouldn't have to do much investigation to make a decision.

rhutchin

If the Bible actually said that God will send everyone to hell, neither you not anyone else would oppose it as there would be nothing to be gained by doing so. Everyone would eat, drink, and be merry while they yet lived.

Yep. The alleged errors tend to be minor. Christians can leave the explanations up to the scholars to investigate and explain.

Do you know that He did not?

Mark 4
11 And [Jesus] said to them, “To you [the apostles] it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables [as confusing writings],
12 “so that ‘Seeing they may see and not perceive, And hearing they may hear and not understand; Lest they should turn, And their sins be forgiven them."

Even Christians are not perfect and do dumb things.

Given the number of copies of the individual letters, it would not be as simple as you suggest. Textual critics do investigate the differences in the available copies and would do so under your scenario also. With the copies available and the great number of passages quoted in other documents, it would be extremely difficult to purposely alter the text and have people accept it.

Yes, the implications for them are not good.

OK.

Exactly. To acknowledge that God exists is to acknowledge their sin and then to do something about their sin by accepting what He has said.

That seems true. From what we read in the Bible, God does not intend to save all people. That God would withhold evidence from those that He does not intend to save seems likely.

That is fine. If God wants to change their mind, He can do so. Otherwise, He can leave them alone.

Why? If the Bible said that God will send everyone to hell, no one would evangelize and people would ignore the Bible because there would be nothing they could do to change that outcome. Isn't this a repeat of an earlier argument?

If the God of the Bible did not exist, there would be no message to spread. It is because there is a God that there is a message to spread. That it is spread by people who are willing to sacrifice everything, even their lives, to do so seems somewhat unusual. How many other people do something like this without the promise of personal gain?

This does not seem to have anything to do with the subject argument.

Are you sure that this is accurate. Some people claim that the Chinese characters in the alphabet reflect Biblical themes.

Here is one example: http://bibleprobe.com/chinese.htm

Yes.

Yes.

Dogfish

"Believe" and "know" ? Re-defining words again. You can believe and accept, but if you know, you don't need to believe.

Dogfish

So, it has nothing to do with god being good, deserving of praise or full of love, it's all about being stuck in this game and playing by the rules you think will save you ass.

Praise Jezuz!

Johnny Skeptic

Which proves exactly what I intended to prove, which is that if the Bible said that God plans to send everyone to hell, you would inconsistently reject the very same quality of evidence that you accept now due to your emotional perceived self-interests, not because logic and reason convinced you that the Bible is true, and that my position would consistently be the same no matter what the Bible promised due to a lack of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Hypothetical arguments are frequently excellent means of revealing bad arguments. Fundamentalist Christians frequently use them when they feel that it suits their purposes to do so. C.S. Lewis' "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" is a good example.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: No moral God would be much more interested in people's spiritual needs that he would be in their physical needs. Consider the following Scriptures:

James 2

14 What [doth it] profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?

15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,

16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be [ye] warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what [doth it] profit?

17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

22 Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?

James obviously was more loving than God is, and knew that people have tangible needs too, not just spiritual needs.

If God gave food to Adam and Eve, and gave manna to the Jews, why did he do it?

Why did Jesus give food to some people? In one case, the New Testament says that Jesus gave food to people out of compassion, but that was not possible since God refused to give food to millions of people who died of starvation.

Why did God inspire James to write that if a man refuses to give food to hungry people, he is vain, and his faith is dead?

Why does God kill people and animals with hurricanes? What fair, worthy, and just causes cannot be achieved with killing people and animals with hurricanes?

Why does God cause animals to kill each other?

Johnny Skeptic

We cannot observe the past. All that we can do is study historical records. Are you aware of any historical records that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Egypt?

Do you know that the God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth?

Johnny Skeptic

Don't you?

But there are not any good reasons for anyone to believe that a loving, moral God exists who is not able to achieve fair, worthy, and just goals without injuring and killing people and innocent animals with hurricanes, and without refusing to protect women from rapists.

No decent, moral man is able to accept the existence of a God who claims that he is merciful, but endorses unmerciful eternal punishment without parole. Unless we redefine what the word "merciful" means, the God of the Bible probably does not exist. Mercy and eternal punishment without parole are contradictory.

Logically, there is not a necessary correlation between the ability to create a universe and good character. If there were, any creator of the universe would have good character no matter what he was like.

Cege

How do I decide? I now decide based on what I can determine is most likely true to the original. I have to depend on the scholarship of others, like Bart Ehrman, for what's most likely to be original. Originally, when I "became a Christian" at age 12, it was based strictly on an emotional response to a sermon I heard about the sacrifice of God giving his son for a sinful me, a sacrifice that involved intense suffering on a cross that Jesus didn't deserve but endured for me personally.

There was no consideration of what the bible said, back then, but only of what I was told it said, in a very condensed message. I "became a Christian" based on what I was told but certainly not about what I knew about the bible.

40 years after that conversion, I began to question and examine what the bible actually says, what the history of it consists of, what biblical scholarship has discovered about both old and new testaments.
I think that it's more a choice than a right. Errors and contradictions aren't few; they are many. I think it's important to be honest about that. Many can be chalked up to copyist errors, but still...there are errors and there are contradictions.

I also think that in contemporary society the message of the Bible wins over primarily children and youth who don't question what they are told. They hear an emotional appeal from adults they trust and make emotional decision based on very limited information. As they become older, if they stay "in the faith" they may or may not question the source (Bible) or the message, since they're told that if they question they don't have faith and just might not even be Christians, i.e., going to hell for eternal suffering.

*It's a personal question, but I'd like to know if you, rhutchin, became a Christian as a well-informed and searching adult, or as a minor.
I happen to be a Southern Baptist (of sorts) and a big problem for that denomination is that adult conversions are very low in number.

Cege

Others have already pointed out that people are compassionate about a lot of differing philosophies whether the people and the philosphies are Christian or not.

To those already mentioned, I'll add college sports allegiances. War Eagle! and consider Auburn University, especially for engineering and pharmacy pursuits. I won't receive any material gain for my passion to persuade students to attend Auburn, but I am passionate.

Southern Baptists are motivated to spread the gospel per missionaries because they believe that if they don't, they are personally responsible for people not hearing the gospel and having a chance to save themselves from eternal hell. There's a factor of (false) guilt as well as compassion involved.