I guess non believers can chime in and take their shots here if they want, but my question is directed at believers. I’m a Christian who, admittedly has struggled with my faith from time to time. I believe in Jesus and God, but when I question things, the pastor usually retorts with a Bible verse.
How do we know that God inspired the words? How do we know that it wasn’t some crazy guy smoking opium in a cave somewhere? Maybe God wants us to do the exact opposite of what is said in these books?
So, why do we give credence that what is written in the Bible (all books) are the divine word of God? And as a secondary subject, why are those other books (e.g. The Gospel of Peter) dismissed with scorn?
Speaking as advocatus diabo- er, deus. A couple of things brought up by the faithful;
The Bible says it is. Circular logic, but ‘it’s right because it says it’s right’ works for many believers. Interestingly, nowhere in the Bible is any mention made of how to compile it, or which books should be taken as the word of God.
The Bible mentions the Holy Ghost, Jesus and a loving God. Many believers conclude that since they have felt what they believe is the presence of the Holy Ghost, Jesus or a loving God that this is confirmation of the Bible’s accuracy.
The more…fringe views, young Earth creationists and the like, who believe that pseudo-science confirms views in the Bible. Things like the ‘leviathon’ being a dinosaur and the like. Or, more commonly, the ‘beauty of creation’ and ‘natural order’ of the universe confirming a divine hand, verifying the account in Genesis.
On why the apocrypha is so readily dismissed, I’d imagine centuries of suppression by the Catholic Church following the Councils of Nicaea, Rome and Carthage has a great deal to do with it. Look at how the early Christians dealt with Arianism, a sect with competing views about the divinity of Jesus - after the First Council of Nicaea they were denounced as heretical by the majority of early Christians.
I agree. I do have faith, but it’s…difficult to properly define. Mr Kobayashi hinted at it WRT the “natural order of the universe” having a divine hand, but I certainly am no creationist. Well, I suppose I actually am, but not in the way most people assume.
I don’t see how you can believe in Jesus if you question the New Testament (or at least the Gospels and Letters parts). There isn’t really any other source for who Jesus was or even that he existed other then the New Testament, if you discount the information there as fictitious, then there isn’t really any Jesus left to believe in.
And in the New Testament, Jesus seems to believe in the Old Testament, and if you believe he’s a deity, it seems unlikely he’d be unaware if the Old Testament was just made-up, so there you go.
For one thing, Christians disagree over what it means to say that the Bible is the “Word of God,” or in what sense God inspired it. The answer to “How do we know _______?” is going to depend on what you mean by _________.
When it comes to the question of “what God wants us to do,” even if you do accept the Bible as the word of God, there’s still the questions of interpretation and application. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to find a Bible verse that, taken out of context and/or misinterpreted, does “tell you” to do something that is the exact opposite of what God would want you to do.
Relatively few Christians would say that the Bible is the only source for “what God wants us to do.” Instead, they’d include at least some of the following: tradition (e.g. Church teaching), reason, conscience, experience, and personal guidance by the Holy Spirit. If our reading of the Bible meshes with those other ways that God “speaks” to people, that’s a good sign.
You might get at least partial answers to both of these questions by studying the making of the canon—how it was historically decided which books should and should not be included in the canon of the Bible.
How do I know that the Bible is, in at least some sense, the word of God? Because I have met God there. Not on every page, every time. But, for example, when I read the gospels (of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John), I encounter Jesus, and when I encounter Jesus, I encounter God.
This is my first post here in this forum…and I hope this post is not considered an inappropriate deviation from the main thrust of the topic. But I see the word “faith” being used and defined in several responses…and I’d like to offer an opinion on that.
As I see it…a “belief” is a guess about the unknown. People who make guesses about the unknown often use the word “belief” to disguise the fact that it is a guess…mostly, it seems to me, to give more credence to their guess. If you are going to ask people to “have respect” for your guesses…I suppose disguising the fact that they are guesses makes sense.
Religious people and strong atheists are most prone to do this…to call their guesses beliefs. I “believe” there is a GOD…or I “believe” there are no gods…is really saying, it is my BLIND GUESS that there is a GOD or it is my BLIND GUESS there are no gods.
No problem.
“Faith”, is the word used by theists to insist that their BLIND GUESSES about the nature of Reality ARE TRUE. (Atheists use a form of “faith” also…but their sensitivities require that they not refer to it as faith.)
Me personally? I don’t. I’m agnostic.
