If the bible is proven to be made up....

[BiblicalAtheist]

The Bible is a life book, and Life is what you make it....

I dunno, I think Life is Life. It either is or it is not(death). They are one in the same essentially however. And so the experiences you choose during Life are what you make of them.

 

[TX_Made713]

The Bible is one gigantic parable in one of the many forms that it takes.... let's see what Christ said about parables...

Mar 4:10 Later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked Him what the parables meant.

Mar 4:11 He replied, "You are permitted to understand the secret of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders,

Mar 4:12 so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled: 'When they see what I do, they will learn nothing. When they hear what I say, they will not understand. Otherwise, they will turn to Me and be forgiven.'"

Mar 4:13 Then Jesus said to them, "If you can't understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables?

Mar 4:22 For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light.

Mar 4:23 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand."

Mar 4:24 Then He added, "Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given—and you will receive even more.

Mar 4:25 To those who listen to My teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them."

Mar 4:33 Jesus used many similar stories and illustrations to teach the people as much as they could understand.

Mar 4:34 In fact, in His public ministry He never taught without using parables; but afterward, when He was alone with His disciples, He explained everything to them.

Interesting to say the least

Also I'm curious for my own curiosity, if you can find a story written outside of the Book of Genesis that has been proven to be false....?

How about the part where the bible says the earth is like 6,000 years old

http://home1.gte.net/bridavis/timeline.htm

and science clearly says otherwise (i know science books dont know shit)

 

[bbwthick23]

I don't think it's possible to prove or disprove the Bible in this world. There are arguments for and against the Bible and all seem to claim to be non-biased. There are peoples lives that are changed for the good through the Bible and some are for the bad. The only thing I can think of that would put an end to this debate is that we wait patient on Death to come and we see where the truth resides.

Agreed. This book (fairy tale in my opinion) will never be proven or disproven. Just think people can't even agree with what jesus looked like.

 

[phanatron]

Agreed. This book (fairy tale in my opinion) will never be proven or disproven. Just think people can't even agree with what jesus looked like.

Large parts of the Bible have been disproven. The basic origin on the Universe is an impossibility given the Bible's geneaology timeline. The Noah story of a world wide flood, again, we have enough archeological evidence to disprove it. I mean there a plenty things that disprove the Bible.

When people are faced with obvious facts that discredit the Bible, they shift the standard. The Bible then isn't meant to be 'literally' true, it's the message. If we can prove numerous stories not to be true and most of the rest unverifiable, why should we believe the stories without evidence...especially when they are far fetched and mimic other stories from the same time period that we readily discount?

It isn't an issue of proving the Bible to be false; the issue is getting people to stop believing its true. The Bible gives people a means to organize their life. When things go right, people thank God. When things go wrong, they see it as test of their faith. When they pray, if things go right, God did it. When things go wrong, God wants to put them through their paces. When nothing happens, God is telling them to wait. For everything, there is a built in fail safe option that still preserves people belief in the Bible.

 

[alissowack]

Large parts of the Bible have been disproven. The basic origin on the Universe is an impossibility given the Bible's geneaology timeline. The Noah story of a world wide flood, again, we have enough archeological evidence to disprove it. I mean there a plenty things that disprove the Bible.

When people are faced with obvious facts that discredit the Bible, they shift the standard. The Bible then isn't meant to be 'literally' true, it's the message. If we can prove numerous stories not to be true and most of the rest unverifiable, why should we believe the stories without evidence...especially when they are far fetched and mimic other stories from the same time period that we readily discount?

It isn't an issue of proving the Bible to be false; the issue is getting people to stop believing its true. The Bible gives people a means to organize their life. When things go right, people thank God. When things go wrong, they see it as test of their faith. When they pray, if things go right, God did it. When things go wrong, God wants to put them through their paces. When nothing happens, God is telling them to wait. For everything, there is a built in fail safe option that still preserves people belief in the Bible.

If is fair to say however that those who don't believe in the Bible do so by first observing the evidence? I believe that people have doubts about the Bible is because they find it's followers incapable of doing what the Bible says or they can't be trusted with what the Bible says. Those people have left more of an impression on how the Bible is viewed than just observing the evidence and finding it false.

