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What makes the Bible so believable for people?

BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
sojourner said:
I require neither your pity nor your counsel. And don’t try to undermine my credibility with an intimation of being my emotionally unstable. Just debate the issues honestly, if you can.
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I can, because Christianity is not based on faith, but on truth. I'd love to see someone with your intellect and zeal commit/recommit to the historic, true faith.
 
H

Hawkins

Well-Known Member
Kelly of the Phoenix said:
Who witnessed magi talking to Herod?

Who witnessed Jesus praying while everyone was asleep?

Who witnessed Judas having secret meetings with Jewish clergy?

Who witnessed Jesus talking with Satan in the middle of nowhere?

Who witnessed the resurrection (as in, watched a corpse get up and walk out of the tomb)?

That's what I thought.
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The point is, you may say the same to all kinds of human history.

This is the nature of human witnessing. In the case of the lack of a third person, history can still be recorded about conversations between 2 persons.

Read some history to get a clue. Or continue to apply your criteria to deny human history.

In the Bible, there are actually a lot are between God and Moses only. However, it remains the only way to use Moses' claim as eye-witness account. If you choose to reject, it only means that no humans can ever reach such a truth in the case that it's a truth!
 
BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
SkepticThinker said:
Truth that you can't demonstrate isn't truth to me.
You're just trying to replace faith with truth. It doesn't work.
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You are partially correct, I lack the ability to prove God to you, fortunately, you and God can meet, and He can prove He exists to you, for the asking.
 
Kelly of the Phoenix

Kelly of the Phoenix

Well-Known Member
sojourner said:
And, from a literary standpoint, the storyteller, or narrator, knows everything.
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Quite true. They know everything as long as they made it up in the first place. Realistically, they COULDN'T know such things and are telling falsehoods.

Hawkins said:
The point is, you may say the same to all kinds of human history.
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If, say, Ancient Famous Guy A said "Hey, when I went to that one town over there, I totally drew a picture of my --" and you dig up said town and find said pic, then this is different than a story with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Let's say I'm reading a story about Pompeii. Are you telling me it's the same story as Jesus turning water into wine, even though I can go to Pompeii and see the destruction for myself?
 
BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
sojourner said:
That’s, unfortunately for you, NOT the historic faith. That didn’t happen until the 1500s.
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Huh? The Bible says, "Follow the doctrine in these writings!" Jude says (already at the time of writing) to contend for the apostolic faith!

The Roman "church" has been off since its beginnings, there were always dissenters, reformers.
 
sojourner

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
BilliardsBall said:
Huh? The Bible says, "Follow the doctrine in these writings!" Jude says (already at the time of writing) to contend for the apostolic faith!

The Roman "church" has been off since its beginnings, there were always dissenters, reformers.
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The apostolic faith is not wholly contained in the Bible, though. Sola scriptura is a product of the Reformation. What you refer to as somehow not real by your use of quotation marks is the spiritual DNA you inherited. Your own faith cannot supersede it, because it has informed your faith and stands as a foundation to it. We can’t just say, “I have no need of my foot,” as Jesus says.
 
BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
sojourner said:
The apostolic faith is not wholly contained in the Bible, though. Sola scriptura is a product of the Reformation. What you refer to as somehow not real by your use of quotation marks is the spiritual DNA you inherited. Your own faith cannot supersede it, because it has informed your faith and stands as a foundation to it. We can’t just say, “I have no need of my foot,” as Jesus says.
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The reformers quoted scriptures where scripture says itself is all-sufficient for doctrine--they may have put a name "sola scriptura" to an already-established Bible practice. I can find sola scriptura or if you prefer, the vast supremacy of scriptures in the Tanakh, many centuries before Christ.

Again, Jude tells us to fight for the faith as delivered to the apostles of Jesus. I would say the RCC was always off, in multiple doctrines, and created traditions centuries after scripture was established. One clue is the many thousands of verses that early church leaders quoted in correspondence, before the close of even the 2nd century...
 
Samantha Rinne

Samantha Rinne

Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
Nowhere Man said:
Honestly I can't think of a single thing.

Nobody knows who wrote it, with any degree of certainty. No names of the original authors, nobody knows who was on the Council of Trent , Council of Nicea Etc.

It's obviously been redacted , has incomplete information and has gaps in its narratives. Side-by-side variations are noted in each version of the Bible that exist today to substantiate that is indeed the case.

The Bible clearly is not a divinely inspired collection of books either , evidenced by Christianity's vast and varied amount of denominations and sects, who, to this day remain visibly at odds with ongoing issues over interpretation and meaning, making it clear there's no evidence of any type of guiding hand at play to indicate it now or was ever divinely inspired to begin with at its inception.

There's no real support or proofs to the notion of divine harmonization between one author with another throughout the Testaments over significant periods of time to substantiate any type of harmony exists because each subsequent book could be "harmonized" with each proceeding book by simply reading what each proceeding book said and conveniently changing the subsequent book to "fit" each narrative to uphold the claim that the subsequent authors did not know what the preceding authors wrote making such alleged harmony between books a divine proof a Biblical accuracy and credibility.

Oral tradition is actually worthless. If it wasn't, it could have been used and demonstrated today as a living testament of reliability and accuracy but it isn't for a reason. Obvious reasons.

Hence the requirement for writing something down , and we've seen how effective that can be.


Why would anybody be willing to think the Bible is for one reason or another a proper foundation to base an entire religion on and in cases, people's own lives to point of believability that it would trump logic and science?
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Because... it's not about the writers. It's not even about the words. It's about the alternative. The alternative at the time was the great sin and disorder around the time of the Flood. Yet such was wiped away clean.

The Bible is true, not factual. That is to say, you won't expect it to agree with modern astronomy in terms of its definition of what the cosmos is like. And I think it classifies insects as birds in one place. It's not factual. But it's true.

The Bible provides a guide for an enrire culture to live under (the Jews) then proceeds to show how even that pales in comparison to God's true plan, which is far greater.
 
sojourner

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
BilliardsBall said:
The reformers quoted scriptures where scripture says itself is all-sufficient for doctrine--they may have put a name "sola scriptura" to an already-established Bible practice. I can find sola scriptura or if you prefer, the vast supremacy of scriptures in the Tanakh, many centuries before Christ.

Again, Jude tells us to fight for the faith as delivered to the apostles of Jesus. I would say the RCC was always off, in multiple doctrines, and created traditions centuries after scripture was established. One clue is the many thousands of verses that early church leaders quoted in correspondence, before the close of even the 2nd century...
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Nah. You’re just wrong here. Take a real church history and polity course.
 
gnostic

gnostic

The Lost One
BilliardsBall said:
I can, because Christianity is not based on faith, but on truth. I'd love to see someone with your intellect and zeal commit/recommit to the historic, true faith.
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Sorry, but have you read any of the church “traditions” of early churches regarding to the 1st century “saints” (apostles, disciples of the 1st century CE), eg miracles they were said to have performed, their acts of martyrdom, and their acts of faiths.

And the stories of their martyrs were often conflicting, because there could be different versions to their death, depending on the locations and their local lores.

These “traditions” were telling anything but the “truth”.

They were nothing more than propaganda, invented stories of miracles, that were perpetrated by the early churches. None of these traditions were ever verified, other than the churches say-so.
 
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