Why do I think others “believe” that the bible is god’s word? Same reason I think they believe in god in the first place. It let’s them sleep at night, gives them comfort, etc. Once you have convinced yourself god exists and you like what that does for you then convincing yourself the bible is god’s word isn’t that much of a leap.
I’m agnostic/atheist (depends what day of the week it is :D), but I can’t resist pointing out a flaw in that logic. It’s not an either/or situation. You could believe in Jesus but only believe that certain aspects of the Bible are correct and that the rest is a gross exaggeration. Since it is the Bible that says that Jesus believes in the Old Testament one could also suppose that the “fact” that Jesus believed in the entire OT was also exaggeration.
In my case I believe that there probably was a particularly charismatic preacher named Jesus of Nazareth (or whatever it would be correct to call him if you only accept him as a mere mortal) that may very well have been crucified for sedition.
It’s not; which is why believers have so often been willing to behave like psychopaths for their beliefs.
No, it’s not the same. All evidence supports the atheistic position; no evidence supports the religious position. In fact, the evidence actively opposes the physics-breaking claims normally made about gods. As well, the logical default position on a claim that something exists is disbelief. And on top of that,given that religions wildly contradict each other most must be false; there’s no reason to think that somewhere in the nonsense one guessed right. It’s not a “blind guess” when all the evidence and all the logic favors you, as it does atheism.
I say “There is no god” for the same reasons I say “there are no fairies” and “Darth Vader is a fictional character”. The claim that we need to bend over backward and say, “Well, we can’t mathematically prove that all conceivable religions are logically impossible, therefore we can’t say there is no god” is an attempt to give religion a privileged position. We don’t talk like that normally. We don’t say “you can’t prove that Sauron didn’t exist, so asauronism is a matter of faith!”
Agreed, but why? Why do we believe that these particular texts are the divine and inspired word of God?
I have faith that there is a God and a sense of redemption in Jesus. That faith comes from inner personal feelings. How can that be applied to a collection of texts?
Let’s say that I would contend that the gospels and most of Paul’s letters are true, but that the Book of Revelation is just a ranting of a crazy old man.
Tell me why I’m incorrect.
Or, on the other hand, maybe the gospels are true, but Paul just got it all wrong. All of his letters to the churches gave terrible, terrible advice against what Jesus would have wanted.
I can accept faith in a higher being, but I don’t see where the faith comes from that a bunch of men, centuries apart wrote texts that are unquestionably the word of God…
books of Isaiah and Ezekiel were written in fairly recent (at least “historic”) times. Start by rereading them and get a sense of why contemporaries of Isaiah and Ezekiel would have accepted their writings as inspired word of God. Then notice how this acceptance by contemporaries would naturally morph into it being a part of the “popular culture”, if you will, or at least of religious culture - first of the Jews, then carried over to Christians.
The above example illustrates the basic principle - first a large number of people within the religion have accepted a particular book as “valid”, then this acceptance is propagated in time through the religious institutions. At some point both Jews and Christians (mainstream ones) made a decision to close the canon and, once again, the generality of believers accepted this decision of the authorities.
If you truly believe, you look for confirmation and ignore that which is non-confirmation; in the bible and elsewhere. It’s called, logically, confirmation bias. It’s all the proof you need.
Well you know, how do we know that those texts were interpreted correctly? What about the aprocrepha, the sacred books that weren’t included in the Bible?
Personally, I’m more Ba’haii then I am Christian. I do believe there is wisdom in the Bible and tht Jesus was a good guy. BUT, I also believe that human consciousness is so limited and stunted that we can’t totally understand a higher power. That’s why there are so many different religions out there. B/c they are all different interpretations of something we cannot understand very well.
Well, I’m a Hindu (although I’ve discounted so much of Hindu scripture, that I’m not sure it’s valid to call myself a Hindu). As a Hindu, I have no problem believing that there are multiple paths to God. However, I would only be convinced that there is a unique path to God in the following circumstances:
A personal miraculous event that I couldn’t explain in any other way. So, if Jesus showed up to me when I was awake and sober and performed a miracle, I’d believe that the Bible was uniquely correct. That hasn’t happened.
If all followers of a particular religion behaved in a moral fashion. So, if I saw every Christian behaving morally, then I’d believe the Bible was uniquely correct. What I do see is people exhibit a wide range of behavior regardless of religion.
So, I have no evidence that the Bible is uniquely correct, nor do I have any evidence that Hinduism is correct either. However, there are parts of Hindu philosophy which I find moral (and which are emulated in a number of other philosophies, religious or non-religious), so I’m okay with considering myself Hindu for now.