Bible criticism

[Weatherman2020]

According to the bible Adam lived to be 930 years old. But who could really believe in the bible myth of Adam and Eve? Well I guess we have a few on this forum.

According to your thinking how old is the earth? I see on a bible site they think it is only six thousand years.

Who can believe an explosion creates order?
See what Nobel Prize winner Dr Collins says about his journey from Athiesm to knowing God. His work in discovering the human genome opened his eyes.

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God - CNN.com

The late great Frank Pastore who used to be an athiest breaks it down:

Frank Pastore - Why Atheism Fails: The Four Big Bangs

 

[Weatherman2020]

Of course Noah lived to 950. Prior the flood the earth was covered in clouds, which is stated in the Bible and supported by scientific environmental theories. It blocked the Suns radiation. Factor in the gene pool getting more and more corrupt with every copy made, it makes sense. Fits right into the ages of people written through the thousands of years the letters of the Bible were written.

So people five thousand years ago lived to nearly a thousand years old. Well how come there is no record of Egyptian pharaohs living to even one hundred years.

Egyptian pharaohs existed long after the flood, long after the Tower of Babel.

But, but , but. The bible account of the flood is surely bunk. Nobody believes it really happened do they?
In those times a local flood would have seemed to be the whole earth to people who thought it was flat.

I have a copy of the oldest book ever written, 'The epic of Gilgamesh' and it talks of a great flood too.

Only about 9-10 billion people have believed.

 

[Dajjal]

Only about 9-10 billion people have believed.

Flood myths are common in old texts, The epic of Gilgamesh found written on stone tablets, is from earlier than 2000 bc it tells of the search for immortality and of a great flood.

 

[Weatherman2020]

Only about 9-10 billion people have believed.

Flood myths are common in old texts, The epic of Gilgamesh found written on stone tablets, is from earlier than 2000 bc it tells of the search for immortality and of a great flood.

Of course the flood story is common. We are all descendents from those who survived it.

 

[Weatherman2020]

I am tired of reading all the bible thumping threads telling us the bible is the word of God, and we will burn in hell if we do not believe it. So here is a thread to dismantle the bible and prove it cannot be from God, and it has not been preserved unchanged.
I will be posting many links and doing some cut and paste jobs, because I am no bible expert, but I know a lot of work has been done on this by others.

The first point I would like to raise is the age of Noah and other so called prophets. The bible says Noah lived to be 950 years old, but I read somewhere that this is now believed to be a mistake in the translation of the numbers from an early bible, by a scribe that did not understand the numbering system.
I will research this and post links.

To be going on with here are a couple of links to critical pages.

Bible Babble - The Holy Bible and it's Errors, Contradictions, and so on.

Biblical scientific errors - RationalWiki

The biggest question is if there is anything that would make you believe?

If the answer is yes, what?
If the answer is no, you have a closed mind and are a waste of time.

 

[Dajjal]

Here is an article about the size of Noah's ark. For reference for later discussion.

the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make in the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side therof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." (Gen. 6:14-16)

A cubit is the distance between an adult’s elbow and tip of the finger, no less than 18-inches [45.72 centimeters]. (Scene from The World that Perished.)

Most Hebrew scholars believe the cubit to have been no less than 18 inches long [45.72 centimeters]. This means that the Ark would have been at least 450 feet long [137.16 meters], 75 feet wide [22.86 meters] and 45 feet high [13.716000000000001 meters].

 

[Dajjal]

The biggest question is if there is anything that would make you believe?

If the answer is yes, what?
If the answer is no, you have a closed mind and are a waste of time.

Believe what, the bunk in the old testament? That says the world is flat and its six thousand years old and Jonah was swallowed by a whale, etc, etc. I hardly think so.

 

[Weatherman2020]

The biggest question is if there is anything that would make you believe?

If the answer is yes, what?
If the answer is no, you have a closed mind and are a waste of time.

Believe what, the bunk in the old testament? That says the world is flat and its six thousand years old and Jonah was swallowed by a whale, etc, etc. I hardly think so.

So you have a closed mind and chose to live in a bubble.

{click}

 

[the_human_being]

I am tired of reading all the bible thumping threads telling us the bible is the word of God, and we will burn in hell if we do not believe it. So here is a thread to dismantle the bible and prove it cannot be from God, and it has not been preserved unchanged.
I will be posting many links and doing some cut and paste jobs, because I am no bible expert, but I know a lot of work has been done on this by others.

The first point I would like to raise is the age of Noah and other so called prophets. The bible says Noah lived to be 950 years old, but I read somewhere that this is now believed to be a mistake in the translation of the numbers from an early bible, by a scribe that did not understand the numbering system.
I will research this and post links.

To be going on with here are a couple of links to critical pages.

Bible Babble - The Holy Bible and it's Errors, Contradictions, and so on.

