WHAT CONVINCED YOU?

Fanny Cradock

AtomicHorror wrote: »

They can't provide evidence that the error was made as they suggest, they can't show when it was introduced. And there's the issue. This is an error that is easy to detect. How many undetectable ones are there? More importantly, how many deliberate alterations were made to the various books when the number of copies was still small enough that we can expect never to find originals?

I'm not quite sure how you would provide evidence to either prove or disprove their suggestion. Any ideas? To my mind, they are simply proposing a reasonable explanation. Unless we can find evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to object to it.

As for the second part of your question, I believe that there exists excellent source material from antiquity for the NT - both in terms of quantity and the time from the events described. Approximately 5300 Greek manuscripts of the NT have been documented that date between the 1st and 5th century. As Bruce Metzeger said,

"Beatty Biblical Papyrus number one contains portions of the four gospels and the book of Acts, and it dates from the third century. Papyrus number two contains large portions of eight letters of Paul, plus portions of Hebrews, dating to about the year 200. Papyrus number three has a sizeable section of the book of Revelation, dating from the third century.

Another group of important papyrus manuscripts was purchased by a Swiss bibliophile, M. Martin Bodmer. The earliest of these, dating from about 200, contains about two-thirds of the gospel of John. Another papyrus, containing portions of the gospels of Luke and John, dates from the third century." Case for Christ, Strobel.

When you compare the NT to other works of antiquity, what has been amassed is very impressive. For instance, Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome - 20 copies written about 700 yrs after the event; Homer's Iliad - 650 copies between about 400 - 1000 yrs after composition; and Plato's Dialogues - 7 copies that date from over 1000 yrs after composition. Of course, the devil is in the details, but at a somewhat cursory glance, this seems impressive to me. I would have high confidence that the NT has been reproduced with an incredibly high degree of accuracy.

Dades

An impressive volume of work for men - but a bit of an odd way for the Creator of the Universe to get his message across...

2000 years later and there's still people in the Amazon basin waiting for the message!

AtomicHorror

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm not quite sure how you would provide evidence to either prove or disprove their suggestion. Any ideas?

No, but that's not really what I'm getting at. My point is that there is cause to assume the bible may be inaccurate in many places and that this may ultimately be undetectable. So a Christian must not accept the bible on blind authority because that places them in danger of acting against God's Word inadvertently. I'm suggesting that there a times when a Christian is required to look within, weigh up the benefit, the harm and their values of these things, and make a call on whether they subjectively believe that a given moral call within that text actually reflects what they consider to be the morals of God that reside within them.

Naturally I don't consider those subjective morals to have a supernatural origin, but I gather that many Christians (some of whom defer to the bible in all cases) do think that their morals are in some manner informed by God.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm not quite sure how you would provide To my mind, they are proposing a reasonable explanation.

I agree, it is a very reasonable explanation. But it is not one that can be supported by evidence at this time.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Unless we can find evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to object to the proposed explanation.

I don't object to it as a proposal. I object to it as a statement of fact. And my point is that this is simply a glaring example of an error in replication or translation somewhere in the chain. We've detected it, but only because of the internal contradiction. We're unable to trace it to the source nor identify when it was introduced.

So that raises the question of whether the rest of the bible itself should be held as infallible when it is quite possible that other undetectable errors or perhaps deliberate edits to the Word may remain within the text.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I believe that there exists excellent source material from antiquity for the NT - both in terms of quantity and the time from the events described. Approximately 5300 Greek manuscripts of the NT have been documented that date between the 1st and 5th century. As Bruce Metzeger said:

"Beatty Biblical Papyrus number one contains portions of the four gospels and the book of Acts, and it dates from the third century. Papyrus number two contains large portions of eight letters of Paul, plus portions of Hebrews, dating to about the year 200. Papyrus number three has a sizeable section of the book of Revelation, dating from the third century.

Another group of important papyrus manuscripts was purchased by a Swiss bibliophile, M. Martin Bodmer. The earliest of these, dating from about 200, contains about two-thirds of the gospel of John. Another papyrus, containing portions of the gospels of Luke and John, dates from the third century." Case for Christ, Strobel.

