Nobody has said the Bible is fictional, although you’ve asserted a few times that that’s what atheists think. FinnAgain did say the Flood story is fictional, but other posters have noted some of the history is accurate.
Some of those things are accurate, and others are wrong and contradicted by stronger historical evidence. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people explain that to you in other threads. You are apparently assuming that historians take documents at face value, which they don’t. The stuff about Jesus’ bloodline is seen by scholars as the work of later Christians trying to prove that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
Your ability to get Biblical facts wrong borders on the supernatural. The bloodline runs through the male line all the way to Jesus’ mother! That’s right-the wrong parent to claim proper linage.
Right, so I don’t understand why atheists create these kind of threads asking for evidence when it’s obvious that nothing will ever convince them. Likewise, they are not going to convince me that God is a figment of my imagination. Can we just shake hands, and agree to disagree?
Placing your faith in a series of books is building your faith on sand. I think the bible has some very interesting things to say and it is a wonderful story with some historical accuracy, but if you really took the time to research the history of the bible and which books were included and excluded and why, then I’d like to think a rational person would have to step back and realize that maybe they’ve placed their bet on the wrong horse. But I look at faith like the story of Dumbo. He could fly because of his big ears, not because he held that crow’s feather in his trunk but he needed that feather to leap.
Declaring that the bible is “fiction” is an overstatement. However, noting that the bible includes a great deal of story that is not based in fact is not. On the other hand, your efforts in this posts simply display an amazing lack of knowledge. (Your choice of language is also interesting, although not in the way that you wish it to be.)
It is pretty much certainly true that the authors of Matthew and Luke created genealogies for Joseph. However, there is no reason to believe that those genealogies actually represented the parentage of successive generations of men living in that region of the world. They do not even agree with each other when they identify the father and ancestors of Joseph. (Leaving aside the Christian belief that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, one would think that “historical” accounts could at least agree on the (step-)grandfather of Jesus.)
Why would one ever expect to persuade non-believers that a work was factual or historical when it so clearly suffered numerous errors? Similar problems occur when we look at other “historical” references such as a “world wide” census that is not mentioned anywhere in any other work and which is extraordinarily implausible in sending people back to ancestral homes to register for in defiance of any logic. (Authorities order a census to establish taxation; they want to know where people live now, not where some distant ancestor might have lived.) There are also significant errors in the descriptions of the trials of Jesus that require that neither the Romans nor the Jews even followed their own procedures.
None of this has anything to do with “atheists” dismissing anything with a religious origin. It has to do with people, (including Christians), looking at facts and genuine evidence and realizing that the stories in the bible were not written as historical accounts following the protocols of historiography that have all been developed since the eighteenth century.
my mother is a devout Christian, though, I’d say I’ve made her see certain things a bit differently. She believes that the Bible speaks to her. When she has a question she opens it up and finds the answers. And I won’t debate her on that point, though I probably could, but if it does give her the answers, could it be something else is giving her the answers not neccesarily the Bible itself as a supernatural item. We’ve yet to do enough experimentation on the power of our thoughts and emotions to know that perhaps when we seek something, we can find it because of some form of projection? I’m getting into mysticism but that to me is just as likely as any other religion. We are in control not some outside force we call God. What if we all are God, connected on the fundamental level of the universe?
Nah. There are true things in it, sure, but there are also true things in, say historical fiction. Or Greek mythology; Ithaca is a real place, for example.
So pointing out, objectively and without rational dispute, that the Bible contains certified fictional events… is bias. I don’t think you grok what “bias” means, but it does make sense that you see factual claims you do not like as somehow assaulting your worldview.
Except of course for all the things that didn’t actually happen, ever. So other than the fictional stories, and the bad history, and such. So except where it’s not true, it’s a great resource on true things.
