Why do you NOT believe the Bible?

[HKenyon]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

 

[psychoslice]

I personally see the so called bible as a book with many peoples idea's of what or how they understood god or their chosen god man at their particular time, just like all religions, and that is all it is.

 

[buddhist]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

My main problem: I was not there when its various books were originally written, and so I cannot personally verify anything within it, including any of it's alleged stories, alleged claims, or alleged "prophetic fulfillments".

 

[HKenyon]

I personally see the so called bible as a book with many peoples idea's of what or how they understood god or their chosen god man at their particular time, just like all religions, and that is all it is.

That is interesting, how would you respond to the argument that there were some things written in the bible about the future that there was no way that they could have known when that particular section was written?

Also, what do you think about the fact that all of the theology and the message is consistent throughout the bible despite being written by 40 people over 2,000 years?

 

[HKenyon]

My main problem: I was not there when its various books were originally written, and so I cannot personally verify anything within it, including any of it's alleged stories, alleged claims, or alleged "prophetic fulfillments".

That is an argument that I have not heard before, does that mean that you have a problem with history in general? Or perhaps just religious matters because those are more specific and have less tradition outside of that certain religion?

 

[buddhist]

That is an argument that I have not heard before, does that mean that you have a problem with history in general? Or perhaps just religious matters because those are more specific and have less tradition outside of that certain religion?

I do not personally know "history", so I am agnostic about most of it. I understand that recorded history is often written and skewed by the victors. I would not say I have a "problem with history", just that I do not know it directly.

I have no reason to trust Christian tradition, more than any other tradition, especially considering the number of internal inconsistencies within the Bible itself. I've read the NT in the Greek, and find many inconsistencies between what it says in the Greek, and the various English translations (translators often choose specific words to align with Christian theology, for example). There are also many, many other inconsistencies in the Bible, e.g.:

 

[Laika]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

I havent read it. Moreover I have a philosophical Predisposition against belief in god as a materialist which means reading the bible is unlikely to change that- at least in one complete reading from cover to cover.

I think I would have to read alot of Christian philosophers to be convinced to reject materialism specifically and then to essentially convert to Christianity. it would be a long term process and as yet I do not have the motivation to undertake it.

I think thats the fairest, most honest response I can give.

 

[psychoslice]

That is interesting, how would you respond to the argument that there were some things written in the bible about the future that there was no way that they could have known when that particular section was written?

Also, what do you think about the fact that all of the theology and the message is consistent throughout the bible despite being written by 40 people over 2,000 years?

I don't think that is true at all, the amount of words written in this so called bible, can of course predict anything you want it to predict, I could write a book with many predictions, and some of them will come true, and many wont, that same with the bible or any words written by anyone, the desperate will find what they want to find in anything.

 

[lovesong]

Well I could point out some of the more popular reasons like how much it's been edited over the centuries, the contradictions in it, the horrible morality.... For me though, passing up the bible came before I knew much of anything about those arguments. Ever since I was a wee lovesong I felt that something just wasn't right with Christianity. I spent years just researching other faiths and trying them out, hoping to learn from experience. Well, that research and experience did it's job and brought me to where I am today. That's really all there is to it.

 

[Neo Deist]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

I grew up as a Southern Baptist and spent 30 years in that denomination. I am now 41, an ordained minister, I have a Doctorate of Theology from seminary, I serve as a police chaplain and I identify as a Christian Deist. Now that the pedigree is out of the way...

The Bible is a collection of stories that started off being told around campfires by nomadic people thousands of years ago. A child would ask an elder "why are there so many different languages" or "where did we come from" and the elder was expected to have the answer. Those stories were handed down from generation to generation, and eventually were written down when writing was invented in its earliest forms. As people traveled from place to place, their stories traveled with them.

Those same people did not have the level of scientific and medical knowledge that we have today. They did not have telescopes or microscopes. They would stand on the ground and try to explain the world around them with their archaic knowledge and superstitions. When they could not explain something that they did not understand, they often defaulted to the supernatural, whether it be magic, a god/goddess, an angel or demon, etc.

