The Tension of Faith

Hi everyone,If the bible was the word of God it shouldn't be a problem to question it, because every question would have a good answer. But that is not what happen with it. How can a book that's full of contradictions, atrocities and absurdities be the word of an omniscient and all benevolent being?

Hi Jar,Thank you for welcoming me to the site. Looking at a few of your posts I have the impression that you have a sound academic knowledge of the bible and other contemporary writings as well as the historical context in which they were written. I'm looking forward to learn some of that.Faith,If you don't see any contradictions in the Bible I would suggest this: If you haven't, do read it completely, cover to cover; and reflect on what you are reading. With that alone you should be able to spot a lot of issues.If that is not enough, simply google "Bible contradictions"; you'll find overwhelming amounts of if. Look at what people who disagree with you write about it and try to refute what they say. If God is with you, you should be able to own every person attacking the Bible, and demonstrate where we all are wrong. You would do your Lord a great service.If you take the Bible as authority and don't "indulge" your doubts, you are resigning your humanity and giving up yourself as a slave at a time where freethinking is allowed, at least in western society. If God exists at all, he gave us curious minds and an appetite for answers, so there is not reason not to want to make questions.

Significant or not that is not the problem. If you read a History book that says that some event took place in 1921 and later says that the same event happened in 1922 you would doubt the reliability of the author, and rightly so. Why won’t you hold your god up to higher standards? Doesn’t God want to save everybody? Why mislead people? The Bible would have been put together long after the original readers had gone through the separate texts that made it up, so I guess they may have not perceived some of the contradictions. Take for example Acts 9:7 where Paul falls to the ground as Jesus appears to him. It says that the people present with Paul heard a voice but saw no one. In Acts 22:9, they saw a light but did not hear a voice. Do you think it read differently back in the first centuries? As far as I can tell it simply is two different versions of an alleged event recorded by different persons, and whoever put it together did not bother checking for consistency. Even if what you say was true, still our fallen minds are all we have to find answers. Shutting down our fallen minds as you suggest would still have us killing ourselves over religious disagreement. I heard someone on a debate, I think it was Bill Nye, who said that one the first to develop and practise the scientific method where Christian scientists trying to find God in nature, but much to their disappointment the evidence they found led elsewhere.

Yes, Faith, it is Pr 26:4 (KJV): "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him". But don't worry, because right affter it says Pr 26:5 (KJV): "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit". So it's alright for you to answer us. You actually might want to answer just half of us fools to be safe.

I see you can give smart answers when you don't base your thinking on a literal understanding of the bible.

Do you have a regenerated mind that gives you God's insight to answer sensible questions about the Bible? I'd like to tell you some questions I have:Why does the bible 'look' contradictory?
Why does it 'look' homophobic?
Why does it 'look' misogynist?
Why does it 'seem' to endorse slavery?
Why the genocides and deaths of innocent infants and animals?
Why does the god of the Old Testament 'seem' to have the character of an spoiled little child looking for attention?
Why was it necessary to invent hell?These are just I few questions I don't really think you can answer, but I wanted to show you some reasons why one may not assume, like you do, that the Bible is the word of a good, all powerful and loving being. Don't you think these are good reasons? Don't you wonder why the things you don't like about the bible are that way?

