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Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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If that’s the case or not.. I don’t want to waste any time.
I lost a lot of my life and time due to being a Christian.
Anytime you feel your ocd kicking in and you need to vent or get a different prospective on your repeating religious thought...feel free to post.
@Italianish OP
I am not an expert on the bible as many are here. But I do know the contradictions are "legion" in the bible. I could write 5000 words on what is wrong with simply the first few lines of genesis.
To me, none of it even really matters. It is a book, written, heavily edited, heavily translated, heavily plagiarized, (to and from,) with a 1000 different versions, for roughly 2000 years.
To anyone that is not involved in the religion the book describes, it is obvious what it is. A book written by humans, for a certain group of humans at a certain time. And since all the important stuff is not verifiable in any way. It is a book of fiction. To me the entire works of the bible does nothing but help illustrate/support that the book is just fiction, with none of it showing that the ideas therin are actually in any sort of way, non-fiction/reality. Zero way to evidence anything whatever holy book the person ascribes to.
I am grateful to be welcomed and treated with the kindness all of You have treated Me with.
I’ve been watching more videos from nonstamp collector and it’s been helping me a lot, and I sometime go back to reading what some of You have posted here, its helpful.. and as I open up more and will have a strong foundation to stand on about The Bible being false which I plainly see and that I don’t have to be a slave to scriptures anymore. Those videos I’ve been watching also helped me realize that there really isn’t much moral standard in the Bible with the exceptional love your neighbor as yourself, treat others the way you want to be treated.. possible 1st Corinthians 13 which is good info.. yet it doesn’t show the God of the Old Testament which is believed to be. ( this book and verse explains love)
Almost no moral compass. And I might not be the first to say this here.. but according to the Bible, if I got married. God would want me to love my wife for him, not me, not her.. and that my marriage would be an act of worship and servitude rather than something totally enjoyable and free.
@talianish: There are thousands of contradictions and over 500,000 errors in your modern King James Bible. My suggestion is that you get the audio files as there is too much information to cover in a single post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhM5lbVBgkk&t=45s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lBHmpaYUHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE&t=385s
@italianish
Currently it shows in your profile that you are still a Christian.
do you know when you change your faith you can change your Christian status to Atheist as well?
Just saying
Thank You, you’re all heroes to me.
@Italianish
You are very kind. I hope you find peace and contentment.
I find that it's nothing more than ambiguity in the text which gives rise to most
of the alleged 'contradictions'.
That very SAME ambiguity likewise affords me equally the ability to harmonize those supposed contradictions - and do so with sufficient confidence that my certainty and trust in the bible remains intact.
@Lion IRC: I find that it's nothing more than ambiguity in the text which gives rise to most
of the alleged 'contradictions'.
I would find ambiguity troubling in a legal document or the owner manual of my car, yet you seem to find it acceptable in your handbook for life and the afterlife. How does that work? For example, is killing right or wrong?
Do you think the ambiguity comes from the inadequate writing and translating skills of the men who produced the Bible, or was it deliberately put there by a god that enjoys confusing people and watching them squabble over scriptural minutiae?
Any set of conflicting statements expressed in sufficiently ambiguous language can be reconciled, but that doesn't make them trustworthy. Quite the contrary. So I don't understand why ambiguity allows you maintain your trust in the Bible.
@ Lion
Aaaaaawwwwww shit, not more bible hermeneutics....what a crock of crap that little apologetic nonsense is indeed. The Magimix of words.
It's the (atheist) counter-apologist who has to apply hermeneutics in order to assert that a contradiction exists.
Since hermeneutics is defined as:
"the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible or literary texts."
I'd say you are correct. You do have to interpret the words before you assert that there are contradictions. So what? Feel free to logically argue against any of those interpretations, you can't just wave them away.
Sometimes it's a nil-all-draw.
The bible skeptic asserts that "purple" is a contradiction of "scarlet". (Jesus' robe.)
I can equally assert that purple is a subjective perception of color.
@Lyin, (oops wrong spellin)
Except no one gives a ff about the color of something.
We are talking real contradictions, like "Thou shalt not kill" v. "Kill them all—old and young, girls and women and little children."
Or am I interpreting those incorrectly?
You realise that's God giving orders, right?
Is a traffic signal 'contradicting' itself by changing from green to red?
@Lion: Another idiotic example. WOW! How do you even function in this world?
@Lyin,
Okay, we've established you are really, really bad at composing metaphors.
Let's make the metaphor coherent.
If the traffic light told me, "if I'm red you must stop" and then later told me that "if I'm red you must go", then it would be a coherent metaphor to something telling you "don't kill" and then later telling you "kill".