In studying the Bible, you will quickly see where it was obviously written by male chauvinists, from a geographic location that still has that same mentality to this day. It also contains glaring contradictions between its verses, and people (especially Christians) have a tendency to cherry pick verses from it, take them out of context and apply them to whatever they are talking about. What you read translated into English is not quite what is actually written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic or Koine Greek. For starters, you have the loss of cultural idioms from that time period.

God never came down from the cosmos and wrote anything in the Bible. Every single word comes from the minds of men. It is easy to say that "God inspired me to write this" but there is no proof of divine inspiration. I could just as easily say "God spoke to me and told me that the Bible is not correct on many accounts" and you could not prove otherwise. People tend to fixate on worshiping a holy book instead of God.

The universe is a vast place, and to think that we were selected out of the billions upon billions of planets, within billions upon billions of galaxies, as the recipients of "God's word" is just a ridiculous notion. Every writer from the Bible that is accredited with divine inspiration was miraculously alone when they received said revelation. They often used metaphorical or allegorical writings in order to teach a lesson, but those stories were never meant to be taken literally.

As far as the Gospels go, they were written by anonymous, 3rd party authors that were not eyewitnesses to Jesus, decades after the fact. That makes them hearsay, which is not even allowed in court because hearsay testimony is deemed unreliable. The Gospels disagree with each other on many accounts. Do I believe that Jesus existed? Yes! Was he crucified by order of Pilate? Yes! Was he the divine son of God, born from a virgin? The jury is still out but he did preach a positive message, and if more people followed that message the world would be a better place.

Taken as a whole, I teach the lessons that can be learned from the Bible, especially ones that deal with morality, compassion and forgiveness. But to think that it is inerrant or infallible and the direct word of God, is just a stretch, and an attempt by certain religious sects to keep said book sacred and revered.

Edit: you are free to think and believe as you wish. God gave you the ability to think for yourself and so you should use it. Don't be afraid to ask questions and think outside of the box. Most importantly, don't blindly accept what random preacher X tells you. Far too often, preachers go by tradition instead of what the Bible actually says.

 

[Skwim]

As has been mention in part; the Bible is chock full of contradictions, crazy theology, inconsistencies, outright illogical claims and concepts, witless fantasy, extremely bad science, prejudice and bigotry, immoral advice, poorly constructed and misleading instructions, goofy assertions, stupid promises, and just plain silliness. Of course, if one is needy enough and has no qualms about cherry picking the book, none of this matters. So whatever pops your corn . . . . Just don't knock on my door with Bible in hand. On second thought, if I'm in the right mood I may welcome the opportunity to disabuse you of your folly.

Ever wonder why someone as perfect as god is said to be would create/inspire and allow to persist such a badly written book, so bad that it actually dissuades people from buying into it its "message"? So bad it has divided its major readers, Christians, into 30,000 to 40,000 denominations, many with incompatible theologies. In all, it appears the god of Abraham is not as competent as one would expect. But



.

 

[sun rise]

I grew up as a Southern Baptist and spent 30 years in that denomination. I am now 41, an ordained minister, I have a Doctorate of Theology from seminary, I serve as a police chaplain and I identify as a Christian Deist. Now that the pedigree is out of the way...

The Bible is a collection of stories that started off being told around campfires by nomadic people thousands of years ago. A child would ask an elder "why are there so many different languages" or "where did we come from" and the elder was expected to have the answer. Those stories were handed down from generation to generation, and eventually were written down when writing was invented in its earliest forms. As people traveled from place to place, their stories traveled with them.

Those same people did not have the level of scientific and medical knowledge that we have today. They did not have telescopes or microscopes. They would stand on the ground and try to explain the world around them with their archaic knowledge and superstitions. When they could not explain something that they did not understand, they often defaulted to the supernatural, whether it be magic, a god/goddess, an angel or demon, etc.

In studying the Bible, you will quickly see where it was obviously written by male chauvinists, from a geographic location that still has that same mentality to this day. It also contains glaring contradictions between its verses, and people (especially Christians) have a tendency to cherry pick verses from it, take them out of context and apply them to whatever they are talking about. What you read translated into English is not quite what is actually written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic or Koine Greek. For starters, you have the loss of cultural idioms from that time period.

