The Bible was NOT man made, it was Godly made

Oh? So what does the theory of evolution claim? Or doesn't anyone know as can be seen in the thread trying to define the theory of evolution?Where do evolutionists think that man came from? Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

I've read hundreds of books where what was predicted in the beginning comes true in the end. The Bible as you know it didn't even exist until 400 years after the death of Jesus, at the very, very (stretching it) earliest - what, you thought Peter and Paul were walking around with copies of the KJV?400 years after the fact, when you're essentially re-writing the whole thing nearly from scratch - as well as picking and choosing which sources you're going to include and which you're going to discard - it's ridiculously easy, in fact, to wind up with a book where what is predicted in the beginning comes true in the end.What's the significance of that? You're acting like the people who wrote down the prophecies and the people who wrote down the fulfillment were two different groups of people, working independently. At the very least, the second group would have known what the first had written. Much more likely, they were working for the same people. They were the same people.

Refpunk,Per the Forum Guidelines, we ask that members stay on topic for the thread.
Please refrain from leading the topic astray.Please direct any comments concerning this Admin msg to the Moderation Thread.

​

Any response in this thread will receive a 24 hour timeout.Thank you

---

Usually, in a well-conducted debate, speakers are either emotionally uncommitted or can preserve sufficient detachment to maintain a coolly academic approach.-- Encyclopedia Brittanica, on debate

---

Still waiting for replies to Message 132.The topic of this thread is whether the Bible is human of godly made.The support for the position that it is human made rests on several pillars.

• there are many absolutely factually false tales in the Bible such as the story of a world-wide flood, the destruction of all life with the exception of small groups of animals, the Exodus and the Conquest of Canaan.
• there is no one unique "Bible" but rather several different Canons that include from only five books, to over 80 books.
• most of the "prophecy" found in the Bible seems to be either post hoc reasoning, quotemining or just plain false.
• there is no one uniform depiction of God that is common throughout the Bible.
• material has been rearranged, newer material being inserted before older material.
• many of the stories, for example the creation myths found in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are mutually exclusive.

These facts, particularly the fact that there is not one Bible, demonstrate that the Bible is but the work of man.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

jar wrote: No one has replied? For shame! I will then reply.
To look at his list critically:Well, it’s hard to dispute the undeniably false tales in some parts, such as the talking animals, flying people, and crowds of zombies.The lack of a single “Bible” falls into several categories, Jar has mentioned but one of them. There are multiple “bibles” based on:
Time - the Bible has been changed over time, so the Bible of, say 178 CE isn’t the Bible of 1611 isn’t the Bible of 1970.
Canon (as he mentioned)
Translation - compare any two translations, and you’ll find changed words, sentences, ideas, and even whole verses.Prophecy - it’s hard to find a specific prophecy that isn’t post-hoc, and easy to find overly vague ones as well as false ones.Uniformity of God - OK, hard to argue with that. That’s been recognized since the 2nd century. Also, this should be extended to include the massive theological changes the appearance of Hell for the New Testament, as well as the means of avoiding God’s wrath between the two.Rearrangement of material - yep, even Martin Luther felt free to do that - in his case, moving James to the end as of secondary status.Contradictory stories - OK. Plus many contradictions in details, such as exactly what God said when, or who was who’s father, or numerical differences, etc. This is especially easy to see comparing Kings against the same stories in Chrs.Well, since Jar is, well . . Correct, I’ll have to respond by adding pillars. Here are some more:Apparent lack of knowledge of other cultures - wouldn’t an omniscient God at least say something about the Chinese or Aztec cultures? Wouldn’t that help people be saved by seeing, in later ages, how far-seeing God is? But no mention of them, even though there are many clear and easy things to mention, such as the great wall, machu picchu, or such.Deep human history - wouldn’t some chronologically accurate description of, say, the first domestication of plants, or the origin of languages, or of dog evolution/domestication, or such be easy for an omniscient God to mention?Heinous morality - wouldn’t a moral God act a little differently from a terrorist, or at least make it clear that such actions are immoral when they are written - including things like Lot’s daughters and other similar stories? This category should also include the absolute barbarity of torturing people for all eternity if they happen to be in the wrong religion, while letting mass murderers or anyone else watch them from a comfortable heaven which the murderers got into simply by being Christian.Lack of knowledge about how the real physical world works - wouldn’t and omniscient, loving god say something about life saving things like vaccination, fertilizer, electricity, pain relievers, steam engines, telephones genetics (instead of striped sticks) and the periodic chart? This is like a scientist who discovers an instant cure for leukemia, then comes home to his dear son who is dying of Leukemia, and just doesn’t say anything, or give it to him, but instead watches him die. Whaaaa? Imagine a ship of uneducated people you loved going to colonize a distant planet, and you could send a book of 500,000 words (the length of the KJV Bible) - think of what you could include! But instead we get stories repeated word for word, pages and pages of geneologies of people who are never mentioned again, and incoherent babblings. It’s like the parachutist who pulled the cord and out popped a blow up doll. What is this, some cruel, sadistic joke? And you (the fundamentalist, not Jar) say a God is behind all that, and that you still want to worship him? It makes me wonder who is more messed up - the literalist or the proposed God.Efficiency. Would it really take anyone with any writing ability a half a million words to spell out fundamentalist doctrine? It’s simple - believe in Jesus or be tortured forever. Sure, you could cover things like the holy spirit, Jesus’ life, the trinity, the apostles lives, and such in another 50,000 words, and OK if you really wanted all the old testament wisdom (proverbs, etc), another 100,000 for them. This is why fundys can say that all the changes between translations and cut out sections and such between the Bibles don’t change doctrine - by Jove you could cut out the whole Gospel of Mark and not lose anything. Is this the model of efficiency that someone could call a perfect creation of a perfect God? You’ve got to be kidding me.I know a lot of moderate Christians who think that blaming God for the Bible has to be the worst blasphemy they’ve ever heard. It’s hard to fit a more damning statement about the Holy spirit into a single sentence than saying that the Holy Spirit is ultimately the author of the Bible. Realizing that the Bible is a purely human creation allows a Christian to believe in a much grander, more wonderful, more loving God as compared to the sadistic, incompetent cosmic terrorist that would be behind one of the Bibles.I think we’ve got a lot more pillars than we need.Have a fun day-Equinox Edited by Equinox, : clarified that when I say "you", I mean literalists, not Jar.Edited by Equinox, : fixed punctuation

