Humans make up stuff all the time. Why are we so credulous about the Bible?

Great Debates
1

It’s human nature for many people to make up stuff to buttress this or that position they want to others to support or believe in. People make up stuff, take creative license, engage in puffery and basically lie like rugs, always have.

Given this fact, why is so much credence given to the supernatural claims contained in the the Bible which is basically a collection of after the fact narratives and opinions by a variety of people.

Why so few raised eyebrows at biblical claims? And for that matter why so much credence still given to supernatural claims generally in modernity?

What is it about the quality of being human that we find so many seemingly absurd, supernatural, and outrageous claims so darn believable?.

2

You want to throw out 10’s of thousands of years of religion and superstition in a couple of centuries? Good luck with that.

Why do humans believe in the supernatural? Well…why wouldn’t they? For thousands of years we didn’t have the means to figure out why bad shit happens. Even today we are only starting to scratch the surface…and it’s STILL hard to figure out why bad things happen to some people but not others. If you are hurt and confused and don’t know where to turn…well, why exactly do you think people wouldn’t turn to supernatural explanations of what is going on? Especially if they don’t have any alternative means to figure it out?

You seem to be laboring under the delusion that all religion is a con game or that the folks that founded them were lying. A simpler explanation is that most if not all of those folks actually believed they WERE in touch with a higher power. That they probably weren’t matters not at all from their perspective…nor from their follwers perspective.

Science and the scientific method is pretty new. The sheer inertia of centuries and millennium of thinking of the world in terms of the supernatural isn’t going to be reversed in, what? A century? Science is still evolving (heh), and still figuring things out.

What was so darned hard about figuring out electricity or steam power? What was so friggin hard about solid state electronics or radio? Gun powder is pretty frickin easy when you think about it…what was the problem there? For that matter smelting metal is a no brainer…'da fuck was with those idiots for not getting that sooner and continuing to bang rocks together to make tools???

It’s kind of easy to see the big picture when you stand on the shoulders of the great minds that came before us. Try going back to a time when fire was a great innovation or when your crop could be wiped out at the whim of nature or some other force you didn’t understand and maybe it will give you some perspective.

-XT

3

Fist, because it’s old, and widespread in this part of the world; traditional. Note how the assertions of small or far away ( in time or space ) religions are mocked or dismissed by the same people who take offense if you point out how implausible their beliefs are.

Second, because much of it tells people what they want to hear. “You will live forever in paradise, and you can do any awful thing you like to people who disagree with you !”

Third, because people are indoctrinated with this stuff as children, and are inoculated against contrary facts or reason by it before they have the judgement to defend themselves.

Third, because people appear to be at least partly genetically wired to be religious; probably due to millenia of the religious killing unbelievers, and/or raping the women ( straight out of the Bible; kill the men and children; rape the young women ). in essence, humans have been bred for certain kinds of gullibility and submissiveness.

4

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Second, because much of it tells people what they want to hear. “You will live forever in paradise, and you can do any awful thing you like to people who disagree with you !”
[/QUOTE]

Not every religion promises paradise or immortality. Not every religion gives you Carte Blanche to wack thy enemies in the name of god.

I think a better way to put it is…religion gives explanations to the inexplicable. It gives people struggling to understand why bad things happen a way to understand and cope with those bad things. It lets them feel connected to something beyond themselves.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Third, because people are indoctrinated with this stuff as children, and are inoculated against contrary facts or reason by it before they have the judgement to defend themselves.
[/QUOTE]

To a certain extend this is also true, though in your usual charming way it’s a bit harsh and narrow in it’s observation. Still, it’s true that religion is part of the learning process that people grow up with, and has been for…well, for a long ass time.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Third, because people appear to be at least partly genetically wired to be religious; probably due to millenia of the religious killing unbelievers, and/or raping the women ( straight out of the Bible; kill the men and children; rape the young women ). in essence, humans have been bred for certain kinds of gullibility and submissiveness.
[/QUOTE]

You used third twice. :slight_smile: I’m not sure if we are genetically wired for religion but certainly it’s ingrained in us from literally 10’s of thousands of years of human existence.

I think you are projecting Christianity with it’s guilt, submissiveness and such on all of religion however. Not all religions are in the same mold. As to gullibility…again, it’s easy for you or I to say that, standing as we do on the shoulders of all the folks that came before us. I doubt that if you were living in the first century it would seem all that obvious that religion is probably a psychological condition, or that it follows from a natural human tendency to attempt to connect the dots even when we don’t have a clue what is going on. Without a scientific background and a grounding in skepticism (something that even today many people don’t have), these things that are ‘obvious’ really aren’t so obvious after all. It’s only WITH such a background that those kinds of insights can emerge.

-XT

5

If someone you really love dies, it’s hard to accept that they are gone forever and that you will never see them again.

You will want to believe in an afterlife.

I’m an agnostic. I don’t believe in anything one way or another. But I want to. The believers, at least, have hope.

6

[QUOTE=astro]
It’s human nature for many people to make up stuff to buttress this or that position they want to others to support or believe in. People make up stuff, take creative license, engage in puffery and basically lie like rugs, always have.
[/QUOTE]
In that case, why don’t we just throw out everything that anyone has ever said or written? How can we believe anything?

“After the fact narratives”: Isn’t that pretty much what all history, biography, etc. is?

:dubious:

I’ve seen plenty of raised eyebrows at Biblical claims, here on the SDMB alone.

Your OP is very vague. You haven’t given any specific reason to doubt any specific claims. Your OP essentially amounts to “Why do so many people find credible what I find incredible?”

7

Because science does not remove the terror of the grave.

