What makes the Bible so believable for people?

[1213]

...the Bible presents just such a mistake.

2 Chronicles 36:9 (KJV)
9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.

2 Kings 24:8 (KJV)
8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.​

.

By what I know, in 2 Chronicles 36:9, the word “eight” could be translated also “eighteen”. So, it may be that the translation is not very accurate, but it doesn’t mean the original text has an error. It is interesting question, why it has been translated differently.

 

[exchemist]

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?

Do you really want to explore why Christianity has been so influential, or do you just want to present your personal reasons for dissing the bible?

 

[exchemist]

Please have the decency to allow others the same freedom to practice their beliefs that you expect. I am rather much of a Biblical Literalist, and find the explaining away of key elements of Christianity to be insulting.

The key elements of Christianity do not require anyone to be a biblical literalist, though some things in the NT do need to be taken literally of course.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

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?

Because their reason for trust and belief in the bible follows different criteria and meaning than how you define it.

 

[sealchan]

Human beings survive and thrive by understanding the mechanics of their environment, so that they can anticipate and manipulate it to their own advantage. Our species' survival asset is cognitive knowledge.

So we become very vulnerable, and fearful, when we're confronted by the unknown, and even more-so by the unknowable. And as a result, many of us will choose to alleviate this fear by presuming unto ourselves knowledge that we do not actually possess. We presume unto ourselves a false knowledge of "the gods", and how they control the otherwise uncontrollable aspects of ourselves and our environment. And in so doing we can then pretend that we have gained influence over these gods and how they effect the world we live in and the people we live among. Thus, we can pretend that we have gained some control over the otherwise unknown and unknowable.

Pretending that "God wrote the Bible" provides those who do so with the delusion that they essentially know (or can ascertain) the how and why of everything that happens in their lives, and that they, thus, can have some control over it. All they have to do is look it up in God's 'how-to' book. And this delusion provides them not just with the comfort of pretending that they can have all the answers, but it also provides them with an ultimate "authority" through which they can stand in judgment over everything and everyone they encounter. So that not only does the 'inerrant Bible theory' relieve people of their most fundamental and existential fears, it boosts their egos tremendously as it positions them above nearly everything and everyone else in their lives.

And let's face it, that's one powerful psychological cocktail!

One can have powerful and unbidden dreams and other internal experiences which support (without proving) the objective existence of God. And these experiences can be vitally connected to a sense of personal meaning. There are few stronger drinks!

 

[stvdv]

Honestly I can't think of a single thing.
What makes the Bible so believable for people?

That for me is obvious = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
0: Children need/believe parents
1: Very young children are innocent, gullible
2: Brainwashing is known to be very efficient on young children
3: Christianity in general has a very high emphasis on evangelizing/proselytizing
4: Christian parents in general read these nice "children Jesus Bible stories" frequently

As a child I liked the magical stories best. Bible Superman "Simson" was my hero. I even never wanted my hair cut
As a child I was aware of injustice, so I did not buy into "Jesus is the only way" which my mother tried to brainwash me with
[even on RF some still like certain science fiction stories ..spock I read yesterday; some equated it with religion; good example in this context]

One Master once said "For a Master it takes many years to undo the brainwash done by religions".
This for me is not a belief, but this sounds to me like a fact. Maybe one of the few religious facts I know.

 

[Audie]

Science is in constant change.

This is a thought I see repeated so often, it makes
me think it is basically copy-paste, with very little
thought of understanding put into it.

Certainly, it gives a wildly distorted and unrealistic
impression of what "science' is and does.

I wonder if you realize that.

 

[Audie]

I guess your not familiar with Common Core. It has changed math concepts a fair amount. So 8 can equal 18.

That is like a bit of humour, or, an actual serious response?

 

[Regiomontanus]

That for me is obvious = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
0: Children need/believe parents
1: Very young children are innocent, gullible
2: Brainwashing is known to be very efficient on young children
3: Christianity in general has a very high emphasis on evangelizing/proselytizing
4: Christian parents in general read these nice "children Jesus Bible stories" frequently

As a child I liked the magical stories best. Bible Superman "Simson" was my hero. I even never wanted my hair cut
As a child I was aware of injustice, so I did not buy into "Jesus is the only way" which my mother tried to brainwash me with
[even on RF some still like certain science fiction stories ..spock I read yesterday; some equated it with religion; good example in this context]

One Master once said "For a Master it takes many years to undo the brainwash done by religions".
This for me is not a belief, but this sounds to me like a fact. Maybe one of the few religious facts I know.

Hello. What about people who are led to God as adults, through the study of the natural world? It was only by freeing myself of the brainwashing of scientific materialism that enabled me to see the Way.