Faith,
Although you took the effort to answer all of my questions, which I appreciate, your answers are not satisfactory and give me no good reasons to accept believing in a god which looks rather evil when looking at his sacred book. I guess you can get away with it in a few cases, but there’re plenty of contradictions like the two different deaths of Judas. There are not assumptions to impose there and no frame of reference that could make two different versions of an event true. And there is no shortage of examples like this. I am aware this is not a topic to discuss the accuracy of the bible (or lack thereof), but I just want to point that when the bible is this contradictory there is no reason to believe it is divinely inspired by an all knowing being, and therefore no reason no blindly follow its doctrines. You are wrong. Homophobia as a concept may have been invented recently, but the problem it describes is old. It was not a common understanding among different cultures around the world; there has been a range between acceptance as something normal and punishment by death. Any guess in which end of the spectrum your belief system sits? Fall or no fall a loving god would know better than to order the killing of people who didn’t even choose their sexual orientation. This stupid prejudice of primitive Christianity has made miserable the lives of countless persons through history. There is no excuse for that. Similarly to previous point, in different cultures through history the role of women varies in importance with your beloved Abrahamic tradition in the extreme of making of the woman second class persons (or objects, rather) belonging to men. No matriarchy as such has been documented but in other societies women fared a lot better. The attitude of Jesus is better than in the old testament and is reflection of the change of times, but Paul, who is supposedly inspired by Jesus, said that women were not to teach men but be submissive. Then he goes on to bring up the story of eve which is an invention to justify this sick extreme of sexism. I understand you are a woman; doesn’t this annoy you at all? How many brilliant minds have been annulated through history by this pathetic doctrine? Of course it was universal and normal at the time. But human morality has improved over time and now we know better than that. But of course your god, who has been around forever and knows it all, did not anticipate that we would get past that horrible practice. And the biblical laws that you allude to, did not worked very well as testimonials from the treatment of African American slaves by their Christian masters reveal.The freeing of the Israelite slaves had a catch, though: If they got married and had children while at the service of their masters they could go free but they could not take their families with them. If they wanted to keep their families they had to stay slaves for life. There were other biblical laws like how to get sexual slaves for example. With Jesus things did not improve that much. There was no general idea of emancipating slaves as you think; rather Paul tells the slaves to serve their masters with all their strength and even more if their masters were believers. I don’t recall any verses from Paul writing to a slave owner encouraging emancipation of slaves; could you please provide the quote? It would have been really helpful for so many people that have been enslaved through history if the bible had simply said that slavery is not ok. God put animals under curse; something that did not have to happen except if he is the bloodthirsty being that the bible depicts. And regarding human infants, what are they guilty of? How can someone be guilty and deserve eternal suffering simply for having been born? Why didn’t god stopped us from being born if he knew we would end up in Hell? By your logic we should all have died as kids and that would be a favour from god. Is that how you rationalize the deaths of children that happen all the time? Satan looks a lot less evil than God in the bible. Revelation shows god surrounded by all kinds of living beings worshipping him without rest. He wanted the Israelites to love him above all, and obey all his precepts, or else. It was everything about him: If they wanted to pick another religion or costumes, big deal; if they worked on Saturday, big deal; if they worshiped him the wrong way, big deal. If they spoke against him, big deal. If that is not a spoiled little kid’s attitude, I don’t know what else is. Is not about what I want, but about what it is. And I don’t think anyone deserves an eternity of torture for a single lifetime of bad decisions. Besides that your doctrine puts together in Hell people who committed horrible crimes with children who died without accepting Jesus; How is that fair? Hitler tortured and killed people for years and that made him a repulsive person. Your god will torture for eternity 99% of people who has ever lived; who is the worst monster here? Do you picture yourself in heaven singing songs to this monster without end? After being at that for a couple million years won’t you spare a thought for those that have been suffering horrible tortures for that time? Will you as a perfect and loving being be happy about it? I’m not arrogant; I’m just trying to think logically here and find the truth wherever it leads. I’ll tell you something in all humility: if I am wrong, by all means, show me how is that. So far you haven’t shown me that alleged loving side of god, I can’t certainly see it in his sacred book. If this is the work of Satan do discredit God, he has done a hell of a job there. The bible must then by inspired by Satan because that book is not making your god any favours whatsoever.Edited by Paboss, : Corrected a couple of spelling mistakes

Faith,It’s not a matter of accepting or rejecting what you call evidence from John’s testimony; is that it is not really evidence. Extraordinary claims written by someone do not count as evidence; if it were so, you would need to believe the claims made in the Koran, the Book of Mormon and thousands of other extraordinary claims people have made through time. However you accept the testimony from the Bible while rejecting the other different testimonies from other religions. Somehow you seem to be using this idea as argument for your religion to be believed, but as far as I know the concept of a saviour god atoning through self sacrifice and an eternal punishment in the afterlife are both concepts borrowed from religions predating Christianity. But even if that wasn’t the case, having something that differentiates your religions from others doesn’t make it true. I could tell you that only Mormonism talks about Abraham descendants living in a well advanced society in North America 2,000 years ago, and because this is specific of Mormonism then it must be true.Now, I’m not Mormon and I’m not telling you that you should believe in that; I’m just looking for an example that is just as absurd as the supernatural claims made about Jesus to show you why John’s testimony, and for that matter any book in the bible are not evidence.You can use the Bible as evidence of what were some of the beliefs of people at the time and place were those texts were written, and I think the Bible is valuable in that sense, but that is as far as you can go. Edited by Paboss, : No reason given.