Your say there is a large amount of evidence that disprove the Bible. But there are people who say that they have large amounts of evidence supporting the Bible...and both are claiming that their findings are without bias and both may claim that the opposing party is using biases. Maybe if you can rid the society of the "bias" bug, we may see the truth. However, I doubt serious that will happen.

 

[phanatron]

There is no large amount of evidence that the supports the Bible. The most basic things that support the Bible is the existence of certain geographical locations and in some cases the dates appear to be plausible. But, simply saying that Egypt exists, or that there was a nation of Israel in no way proves that the content or the substance is true. And even when giving credit that some of these locations are close and that some timelines fit, many others simply do not. So even when giving the Bible credit for some possibility of truths, much of even the basic stuff can be confirmed to be at best inaccurate.

What we know about humans and psychology is that absent some reasonable explanation that people understand 'at the time of the event', people generally ascribe to some supernatural power that is responsible for the event. Forget about the Bible and Christianity for a moment, this is true in every other religion. The more 'primitive' the culture, the more spectacular the events. Thus, it is no wonder that miracles happen every day, today, in isolated villages where there are no cameras, no science, and no investigation. And it is no surprise that the Biblical miricales that were frequent and dominated the Bible have ceased to exist.

And even on a most basic level, there are all kinds of things that there has been direct evidence for that have been disproved with further investigation. People report UFOs in the sky and it turns out to be an airplane, weather balloon, meteroite, whatever. Weateher patterns can be predicted and planned for. Certain catacalysimic disasters (like the earthquake in Haiti) while not predicatable are explainable.

So given all that, and considering the burden of proof to be on the Bible, why would anyone believe the Bible (from an objective perspective) given all the evidence and what we know now? To suggest that there is merit to be both sides of the argument is not misleading at best.

 

[phanatron]

Let me go even further. There is wide acknowledgement that most of the Biblical texts were not written by the people credited with writing them. In fact, most of the Biblical text were composed several hundred years (in some case a few thousand) after the events occurred. But lets say, for the sake of argument, that the text were authentic. Would this prove that the text were true? Of course not. Simply because a text can be traced back to its origin, doesn't mean that the origin was correct in describing what they witnessed. We still would have try to conduct objective tests or look for independent confirmation to show that the source was indeed correct, that the source wasn't confused, and a whole host of other measures. And given the time of the sources, where there were many 'false' gods and people believing just about anything, proof is all the more needed.

And if you believe the Bible, God provided that proof on a regular basis. From Moses to Daniel to John in Revelations, how one is convinced that the Bible is true, is based on evidence that appeals to our reason and logic. The problem is, it only appeals to our reason and logic if the only source you look at is the Bible. It all begins to collapse as soon as you take an objective approach to it.

So, considering all this, I know that people take comfort in the Bible, and in a normal setting, I don't attack it. It provides comfort and a sense of well being to people who truly believe. But this is the IC and I assume that all reasonable intellectual conversation is a go. So in here, I have no problem taking the Bible apart, page by page.

 

[alissowack]

Do you think that people who believe in the Bible are necessarily looking for miraculous; that one day that mysterious unicorn will appear or that God just appears out of thin air and surprises everybody? What if there is more to it than just the "fireworks"?

Geographical locations and artifacts are just as good of evidence supporting the Bible. It doesn't mean that it's a "slam-dunk" case in favor of believing the Bible but it at least has something to say when it comes to these places and findings. However, the question is whether or not theses findings can be trusted? Can you trust that whenever there is a finding supporting the Bible, that it is done apart from any biases. Can you trust those who has has evidence against the Bible that they are not using their biases?

 

[phanatron]

Do you think that people who believe in the Bible are necessarily looking for miraculous; that one day that mysterious unicorn will appear or that God just appears out of thin air and surprises everybody? What if there is more to it than just the "fireworks"?

Geographical locations and artifacts are just as good of evidence supporting the Bible. It doesn't mean that it's a "slam-dunk" case in favor of believing the Bible but it at least has something to say when it comes to these places and findings. However, the question is whether or not theses findings can be trusted? Can you trust that whenever there is a finding supporting the Bible, that it is done apart from any biases. Can you trust those who has has evidence against the Bible that they are not using their biases?