 

[Regiomontanus]

That is like a bit of humour, or, an actual serious response?

I help my grandkids with their math homework sometimes and I must say that Common Core is a GOOD thing. I know some parents who do not like it but every one of them so far have been nearly innumerate.

 

[stvdv]

That for me is obvious = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
0: Children need/believe parents
1: Very young children are innocent, gullible
2: Brainwashing is known to be very efficient on young children
3: Christianity in general has a very high emphasis on evangelizing/proselytizing
4: Christian parents in general read these nice "children Jesus Bible stories" frequently

One Master once said "For a Master it takes many years to undo the brainwash done by religions".

Hello. What about people who are led to God as adults, through the study of the natural world? It was only by freeing myself of the brainwashing of scientific materialism that enabled me to see the Way.

That is why I said Christianity "In General". I clearly focused on Children (it's well known that before age 7 brainwash is hard to reverse). To me this is the main reason of "blind belief".

 

[Regiomontanus]

That is why I said Christianity "In General".

Right on.

 

[BilliardsBall]

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?

Your premises are false:

1) Why cannot people enjoy books written in anonymity?

2) Why don't skeptics "remember" that the NT writers were under threat of Jewish excommunication and Roman execution and wrote under and used pseudonyms?

3) Why does an explosion of sects and even schisms, each and all motivated by groups of followers devoted to Bible study for their aims, weaken the case of the Bible as an influential book?

4) Why do you knock harmonizing the NT without any attempt to form a chronology or do any kind of Bible study? I can use your "proof" to say that NBC, CBS and ABC cannot possibly be reporting accurate news stories, based on their angles of coverage.

5) How is oral tradition worthless? Do you disrespect all modern cultures that emphasize it, including the Jewish tradition?

 

[stvdv]

It was only by freeing myself of the brainwashing of scientific materialism that enabled me to see the Way.

"Science materialism brainwash" is indeed a big obstacle on the spiritual path. I see that happen in India a lot. 1990 much less materialism, more spiritual and now changing.

 

[stvdv]

Oral tradition is actually worthless. If it wasn't, it could have been used and demonstrated today as a living testament of reliability

Is this Zen wisdom or Zen ...?

 

[stvdv]

Oral tradition is actually worthless. If it wasn't, it could have been used and demonstrated today as a living testament of reliability

Sometimes it's better not to write down lines; this line might be one of those.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Your premises are false:

1) Why cannot people enjoy books written in anonymity?

2) Why don't skeptics "remember" that the NT writers were under threat of Jewish excommunication and Roman execution and wrote under and used pseudonyms?

3) Why does an explosion of sects and even schisms, each and all motivated by groups of followers devoted to Bible study for their aims, weaken the case of the Bible as an influential book?

4) Why do you knock harmonizing the NT without any attempt to form a chronology or do any kind of Bible study? I can use your "proof" to say that NBC, CBS and ABC cannot possibly be reporting accurate news stories, based on their angles of coverage.

5) How is oral tradition worthless? Do you disrespect all modern cultures that emphasize it, including the Jewish tradition?

Far from false.

You just cannot establish any reliability accuracy or credibility that way.

Those are just the hard facts about it. The Bible is just not something you could take seriously.

You can certainly enjoy books. However the Bible is akin with Aesop's Fables. An enjoyable fictional literary work that's memorable.

There's no Divinity in anonymity. Clearly by such it further establishes there is no God there to protect them, if that's the case, I understand why people don't know who thought the words up and wrote it down as a result. However it does nothing for establishing any kind of truth except for blind belief born out of low standards of believability.

The thing about the schisms and conflicts among sect and denominations convincingly demonstrates there is no divine communication much less divine inspiration. Christians well demonstrate that it's all left up to their own particular interpretations. If there was a Collective consensus across the board that would be impressive , but clearly that's impossible and clearly is not going to happen.

Whenever you have a redacted collection of books made into a single compilation where nobody knows when it was written who wrote it, where it was written, it's not hard to see how it could be put together and altered to make it "harmonious" and making chronological events "fit" into the narrative. Even as the Bible exists today it's not done a good job in conveying to people how harmonious it is and it's claims that one author could not have known what another author had written down beforehand. Much less again knowing who the author's even are .

 

[Audie]

Your premises are false:

1) Why cannot people enjoy books written in anonymity?

Love them ironical / unintended humour
posts!

 

[Nakosis]

Don't you know that we are subjected to programming everyday at almost every level?

Yes.
Folks think they are making self-willed choices but most often, not so much. We act on urges driven by the subconscious that most often we aren't even aware of the source of.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Honestly I can't think of a single thing.