God never came down from the cosmos and wrote anything in the Bible. Every single word comes from the minds of men. It is easy to say that "God inspired me to write this" but there is no proof of divine inspiration. I could just as easily say "God spoke to me and told me that the Bible is not correct on many accounts" and you could not prove otherwise. People tend to fixate on worshiping a holy book instead of God.

The universe is a vast place, and to think that we were selected out of the billions upon billions of planets, within billions upon billions of galaxies, as the recipients of "God's word" is just a ridiculous notion. Every writer from the Bible that is accredited with divine inspiration was miraculously alone when they received said revelation. They often used metaphorical or allegorical writings in order to teach a lesson, but those stories were never meant to be taken literally.

As far as the Gospels go, they were written by anonymous, 3rd party authors that were not eyewitnesses to Jesus, decades after the fact. That makes them hearsay, which is not even allowed in court because hearsay testimony is deemed unreliable. The Gospels disagree with each other on many accounts.

Taken as a whole, I teach the lessons that can be learned from the Bible, especially ones that deal with morality, compassion and forgiveness. But to think that it is inerrant or infallible, and the direct word of God is just a stretch, and an attempt by certain religious sects to keep said book sacred and revered.

Edit: you are free to think and believe as you wish. God gave you the ability to think for yourself and so you should use it. Don't be afraid to ask questions and think outside of the box. Most importantly, don't blindly accept what random preacher X tells you. Far too often, preachers go by tradition instead of what the Bible actually says.

The passages about the two Greatest Commandments is the root message of the Bible as the scripture asserts. The message that love is the foundation of everything I take as coming from God but not most of the rest of the Bible.

 

[Neo Deist]

The passages about the two Greatest Commandments is the root message of the Bible as the scripture asserts. The message that love is the foundation of everything I take as coming from God but not most of the rest of the Bible.

Love God, love people.

Follow those and the rest will fall into place.

 

[Neo Deist]

As has been mention in part; the Bible is chock full of contradictions, crazy theology, inconsistencies, outright illogical claims and concepts, witless fantasy, extremely bad science, prejudice and bigotry, immoral advice, poorly constructed and misleading instructions, goofy assertions, stupid promises, and just plain silliness. Of course, if one is needy enough and has no qualms about cherry picking the book, none of this matters. So whatever pops your corn . . . . Just don't knock on my door with Bible in hand. On second thought, if I'm in the right mood I may welcome the opportunity to disabuse you of your folly.

Ever wonder why someone as perfect as god is said to be would create/inspire and allow to persist such a badly written book, so bad that it would actually dissuade people from buying into it its "message"? So bad it would divide its major readers, Christians, into 30,000 to 40,000 denominations, many with incompatible theologies. In all, it appears the god of Abraham is not as competent as one would expect. But



.

Or, it could be that humans are choosing to follow a book made by other humans, and the authors of said book contradict each other, have crazy theologies, illogical claims, fantasies, bad science, prejudice, etc.

I don't blame God for the free will actions of others, even if they are butchering religion in God's name. Perhaps God is out in the cosmos with a huge going on whenever He observes Earth. God could be out there thinking to Himself, "why in the heck did I give these morons free will? Why? Why? Why?"

 

[Ana.J]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

Did you ever play the game when you read a story to one person, he tells it to another and so on with 6 people involved and then the last one tells the story to all of the participants? The final story has a little to do with the original. Bible is at least 2000 years.

 

[Deathbydefault]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

I'll list just a few.

1. Any moral teachings found in the bible don't require the bible to present them as so.
2. All the spiritual and supernatural stuff in the bible is 10 solid steps away from what I consider logical and rational.
3. I doubt a book written about a true god would be so boring to read.

 

[Kapalika]

I kind of feel that, as a teenager as I started to read the Bible more I found a lot of the things that Yahweh did or that prophets did in his name by using their powers, or some things in Psalms that were praised (like saying they should kill Babylonian babies by hitting them against rocks) to be really horrible and gravely offend my innate moral compass. And I realized that any permanent punishment for any temporal crimes against an infinite unhurtable god was not justifiable and so despite the nicer qualities of Jesus I couldn't even get behind him for how much he talked of hellfire. That was the starting point. Then I found a bunch of weird claims that couldn't be true. And I failed to find any solution to resolving the very evident age of the Universe with the claims of the Bible. The last nail in the coffin was that I tried it out and prayed a lot but nothing happened, but the moment I turned to another religion and prayed stuff happened very quickly and the experience was very real and vivid.