When you compare the NT to other works of antiquity, what has been amassed is impressive. For instance, Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome - 20 copies written about 700 yrs after the event; Homer's Iliad - 650 copies between about 400 - 1000 yrs after composition; and Plato's Dialogues - 7 copies that date from over 1000 yrs after composition. Of course, the devil is in the details, but at a somewhat cursory glance, this seems impressive to me. I would have high confidence that the NT has been reproduced with an incredibly high degree of accuracy.

I'm not at all disputing this. It is perhaps because of the incredible importance of this book to so many people that so much good source material is available. Yet where in all of this material can we conclusively resolve the contradiction in Samuel and others like it? And if we cannot even resolve these errors we have detected, what chance is there that other errors will be detected?

I've tried to raise this issue in the "Homosexuality as a sin" thread but nobody has taken me up on it. If 1) your sole reason for a given moral position is the Word of God and 2) your actions in line with that moral position affect your salvation then is it not then an incredible risk to allow a book with demonstrable errors and probably undetectable errors to entirely dictate your morals? Is it not wise to use your reason also?

To a certain extent, we can extend that to the BC&P debate as well- though that is obviously not so much a moral issue.

PDN

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

A reasonable explanation here. But maybe not so for those who subscribe to an inerrant bible.

Perfectly reasonable for those who subscribe to an inerrant Bible.

Inerrantists believe that the original manuscripts of Scripture were without error - not any subsequent copy. Any educated inerrantist knows that there are variant manscripts - hence one of the tasks of textual criticism is to try to ascertain as accurately as possible how the original would have read. Two Hebrew manuscripts, some Septuagint manuscripts and the Syriac render 2 Samuel 21:8 as "the five sons of Saul's daughter Merab" - and that is the reading preferred by many modern translations.

Tim_Murphy

PDN wrote: »

Inerrantists believe that the original manuscripts of Scripture were without error - not any subsequent copy.

Hi PDN,

I've just started reading Karen Armstrong's "The Bible: a biography" and she maintains that early versions of the old testaments were edited and changed regularly and were of course originally handed down orally. If this is true, which seems highly likely, then there were no 'original' versions of these manuscripts to speak of, they were works in progress for quiet a while. How then can 'the originals' be inerrant?

[edited for typos]

Zombrex

Tim_Murphy wrote: »

Hi PDN,

I've just started reading Karen Armstrong's "The Bible: a biography" and she maintains that early versions of the old testaments were edited and changed regularly and were of course originally handed down orally. This this is true, which seems highly likely, they were no 'original' versions of these manuscripts to speak of, the were works in progress for quiet a while. How then can 'the originals' be inerrant?

Was about to make the same point. It is highly unlikely that there are "original" manuscripts of the Old Testament, as it most likely started as an oral history.

The idea that these stories simply never changed in their entire time of being passed down is rather unbelievable (even given the context of discussing the likelihood a super powerful multidimensional sky god has a problem with gay people :pac:)

If for example the entire doctrine of homosexuality was introduced to the Old Testament 1000 years after the stories first emerged, how would we know? How would we know this didn't happen, how would we know it did?

Generally such a thing wouldn't matter, for example if it was the details of a Greek legend. But people are basing their systems of morality around this stuff.

AtomicHorror

PDN wrote: »

Inerrantists believe that the original manuscripts of Scripture were without error - not any subsequent copy.

Which is fair enough. But my question is whether you agree with statements such as Wolfsbane's on homosexuality. That he considers it immoral because that is what the Word says. But he can only be certain that it says so in the subsequent copies.

It's not possible to conclusively establish that the Word itself (the infallible original) actually does say this, as far as I'm aware the original manuscripts no longer exist (or never did exist, or cannot be found) for any of the books of the bible. Indeed it would be surprising if we could even find "third generation" copies in most cases. Perhaps you know the specifics there, I do not. So surely we need to look for confirmation on some more important issues elsewhere.

To describe a lifestyle as immoral when seems to do no apparent harm, and thus add fuel to pre-existing prejudice and fear, would appear to me to be one of those issues that Christians need to re-examine. Because if that aspect of the bible is an error driven by prevalent homophobia in antiquity, then this would imply that Christians may be contravening the true Word and thus are sinning when they condemn the homosexual lifestyle.