You’re supposed to engage in critical thinking and realize that since one major narrative event is fictional and never actually happened, and it’s provably fictional, then perhaps positing that the document as a whole contains some sort of truth, let alone revealed truth, is a bit of a reach. Silly dodge on your part, of course, to claim that it’s a question of the non-flood not “jiving” with “modern science”. As if some dastardly and/or incompetent scientists just can’t manage to find evidence of a fucking global flood, something which would make absolutely any geologist’s career, forever. As for “Science is flawed, God is not”, you have yet to prove that any God exists (ya know, the subject of this thread when you were called on the carpet?), let alone that it’s a tri-omni god. But of course you’re using circular reasoning and positing a perfect deity which can then be used to explain the holes in your logic because, we’ll, it’s a perfect deity!
I won’t speak for the atheists, but my problem with fundy christians is the glaring hypocracies and the devout lunacy that some of the more extreme members of the faith exhibit. I should say all faiths have these extremists and its why atheists and agnostics have a real problem with religion. Not to get political but we know a certain party likes to manipulate the religious right, who allow themselves to be controlled and misinformed and it does damage to our society. Some people like to be told what to believe and how to act. When I hear things like, “you’re not a real Christian unless you vote a certain way,” I want to scream. The two opposing ideas of An Eye for and Eye and Turn the Other Cheek, in themselves point out the hypocracy and the lack of independent thought. I grew up in the Bible belt and have some room to speak on this.
“My personal belief is that elves come into my kitchen at night and bake cookies.”
“Look, not only are there no elves, we checked your kitchen. There were also no cookies. Your claims seem not to be factual.”
“Respect my beliefs, damnit!!!”
"Nope. You were also one of the posters to offer the Bible up as a cite for your claims. The Bible was offered as having some sort of veracity, and it was shown to be fictional. "
Maybe someone has already said this (I am not going to wade through a 5 page GD thread), but asking a religious believer for evidence of their god is a bit like asking a scientist why we should worship the Schrödinger equation. Science isn’t about worshiping anything and religion isn’t about evidence, at least not the sort of evidence that science might recognize.
If you actually want to understand what is going on with religious people, don’t ask them why they think their god exists, but why they worship Him (or He, or It, or whatever).
People who ask about evidence of the existence of gods, and (perhaps more surprisingly) religious people who try to offer answers (or seek a space in which to fit evidence of God by denying already well established scientific explanations), just aren’t getting what religion is really about. The religious believers who do real harm are those who do not really understand religion and who think it is meant to do something like what science does so much better. If they were merely ignorant of science, it would not really matter very much, but they are ignorant of religion.
I say this incidentally, as someone who has been firmly atheist for about 40 years now. Nevertheless, I do not think religious people are necessarily fools. (A lot are fools, of course, and some are dangerous fools, but a lot of atheists are fools too.)
I’m not sure that’s what he was saying, but I won’t bother contesting the point because FinnAgain does seem to be taking that stance in more recent posts. That said, lots of people have agreed there are historical facts in the Bible even if the general narrative and the supernatural events are fictional (as many of them demonstrably are). Your stance on atheists is and has always been completely wrongheaded.
How about providing some cites for your claims, or should I take your suggestive errors at face value? Of course, this is the problem when I have to take on a dozen people attacking me from different angles. I have to suddenly be an expert in science, geology, and now geneologies. Otherwise, you insult my intelligence.
Christian apologists certainly have not run away from any of your challenges.
From a quick google search:
From wikipedia:
Several theories have been advanced to explain the divergence of the two gospel genealogies, most notably:
That Joseph had two fathers—one natural and one legal—as a result of a levirate marriage involving uterine brothers.
Legal inheritance.
That Luke’s genealogy is actually through Mary rather than her husband Joseph.
That Matthew’s genealogy is actually through Mary rather than her husband Joseph.
That one or both of the genealogies are invented.
Frankly, I’m more amazed at the numerous Messianic prophecies in the OT that came completely true with the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Fictional works can have factual bits. The city of Dublin really does exist, even if Ulysses is fiction. There was a Revolutionary War, even if Johnny Tremain is fiction. There really are swords, and armor, and rings, even if Lord of the Rings was fiction. And there really are old kingdoms which were talked about in the Tanakh, even if it too is fiction.
I’m reposting this because it may have been lost on the previous page. It deals with the work of Dr. Amit Goswani a leading quantum physicist. You asked for evidence not proof. Well, I submit this to the evidence pile.
