6 ms·

How can the bible be utterly true? It outright contradicts itself multiple times. It's a bunch of little books written by a hundred different people over the

How can the bible be utterly true? It outright contradicts itself multiple times. It's a bunch of little books written by a hundred different people over the span of centuries. Do you instead mean that you believe that the broad themes are true, but that there are lots of details written by authors that are flawed? To believe that it is "utterly" true indicates to me a capacity for doublethink bordering on total insanity.

iab 5y ago
Religion specifically asks you suspend disbelief, so this is consistent
- senectus1 5y ago
  yes, the Faith problem.
rsyring 5y ago
You are, of course, accusing me of being totally insane after a reasonable investigation of the Bible including significant familiarity with the texts themselves as well as the theological and exegetical arguments for non-contradiction? If not, maybe try it. :) IMO there are reasonable and even compelling arguments about why the Bible is both inerrant and trustworthy. I spent five years in seminary and believe, after significant investigation, that the Bible is utterly true.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  I have read it. It's why I don't believe it is utterly true and consider the claim that it is utterly true indicative of what I said it is. It's 2021. Any of us can go and look up a list of the contradictions people have found throughout the ages, then go and look up those verses on BibleHub and see that the text, in any of a dozen translations, are directly contradictory. Context does not help in the vast majority of these cases, as they are definitive claims of fact that are directly opposed. Probably my favorite bit is when Genesis says that god decided people could not live longer than 120 years, then later goes on to name a ton of people who lived for hundreds of years. We also know today that there is at least one person who lived longer than 120 years, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment . And of course I won't even get into just how fantastically contradictory every gospel is with the others over quite a startling array of details of the story of the death and ascension of Jesus.
  - rsyring 5y ago
    Well, kudos for at least reading it. Yah, some of that stuff is admittedly hard, the different gospel narratives are right up there with the best of them. Although, I do believe they can be reconciled. My apologies for assuming you were just parroting common internet wisdom.
- belltaco 5y ago
  Does the Bible have any predictive power at all in the real world today? What insights can it give modern scientists? Do miracles still happen or have they conveniently stopped happening in the modern world? If anything it would be easier to prove nowadays with most people walking around with cameras.
  - rsyring 5y ago
    IMO you have some presuppositions about value and importance that are influencing the questions you ask. For example, I could ask: "How does the Bible help me be a better Python developer?" The most direct answer is, "It doesn't." Biblical wisdom, in response, might say something like: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world (e.g. be the best Python developer) and forfeit his soul?" And, if you believe that's a better and more important question, then the Bible starts to have value and insight. I only have anecdotes regarding miracles. Usually from missionary settings. But, I've also realized that while miracles are frequent in the Bible particularly because they are extraordinary, most of the biblical timeline unfolds without mention of any miracles. I think it's probable miraculous signs are not nor expected to be commonplace.
    - belltaco 5y ago
      >Biblical wisdom, in response, might say something like: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world (e.g. be the best Python developer) and forfeit his soul?" And, if you believe that's a better and more important question, then the Bible starts to have value and insight. At that point, one might as well turn to Buddhism or the wisdom in Hindu texts, which is as good as, if not better than wisdom in the Bible. The Bible would only be special if it was the word of God, but if it cannot give us any more insight into understanding our world than science can, it's a lost cause.
      - no-dr-onboard 5y ago
        You kind of have to run Pascal’s wager on that one then, don’t you? The Bible says that it is the divinely inspired word of God, that Jesus himself is the exclusive way to heaven and that all other religions are fabrications and devotion to them leads to hell. Hell is a real place, with real suffering brought on from disunity with God. Quite the wager imo. > but if it cannot give us any more insight into understanding our world than science can, it's a lost cause It’s surprising to me that especially in this year alone people cling to science as their religion. Modern medicine is effectively still alchemy in light of comprehensive knowledge of the human body. No scientist can recreate the human hand, eye or ear in perfect authenticity to all of its intricacies. It’s trite at this point to even mention all that we do not know of our own humanity. We can’t even fix depression with SSRI’s! We have no clue the true mechanism of action as it interacts with brain chemistry. The Bible declares that in every individual, God created the very last detail of their existence. That before time began he knew you and I as individuals. Jesus came and rebuked fevers. Literally spoke to a fever to tell it to leave. He told bacteria or viruses to leave another humans body and it did. She was saved. Jesus can do that because he’s God. He can do that because he has comprehensive, complete, understanding of the human body. He designed it. He made it.
no-dr-onboard 5y ago
I believe it’s utterly, infallibly, and inerrantly true. I haven’t been able to find a single contradiction that hasn’t been answered by a cogent explanation that includes the surrounding context, intertext references and ties to larger overarching themes. And believe me, I love and enjoy peering deeply into those holes. Perhaps the beauty is that those 66 books written over centuries tell a continuous and noncontradicting story. This isn’t to say that there aren’t difficult sections of scripture. There are things that come off as quotes that are actually paraphrases. There are different point of views between the gospels that insist 1 person was there when 2 people were in another account of the same situation. These are easily remedied when you consider the focus and theme of the book and the clear intentions of the author. The authors are indeed flawed (as humans, standing in the pages of history), but they write with the inspiration of God himself and make no error in recording their account. Happy to help with other concerns.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  How do you explain this then? https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/accounts.html https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/accounts.html
  - rsyring 5y ago
    Easily. It's the same story from two different perspectives. The first chapter is on a more global level. The second zooms in and focuses specifically on how man was created. The animals were created globally first. Once Adam was created, God created animals again so Adam could see the process, understand that God is Creator, and participate in ruling over God's creation. Interesting website choice. I spent a year as an agnostic because of that website before I started to realize there must be another perspective to consider.
    - rjbwork 5y ago
      Okay. So you don't believe that the bible is utterly true. You believe that the bible, plus some supplementary explanatory material is utterly true.