8

Religion is “our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”

–Forrest Church, Unitarian Universalist Minister

9

[QUOTE=xtisme]

You used third twice. :slight_smile: I’m not sure if we are genetically wired for religion but certainly it’s ingrained in us from literally 10’s of thousands of years of human existence.

[/QUOTE]

Isn’t it true that virtually all (if not ALL) recorded human cultures have had some element of the supernatural in them? From omnipotent gods, to a pantheon of deities with specific portfolios, to totems, to ancestral spirits… For it to be as widespread as it is, I think the idea that we have a genetic predisposition should be a leading theory. You could make the argument that if we came from a common ancestor(s), we may have inherited supernaturalism culturally, but humanity’s little tribes have gone through so many great upheavals that it’s hard for me to imagine that a common cultural trait has persisted for so long, everywhere.

I just think that whatever it is makes us human-- maybe the intelligence, or curiosity, or the way we can reason out cause and effect, whatever-- also makes it so that we must fill in the gaps of our knowledge with something, and that something is almost always supernatural in nature.

As for the OP; why do we remain so attached to the Bible and Christianity specifically? I think once a religious system gets critical mass and it dominates a society, it’s very hard to knock from its pedestal. Invasions, epic disasters, etc. have done so, but hell, even the Cultural Revolution in China (which is perhaps the biggest attempted culture-wipe in history, aside from genocide) didn’t completely eradicate traditional spiritual beliefs. You need a good replacement, and the Cult of the Chairman and Party was not nearly satisfying (or long-lasting) enough. And in the West, no serious effort has been made to completely dethrone Christianity, and certainly not one with a good replacement in hand.

10

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
In that case, why don’t we just throw out everything that anyone has ever said or written? How can we believe anything?

[/QUOTE]

We shouldn’t, without confirmation, and then only provisionally. If we find in a Greek narrative that Alexander slew 1,000 enemies by himself, do we believe it or do we think the writer was perhaps kissing butt? The reason science has progressed so far is that nothing you write gets published without being reviewed by others, and others can and often do challenge it. For most of the past 2,000 years challenging the Bible in this way was punishable by death.

11

Because God is real and He won’t let His word fade away.

12

BTW, the OP is a bit narrow insofar as this is not just a question valid vis-a-vis the Bible, in the case of Western Civilization, but it’s just as valid about the Qur’an anywhere in North Africa and SW Asia. Or for that matter as someone mentioned before, about the teachings of Lao Tzu and Confucius in China even though in the latter case they are not purported to be the Word of God.

You assemble civilization for ten thousand years WITH religion in it – Egyptians, Nubians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Dravidians, Aryans, Chinese, Aegeans, Classical Greeks, Persians, Romans, Germanics, Mongols, Arabians, Ethiopians, Zimbabweans, Olmecs, Toltecs, Maya, Inca, etc… all WITH religion in it. Towards the latter few centuries, half the world’s peoples belong to cultures that follow one of two religious schools that teach that a certain written text (Bible or Qur’an) is The Infallible Word Of God itself.

I’d say the progress so far is actually pretty good, all things considered. And that’s if you even think it’s really worth the bother.

13

I’m not one to separate into “natural” and “supernatural.” To me God is as natural as dark energy.

I don’t argue religious matters, but I am curious about something. Did the cosmos just will itself into being? I don’t understand the scientific explanations of the initial cause of the big bang.

14

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Because God is real and He won’t let His word fade away.
[/QUOTE]
Wouldn’t free will come into that?

Thudlow Boink’s made the point I would have made. If the reason is “people make stuff up all the time”, that’ as equally applicable to everything people say or do.

I would add that the reason it is accepted so widely is that it’s not really all that different. A Christian in general is expected to believe things that I might call unlikely that are very similar to the things Jews or Muslims must believe. Many religions have holy texts; while someone other than a Christian (or various faiths that hold the Bible in some esteem) doesn’t believe in the Bible, the idea that such a holy text could exist isn’t all that unbelievable. It’s only when beliefs vary wildly, for example Christianity and Wicca, or Shinto, that other religious people have a harder time considering them believable.

15

[QUOTE=Zoe]
I don’t argue religious matters, but I am curious about something. Did the cosmos just will itself into being? I don’t understand the scientific explanations of the initial cause of the big bang.
[/QUOTE]
We don’t know the cause of the big bang and may never know. That’s no reason to invent one.

16

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Because God is real and He won’t let His word fade away.
[/QUOTE]

He will however allow multiple poor translations of said word to exist. Also He will place multitudes of contradictory and downright evil commands in said words allowing self-serving followers to pick and choose which of the *Words *they want to follow.

I assume everyone who believes that bible is inspired word of god had a fun time stoning to death those that worked on the sabbath?

People believe in the bible because they haven’t read it. The book is ignorant rubbish.

17

[QUOTE=Zoe]
I’m not one to separate into “natural” and “supernatural.” To me God is as natural as dark energy.

I don’t argue religious matters, but I am curious about something. Did the cosmos just will itself into being? I don’t understand the scientific explanations of the initial cause of the big bang.
[/QUOTE]

Did god just will himself into being? I don’t understand the theological explanations of the initial cause of God’s existence.

18

Good question- maybe part of it is many people think hoaxes are a 20th century invention.

19

Why did I end up an orphan? There must have been a mix up a the hospital, there’s no way my mother and father would just abandon me. I bet my dad’s an astronaut and my moms a race car driver and some day soon they’ll come for me and tell me it was all a mistake and take me home.

Humans have an inherent need to feel loved and wanted that is more powerful than logic.

20

[QUOTE=Zoe]
I’m not one to separate into “natural” and “supernatural.” To me God is as natural as dark energy.
[/QUOTE]

That’s an absurd example to use. Is that the best you have?