Even if all of your points are true, this does not mean that the Bible is NOT also from God.This thread sets up a false dichotomy: either the Bible is man-made OR it is from God. This is too reductionistic. It is like asking whether Jesus was human or divine. The orthodox Christian position (spelled out at Chalcedon) is that He was both--fully human and fully divine. And the orthodox position on the Bible is that it is also both.

A great topic for a different thread. Which Bible. The one with only five books or the one with over 80 books?So God included false prophecy and factually false stories?God decided to create mutually exclusive descriptions of God to keep folk guessing?If the Bible is "God Made", then God got lots of it wrong and never could make up Her mind just what "The Bible" should say.However, if the Bible is man made, created by men inspired by God, then the contradictions, absolute false portions, even the post hoc and quotemined prophecies can be understood.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

But doesn't that idea only make things worse? I mean, if a supposed God is truly omniscient, all-loving, and all powerful, you'd think it would be trivially easy for such a god to make sure his message got to the intended audience uncorrupted, complete, and without harmful additions. And yet, as you yourself seem to admit, that's not the case, and we are left making excuses for God. A first year marketing student could craft a more coherent message than is contained in any one of the many Bibles.It starts to sound a lot like the theodicy dilemma. The condition, content, and situation of the Bible shows that God could be any two of 1. all loving, 2. omniscient, or 3 all powerful, but not all three.Have a fun day-EquinoxEdited by Equinox, : clarification

Someone can call anything a "Bible" that he likes, but that doesn't make it so.As you said regarding the nature of Christ, this is a great topic for another thread. The present thread is not about canonicity, but about authorship.

Of course it would. But perhaps this is not what God intended to do? But this relies on lots of assumptions as to what God's love, knowledge, and power should look like.It is easy to set up a straw man and say that because God does not behave this way, He must not exist. (Or because the Bible does not fit our simple picture, it cannot be divine.) But perhaps He DOES exist (and DID author the Bible), yet acts in a much more complex way than we would like to imagine?

The Bart Simpson defense: "I could do that but I don't wanna."God could communicate His message to us effectively but for some ineffable reason, He doesn't wanna? That's almost as lame as the You Gotta Believe to Believe defense.Either the Bible makes sense in a human-understandable way or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it's either because God is incapable of expressing Himself or because He didn't write it.

