B. H. Manners

How do we know that the God portrayed in the Bible is really not Satanic lies? It has been proven objectively that the Bible has been edited over time by human hands. Some manuscripts of the Bible have chapters missing that are found in others, and individual passages in one text have been changed to something entirely different from the equivalent passage in another manuscript. I am not referring to minor spelling errors either.

Since Satan is evil and no doubt willing to corrupt the Bible if he could, and changes have been documented, how do we know Satan may not have inspired the Bible or parts of it? How can we tell what parts are inspired of God and which are Satan's words? Also, since Satan knows Christians and Jews believe "Since God said it it is automatically truth" it seems to me that the devil would make Bible corruption his #1 goal. What better way to cause mayhem than convince people that God ordered them to believe such and do such and such so as to have life. Since Christians and Jews (and Moslems) believe it is wrong to question the commands and teachings of the Bible what better way for Satan to give bad laws and stifle opposition from freethinkers, psychologists, sociologists, everyday reflection by man, ect. than convince them that it is false doctrine to say the advice found in the Bible may be bad.

[ October 18, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>

Tom Sawyer

Satan doesn't exist.

Therefore God cannot be him.

Animesh

I proposed a similar question a while ago to some Born Again'ers. They were discussing what basically amounted to "anyone following any other religion is really following Satan". I countered that Wiccans and Hindus and Buddhists don't believe Satan exists, so how could they be worshipping him? They responded that they might THINK they aren't worshipping him, but that Satan has fooled them.

Okay.

So, I asked: how do you know that Satan hasn't fooled you? How do you know that Jesus wasn't, in fact, Satan? Their response was that Jesus died and came back from the dead, and that Satan couldn't do that. I guess Satan couldn't fake his own death. Uh huh.

B. H. Manners

How do they not know Satan was the one who faked Christ's death and resurrection?

Talking about variant texts of the Bible:

There are at least five different endings of Mark.

Luke and John have a least one or two stories inserted into them that are not in other copies of the same said books (the adulterous woman Jesus saves is one of them).

There are variant manuscripts of I John, containing verses not found in others.

There are variant copies of Romans which say entirely different things from the other copies.

There are versions of Exodus, Jeremiah and Isaiah that contain extra chapters that other copies do not have.

Jeremiah Chapter 7 complains that the pen of the scribes has turned the law into a lie.

It has been known for a long time the Daniel in Protestant Bibles does not contain stories the Catholic Bible does.

The Septuagint is missing a lot of portions that the Masoretic text has, but contains the material for the most part found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.


If believers object saying that "objective" Christians scholars have found out for sure what are true portions of scripture and which are false additions I will ask how they could know for sure unless 1. they had copies of every manuscript ever made or 2. They had the original autographs and could prove them as such.

If they do not have one or two above, all they have is guesswork. It is possible that the copies that the Christians scholars say are forged (A) may in fact be older than the ones they say are true (B), it is just there are no copies left of (A) before a certain time period whereas (B) has a few parchments left and so can give the facade of being older than (A). However, the scholars have no way to know this.

If scholars say that the style of writings allows us to date manuscripts I will respond that it is fallicious too. It is a known fact that manuscripts are written in older style so as to make the manuscript look older or cosmetically more pleasing.

So, how do we know Satan did not inspire parts of the Bible?

1. He knew that believers would accept anything written in the Bible as unchallengable. No doubt he wouldwant to put some bad stuff in there parading as the word of God in order to cause harm and misery.

2. Variant texts have been proven to exist and it is an objective fact.

3. The only way one could tell what is God's word and what is not is for there to be an objective set of values which even God is subject too.

[ October 18, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>

Evil Milkman

That's the thing... One can't know everything in full detail about the supernatural. That's what makes it a mystery cult.

Besides, the old question still remains; if certain versions of the Bible are inaccurate or 'Satanic', why would God allow this mistranslation and error of his Holy Book to happen in the first place? My answer is because all powerful god does not exist.

Vanderzyden

BH,

From where do you get the concept of Satan?

Therein lies your answer.


Vanderzyden

Skepticos

Descartes entertained a similar notion in his "Meditations on First Philosophy" (1641). What if a malevolent being existed, who thrived on making all of us believe falsehoods to be truths? That is, what if everything we believe to be true is actually false, since this being is constantly deceiving us?

Gotta love ole' Rene!

- Skepticos

B. H. Manners

Not quite. The Bible may have told stories about satan, only to be corrupted by him later. Unless you can provide absolute objective evidence to the contrary, for all I know the devil may have inspired the Bible or good parts of it.

You will have to provide an absolute objective standard of right and wrong independent of Jehovah which he nevertheless is subject to in order to tell if a command is from Satan or not.

Jobar

Folks, I foresee this developing into a Biblical argument concerning the nature of Satan- so let's try it in Biblical Crit., OK? If the mods there find it inappropriate, I guess MRD would be the next logical place.

Oh yeah. Evidence, Vanderzyden. Evidence.

B. H. Manners

I am going ahead and tranferring it to MRD.