Which are ?
But so can the very stuff of reality! The most rigorous science, the most obvious maths, all of them become 'obscure' or 'contradictory' when people's treasured vices or personal philosophies are at stake. I use this example too often, but if people cannot determine through science whether or not eggs, or pot, or the Atkin's Diet are good for us, then what can we expect from a mere book - a representation- even if it is devine? I think the problem is with us. The Bible says what it says, and most of it it says very clearly. But what we [i]wish it said [/i] gets in the way.
Also, your argument against the existence of God fails for the same reason that all these "God did this, and He should have done that" situations fail. It could never be rigorous enough. We can always come up with some reason or excuse for why God may have did something that it seems at first glance He wouldn't have done. Even a really bad excuse is enough to defeat your argument, so long as it is coherent. The best you can do is say "Isn't it funny, that God would do this when He could have done that?" If you have enough of those, you could start to build an evidentialist case against the existence of God, but never a solid, deductive argument.
Fundamentalism and symbolic interpretation.
Some Christians claim that homosexuality is wrong, some claim that it is OK.
Some claim that to be rich is wrong. Others (amongst the reformed) claim that it is OK.
Some Christians claim that we are saved by faith alone, others claim that we are saved by deeds.
God could have said in His book where he speaks in a literal way and where he speaks in a metaphorical way. It would have been far more difficult to interpret anyhow the Bible. Just imagine what would have happened if it had been written in Genesis that the story of Creation is not to be taken literally.
Perhaps a reason would be logically possible, but it would not be plausible, it would not be reasonable. As I said, what I am attempting at is to show Christianity to be irrational, not to be false.
Sure! Or, He could have not bothered to speak in a metaphorical way at all. Or, humans and their fallibility could have been involved in the writing of the Bible to an extent where this wasn’t possible. There’s a lot of possibiilties here.
Yes, people would have been enraged for 4,000 years that ‘God’ put a Creation story in the the Bible that wasn’t true, while at the same time didn’t supply them with something that was true.
How do you know this? It seems to me that the only way would be to evaluate such reasons as they come. And that's the problem- there's such a great many possibilities, that you never know when someone is going to come along with an explanation that sells. For example, it could be that God was more interested in founding[i] Churches [/i]than writing books, and that to find your way through the difficult passages of the God-breathed human-written book, without being screwed up by your inherent sinful nature that makes things obscure, you need to adhere to the doctrines God's Church has presented for you. Not only is this 'plausible', it's exactly what a huge number of Christians would tell you, including most Catholics. This is just one possible solution to the problem you present, we could discuss it for a month, I'm sure. In the end, if you proved it was unreasonable, it would take me a few minutes of Googling to find another.
The Problem of Evil is this same way. Again, you can say “Doesn’t it seem odd…” and build an evidentialist case. Combine the confusion of the Scriptures, with the Problem of Evil, with the lack of apparent miracles in the present day, with evolutionary explanations for the existence of relgion. All of those things together give you a strong evidentialist case against the truth of Christianity, and a person would either have to refute some of those bits, or have evidence of their own that shores up Christianity, or else admit that Christian belief is unreasonable. I don’t think any of these legs are strong enough on their own to hold up skepticism.
Or he could have created the bible in perfect unmistakable language and distributed it to every man woman and child. Or he could have personally spoken his complete message to everyone in exactly the words and concepts that that individual would understand. But he DIDN’T. STOP TELLING GOD WHAT TO DO SAMKHYA. Just because he doesn’t do it the way you like doesn’t mean that he’s a bad guy or irrational or whatever. It’s really completely beside the point of Christianity AND Judaism to question God’s motives. As it says in Job, “where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?” implicitly asking how Job could know what God was thinking when he did what he did.
(all personal opinion:)
“Christianity” already disprooved itself!
Initialy, the ones who were killing first century christians,
later on turned around and created roman catholasism.
The only way you can take the bible the right way is if you put logic and common sence and balance above God. Why? Because none of us realy “know” “God”, and once we think we fully do, we become insain.