---

“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
-------------
Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation.
Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC

How silly.Canons are not an example of someone calling anything a "Bible", Canons are what actually makes something a Bible.The ONLY thing that makes something a "Bible" is being included in a Canon, a listing of authorized content put together by a committee. Well, we do know that if God was the author God is either ignorant, deluded or a liar. So that much can be handled quickly.Edited by jar, : fix subtitle

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Kbertsche wrote {my add for clarification}: But now you are running away from the original claim. The original claim was that we can see that the Bible (which Bible?) was godly made, not human made, specifically by being able to look at it and see the evidence. In face, Juraikken wrote at the start of this thread: There is no difference between a Bible that was divinely, perfectly made to look human made, and an actually human made bible. That’s like saying that there is an undetectable, pink unicorn behind you - you can’t even examine, much less prove, it one way or the other, by definition. Similarly:Kbertsche wrote {my add for clarification}: Again, this is running away from the initial claim (as above), and is again simply hiding from the original question. There is no difference between a God that acts divinely, perfectly to appear as if he doesn’t exist, vs. the situation where he really doesn’t exist.Several points come to mind. First, by stating this, Kbertsche is agreeing that the Bible appears, by all observational evidence, to be humanly made.Second, he postulates a God is that is outright deceptive, since God is supposed to know everything about us, it would certainly know that millions of people would be successfully fooled by this, and if he’s omnipotent, and has a plan, then this deception is his plan.Thirdly, the same argument can then be applied to any book. Is the Qur’an then the word of God? - maybe God is working in mysterious ways, and the Qu’ran is God’s word. Or the Rig Veda? Or the local phone book? How about the communist manifesto? Hey, I’ll follow Mein Kampf! I better not throw out my two year old’s drawings - maybe they are God’s sole communication to us, now that sure would be a mysterious way. Even asking for a divine sign - lot’s of people have had divine signs that the Suttas are God’s word, or that the book of Mormon is. Asking for, and examining, evidence is not a straw man, and it’s not a strange “assumption” to guess that someone would show love by not murdering or torturing people.Worst of all, it is making a claim, then unmaking it when challenged. For instance, it’s like saying “the sky is green!”, then when presented with evidence showing that it isn’t green, saying “It may appear blue to us, but that’s only because it’s a mystery what color it is - we can’t really know.” So then why make the claim in the first place?It reminds me of how the discussion of the “correct order in genesis” often goes. Like this:Fundamentalist: “Genesis presents the correct, scientific order of when things appeared on Earth (first the simplest life, then mammals, then humans, etc). It would take odds of 1 in 3242323 to arrive at this correct order by chance -thus the bible is divinely inspired.”Skeptic: “but the order ISN’T correct. Birds are made before anything is on land, land appears after the oceans (when only land existed first) and here are many more examples . ;”Fundamentalist: “The Genesis account doesn’t give chronological order, but topical or some other order. Thus Genesis is literally true.”Skeptic: “but wasn’t your original claim that the events were in the correct order? What kind of order did you mean if not chronological?”Are we going to make the claim that the evidence shows that the Bible is divinely inspired, or not? If so, we can look at the evidence. If the evidence is a divine mystery that we cannot examine, and we are not to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, then there is no point to this thread or indeed to any discussion of any sacred text. At that point, it becomes blind submission to whoever is using religion for whatever ends.Thanks--EquinoxEdited by Equinox, : added Qu'ran

Do you really see these as the only two options? This is a version of the classic agnostic fallacy: "If God exists, He will behave in a certain way which I expect and understand. If I don't see this, I will not believe in God."Let's modify your claim:
"Either quantum mechanics makes sense in a human-understandable way or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it cannot be true."Perhaps, in both cases, reality does not follow our intuition or preconceived notions. Rather than insisting a-priori how reality MUST work, we should approach these questions more open-mindedly and investigate to see how it actually DOES work. Without such an approach we will never discover new things, whether in science, theology, or our personal lives.

1) First, it was/is not clear to me that "seeing evidence" is part of the original claim. The OP says merely: This is an assertion, but I don't see any insistence on specific evidence in the first few posts.2) What in the world do you mean that I am "running away from the original claim"?? I have never embraced this claim nor defended it! It is not orthodox Christian doctrine. I disagree with it. The danger is that this is implicitly claiming a-priori what constitutes evidence of divine authorship and what does not. It's virtually the same problem as some of the Intelligent Design (ID) arguments for nature, which rely on assumptions of what God's design must look like. A better approach is to study nature to see what God's design DOES look like rather than imposing a-priori requirements on what it MUST loook like.Likewise, most of the arguments that I've seen here against divine authorship rely on a-priori assumptions of what God's authorship should look like. This is the same fallacy.