Faith and GDR,It makes no difference how many people wrote accounts about something and how many people believe in those accounts; it does not make the writings evidence. I’ll try to show you what evidence looks like, taking examples from the Bible. As far as I can tell, the stories I am going to refer to are fictional, but I’ll go with them for the sake of the discussion.When Jesus resurrected and appeared to the disciples for the first time, Thomas was not there. When the other disciples told him about it, he did not believe. This is because the testimonies of around 10 people, even as reliable as they could have been for Thomas were still not evidence. He demanded evidence; he demanded to see Jesus by himself, to touch him and to touch his wounds. Only when he looked at the evidence he could believe. Despite Jesus praising those who believe without seeing (which is, those who believe without evidence, those who believe by faith, like you two do) he had no problem providing evidence when demanded.Second case is Paul, he was set in destroying all Christians. For him to change his mind and believe, it was necessary for Jesus to appear in person and talk to Paul (the book of Acts presents two contradictory versions of this but there is no need to go into that at this stage).Thomas and Paul required evidence to believe and Jesus had no problem to provide it (this is of course, according to the story). What they could see was good evidence for them; but for us to read about those stories is not evidence. Can you see the difference between proper evidence and what you call evidence? Unlike you, I don’t believe whatever I want; I believe what the evidence suggests regardless of what I want. The evidence, at this point, suggest there are no gods. You’re getting it backwards, and maybe that is the reason we’re having this discussion. You don’t assume something is right and then call it evidence; you look at the evidence and then decide whether your hypothesis is right or wrong. Would this mean that when the gospel writer said that at the death of Jesus the earth trembled, the graves were open and the dead saints came out and walked among the living, he meant it as a historical event? Because in message 415 you seem to suggest something different: Was he attempting to understand the meaning of Jesus’s resurrection or attempting to report a historical event?

That is an interesting question, but is one I thought I’d ask you and not the other way around. It is interesting because it is at the hearth of the problem with religions, and in general, with any make-believe story. Before I answer let me ask you this: Why is it that gods, angels, ghosts and other supernatural entities have this very inconvenient policy of appearing only to individuals or small groups and leave them with no way to prove their experience? If what they want is to convey a message, all they are achieving is to make their intended messengers look like fruitcakes. Can’t they understand by now that there are more effective ways to communicate, like for example, starting by providing actual evidence of their existence for all to see?So, what if I witnessed the apparition of a god? Assuming is not a mere hallucination but the real deal, I’d be scared. But I’d have no alternative but to recognise that after all, in the light of evidence, there is a god. Now, I’d be terrified if this god I’ve just met, was asking me to convey a message but was not giving me any evidence for me to demonstrate to others that my experience was genuine. I would know that no one would believe me and I would look like a fruitcake, and reasonably so. Probably the people who knows me and trusts me would think I had a hallucination and would recommend me to look for professional counselling. So this supernatural beings really need to improve their communication skills or I’d rather they don’t come anywhere near me.

No, we certainly don’t. By your circular reasoning is clear that you are assuming things. You do use the conditional if, but you have made clear that you do believe John’s account to be true. You think that John’s account is evidence because it is true and is true because it is evidence; that’s at least how I read your reasoning.

Yes. Specifically, the point I was trying to get across was that if one believes in a supernatural claim only on the basis of being written in a holy book, then is only fair to accept all other supernatural claims made in all other holy books.

Not necessarily false, but if I cannot produce any evidence I would have to understand if they don’t believe me. I don’t know how it works in courts of law, but I’m sure there is more than simply taking witnesses for their word. Besides, courts of law deal with real life situations that can happen: Murder, car theft, someone breaking into someone else’s property. Those are things that unfortunately happen all the time and therefore is reasonable to believe they could be true. But when it comes to extraordinary claims the weight of the evidence would have to be also extraordinary. Words written in an ancient book, certainly do not qualify for that.

Faith,So is my comment stupid? And why is that? Are you going to loose your temper again? Just don’t. Rather, show us the infinite knowledge that should be flowing through your regenerated mind. After all, if God is with you, you should be blowing us all away with his insight. Imagine how much wisdom would have an omniscient being who has been around forever. Instead, your debating abilities seem to have fallen to disappointing levels.You say you’re beating your head against this wall. Well, it’s a wall you have put up yourself. It’s a wall of cognitive dissonance and you will keep beating your head against it for as long as you keep trying to defend the indefensible.I am not the Bible’s worst enemy; neither is anyone here. It is not Satan and his hordes; neither is Science. The Bible’s worst enemy is the Bible itself. It’s all you need to have a conscious look at to realise that its god is just a projection of the primitive, ignorant and violent men who wrote it; nothing amazing to see there. Edited by Paboss, : No reason given.

I think you’re making a good point there, Jar, you do know your Bible. It would be good if most christians did.