PDN wrote: »

Any educated inerrantist knows that there are variant manscripts - hence one of the tasks of textual criticism is to try to ascertain as accurately as possible how the original would have read. Two Hebrew manuscripts, some Septuagint manuscripts and the Syriac render 2 Samuel 21:8 as "the five sons of Saul's daughter Merab" - and that is the reading preferred by many modern translations.

Are all of the contradictions in the bible clearly resolvable? And how is it possible to detect errors which do not result in definitive factual errors or internal contradictions?

sukikettle

MADHATTER!!!!! over here
I liked your post a few posts ago. I was losing faith that you were a rational human being unlike me who is after all a new creation!!!!
They rejected Jesus my friend because He died on a cross. It was too awful and catastrophic they expected a king. He is a king but not an earthly thought of one.
He was so radical so different, He offended everybody! He was so anti-people pleasing. He reclined when He ate and He laughed and He had compassion and pity and He healed and He died for me. I'm nuts about Yeshua (Jesus) He's everything I want to be. The coolest type of dude. He'd be my ideal dinner party guest. I told Him once and I realised I'd be face to the floor in worship unable to speak to Him.

sukikettle

Atomic your logic and reasoning will not add a single second to your life and you cannot control the fact you will stand before God one day. And you cannot dismiss Him because you can't see Him. Just as you can't dismiss I'm here because you've never met me. You trust what you read therefore you are communicating.

AtomicHorror

sukikettle wrote: »

Atomic your logic and reasoning will not add a single second to your life

I imagine it might let me live longer in certain situations. Granted it won't help much if I'm, say, attacked by a bear. But then your faith won't do jack in that situation either.

sukikettle wrote: »

And you cannot dismiss Him because you can't see Him. Just as you can't dismiss I'm here because you've never met me. You trust what you read therefore you are communicating.

Nope. No idea what you're on about.

sukikettle

The bear would just pass me by

2Scoops

Yeah, just like that film, Grizzly Man.

AtomicHorror

sukikettle wrote: »

The bear would just pass me by

The hazards of belief.

eoin5

sukikettle wrote: »

The bear would just pass me by

Relinquish that ring, Ma-Ti needs it back to defeat Verminous Skumm

ChocolateSauce

sukikettle wrote: »

The bear would just pass me by

Maybe AtomicHorror and I can do an experiment to see if this is the case?

AtomicHorror

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

Maybe AtomicHorror and I can do an experiment to see if this is the case?

You old kidder! He's just joking folks! Oh yes.

The bear is ready.

javaboy

Reminds me of this: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%202:23-25;&version=31;

Soul Winner

Zillah wrote: »

So, eh, Soul Winner. When you encounter an argument that completely destroys your position, and...er, completely ignore it in your response...do you actually know what's happening or do you have a blackout moment or something?

I think that I must have a blackout moment somtimes. At least I can admit that! All be it a tad late in discussion I can't believe that this has come to life again. Well done SW for starting it!!! I just wish I had more time for Boards. You guys are brilliant!!!

Soul Winner

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm not quite sure how you would provide evidence to either prove or disprove their suggestion. Any ideas? To my mind, they are simply proposing a reasonable explanation. Unless we can find evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to object to it.

As for the second part of your question, I believe that there exists excellent source material from antiquity for the NT - both in terms of quantity and the time from the events described. Approximately 5300 Greek manuscripts of the NT have been documented that date between the 1st and 5th century. As Bruce Metzeger said,

"Beatty Biblical Papyrus number one contains portions of the four gospels and the book of Acts, and it dates from the third century. Papyrus number two contains large portions of eight letters of Paul, plus portions of Hebrews, dating to about the year 200. Papyrus number three has a sizeable section of the book of Revelation, dating from the third century.

Another group of important papyrus manuscripts was purchased by a Swiss bibliophile, M. Martin Bodmer. The earliest of these, dating from about 200, contains about two-thirds of the gospel of John. Another papyrus, containing portions of the gospels of Luke and John, dates from the third century." Case for Christ, Strobel.

