Benjamin Franklin

In my opinion, the existence of errors does not render the Bible useless but it shows that there is no reason to treat the Bible as more special/divinely inspired than any other religous book or good philosophy book that deals with ethics.

BF

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Benjamin Franklin ]

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Benjamin Franklin ]</p>

leonarde

Posted by Ion: Hmmmmm. I don't understand the
above so I won't even try to respond.

Cheers!

Ion

I know you don't understand.

It's how one was conditioned for a lifetime, that facing the tangible facts one is confused:
primarly, there is no historical basis for Judas, and other religious persons; they are characters of the Bible, an incoherent book of miracles; outisde of the Bible, nobody ever saw Judas and the other religious people; so history skips them, as baseless.

Baidarka

Leonarde and Ion
I thought that this post was quite interesting so I have taken the liberty to restate its points in a form that you might understand so that you can respond to it.
Ion please let me know if I have distorted your thoughts in any way.

Not True.
If History can not establish how some one died then this lack of information is recognized a gap in the historic record. Alexander the Great and Hitler are examples.
So history sorts out what is established from what is not established, and claims as truth only what has been established.
Nothing is historically established about Judas, his one-time status as an Apostle (speculation by a cult based on contradictory accounts), or his thirty pieces of silver (an anachronism). So the history should dismiss these claims as false.

Vibr8gKiwi

Some people don't seem to understand why this inconsistency is important. Let me give a few "big picture" reasons why I think it's critically important:

First the Bible is supposedly the communication of some all-powerful Creator of the Universe to his creation. If that is true there should be some "striking attributes" of the book that would show its supernatural origin. I'm unaware of any such "striking attributes" however I am aware of many inconsistencies (like the ones mentioned), scientific errors, absurdities, atrocities, and such that point to a human origin.

Secondly the inconsistencies make the sources appear not as eyewitness testimony of an actual event, but as different tellings of a legendary story. Again this gives evidence for a mundane origin for the bible, and specifically a mythical/legendary basis for the Jesus story.

Baidarka

Correction

If History can not establish how some one died then this lack of information is recognized as a gap in the historic record. Alexander the Great and Hitler are examples.

Ron Garrett

And a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds after all. I think the real issue Radorth is the divine revelation claim. What reason would we have to place Jesus ahead of Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna in the deity queue? What in natural Theology forces us to an intellectual conclusion that Yahweh of the Israelites and Jesus of the Christians are the only true deities? You must resort to the wintess of Jewish and Christian scriptue which is of a type with the Koran, the Gitas, and othe religious works which make fantastic claims that cannot be verified or demonstrated. Theologians have always known this which is why the inerrancy of scripture position emerged in the 1800's and has become a byword to fundamentalists. If the witness is defective, and it absolutely is, if the witness makes claims outside of human experience and demonstration, and it absolutely does, and conflicting and competing witnesses of like content exist, how do we ascertain the validity of any, let alone one? Intellect has nothing to do with it or you would be able to create a deity decision matrix that would bear scrutiny and we could logically select and verify the existence of your flavor of god. Muslim leaders claimed 34,000 conversions to Islam in the United States the week after 9/11. No matter whose numbers you look at Islam is in a rapid growth spurt.The U.S&gt; Center for World Mission says Christianity is growing globally as a percent of populations at a rate of 2.3% and Islam at a rate of 2.9% The variance between surveyors seems as much as 30%, so who knows. How many people are born Christian as opposed to converted

And having orked as a crusade counselr at both Billy Graham and Greg Laurie events, I'll give you a little statistics. After one Graham crusade where we tallied up 3800+ "professions of faith", followup indicated less than 20 of those were still churched two years later. Luarie's numbers are also abysmal. And having done evangelism myself, understanding that people do not as you infer make this decision intellectually, but emotionally, usually as a result of an emotional crisis either pre-existing or temporarily created through preaching technique. Are such conversions real? Do they in fact mean anything other than the person's guard was down? Most conversions occur in the same way most weight loss systems get sold at 3AM on TV. The person is weak, gullible and ready to try anything.

Vanderzyden

False. This is the typical "all religions are the same" fallacy. If Mr. Garrett really had all that training he's been bragging about, he would know that the Bible stands unique.

And, we may note, he has gone way off topic. Despite his confident, boisterous claim concerning the Judas "contradiction", he has contributed not one shred of argument, nor any concession, in this thread.

MODERATORS: Why is Mr. Garrett permitted to post nothing but diversions in this thread?


Vanderzyden

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

Autonemesis

He was comparing scriptures, not religions. If there is a fallacy, it is the "all scriptures are the same" fallacy.

There's a no-true-scotsman fallacy.

Because he's a favored son. You, however, are allowed to post diversions because it amuses us.

lpetrich

And Radorth has direct acquaintance with a reasonably-representative subset of them?

But that figure is peanuts compared to how many new members Catholicism and Islam get each day -- about 40,000 each. And Hinduism gets some lesser number -- 30,000 per day. So will Radorth consider converting to any of these sects?