It's kind of the ultimate cultural appropriation. It wasn't written with hardly any of us in mind. The authors were making up crap to speak to their own immediate audiences. A population fixated on xenophobia isn't out to make sure God's Word goes to everyone in the world (except in the notion that they are the ones in charge, which will never happen). Back in the day, Gods and Goddesses were more "local" (of varying degrees). If you move to another city, you worship another God, the One who's in charge there (it's almost like gods were just the human governing administration). Everyone in the US should be worshiping the local gods. White supremacists might say we should worship Odin or whatever, but that still isn't how it worked, at least when Gods had limited jurisdiction. Besides, everyone's slept with everyone else by this point that no one is pure blooded anyway.

I've heard it said that the Roman Empire switched to Christianity because their own pantheon just wasn't doing it for them anymore, but we still see this "religion is something I can just buy at different stores" concept. If you don't like what your religion or denomination teaches, just go find the one you like. That shows that religion doesn't transform anyone because everyone is just looking for confirmation of their own beliefs.

On the other hand, Jesus said that if something causes us to sin, we should cut it off and toss it. There's a similar Zen saying about killing Buddha or whatever. If it's not working, it's not working. However, why replace it with yet another broken item? It's not like you can't worship without religion. Religion is just the theological fandom, the geek club you form to discuss what you like to talk about. Organized religion is fairly modern when compared to all of Homo sapien history. Clearly it's not necessary to have beliefs.

Bible doesn’t really change, so it is better foundation.

It changes all the time. There's no need for a New Testament if the Old one doesn't need a rewrite, right?

Humbly , for me the answer is because, love is sacraficial towards self and beneficial towards others, and that is what God's word teaches, and what Jesus Christ did on the cross as a living example,Jesus- God in the flesh, showing that the greatest thing one can do is give up their life for others, and this does not mean to seek martydom in a vain attempt to eagerly sacrafice ones life in exchange for death, more often giving up ones life means - putting others before ourselves, rejecting vainity, and embracing compassion, and love; and if called to do so, and not by forethought and conspiring for vain glory, but for love of another to save their life, and ultimately lay down your own; preventing harm, never causing it. Love is the answer, Jesus Christ is love - God is love.

God's support is notoriously fickle. God will promise to never leave you in one paragraph and describe a long list of ways He's going to utterly ruin you in the next.

Human beings survive and thrive by understanding the mechanics of their environment, so that they can anticipate and manipulate it to their own advantage. Our species' survival asset is cognitive knowledge.

And those people who knew slightly more than everyone else were labeled as gods.

Tribal person: I went up to the mountain the other day. Looks like we're in for a storm soon.
*storm comes*
Tribe: WOW! THAT'S AMAZING! WE SHOULD MAKE YOU LEADER! WE SHOULD MAKE YOU GOD!

Random ancient guy: Hey, cool, I just learned how to make my first boat.
Future people: And thus, the God of the Seas did improve humanity by forming for us floating wooden things called "boats", and it was good.

Furthermore satan is real and makes sure people believe many false things.

He's the most honest character, really. The reason God is more popular than Satan is that Satan tells you how it is, while God will stab you in the back and tell you how much you are loved.

Different people for different reasons but ultimately, people cement their belief by their ensuing relationship, the practical manifestation of that relationship and their deeper study.

That may be true for some, but I've seen far too many Christians who say the scriptures are the only way to know God and if God told them the scriptures were lies, they'd go with the scriptures. Too many Christians don't have a relationship with God and choose a book instead, because unlike a deity, they can hold that in their hands.

Nothing is impossible with God

I think the bible shows that's not the case. There are plenty of plot holes that only exist because God's powers are ... convenient (or conveniently missing). Ask yourself why God can heal everything but John the Baptist is still cosplaying as the Headless Horseman.

ETA: That isn’t just about people believing the Bible. I see the same thing in all the factions.

Yes, exactly, like when people go up in arms over Star Wars because "the new trilogy got it wrong", even though it's canon, unlike the fanfics going on in their heads.

By what I know, in 2 Chronicles 36:9, the word “eight” could be translated also “eighteen”. So, it may be that the translation is not very accurate, but it doesn’t mean the original text has an error.

What original text?

And if the original stories were transmitted verbally, how do we prove the "original" has it right?

One Master once said "For a Master it takes many years to undo the brainwash done by religions".
This for me is not a belief, but this sounds to me like a fact. Maybe one of the few religious facts I know.

You must UNLEARN what you have learned. -- Yoda

This statement becomes more potent when you've watched Clone Wars, where the Force Priestesses/Goddesses lecture Yoda about relying so much on learned tradition for centuries that he arrogantly thought he knew everything there was to know about the Force.