When you compare the NT to other works of antiquity, what has been amassed is very impressive. For instance, Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome - 20 copies written about 700 yrs after the event; Homer's Iliad - 650 copies between about 400 - 1000 yrs after composition; and Plato's Dialogues - 7 copies that date from over 1000 yrs after composition. Of course, the devil is in the details, but at a somewhat cursory glance, this seems impressive to me. I would have high confidence that the NT has been reproduced with an incredibly high degree of accuracy.

TOP CLASS!!! Thank you FC...

Soul Winner

Zillah wrote: »

I also find it hysterical and staggering that you can on one hand assert that nothing at all existed and then clumsily segue into proposing that an omnipotent super intelligence was existant as if that wasn't a completely insane thing to say.

I absolutely agree. It is insane to SEGUE into that proposition. But what are the alternatives??? That everything came from nothing and by nothing, when there was not even the potential for anything?? OR that a being external (not part of what we perceive to 'BE!!!'), 'SPOKE' and everything became??? These are the choices like it or not, even if you postulate and infinite regress of universes, at some point it had to 'BEGIN', else we are faced with an infinite number of events that preceded our ‘present’ which would mean that we can never come to our present!!! Think of that for just one minute before responding

Soul Winner

Matt Holck wrote: »

“Come and ride the carousel cradled in the caverns.
Put pain aside and shirk the bell that once called to your hunger.
We will turn eternally brushing through each other.
We’ve shed our skin to earthen walls held closely in the under.”

F*** that sh*t... :eek::eek::eek::eek:

pH

Soul Winner wrote: »

F*** that sh*t... :eek::eek::eek::eek:

Ahhh the inevitable post.

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=58224183#post58224183

Dades

What the feck is going on with this thread? :pac:

*Wanders off grumbling*

Wibbs

Interesting debate.

womoma wrote: »

Belief in God can only ever be learned or contrived. Atheism is the "natural" state.

I wouldn't be so sure. Maybe as our knowledge of the universe grows it may become the natural state, but I would strongly suspect our brain biology is more geared to a sense of spirituality than not. You could argue its a outdated brain meme, but it's a very ancient one. The obvious reasons why it evolved are maybe as a psychological mechanism for coping with the extinction of self at death for a get go. The second part would be a way for our psychology to explain away things we don't know. Our expanding knowledge of the universe will more and more put paid to that need. You can see that already even with the faithful of many religions. The a la carte nature of many peoples faith. Ignore the obvious mistakes but keep the need for faith. Or they embrace religions they consider less "troublesome" from a scientific point of view. Buddhism gaining popularity would be an example of that. The usual response is "ahh but it's not a religion". Arguably true, but it is a spirituality and it seems many need that, however tenuous a spirituality it is. I suspect religion/spirituality will hold sway with the majority for the first reason for quite a while yet.

Soul Winner wrote:

I don't think it is. We know that the universe had a beginning right? And we don't know how it came to be, but most scientists accept that at some point in the finite past it did not exist.

Actually not quite. In a quantum loop universe model(which would be the most appealing to me), the universe expands, then over time slows down and then contracts, right down to the Planck distance and then expands again, then contracts etc etc forever. It doesn't require a singularity or indeed a beginning or an end.

Because our brains are universe bound we tend to only understand beginning and end as having meaning, because we see this in the macro world everyday. They don't really. Even if you go along with the basic big bang notion, there was no "before" as there was no time. The universe is eternal, basically because the very idea of eternity is bound within this universe and or it's reincarnations, so maybe the Hindus do have it right.:)

achtungbarry

sukikettle wrote: »

Atomic your logic and reasoning will not add a single second to your life and you cannot control the fact you will stand before God one day. And you cannot dismiss Him because you can't see Him. Just as you can't dismiss I'm here because you've never met me. You trust what you read therefore you are communicating.

Have you ever heard of Gareth37? I think you 2 would really get along.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

20goto10

Wibbs wrote: »

Maybe as our knowledge of the universe grows it may become the natural state, but I would strongly suspect our brain biology is more geared to a sense of spirituality than not.

Our brain is not geared to a sense of spirituality. Are you suggesting a child becomes religious by itself? It just knows there is a sense of God in the same way it knows how to suckle?

Religion and spirituality are engrained in peoples brains by their parents, family, schools and other influences. Its simply a matter of upbringing.