Just to be clear, geographical locations and artifacts don't support the Bible. These locations and artifacts support places mentioned in the Bible. We can agree that a place existed or even that a person existed and still question whether what they said, or what was recorded that they said, is accurate. Take for instance the Vedas, we can verify the authenticity of the text but do we believe it? Does it match other evidence? We can apply this standard to all religious text, including The Book of Mormon (which not many Christians hold to be credible, even though all the locations can be verified, the timeline is correct, and there is no question of the aunthenticity of the author).

 

[phanatron]

Do you think that people who believe in the Bible are necessarily looking for miraculous; that one day that mysterious unicorn will appear or that God just appears out of thin air and surprises everybody? What if there is more to it than just the "fireworks"?

Geographical locations and artifacts are just as good of evidence supporting the Bible. It doesn't mean that it's a "slam-dunk" case in favor of believing the Bible but it at least has something to say when it comes to these places and findings. However, the question is whether or not theses findings can be trusted? Can you trust that whenever there is a finding supporting the Bible, that it is done apart from any biases. Can you trust those who has has evidence against the Bible that they are not using their biases?

To me, this is the most credible thing that I've read on the IC in a while. I could be misinterpreting you, but to me, it seems that you are suggesting that maybe it's more than logic and reason or some willingness to believe a fantasy that compels people to believe.

William James (a founder of modern psychology and the founder of modern pragmatics) wrote in his book 'The Varities of Religious Experiences' that there is this intuition,an internal mechanism - or a feeling, if you will, that is the principle religious experience that people who firmly believe have. He says that an intense spiritual experience requires no evidence, no logic, no reasoning. It is what it is and there is no denying it. What we may question is the explanation of that experience. When people have this experience, they more often than not attribute it to their faith and they look to their faith to recreate the experience. The faith may not make any sense to the outsider at all...but to the person who experienced this 'spiritual awakening', it makes perfect sense.

Based on William James analysis, he said that what the faith was in was of no consequence, so long as the faith existed. In fact, according to his research, the inability to have a spiritual experience or faith can lead to immense depression or worse. We actually see this in some of the most prominent philosophers who found all things spiritual to be absurd (Nietzche, father of nihilism, is a prime example). This is one of the reasons why I hesitate attacking the Bible outside of limited circles. In my opinion, unless a person is trying to advance their own personal knowledge, it is no benefit for me to poke holes in another's faith...especially considering the raw value that faith has.

 

[alissowack]

I mean more to say...what if it is proven that God created the world or Moses parted the Red sea or that Jesus did rise from the dead? So what? What did all of that accomplish? Was there a goal or agenda in those things happening? I've heard of miraculous things happening to people and it might make me give God praise, but at the end of the day they mean nothing. Knowing (or believing it happened) would not make me any richer or stop me from making mistakes; doing things wrong; prevent me from suffering a loss or keep me from being lied to.

 

[TX_Made713]

To me, this is the most credible thing that I've read on the IC in a while. I could be misinterpreting you, but to me, it seems that you are suggesting that maybe it's more than logic and reason or some willingness to believe a fantasy that compels people to believe.

William James (a founder of modern psychology and the founder of modern pragmatics) wrote in his book 'The Varities of Religious Experiences' that there is this intuition,an internal mechanism - or a feeling, if you will, that is the principle religious experience that people who firmly believe have. He says that an intense spiritual experience requires no evidence, no logic, no reasoning. It is what it is and there is no denying it. What we may question is the explanation of that experience. When people have this experience, they more often than not attribute it to their faith and they look to their faith to recreate the experience. The faith may not make any sense to the outsider at all...but to the person who experienced this 'spiritual awakening', it makes perfect sense.

Based on William James analysis, he said that what the faith was in was of no consequence, so long as the faith existed. In fact, according to his research, the inability to have a spiritual experience or faith can lead to immense depression or worse. We actually see this in some of the most prominent philosophers who found all things spiritual to be absurd (Nietzche, father of nihilism, is a prime example). This is one of the reasons why I hesitate attacking the Bible outside of limited circles. In my opinion, unless a person is trying to advance their own personal knowledge, it is no benefit for me to poke holes in another's faith...especially considering the raw value that faith has.

I like this guys way of thinking, he has a pretty credible and logical argument to present.

thing is, i agree with what was said earlier. It is all about YOU basically. The bible is nothing more than a belief. No different from a gang member worshipping that shit or even a cult. No matter how hard you try, the bible can be neither proven nor disproven. It just like trying to prove who is the best rapper alive....its all based on opinions