mark9950

I received a response from an ex atheist about the validity of the bible and here it is.

Dear Mark:

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that in the year 3000, physicists will
discover that the earth is actually a glooptrot that is encircled by blarb and
cranny nuts, suspended in the liquified tract of a non-electric harezainattor,
which was discovered in 2065. Of course, everyone knows that the electrified
model of the harezainattor as suggested by the Physics and Astronomy Council of
2043 provided an insufficient amount of coyle for such a mega-transistional
field of torquettes and rollaqwarts to exist.

Now if God revealed that information to us today, we would pass it off as
nonsense. Had God revealed the information we know now to those living
2000-5000 years ago, none of it would make any sense.

For example, how is God to explain the creation of Adam to a people who don't
even know what amino acids are or have the knoweldge of biochemistry that would
be necessary to explain them? Those who wrote the Bible through God's
inspiration were given that inspiration in a way that would make sense to them
and the other people of their time.

God reveals His authorship as Creator, but He does not reveal the mechanism of
Creation. We still would not have the capacity to understand it if He did.

When you read the Bible, read large segments of its text and then ask yourself,
"What is the purpose of this narrative that I have just read?" Try to
sum it up in one short sentence. I know what you are saying, because I used to
only see it the same way. But the Bible is inerrant in the truth it intends to
reveal. What is the truth intended to be revealed in Genesis 1? God created us
and our world.
What is the truth of Genesis 2? Man is created as a special creature, the
purpose of God's creation.

I have read nothing in the Bible, when considered in its proper context, that
would make me believe that it intends to reveal that the earth is flat.

You cite a verse in Joshua where the sun is commanded to stand still. What is
the intended truth being revealed here?
a) That God has control over planetary motion
b) That God ensured Joshua's victory through divine intervention.

Did the sun really appear to stand still?
I've no doubt that it did. I smoked a joint once and 1 minute seemed to drag on
for an hour. Was the sun standing still an illusion? I don't know. All I know
from the text is that something happened that made the sun appear to remain
still.

From a standpoint in physics, if the sun appeared to stand still, our earth quit
moving. And if our earth quit moving, we would all be fried, not to mention the
effects of gravity that depends on the earth's rotation. However, perhaps there
are things that we still don't know about physics that would permit such an
event to take place without catastrophic consequences. I certainly wouldn't be
able to argue against that possibility.

The truth that the Bible intends to reveal is not the truth about animal
husbandry aboard self-contained vessels, the structual anomolies that would
permit a fish to swallow a man, earth topology or the ability of animals to
vocalize in human languages. The truth that the Bible intends to reveal is the
truth about man's nature and the nature of the God who made him. It's that
easy.

Until you realize the truth that the Bible does reveal, it's very easy to get
wrapped up in the truth that the Bible doesn't reveal. But doing that becomes a
game that will allow you to argue every point while missing the Bible's entire
point.

Don't get lost in these quagmires. Read it and try to see the truth that is
being presented above the absurdity and nonsense.

In His Grace,
A.S.A. Jones

--
I wasn't born again yesterday.

Godless Dave

Actually I respect his point. Much of the Bible was not even intended to be taken literally. Fundies are Christianity's own worst enemy. And I think when we infidels concentrate too much on the errancy of the Bible we lose the attention of all the Christians who are not Biblical literalists.

Toto

This looks like that ex-atheist website that I found advertized on Amazon last night. It didn't ring true to me.

He claims that he started to read the Bible as if it were Alice in Wonderland, and it suddenly all made sense! So he figured that the Bible is divinely inspired, and he turned to JP Holding to help him find the right arguments, and now he talks like a Southern Baptist. (I may have omitted a few points in this summary of his website, but nothing that really matters.)

I think that even if you read the Bible metaphorically, it still doesn't actually make a lot of sense, unless you use it just as a Rorschach test. But that's another forum.

Craig

There are no effects of gravity that depend on the rotation of the earth.

Essentially what he is saying is to just suspend disbelief and suddenly the bible makes sense. Great!

Psycho Economist

I will gladly grant you that. But Liberal Christians, while they may occasionally want or try to convert us, don't typically want to deprive us of our rights. It's also easier to make a fundy crack than a liberal Christian. If I'd not been inocculated against liberal christianity in my upbringing, arguments like his would have made led me to become a Presbyterian and not an atheist.

Viti

Even God's nature comes off as nonsensical...totally schizophrenic, impotent sometimes evil.

BadBadBad

I'm not sure about that GD. The only thing we know about Christianity is wholly surrounded by the Bible. Whether you are dealing with a fundie or liberal christian, the key word in my mind is errancy. It's just plain false taken literally, allegorically, mystically, or any other way that leads you to believe in God, Satan, the supernatural morality of murder, Hell, omniscience, omnipotence, etc etc etc.

mark9950

That christianity is supposed to be surrounded by the bible,. but if anything sounds or looks like errancy they dismiss it and not admit that the bible lacks credibility.

lpetrich

hat "ex-atheist's" idea of science education does NOT match the real world. That's because every one of us had started out totally ignorant and had learned first very simplified accounts and then less and less simplified accounts as the years pass.

Also, the Bible contains lots of the sort of detail that it allegedly omits for the sake of illustrating theological points.

The Bible has numerous genealogies, all those lists of who begot whom. These are neither very edifying nor very entertaining, and they may have been included as demonstrations of legitimacy.

And much of its first five books is devoted to a large volume of laws. These include going into gory detail about:

Temple gear and priestly clothing.

A variety of types of animal sacrifices.

Which animals one is not supposed to eat, including 20 kinds of birds.

wordsmyth

There is a big difference between explaining things in layman's terms and giving outright erroneous information. The alleged divinely inspired xian Bible is guilty of the latter.