You have obviously been taught what to think and not how to think.
@ Lion IRC
"You realise that's God giving orders, right?
Is a traffic signal 'contradicting' itself by changing from green to red?"
So if your god commands to murder innocent children, that is OK with you? You seem to have strayed into morality from god.
Lion IRC
"I can equally assert that purple is a subjective perception of color."
Yair. I learned that at age 12, at school. This kid and I were arguing about the colour of the pillars of the school building. I said they were maroon. He insisted they were was purple. So we compared a few things. Turned out that he saw purple where I saw maroon. We were both right and both wrong
As for biblical hermeneutics, I'm afraid I see it in as in the same general area as theology and apologetics. The most extreme form of
hermeneutics I've run across is the pesher technique. Barbara Thiering found an entire corpus of hidden meaning in the New Testament.Pretty sure there is a similar tradition for theTorah.
"Barbara Thiering is an Australian woman*** who has written several books attacking orthodox Christianity. Her basic thesis is that the New Testament was written in a code which only she has discovered. Although her outlandish ideas have absolutely no support in the scholarly world. She is unique in dating the Dead Sea Scrolls to the time of Christianity, although radiocarbon and handwriting tests put them mostly in the 1st and 2nd centuries bc."
https://creation.com/barbara-thiering-a-short-critique
When I am in danger of becoming baffled by bullshit, I remind myself that so far so no one has managed to argue god into or out of existence.
Thought for today " Theology; The effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing" (H L Mencken)
Addendum: Sorry to be a noodge: As I understand it, the commandment "Thou shall not kill" is "thou shalt commit no murder'" in the original Hebrew. This a critical distinction. A nomadic bronze age tribe tended to consider strangers as enemies. One was allowed to kill such. 'Murder' was to kill a member of one's own quite small tribe. In western civilisation neither war nor capital punishment have conveniently not been considered murder.
*** to be fair "Barbara Elizabeth Thiering (15 November 1930 – 16 November 2015) was an Australian historian, theologian, and Biblical exegete specialising in the origins of the early Christian Church.[1] In books and journal articles, she challenged Christian orthodoxy, espousing the view that new findings present alternative answers to its supernatural beliefs. Her analysis has been rejected by both New Testament scholars and scholars in Judaism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Thiering
I've read Ms Thiering.
I have her book "Jesus the Man".
Nothing new or ground breaking.
@Lion Re: "It's the (atheist) counter-apologist who has to apply hermeneutics in order to assert that a contradiction exists."
Huh???... *rubbing eyes and reading again*... Uhhh... Dang... That didn't help...
Soooo... Along that same line of "reasoning", then maybe it is the (aclausists) counter-Rudolphist who has to apply hermeneutics in order to assert that a contradiction exists between Santa and the story of Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer? Wow, I'm really confused now.
Oh, and once again, I must repeat it would be in the best interest of everybody if you would start your own thread on this matter. It will be easier to follow, and you will likely get much better response. Just trying to be friendly and helpful here... *grin*...
Start a *new* thread about bible contradictions?
Whats wrong with this thread?
@Lion Re: "Start a *new* thread about bible contradictions?
Whats wrong with this thread?"
Whoops. My bad. You are correct. Got my thread titles mixed up. My apologies. As for your "defending your religion" in the other thread, though, it actually would be a good idea to start a thread of your own.
Inspired by nonstampcollector, maybe we can turn this into a quiz show!
@Lion IRC
According to the Bible: How many horsemen did David capture in his victory over king Hadadezer?
If you were to read historical newspapers from WW2 you would see differing numbers of casualties and prisoners of war being captured. These are not contradictions.
Likewise, the bible records differing numbers.
@Lion IRC....
"If you were to read historical newspapers from WW2 you would see differing numbers of casualties and prisoners of war being captured. These are not contradictions."
No … they are not contradictions ……. neither are they the truth...… they are propaganda...…. made up numbers & stories to serve a purpose.....
BUT I do agree...."Likewise, the bible records differing numbers."
The bible too is propaganda...… stories and numbers made up to serve a certain narrative ….
@Lion Re: "Likewise, the bible records differing numbers."
Soooooo.... You are saying your PERFECT all-knowing/all-powerful god that supposedly created the entire universe does not know how to count?... *scratching chin*.... Hmmm.... Fascinating...
No.
Where did I say anything of the sort?
Did you read what I wrote?
Two observers of the same event albeit at different times can both be correct notwithstanding their differing accounts.
@ Lion IRC
"Two observers of the same event albeit at different times can both be correct notwithstanding their differing accounts."
How does that work? If there are two observers at two different times, one had to be present, and one had to be absent.
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