It seems that my courses and readings with Christianity have taught me something: we can make say the Bible one thing and its opposite. The Bible has in itself enough obscurity to support two opposite systems.
But how to believe that God, who wants people to believe in Him and to be saved, revealed his will and his laws in so an obscure book. God must have manifested himself in a clear and straightforward way, a way that leaves no room for doubt.
Sâmkhya
I think your big mistake (though understandable given that North America, at least north of Mexico, is overwhelmingly Protestant in it’s popular religious culture - and this is often confounded with “Christianity” as a whole) is believing that God, in Christianity, is even believed to “manifest himself in a book.”
The preaching of the gospel, and the tenants of Christ’s doctrine, and the celebration of the sacraments, etc. all predate the formalization and codification of a universally recognized “canon of the New Testament”. In the earliest era of Christianity, you’d have a scattering (across different local Churches) of this or that Epistle, one or maybe two of the “Gospel” narratives, and the Old Testament. IOW, their scriptures were a testimony and source of faith, but the message itself did not necessarily depend upon it. For example, I don’t think the early apostles and missionaries of Christianity were waving Bibles around or handing them out to people - they knew what they believed, and taught that.
It’s a very Protestant proposition to say that Christianity somehow “flows” from the Bible. I’d always thought it came from a person - Jesus of Nazareth.
None of this is to say, btw. that I am a “convinced Christian”. However, I’m always annoyed when a “bad case” is made against anything, and it’s been my observation that there are a lot of bad cases being made against Christianity (or as is more often the situation, a case against what people narrowly understand Christianity to be.)
porch-
the people who wrote the bible were sent visions by god and told to record what they saw. they were prophets… and god had a purpose in doing this. the bible is not a secondary source, it was written from gods words. christianity does flow from the bible. God can see all ends. this book didnt accidentaly make its way into the hands of every christian in the world.
i get the impression you view christianity as vague spiritualism too often. im not saying you’re necessarily wrong about sacrements… or a few other things. but the bible you are wrong about.
Porch,
This is true to a certain extent, but it cannot be denied that the New Testament talks of all scripture being “God Breathed,” and is this sense Sâmkhya is right.
Jon F
Even if a scripture is true, “God breathed”, etc. you still must find in what sense it is true, from what perspective, and from what context. If I tell you that a triangle encloses three angles of 180 degrees total I am saying something “true” but only if interpreted in the proper context. A man living in hyperbolic space would say that I have said something false, but that’s only because he doesn’t understand my perspective.
Similarly, the truth (or falsehood) of the bible must be considered from the perspective of the people who wrote it, the people for whom it was written, etc. There’s no rule that says God has to breathe truth that is easily seen from every perspective.
So I very much agree with Porch Guy…
It doesn’t say this anywhere in the bible. Muslims claim the Koran was written in this way but the bible is very different.
I keep my point: people can find in the Bible nearly anything they want. It gives rise to opposite religious movements resting allegedly upon the Bible. To say that what really matters is Jesus’ words or deeds or that the true interpretation is what was known to the first Christians is just another school of thought, a school of thought amongst many others. Unless you can bring very strong arguments, that overcome all other stances. But it would be hard to convince all Christians: for them it’s a matter of “faith”… I don’t say they are wrong. My point here is that Christianity is irrational.
Let me emphasize what I said here:
In fact, I think it’s fairly reasonable for god to expect that we understand a book is written for a certain people with a certain language, culture, etc. at a certain time, and therefore the book’s intended message can only be understood from the perspective of that people. If someone says that they can get the message of the bible without attempting to read from the perspective of the time, they are simply reading themselves into the bible. This isn’t special pleading for the bible, it’s a fact about literary interpretation in general. If you want to get an author’s intended message you need to read from the perspective of his intended audience. It’s quite reasonable for god to expect people to understand this, rather than making something which admits only one interpretation and is understood “exactly the same” from every perspective. For in truth it is impossible to write something which will be understood exactly the same from every perspective – every perspective modifies the text in the process of reading. (God, I sound like a deconstructionist or something).
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:
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