Dades

I think what Wibbs is suggesting is that people have a propensity to entertain the idea of a higher power.

Every culture has done it, albeit with different "powers" in mind.

Mr. Incognito

Reasons I don't believe in God.


Organised Religions

This is an aside really

Thousands of them. All screaming they have the right answer. Funny when you drill into them, be they cult (well, they're all cults) or officially tax exempted they all want more converts, money, and you to subscribe slavishly to their doctrine of thought, habit and bigoted hypocricy. No thank you, might as well join the army and get paid.
The truth is no-one knows, and anyone that clains they have the answers must immediately be discounted as a liar. The persuasion of the group mentality and tradition stops people from realising this simple truth.

Insufficient Knowledge, evidence.

We're here, someone/thing must have made us. This is flawed logic and a bit too simple. The big bang is a theory, a best guess. Maybe the universe was ALWAYS here or is a big loop. No-one knows. As linear creatures our basic model for time is linear, but time is an imaginary concept in our heads. Anything is possible. By subscribing to any belief I am, with no evidence only faith :rolleyes: discounting other viable interpretations.

The joke of a god/s that's peddled out

Burning bushes, bee-jee Jesus, Allah the avenger, Krishna the octopus hands, God the murderer in the old testament verses God the forgiver in the new. Ich don't think so. If you're up there superman, save me!


People's inherent stupidity.

People that watch x-factor for example and millions believed the earth was being invaded by Martians in the 1930's because Owell got himself a wireless. People, the majority of them, are well, thick. They are not thought to think, they are regimented through school, work and life and are happy little drones. It's pretty easy to manipulate people. 90% of Americans believe, for examlet that communism is evil and bad without ever actually sitting down and reading marxist writings and realising that, wow unions etc are actually from maxist concepts.(This is only an example, please lets not get into a socialist debate here)

Religions tools

I mean, seriously. God didn't write no book, and if he did he's a terrible writer. The bible is a collection of moral stories as tools, I mean, they're vague enough to cover practically anything, but then people go and peddle it as fact? huh? Get real. If I was an omnipitent being and I decided to write the mysteries of the universe I think I'd have something closer to star wars lol. If I have to hear about one more of Abrahams begats, well, that's as far as I got. Too boring. I'm sure the Koran is the same.
Grown men in dresses swinging burning insence isn't mysterious and magical, it's a bit sad if you need smoke and mirrors to distract the audience from, well your smoke and mirrors.

This whole faith thing.

Now this is what really gets my goat. You know when a child asks why is the sky blue, you don't say, well son, because of the light refracting off particles in the athmosphere, you say SHUT UP! because most people don't know why, so they lie. Religion is the same, it's easy to put your hands behind your back and pretend you know the answers when you have such a thing as faith to hide behind.

Whay happens when we die- ah you must have faith.
What's heaven like -ah you must have faith.
Was Jesus gay? - ah you must have faith.

I respect someone that say's, well chap, I really don't know, but when you can lie, and then present that lie as fact using faith to support it you can build a whole host of lies on the first lie.

For example.

Jesus was God= Lie,
Jesus founded a church= like
That church has suprememe moral authority= lie
That moral authority has decided condoms are a sin against god= lie.

People are so caught up in the last chain of the lie they forget about the whole pack of lies it is built on.

Evolution of thought

I believe we are evolving creatures. You can see this in our interpretation of religion. At first everything was a God, the wind, the sun, the trees, all had Gods. As we got a bit more advanced we rolled them into one. Things we didn't understand were "miracles" or "acts of Gods" as eclipses were once. Of course we have new explanations for things we still don't understand, like ghost and spirtuality etc, it's still convenient to file stuff under miracles/ gods will but I think that's just a little too simplistic. Today's miracles will probably be tomorrows science. I think God is a hang up we have that harks back. As we evolve I think we will have less need for a convenient omnipitent being to hang our ignorance on.

Religion causes more harm than good

There's a reason John Lennon's "Imagine" is up there with the best songs of all tiime consistently in polls. Religion's are generally based on the "love thy neighbour principle" and yet people fight over which God loves you more. Huh? Who cares, zealots- that's who, and they'll kill you for it!
Religions is a method of control and once you've opened that door you have 911, the cruisades, suicide bombers, religions wars etc. Of course I think that religion is a convenient excuse for people that have vested interests but this isn't the conspiracy forum so I'll leave it out.