Biblical scientific errors - RationalWiki

First, allow me to congratulate you on learning to cut and paste. My daughter taught my ten years old grandson recently. He picked it up within about ten minutes.

You admit up front that you are no Bible expert. No harm there. Next, you submit that you will be cutting and pasting links to the works of others on the subject you are attempting to disprove using other people's work to disprove a subject you admit you have little knowledge. Hee Hee Hee snicker snicker snort.
Where do these folks come from? You can't make this up. Hee Hee Hee.

 

[Dajjal]

The biggest question is if there is anything that would make you believe?

If the answer is yes, what?
If the answer is no, you have a closed mind and are a waste of time.

Believe what, the bunk in the old testament? That says the world is flat and its six thousand years old and Jonah was swallowed by a whale, etc, etc. I hardly think so.

So you have a closed mind and chose to live in a bubble.

{click}

I happen to have some fairly controversial beliefs myself. Such as there probably is a God, and that we reincarnate many times on different planets. See my thread ' spiritual teachings'

But I am not about to believe anyone lived in a whale. Facts tell me it is not possible. For one thing there is only one whale with a throat wide enough to swallow a man and that is a sperm whale, and nobody could live in it's stomach. All other larger whales are plankton eaters with very narrow throats.

 

[yiostheoy]

Nit picking a 3400 year old manuscript is not a very useful activity. You are just wasting your time.

The more salient thing to get out of the Judaeo/Christian Bible is the gist of the whole matter.

First it should be noted that the codex book which we call a Bible is really a library.

Secondly it has two fundamentally different parts, an older part and a newer part, although both of which are ancient.

So the book which is really a library is really two libraries.

Third, its many subtitles or scrolls have each been retranscribed many times over the past 34 centuries. Mistakes therefore do creep in.

Forth it is literally difficult if not impossible to literally translate something from two ancient languages (ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek) into a modern language that did not even exist 1000 years ago (English).

It is also good to keep in mind who its ultimate authors were.

For the older portion of the library, Moses was the first author and Nehemiah was the last, not counting the Maccabees who were more or less just historians not prophets. The date range of the older portion is from 1450 BCE to 450 BCE.

For the more recent but still ancient portion of the library, Jesus is the ultimate author with St. Paul and St. Luke being secondary additional authors. Whereas the other authors of the more recent portion of the library had known Jesus personally during their lives, Paul and Luke were disciples who joined Christianity after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension.

Therefore if there are conflicts in the material, then priority must be given to the earlier authors.

Thus Moses takes precedence over the others in the older library, while Matthew, Mark, John, James, and Jude take precedence over Paul and Luke.

Finally, you need to grow up and debunk the famous Protestant myth that the hand of God reached down from Heaven and wrote the Bible cover to cover with quill and ink in English perfectly word for word. As much as Protestants love to believe this faerie tale, Catholics at least appreciate that there is a Latin translation, preceded by a Greek translation, which for the older portion of the library is also preceded by a Hebrew original version.

The most anyone can get out of the Bible is an appreciation for the ethics of Moses and of the Prophets and of Jesus and His Apostles (Matthew, John, Jude) and Evangelists (Mark, Luke, James, Paul).

Most notable are Moses' 10 commandments, his numerous other statutes and rules, Jesus' Golden Rule and other sermons, and Peter and Paul's interpretations of these.

Ultimately you should read the book carefully several times and come to understand it. It is noteworthy that no modern Christian churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Revivalist, Restorationist, etc.) follows the prescriptions and proscriptions laid out in the Bible literally. They are all convoluted somehow.

So you are on your own, as is usual, on this Earth, to figure out what to do on your own.

You have basically 3 choices.

You can become some form of literal Theist and thus accept whatever error your particular preferred sect of Christianity imposes on you.

Or you can become Deist and follow the spirit of the Bible but not the letter of the law.

Or you can become irreligious and call yourself an atheist or an agnostic.

Either way, whichever of the 3 ways that you choose, you will still be responsible for your own ethics and behavior to someone somewhere. It may be the secular law that judges you. It may be the company of the thieves and villains that you keep. Or it may be a God in Heaven. Ultimately however someone will judge you.

So choose well, since your life and your soul depend on it.

 

[hobelim]

I happen to have some fairly controversial beliefs myself. Such as there probably is a God, and that we reincarnate many times on different planets. See my thread ' spiritual teachings'

But I am not about to believe anyone lived in a whale. Facts tell me it is not possible. For one thing there is only one whale with a throat wide enough to swallow a man and that is a sperm whale, and nobody could live in it's stomach. All other larger whales are plankton eaters with very narrow throats.

You need to try and think poetically when reading a story like that.

Being caught in the belly of the beast does not necessarily have anything to do with a fish literally.

Wasn't dagon, an ancient Semitic deity, represented as half man half fish?

 

[Dajjal]

Nit picking a 3400 year old manuscript is not a very useful activity. You are just wasting your time.