iab 5y ago

Religion specifically asks you suspend disbelief, so this is consistent

senectus1 5y ago
yes, the Faith problem.

rsyring 5y ago

You are, of course, accusing me of being totally insane after a reasonable investigation of the Bible including significant familiarity with the texts themselves as well as the theological and exegetical arguments for non-contradiction? If not, maybe try it. :) IMO there are reasonable and even compelling arguments about why the Bible is both inerrant and trustworthy. I spent five years in seminary and believe, after significant investigation, that the Bible is utterly true.

rjbwork 5y ago
I have read it. It's why I don't believe it is utterly true and consider the claim that it is utterly true indicative of what I said it is. It's 2021. Any of us can go and look up a list of the contradictions people have found throughout the ages, then go and look up those verses on BibleHub and see that the text, in any of a dozen translations, are directly contradictory. Context does not help in the vast majority of these cases, as they are definitive claims of fact that are directly opposed. Probably my favorite bit is when Genesis says that god decided people could not live longer than 120 years, then later goes on to name a ton of people who lived for hundreds of years. We also know today that there is at least one person who lived longer than 120 years, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment . And of course I won't even get into just how fantastically contradictory every gospel is with the others over quite a startling array of details of the story of the death and ascension of Jesus.
- rsyring 5y ago
  Well, kudos for at least reading it. Yah, some of that stuff is admittedly hard, the different gospel narratives are right up there with the best of them. Although, I do believe they can be reconciled. My apologies for assuming you were just parroting common internet wisdom.
belltaco 5y ago
Does the Bible have any predictive power at all in the real world today? What insights can it give modern scientists? Do miracles still happen or have they conveniently stopped happening in the modern world? If anything it would be easier to prove nowadays with most people walking around with cameras.
- rsyring 5y ago
  IMO you have some presuppositions about value and importance that are influencing the questions you ask. For example, I could ask: "How does the Bible help me be a better Python developer?" The most direct answer is, "It doesn't." Biblical wisdom, in response, might say something like: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world (e.g. be the best Python developer) and forfeit his soul?" And, if you believe that's a better and more important question, then the Bible starts to have value and insight. I only have anecdotes regarding miracles. Usually from missionary settings. But, I've also realized that while miracles are frequent in the Bible particularly because they are extraordinary, most of the biblical timeline unfolds without mention of any miracles. I think it's probable miraculous signs are not nor expected to be commonplace.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    >Biblical wisdom, in response, might say something like: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world (e.g. be the best Python developer) and forfeit his soul?" And, if you believe that's a better and more important question, then the Bible starts to have value and insight. At that point, one might as well turn to Buddhism or the wisdom in Hindu texts, which is as good as, if not better than wisdom in the Bible. The Bible would only be special if it was the word of God, but if it cannot give us any more insight into understanding our world than science can, it's a lost cause.
    - no-dr-onboard 5y ago
      You kind of have to run Pascal’s wager on that one then, don’t you? The Bible says that it is the divinely inspired word of God, that Jesus himself is the exclusive way to heaven and that all other religions are fabrications and devotion to them leads to hell. Hell is a real place, with real suffering brought on from disunity with God. Quite the wager imo. > but if it cannot give us any more insight into understanding our world than science can, it's a lost cause It’s surprising to me that especially in this year alone people cling to science as their religion. Modern medicine is effectively still alchemy in light of comprehensive knowledge of the human body. No scientist can recreate the human hand, eye or ear in perfect authenticity to all of its intricacies. It’s trite at this point to even mention all that we do not know of our own humanity. We can’t even fix depression with SSRI’s! We have no clue the true mechanism of action as it interacts with brain chemistry. The Bible declares that in every individual, God created the very last detail of their existence. That before time began he knew you and I as individuals. Jesus came and rebuked fevers. Literally spoke to a fever to tell it to leave. He told bacteria or viruses to leave another humans body and it did. She was saved. Jesus can do that because he’s God. He can do that because he has comprehensive, complete, understanding of the human body. He designed it. He made it.

no-dr-onboard 5y ago

I believe it’s utterly, infallibly, and inerrantly true. I haven’t been able to find a single contradiction that hasn’t been answered by a cogent explanation that includes the surrounding context, intertext references and ties to larger overarching themes. And believe me, I love and enjoy peering deeply into those holes. Perhaps the beauty is that those 66 books written over centuries tell a continuous and noncontradicting story. This isn’t to say that there aren’t difficult sections of scripture. There are things that come off as quotes that are actually paraphrases. There are different point of views between the gospels that insist 1 person was there when 2 people were in another account of the same situation. These are easily remedied when you consider the focus and theme of the book and the clear intentions of the author. The authors are indeed flawed (as humans, standing in the pages of history), but they write with the inspiration of God himself and make no error in recording their account. Happy to help with other concerns.

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
How do you explain this then? https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/accounts.html https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/accounts.html
- rsyring 5y ago
  Easily. It's the same story from two different perspectives. The first chapter is on a more global level. The second zooms in and focuses specifically on how man was created. The animals were created globally first. Once Adam was created, God created animals again so Adam could see the process, understand that God is Creator, and participate in ruling over God's creation. Interesting website choice. I spent a year as an agnostic because of that website before I started to realize there must be another perspective to consider.
  - rjbwork 5y ago
    Okay. So you don't believe that the bible is utterly true. You believe that the bible, plus some supplementary explanatory material is utterly true.