The ultimet realization of truth is that:
“Wanting to know facts about God and the spiritual unknown, is difforent then wanting to do what is logicaly right and fair.”
From here on, i prayed for God to help me do whats right, and tried personaly, instead of listening to books and preachers.
How many religious people are motivated out of fear anyways? hm? alot.
Fear can easily become anti-truth i say.
I am saying what a man can rationally expect from a being worthy of the name of God. Of course, there may be a superior being which spoke to men, but is it worthy of being called God?
The standard of rationality and of morality is independent from the will of God (cf: Eutyphro Dilemma), and is partly knowable by man. Therefore, man has the power to judge the purported God’s Word. We CAN use this standard to assess the Bible.
Say what you want about independent reasony moralityoni or whatever, you haven’t actually showed that your particular assertions have anything to do with this “partly knowable” reason and morality. All you’ve done is say “God should have done it this way”. Your mere assertion doesn’t make what you say reasonable or moral.
I am working on some assumptions such as:
- There is omnipotent being
- He wants to make himself known to men
- he wants them to be saved, that which implies performing some deeds and believing some statements.
And I note a fact: the Bible purports to be the way such a being proceeded to fulfill his goals.
And I go on to see whether the goals of God, taking into account what he can do and what men are, are best fulfilled by the Bible.
Of course, you are free to question my assumptions, for we can only grasp God through representations, and you can say my representation is flawed. But it seems that my representation is somewhat a classical one.
Certainly not. While the bible contains much writing that Christians consider is for the purpose of teaching and sanctifying man, the happenings IN the bible are the process of God saving man. The bible alone does not do that job. If you take the bible as God’s attempt at saving man, you’ve got a very narrow view of salvation history and I can see why you would think God is doing a crappy job. But you can’t just consider the bible alone to get the Christian view of salvation history. You have to consider the community and the church that God is supposed to have inspired as reported in the bible. If you want to call “sola scriptura” Christianity irrational, be my guest, but be aware that your condemnation does not affect Christianity as a whole.
The bible is not god’s word, it is, at best, heavily edited and translated writings from observers who wanted to prove a point. That is for the books that are written from first hand witnesses. Instruction manuals for your microwave arrive by a shorter route and cover a far simpler topic, and they are convoluted and unclear. (note: that is not an attack on the material itself, but the way it arrives. Even if you like your prophets they attempt to prove a point).
Secondly, churches are a product of the christian establishment, which by even a cursory knowledge of history can be proven to be… less than holy. Its fundamental ideas have been changed and altered by the whim of mortal man than viciously and ruthlessly defended even against absolute proof (heliocentric universe is merely the most famous example). The same methods by which the church arrived at incorrect physical theories were used to arrive at moral and spiritual judgements.
So there is no solid reason to believe in any judgement of the church without evidence, it has been forced to retract physical and moral judgements before, so their authority on spiritual matters is not on solid ground.
Neither does the bible have authority as a perfect source due to its provenance, even if other valid arguments are ignored
“Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.”
- Oscar Wilde
Perhaps someone has studied the written artifacts of major religions and compared them. If that is done then perhaps people will see common grounds or religous beliefs. We all know that Murder, theft etc, are forbidden in each major religion
I propose that there is much more in common, then just rules to abide by. If such were not the case then how in the world would we be able to communicate or even trade. There must be more common threads in each artifact. Diversity helps us to grow, perhaps such diversity was implanted to teach us all acceptance etc., and the clues to this are in the artifacts.
i dont think God wastes his time worrying about what is written about him.
how people treat each other is probably more important to the overall happiness of mankind and God. Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple when it became a commerce, much like religion and all the feel good books being sold today, resulting in big money.
When Jesus gathered up his 12 apostles, he didnt hand each one of them a bible. he didnt say he came to bring peace, but a division among men and family. he told them upfront that they would be hated for following him.
Jesus whole trip can be summed up in “dont do to other people what you wouldnt want them doing to you.”