Thanks, I have opinions of my own about God which go back to the 1960's when I rejected the God of wrath in the bible, and started a long search for understanding of occultism and spiritualism. I will bounce my thread ' spiritual teachings' for reference.

 

[yiostheoy]

The biggest question is if there is anything that would make you believe?

If the answer is yes, what?
If the answer is no, you have a closed mind and are a waste of time.

Believe what, the bunk in the old testament? That says the world is flat and its six thousand years old and Jonah was swallowed by a whale, etc, etc. I hardly think so.

So you have a closed mind and chose to live in a bubble.

{click}

I happen to have some fairly controversial beliefs myself. Such as there probably is a God, and that we reincarnate many times on different planets. See my thread ' spiritual teachings'

But I am not about to believe anyone lived in a whale. Facts tell me it is not possible. For one thing there is only one whale with a throat wide enough to swallow a man and that is a sperm whale, and nobody could live in it's stomach. All other larger whales are plankton eaters with very narrow throats.

The most perceptive philosophers, starting with Socrates, believed in a God and in Immortality as well.

As far as a man in the belly of a great fish, that sounds like a fish story to me as well.

When you go to bars you tell fish stories like that.

If the others are drunk enough they will believe you.

 

[yiostheoy]

Nit picking a 3400 year old manuscript is not a very useful activity. You are just wasting your time.

Thanks, I have opinions of my own about God which go back to the 1960's when I rejected the God of wrath in the bible, and started a long search for understanding of occultism and spiritualism. I will bounce my thread ' spiritual teachings' for reference.

Judaism does not work for everybody.

Neither does hell fired and damnation Protestant Christianity.

 

[Dajjal]

Nit picking a 3400 year old manuscript is not a very useful activity. You are just wasting your time.

Thanks, I have opinions of my own about God which go back to the 1960's when I rejected the God of wrath in the bible, and started a long search for understanding of occultism and spiritualism. I will bounce my thread ' spiritual teachings' for reference.

Judaism does not work for everybody.

Neither does hell fired and damnation Protestant Christianity.

There is so much uncontested bible thumping going on here that I felt the need to contest it. I am willing to read the bible to criticise it, just as I have read the Quran. I have read the Quran three times since 9/11 because I wanted to understand the mindset of Muslims. I usually content myself with criticism of the Quran and started a thread on it called ' Is the Quran God's word' But I have read enough of Christians preaching hellfire on this forum, to figure they need criticising too.

 

[the_human_being]

I'm thinking about starting an OP about nuclear fusion. I don't know anything about it but I can search the internet and cut and paste. Now, if anyone takes exception to what I cut and past on the subject, they will need to contact the authors of the information I cut and pasted since I know nothing about the subject myself.

 

[Dajjal]

I'm thinking about starting an OP about nuclear fusion. I don't know anything about it but I can search the internet and cut and paste. Now, if anyone takes exception to what I cut and past on the subject, they will need to contact the authors of the information I cut and pasted since I know nothing about the subject myself.

I was in a bible class in the 1960's and when I discovered that everyone else there agreed God burns people in eternal hellfire I walked out . Since then I have studied many things like spiritualism and occultism. So I have some knowledge, and when I find a forum over run with people preaching hellfire, I figure it is time to have my say.

There is also the matter that I am not dealing with something I am not capable of understanding like nuclear physics. I am dealing with bible texts that I can read in English, and the bible can be subjected to criticism just like any other book.

 

[IsaacNewton]

The outright ludicrous claims in much of the bible are too numerous to list.

A literal talking snake.

The fact that human beings, at the Council of Nicea, kept and tossed out various 'books of the lord'. In other words human beings decided which of 'god's words' should be included in a book, and which should be discarded and forgotten. Really? You get to decide which of 'god's words' to follow and which to ignore?

On second thought that is exactly how kristians view 'the word of god' today. Evangelicals in the US have interpreted the bible to allow for torture and hating groups of people they don't like.

 

[the_human_being]

I'm thinking about starting an OP about nuclear fusion. I don't know anything about it but I can search the internet and cut and paste. Now, if anyone takes exception to what I cut and past on the subject, they will need to contact the authors of the information I cut and pasted since I know nothing about the subject myself.

I was in a bible class in the 1960's and when I discovered that everyone else there agreed God burns people in eternal hellfire I walked out . Since then I have studied many things like spiritualism and occultism. So I have some knowledge, and when I find a forum over run with people preaching hellfire, I figure it is time to have my say.

There is also the matter that I am not dealing with something I am not capable of understanding like nuclear physics. I am dealing with bible texts that I can read in English, and the bible can be subjected to criticism just like any other book.

Apparently you still don't understand a whole lot about it or you would realize that God has condemned no one to a place of punishment as of this date. Hell is merely the grave. The dead are dead and inactive and will remain so until Christ returns. See, you did learn something today.