Personal Note

It's quite one thing to know what you are against, it's quite another to know what you are for - Wind that shakes the Barley.
I've no intention of sh*tting all over everything. I'm an athiest because I don't believe in God. This doesn't mean I have a disbelief in everything. I believe that all energy in the universe is finite and everything is made up of the same stuff. Time is a concept in our heads, and this one energy exists as everything and everyone at the same time. When I die, I am converted into energy by the worms and back into earth, when the sun dies it's energy dissapetes into the universe to spawn new stars. I don't believe this energy is conscious, ie like a God, it merely is and we're all a part of it, connected. The universe balances out. If I commit horrible things it's merely another part of the same energy, that I will personally experience in my manifestation as that recipient. You might need to read that bit a few times to figure it out but it makes sense to me. I decided that when I was 12 and it seems pretty fair to me so I don't need some boring fear factor concepts as hell to motivate me to listen to some fat hypocrite on a Sunday or a reward system like heaven where i can go listen to Diana Ross records when I die. How droll. I'd HATE to be trapped as one person for eternity, but then, I have more imigination that most.

Make of that what you will.

Wibbs

20goto10 wrote: »

Our brain is not geared to a sense of spirituality. Are you suggesting a child becomes religious by itself? It just knows there is a sense of God in the same way it knows how to suckle?

Religion and spirituality are engrained in peoples brains by their parents, family, schools and other influences. Its simply a matter of upbringing.

What Dades wrote.

I am suggesting that a sense of higher power/god/spirit is inherent in our brain biology structure. There have been enough experiments done where people are subjected to strong magnetic fields on certain parts of the brain that can cause an "enlightenment" sense, an out of body experience, a feeling of a sense of oneness with the universe a sense of there being "something else". All that wacky stuff. The religious obviously will put their own name and interpretation that is comfortable to their own beliefs. This is where culture and upbringing come in.

But atheists have also felt this in the same experiment. Obviously from their position they will say that it's the brain causing this and it has no outside source and that's their take(and a large way to explain my take too).

It could well be a fault in the brain that we interpret as spirituality if we're so inclined. It could be an evolutionary adaptation that protected the individual from the concept of it's own extinction upon death. Indeed a few studies have shown the spiritual live longer on average. It could be a evolutionary emergent behaviour that gelled a social group together under the banner of their spirituality and proffered an advantage for our ancestors(even Neandertals appear to have had a spiritual sense if the grave deposits of ochre are anything to go by). It may have strengthened familial and community bonds. It may have reduced risky social behaviour in our ancestors. It may have reduced community tensions and explained those tensions away under the guise of a spirit world. This in turn may have given and advantage in an evolutionary sense and may explain why those religious groups live longer.

This has been part of humanity for a very very long time. Now it could be any number of things, but to deny that this experience itself doesn't exist as part of our humanity or that said experiences can be personally and obviously subjectively powerful to those who may believe it, is narrow minded and frankly daft. It even has overtones of the slightly adolescent "religious" zealot in some ways; "I believe something different to you hence you are WRONG! bah humbug:mad:". Obviously the atheist/agnostic has way more logic at their disposal, but the religious types claim their own logic.

That's one reason why I wouldn't identify as atheist, but agnostic. I would be very much more at the atheistic end of the scale, but the fact is I simply don't know. However massively unlikely there could be a flying spaghetti monster living in my cochlea. I suspect not, but I don't know. As I don't know for sure and neither does anyone else, the grey area of conjecture and acceptance of others beliefs is where I want to live. Or whatever floats your boat. Or as another poster put much better in another thread, "I don't care if you believe in a stone, so long as you don't throw it at me".

20goto10

Dades wrote: »

I think what Wibbs is suggesting is that people have a propensity to entertain the idea of a higher power.

Every culture has done it, albeit with different "powers" in mind.

OK, but why do they have a propensity? I'm saying its because of the way people are raised. If all the adults around you are delusional then their influence is going to make you delusional too. Particularly when their methods are forceful.