I think though the underpinning reason for me was that every denomination I've ever known, heard about, or whatever didn't actually follow the Bible very accurately. And when I actually read it for myself it became apparent to me that it would actually be very scary if anyone did follow it, as the things it would have people do are pretty violent at times.

Another thing I should point out is that my current understanding is more mature of the Bible. The ancient Jews wanted to preserve the traditional teachings and so they combined different versions of the same stories which is part of why the Bible is full of so many contradictions. This becomes more clear when you realize that in many parts of the Old Testament it tells the same story more than once, it's actually telling it again as the different version. They wanted to preserve all the versions into a single set of scriptures to unite their people. I'm pretty sure everyone who read it back then knew that it was supposed to be like that, and so wouldn't see them as contradictions but more akin to disagreements, perhaps.

Though the New Testament is a bit' different, because the context was way different. There were hundreds of gospels written all wildly different but only a few survived the gnostics' suppression and were later chosen to be part of the canon. The four gospels of Jesus Christ are more consistent than the old testament, but some things like Judas's death stand out. In one account he accidentally slips on a sharp rock and spills his guts and the guys take his money and do something with it. In another Judas feels bad and commits suicide and the guys do something different with his money.

In either case, if a scripture can't even agree with itself which version is the "real" one I can't see it as being the "Inspired Word of God" as I kind of think if there is a God, an intelligent creator of the Universe who planned this all out, he would of been better at getting people to write the truth down correctly and consistently.

Though I guess you could always take just one version of each story as the "true" one but then you would disagree with pretty much nearly all Christians and you really wouldn't have the Bible anymore but something lot shorter.

3. I doubt a book written about a true god would be so boring to read.

While I am no Christian, clearly you have never read the entertaining and sometimes hilarious parts of the Old Testament. I could give some examples if you like.

 

[Glaurung]

Ever wonder why someone as perfect as god is said to be would create/inspire and allow to persist such a badly written book, so bad that it would actually dissuade people from buying into it its "message"? So bad it would divide its major readers, Christians, into 30,000 to 40,000 denominations, many with incompatible theologies. In all, it appears the god of Abraham is not as competent as one would expect. But

While I'm not interested in the first half of your polemic (you believe what you believe) I do take issue when people spout outright lies. There are no where near 30,000 denominations, otherwise you're going to have to commit to the notion that Catholicism alone comprises of about 200 of these "denominations" which is clearly absurd. You can't take any remotely distinct Christian group/rite/organisation and call it a "denomination" with anything remotely resembling honesty.

I grant that mainstream Christianity is hardly a monolithic entity, but it is not even close to the free-for-all that you imply. Looking beyond the obviously fringe sects, we find that there is nonetheless a coherent historical Christian orthodoxy which is more or less agreed upon by all the major historical denominations. The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds are pretty established ground the majority of all Christians worldwide, just for starters.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That is interesting, how would you respond to the argument that there were some things written in the bible about the future that there was no way that they could have known when that particular section was written?

- can you give a specific example? I've heard claims like this before, but they've fallen flat when they're examined.

- even if you pass that hurdle, if a book of the Bible had something remarkable in it, all this would suggest is something remarkable about its source, not necessarily that the source is God.

- even if you managed to demonstrate that one passage in one book was from God, it wouldn't demonstrate anything about the other books that Christians have decided to package together. For instance, "this passage in 1 Kings came from God" doesn't even imply that ALL of 1 Kings came from God. It certainly doesn't imply that the New Testament came from God any more that it implies that the Book of Mormon or the Raëlian Messages were divinely inspired.

Also, what do you think about the fact that all of the theology and the message is consistent throughout the bible despite being written by 40 people over 2,000 years?

I don't think either of these things are consistent in the Bible.

 

[Father Heathen]

I would love to have a conversation with some people about why they do NOT believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but am looking for the arguments against the Bible.

Irrational, unsubstantiated, homophobic, misogynist, ethnocentric, condoned slavery and mistreatment of slaves, arbitrary laws with disproportionate punishments, historically and scientifically inaccurate, conscientiously repugnant, etc.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/