The rival to the Bible

Just Arrived Joined: Jan 07, 2005 Posts: 4

What is probably the oldest known Bible is being digitised, reuniting its scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What's left out?

For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today's bible.

Follow link for story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7651105.stm

Newbie Joined: Jan 16, 2008 Posts: 16

"The current Bible is God's word. Of course it was written by man, but it was breathed into life by God. The way that it has over time, evolved into is present form is not important. Only those scriptures, in the form that God intended, have presently become the Bible. What is important is that the message that God intended is there for us all, and it has the power to change lives."

I've always had a problem with this type of explanation.
- Xian declaration 1: The bible was inspired by God, but written by humans.
- Xian declaration 2: We have to interpret the bible and cannot take the bible as God's literal words. The reason is that God's words are greater than our understanding.
So, if humans are fallible and need to interpret the bible, how did they write it down properly in the first place?

Just Arrived Joined: Dec 16, 2005 Posts: 1

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=2901

Graduate Thinker Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 513

Quote:

So, if humans are fallible and need to interpret the bible, how did they write it down properly in the first place?

Also, if humans are fallible, then why trust them to interpret anything? Obviously, it hasn't gone very well over the centuries.

Post Noob Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 57

God has lousy comunication skills if the bible is the best way he knows how to get his point across. Either that or he just isn't trying to deliver a message people can understand. If God works in mysterious ways even when there are better options he isn't earning trust.

This God they worship is either the biggest con artist ever known or he doesn't exist.

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 16, 2008 Posts: 71

WillieBop wrote:

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=2901

Thank you for posting this link WillieBop.

I read it with interest and largely agreed with what was said about Bolton's p.o.v. When I was a born-again christian I did some research into the Codex Siniaticus. The A & O Ministries spokesperson is right, many believing christian scholars have carefully examined this text and many others like it over the years. The bible is probably the best-studied collection of human writings there is.

But I have to say that I find this whole debate (Is the bible the true word of god?) superfluous.

I didn't conclude that the bible is false by looking at it's historicity or scrutinizing the text. Though there are enough contradictions, mistranslations and errors to reveal it to be imperfect and therefore of solely human origin.
No, what I did was to examine my own faith (which I then believed was squarely based on scripture) and compare it's tenets with what science tells us about reality.

Here's the process...

1. I believed that Jesus died on the cross for everyone's sins.
(So he was not just the son of god but also a real, historical person.)

2. If Jesus was real and historical then Adam & Eve must have been too.
(His sacrifice removes not only our own sins but also those we've inherited from Adam & Eve.)

3. So the text of Genesis must be accurate and historically true.
(All of it. None of it was meant to be taken poetically or allegorically.)

4. So the Genesis account of Creation must be historically true.

5. If this is so then anything contradicting that must be untrue.

6. So all the findings, evidence and proofs offered by Science must be also be untrue. (I was told that scientists were at best misguided fools or at worst the agents of Satan, undermining the faith of true believers.)

Now I had a crisis on my hands, WillieBop.
If the works of science were lies and the works of christians were the truth could I live my life by christian principles and not scientific ones?
Well, I could and did, for a while. Then it gradually dawned on me that I was deliberately avoiding and ignoring an inconvenient truth .

I could remain a god-centered christian only so long as I denied that fact that science WORKED . Exclamation

Science was supremely able to describe, predict, inform and explain all kinds of natural phenomena. It worked in Chemistry to allow us to make all kinds of complex materials and products according to specific designs. It worked in Physics to allow us to safely fabricate all kinds of structures and buildings. It worked in Biology, Genetics, Astronomy, Geology, Cosmology, Oceanography and any other kind of ...ology.
None of it needed god to make it work. He had no place in oil prospecting, creating new computer designs or formulating air traffic control systems.

The alternative ways open to me (if I treated athiestic science as wrong) were Creation Science and Intelligent Design. The second has been declared by the Courts to be moribund and the first is hopelessly stuck in an unrealistic world-view. Creationists are 100% geocentric and anthropocentric. This introverted, backward-looking p.o.v., if taken up fully in the U.S., would lead America back into a new Dark Age. This nation would be rapidly overtaken by others, to the ruin of freedom and democracy on a global scale.

The demise of America like this was unthinkable to me. I'm proud of my country and it's achievements!

So I couldn't live a truly christian life without being a hypocrite.
I HAD to conclude that the godless, athiestic scientific description of the world was real and true.
I HAD to conclude that the bible was irrelevant because it was inferior to science when it came to describing the nature of life, the world and existence.
I HAD to conclude that I couldn't live as a christian in a world dominated and permeated with the scientific proof of god's non-existence.

So you see WillieBop, even if the content of the bible can be grammatically and textually proven to be one cohesive work, this conclusion is ultimately irrelevant! Science is a far better way of understanding things. That's why I said that this whole debate is superfluous.

Yes, there were other reasons besides this one that caused me to renounce my faith (see my introduction) but this was a major one.

Thanks again for the link.

BornAgainAthiest.


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