Sunday, February 22, 2009
thought of the day.221
Though many claim the bible is the Word of God, there is in fact not a single sentence that rings of truth, goodness or insight into the workings of the universe that can only be explained as divine inspiration. Instead, we find nothing more than what one would expect from the minds of primitive men living several thousand years ago.
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12 comments:
I am a bit confused as to what you are saying here.
Are you saying that there is not a single line of truth in all of the Bible?
Please clarify.
No, I am simply saying that there is not a single sentence that is remarkable. Not a single sentence that stands out as being different than what we would expect from a book written thousands of years ago. Not a single sentence that is so beautiful—so beyond the knowledge of humankind—that it could only have been inspired by a God. Not one.
That's an interesting opinion that you have.
Did you know that if every Bible on the face of the planet were destroyed, every book, chapter and verse could be reconstructed by quotes in other books? There are many people out there who think the Bible is a fountain of profundity. If what you are saying is true, that there is nothing remarkable in the Bible, you'd think people wouldn't quote it as often as they do. This is what I would expect of a book inspired by God.
The Bible is still the world's best selling book. Another attribute I would expect only from a book inspired by God.
You should check out a book by Alvin J Schmidt, called How Christianity Changed the World.
I've mentioned only fact. Your biased thoughts only reflect you're hatred for the Bible.
But, I guess you are entitled to your opinion.
If greater popularity means that a book is inspired by god, maybe the Harry Potter series will be our next holy book.
And I agree. I would challenge any christian to identify ONE THING in the bible that showed that they had an inkling of the future, or had superior wisdom to other people in their day. I can cite many, many examples in the bible that show that the writers DID NOT KNOW of the future, and DID NOT have superior wisdom. It is clear that we have evolved since the bible days; in most societies today, we have a much lower tolerance for the excess violence, mysogeny and abuses that were commonplace in that time. Many of these terrible deeds were attributed to god himself. If I want to be inspired by wisdom, I choose not to read about god killing people, having women raped, sacrificing animals, and mangling children. I prefer my reading materials to be transcendant; to inspire me to be a better person than I am.
you maybe correct that "not a single sentence has the ring of truth". However, there is a cumulative case for it. The prophecies of Daniel (& many others) where all treated by many as being "after the fact" but since the dead sea scrolls predate the events and the text was unchanged they could not sustain such a view. Thus since the prophecies had come to pass this indicates your comment to be in error.
Janet,
I didn't say popularity proves inspiration. It does prove that a ton of people still believe the Bible is beautiful, profound.
None of this proves anything necessarily, but If God did inspire a book then I would expect it to be the most quoted book ever, the most controversial book ever, and the best selling book ever, the most attacked book ever, the most scrutinized book ever and so on and so forth.
Greetings and welcome mrytlechurch!
To be clear, I did not say there is not truth, beauty, wisdom, history, prophecy (a common idea not at all unique to the Israelites) etc in the bible. But what little there is of such things are nothing remarkable, nothing unexpected, nothing that any group of humans living at that time could have written.
To make an extraordinary claim such as the bible being the Word of God and want to be taken seriously means having to have extraordinary evidence to back up such a claim The bible fails miserably in that regard.
Myrtle,
Thanks very much for joining the conversation and welcome! Hope you will share your thoughts often. I agree with you that prophecy, if it was proven to be accurate, would be evidence for divine inspiration. However, I have yet to be impressed with any biblical prophecy but am certainly open to you making a case for it.
you might care to spend some time watching this:
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?hl=en&ei=3bGiSZSbIOLEjAfAo8TGCw&resnum=1&q=extraordinary%20claims%20require&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
Sorry, the last link doesnt work. try google video search for:
The Bible: The Word of GOD? Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Evidence!
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