In Jesus early life scripture was important to his learning but as he grew to adulthood he spent most of his time proving the errors in it to th eold blokes who clung to it like it was the only written word. Jesus faced the same kind of closed mindedness then that is astill prevolant today
Any religion that has one person being paid to preach and translate what is written in the religous doctrines is scamming the people. think about it. The first Holyperson had a great scam going and passed down the knowledge of the “job” quite successfully. The knowledge of any religous artifact is supposed to be freely given, but it is not. Does not the fact that religous leaders are often referred to as shepards of their flocks give a clue. Shepards fleece their flocks or eat them. Religion has given humanity many wonderful things including, the written word. Any god that says all are my children and I love all, then says here are my words go spread them oh and by the way you can charge a tithe for me. Uh yeah I believe that one.
A parent is not going to charge their child for knowledge, that is ludicrious. Your God, your parent, is going to give freely to you any knowledge you need. You just have to open your heart and soul and listen and ask. The words will come. Religous doctrines are guidlines nothing more nothing less. To have to go to a temple, a church a synagogue, to recieve the word of your god from someone else is a scam. Tithes are designed to relive you of pocket weight and support someone who decided to preach to you about god.
We all need some sort of religous beliefs and to some extent we all have religous beliefs. How a person believes and what a person believes is not wrong, it is just different for each person, For me churches are a scam, priests, preachers, Rabbis etc. are scam artists. A supreme being ,is to me, real. My supreme speaks to me in my soul. we have delightful educational conversations. Am I wrong ? No no more so then someone who attends their church or temple. We are all different for a reason, that reason is growth.
Any religion that has one person being paid to preach and translate what is written in the religous doctrines is scamming the people. think about it. The first Holyperson had a great scam going and passed down the knowledge of the “job” quite successfully. The knowledge of any religous artifact is supposed to be freely given, but it is not. Does not the fact that religous leaders are often referred to as shepards of their flocks give a clue. Shepards fleece their flocks or eat them. Religion has given humanity many wonderful things including, the written word. Any god that says all are my children and I love all, then says here are my words go spread them oh and by the way you can charge a tithe for me. Uh yeah I believe that one.
A parent is not going to charge their child for knowledge, that is ludicrious. Your God, your parent, is going to give freely to you any knowledge you need. You just have to open your heart and soul and listen and ask. The words will come. Religous doctrines are guidlines nothing more nothing less. To have to go to a temple, a church a synagogue, to recieve the word of your god from someone else is a scam. Tithes are designed to relieve you of pocket weight and support someone who decided to preach to you about god.
We all need some sort of religous beliefs and to some extent we all have religous beliefs. How a person believes and what a person believes is not wrong, it is just different for each person, For me churches are a scam, priests, preachers, Rabbis etc. are scam artists. A supreme being ,is to me, real. My supreme speaks to me in my soul. we have delightful educational conversations. Am I wrong ? No no more so then someone who attends their church or temple. We are all different for a reason, that reason is growth.
It’s classic, a man sees a vision today, he’s a mental patient, but if it happend a few thousand years ago, suddenly it’s a revelation. The bible is an inconsistant system of frauds, deceptions and lunatics. Lets all face it religion, should and hopefully is (accept in the us), be becoming an untenible position to defend as philosophers it shames me to think of you actually buying into this.
If i was all-powerful and all-knowing, and if i wanted some thing, id make it happen. I wouldnt sit n do nothing for 6000+bible years.
No shit. 
Focus on what good you can do in life, instead of proofless promises and claims. Religion is like lumps of rock in a glass of water, enough of it makes it look full, but your thirst says it all… thist for truth is what im talking about here… pure tasteless truth… just like water.
No, bible predictions of future events were very accurage. Many laws and morals and ideals of the bible are very good for humanity. There are defects with time and translation, and also many miss-understandings, that makes the “good-book” look more like a shit-sandwich, but realy, lets not let ourselves blindly fallow, or demote the bible & Christ.
Religion killed the truth and the bible a long time ago.
No shit!
Oops i thought I posted an apology for double posting I guess it did not go through , Sorry about double posting, my little Avatar decided that I needed help on the keyboard, I thought I had stopped the first post in time after she hit enter.