Bible: Word of God or Not

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What is the single most compelling reason or piece of evidence that leads you to conclude that the bible is not the "word of god".

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The fact that many books are clearly the product of a human author - some are even letters!Add to that the contradictions, the changing view of God, the historical problems and the failure of prophecy and I do not see how any rational person could consider the Bible to be in any way God's direct creation.

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The point is that if the apostles gave their life for belief in the resurrection of Christ, then it is extremely likely that they believed it happened.

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But do we know that any of them did give their lives specifically for that belief ?

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That is the very purpose of prophesy. It quickly determines what comes from God and what doesn't. If you'll notice, Mohammed is often referred to as a 'prophet,' even the 'greatest prophet.' But Mohammed did not prophesy. For some reason, Muslims tend to equivocate a prophet with being a righteous man.

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That is not correct. Muslims rightly identify a prophet as a man who brings a message from God. Predictions of the future are optional. Moses didn't do a lot of predictions but he is still identified as a great prophet.

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The Bible's composition is 2/3 prophecy. That is an enormous figure when considered just how voluminous it is.

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How do you get that figure ? It certainly isn't 2/3 predictions.As for prophecy as a validation of the Bible we have had discussions here and not one single good example has been produced. Not one.

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...I'd say it's very likely that at least Peter's, Paul's, and James' happened.

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So which of them was specifically executed for belief in the Resurrection ? And should we even be counting Paul since his information would - at best - have been second hand ?

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I'm not saying that any of the apostles were martyred for their specific belief in the resurrection (as opposed to their beliefs in Christianity as a whole).

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What I am saying is that the apostles were in a unique situation as far as religion is concerned. How so?

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Because they (and others) knew for sure whether Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or not. They knew for sure whether Christ's resurrection was fact, or fiction of their own making (i.e. the disciples stole the body from the grave or any other account that negates the resurrection).

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Therefore, the apostles were martyred for a faith that they either KNEW was true or KNEW to be false.

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That doesn't follow. Firstly not all accounts require the disciples to KNOW what happened to the body. If Jesus were buried in a common grave straight away or if the body were removed by people working for Jospeh of Arimathea (assuming he existed) then the Disciples couldn't know that Jesus hadn't been resurrected. And given the rather ghostly nature of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances it isn't even clear that they would consider the resurrection to be false if they knew what had happened to the body.And even if the disciples knew that the supposed evidence of the resurrection were false they still might believe in Jesus.The only way to use the argument validly is to insist that they specifically killed over the point in question. That is what they died for - not some other beleif.

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I'll restate the difference between these scenarios: The first muslims believed that Mohammed ascended into heaven. They did not know it for a fact, nor did they die in defense of what they knew. The apostles weren't in this situation. They did not believe that Jesus rose from the dead (i.e take it on faith). They KNEW either that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead or that he did not in fact rise from the dead.

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But did they know ? What if they only believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead ? We aren't in a position to know now - although we can point out that the Empty Tomb story is absent from all the Pauline epistles and could easily have been a relatively late addition to the stories about Jesus.And even if they did know that Jesus hadn't been physically raised from the dead would it matter ? If it wasnt the issue behind the martyrdoms how can you know how strongly they held to that belief ?

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I don't believe that's true. As Paul said, if the resurrection didn't happen, then our faith is in vain.

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Of course we can't tell if any of the other Disciples believed it. More importantly we don't know what their beliefs about the resurrection were. We can't say, for instance, that the Empty Tomb story was part of it. And James' execution seems to have been because a new High Priest - a Pharisee - decided to have a crack-down on less-strict sects and picked on the Christians. I reallty doesn't see that entitles us to assume that James had first hand knowledge of the full resurrection story as we have it now, and knew it to be true.

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Also, in fear of being off topic again, I sometimes wonder HOW the authors of the gospels knew their information, if not by divine inspiration. John is considered to be an eye-witness, but he could not have been an eye-witness to Jesus' birth. It is hard to imagine him interviewing Mary and the other apostles for further details, but not impossible.

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It is more likely that these details were invented rather than known - whether they were invented by the Gospel writers or earlier by others is hard to tell. John in fact does not give a nativity account - Luke and Matthew do. And those accounts are contradictory. What is at work there is too obviously human, not divine.