Kharakov

You will eventually. It's part of getting to know God, letting go of the training wheels of faith and developing a true faith. Atheists are not what they appear, they are here to educate you and detach you from your youthful misconceptions, as are the inconsistencies in the bible: when you finally realize their nature, it is because you have outgrown the bible and are ready for the next step in your spiritual evolution, which involves rejecting your childish understanding.
What specific part are you referring to? I am sure I can come up with logically valid explanations for all, or at least most, of the Bible's inconsistencies, but then again, I'm the son of a great bullshitter.
Well, I suppose you can now as someone else already found the flaw in mine. I think the person who destroyed my story should have to make up the next one, so on and so forth. What shall we name our game?

Half-Life

Hold on. Timeout. Stop the belief system for a minute!

Out of his own free will? What about this verse?

39And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

So, it appears in this passage that Jesus didn't want to go through with the crucifixion, but felt he had to because it was God's will. How's that Jesus' own free will? Sounds like Jesus was forced by daddy.

Yet, even though Jesus is God, and had all of eternity to prepare for this, and this was Jesus' own plan considering he is God Himself as well, he calls out to the "other half" of Himself to force "his other half" of Himself to not do it. Yet, his "other half" goes through with it anyway.

if Jesus had said no to the crucifixion, what would that mean? His "other half" has to come up with a new plan?

If this was God's plan all along, Jesus had no free will. He just had to do it because his "other half" was feeling bloodthirsty on a Friday and needed a sacrifice.

If Jesus did NOT have free will:

God: I'm gonna crucify you.
Jesus: Ooooooooooooooooooook, why?
God: to forgive those humans on earth.
Jesus: What about something else?
God: Nope, it's gotta be crucifixion because there's no other options.
Jesus: What about just getting thrown under the nearest chariot?
God: Look, you're getting crucified damnit!
Jesus: Don't I have free will?
God: Yes!
Jesus: But, why deny my chariot idea if I have free will?
God: *$#%&*$*&%$ (nothing but expletives)

If Jesus DID have free will:

God: I'm gonna crucify you.
Jesus: OK! I want to do it.
God: Good, because there were no other options and we would have ceased to exist.

What a strange religion. :huh:

Half-Life

Wow I haven't seen that much skating around since I last watched Hockey. I guess God inspired Matthew to not include as much. Then, he changed his mind and told Luke to include more names. Or do apologists believe only "some parts" of the Bible are divinely guided and inspired?

I don't know what they believe these days anymore. They flip-flop more than a fish out of water.

Deus Ex

Here is another list of biblical contradictions for DLB to gloss over.

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...adictions.html

Have fun!

Atheos

It seems others beat me to resolving dr lazer blast's contradictory story. It's certainly an interesting experiment and it shows just how easy it is to resolve contradictions.

You went to a lot of effort to pick through my objections, calling them "arguments from silence", and once again I simply direct you to your own contradictory story as evidence that if you try hard enough you can resolve just about any contradiction. My point remains that the contradictions exist. It's simply a matter of whether or not one is willing to accept that simple fact.

Minor nit-pick, it says they "became as dead men", but unless there were additional resurrections that morning they weren't really dead as they later went to HQ and reported about what had happened (according to the story line).

Wrong on this one my friend. This is not an argument from silence. John specifically says Mary stood outside and looked in. He is quite clear she was not inside the tomb when she saw the angels:
Are you kidding me? She says "we know not where they have laid him". She thinks he's still dead! :banghead:

Let's not go there. Sounds like a command to me, but hey, I'm just an atheist. What do I know. Let's concentrate on the geography.

Once again, this is not an argument from silence, it's an argument based on what we can infer from each story. "Luke" is not "silent" at all. "Luke" is quite clear about exactly where they were, and equally clear that they did not go to Galilee.

... and "Matthew" even goes so far as to describe the meeting between Jesus and the disciples in Galilee. Once again it's not a matter of time, it's a matter of detail. To refresh your mind I give you the following passages from "Luke" / Acts:
In "Luke", Jesus appears to the disciples in the room after the sun goes down on the same day all this stuff started. There he eats some fish and honeycomb, "opens their understanding" and then commands them to "tarry in Jerusalem". Acts re-emphasizes this evidently important detail.

There is no room in "Luke" / Acts for a journey to Galilee. Everything happens in Jerusalem, and the "command" to remain in Jerusalem is issued twice in these passages.

dr lazer blast

you're comparing a very poorly thought out, quickly typed, made up story that I already messed up once on, to the bible?
take about 'glazing over'

like I said, that story was poorly thought out, quickly typed story that I messed up on. There was only supposed to be one definite contradiction and I didn't think it through good enough, so that story actually had no contradictions in it, because the contradiction I put in it wasn't even a contradiction. So you referring me to my story with no contradictions in it, in an attempt to show me that an ancient book has contradictions flailing at its best, and is a poor attempt to cover up your arguments from silence.

Fact is, all of the 'contradictions' you've listed so far are made from arguments from silence, and my poorly thought out, made up story about frank that had no contradictions in it, has nothing to do with that.


whos story line? my story line? did the gospels say this? do you have any evidence to back this up?
According to my narrative, that is when Mary came back to the tomb after she found peter, so yes you're right she didn't go into the tomb the 2nd time she came back.

Let me re cap.

The women go to the tomb, rock gets moved, all of them enter the tomb. The angel talks to them, they split up and go their own ways. Mary magdelene comes back with peter. After peter goes into the tomb, mary weeps and stays out of the tomb.

so I believe you just didn't read my narrative closely enough, or I didn't explain it good enough. Either way, the explanation still does nothing to contradict anything i've said so far.



I don't know where they have laid him. Once again, she didn't know how he rose, or where he was at. As far as she knows, the angels didn't tell her specifically where Jesus was, so the best place to start was where ever his body is. His body wasn't there, she could be wanting proof that he is alive. "peter 2 angels said Jesus is alive, but I don't know where they put his body"
as far as Mary knows, the angels resurrected Jesus.
She could also have trouble believing the angels as well, so its also very possible that she still thought Jesus was dead when she ran to peter, after all Thomas didn't believe until he saw Jesus either.



Wrong, there is nothing in luke that makes it clear they didn't go to galilee. You're using arguments from silence again. Where in luke does it say they didn't go to galilee? like I said, one could easily infer that they went to galilee, the authors are assuming you've read the other 3 gospels.
In fact luke even states they wern't at Jerusalem. So if it goes like how you say, How could someone return to Jerusalem when they are already AT Jerusalem? if Luke states they were at Jerusalem the whole time, how could they RETURN to Jerusalem?

And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy

so that would be luke being 'quite clear' that they were somewhere OTHER than Jerusalem.
Once again, if one reads the other 3 gospels a journey to Galilee easily fits in.


Bolded is in Matthew 28.

This time acts is in bold.

Once again, if you put those verses in there, they fit with no contradictions. Also if you notice in acts, it has 2 angels SAYING that they are in Galilee. Which is why they called them men of Galilee.

I also need to add to my narrative that they went from Bethany to Galilee. New narrative will be up soon.

Amaleq13

This is just sad.

Please don't insult our intelligence by suggesting her uncertainty about where he had been laid indicates anything other than she considered him to be dead. You don't lay out a man who has risen from the dead and you don't wonder where a man who has risen from the dead might be laid. You only wonder that about a dead body.

dr lazer blast

why don't you read the whole post? instead of replying to only what you can handle

Atheos

No, I'm calling a spade a spade. You tried to create a contradictory story and found that using the criteria you apply to your favorite god-myth you can't create one contradictory enough to qualify as a contradiction. That says something.

As I've encouraged you to do several times, read your own myth. Get familiar with what you're talking about before debating someone who preached it as a 'professional' for nearly two decades. "Matthew" says the following about the guards:

As I said, it's a minor nitpick. But it does make me wonder if you're even bothering to read the bible accounts of any of this or if you've just been mining apologetic sites for quotes. Do you actually know what the bible says happened on that day? I'm just asking.

Would you please just read your own myth and get to know it a little better before arguing over these things that it would appear you haven't even bothered to check? You keep separating explanations from the things the explanations contradict. That's the problem with the "Easter Challenge" puzzle. Yes you can resolve one thing but as soon as you do it knocks something else over. It's the whole picture that makes absolutely no sense. The five "resurrection accounts" in the canonical gospels and I Cor 15 are the textbook definition of contradiction.

"Luke" does, indeed, say they returned to Jerusalem, but he's also thoughtful enough to provide the exact location of where they are returning from. Read the two previous verses and you'll see that according to "Luke" he "led them out as far as to Bethany". Acts (most folks believe it was written by whoever wrote "Luke") clarifies that the distance was "about a Sabbath day's Journey" that took them back to Jerusalem. "Luke" is very specific and insists that the disciples did not go further than a sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem (far short of the 50 miles they'd have had to go to get to Galilee) between the day they first saw the ressurected Jesus and the time they were "endued with power from on high". I have no clue why the writer might have thought that to be an important detail but it would be difficult for the writer to have stated it any more clearly. And it clearly contradicts "Matthew" and "Mark's" claim that the disciples were to (and eventually did) go find Jesus in Galilee.

I've been criticized by fundies for "quote mining" the bible and lifting verses out of context many times. It seems odd that I'm on the other end trying to talk a fundamentalist into checking the context of a bible verse.

dr lazer blast

also I'd like to point out that is entirely possible, considering Risen from the dead doesn't always mean getting up and walking and not being where your body is laid.

as you can see, if Jesus had not took her by the hand, she would've just been laying there. Also with Lazarus, when Jesus told Lazarus to come out of the tomb, he didn't just magically go somewhere away from his body, he was around the place where his dead body had been.

So mary not seeing the body, and hearing from the angels that Christ had died and rose, wanted to know where the body is, because in all the instances of resurrection the person was around where they had died.