Re: What is your strongest disproof of the Bible?

[Kylyssa]

The only way religion (the Bible, for instance) stands on its own two legs is if it is examined in a vacuum. Everything else is simply grasping at straws.

This is just a brilliant phrasing.

[rlrose328]

The great flood would have needed cloud cover so dense it would have blocked out the sun, thus killing noah and all the animals he was trying to save.

Women are not made out of male bones.

Snakes don’t talk

The earth is not older than our sun

The moon is not a “small sun” that creates light in the same way the sun does.

Rainbows existed before the great flood.

Thou shall not kill yet killing animals, insects, plants, bacteria, viruses and people who are deemed “evil” is morally acceptable.

Miracle,
Miracle,
Miracle or They did then,
("science")The atoms that make them up would be the same age, (/"science") Way too many questions regarding sure determination of sun age, earth age, other things
The moon is a "lesser light" that "rules the night"
You have no proof, only presumption that things were the same then as they are now
Thou shalt not murder - non-humans don't count, "state" executions are not murder, explicit orders from God overrule general principles

Wow... just... wow.   :borg:

[jcm]

Wow... just... wow.   :borg:

yeah. i just can't bring myself to respond to that.

[Faithless]

I'm beginning to think that this guy is from the same church as messenger and Titan because they have strangely similar techniques.  They cherry pick the statements they choose to answer, they present themselves as reasonable and intelligent and eager to learn our perspectives on religion and god, and they never learn anything and they never really say anything.  They just rearrange the same pat answers/questions/statements and continually regurgitate them.  I feel sorry for them in a way, because they don't seem to understand that not only do we see through their quaint little attempts at proselytization, but that we've seen them so many times and these guys have no clue how unoriginal and uninspired their cute little statements on religion are.

So here you go, minstrelofc.  You have already been given 1421 actual contradictions in the bible.  You may respond to each of them and attempt to refute them.  In such refutations, you may use testable, provable facts.  If such facts do not exist, then you must admit that such contradiction is actually a contradiction and move on.  Once you have answered those original 1421 bona fide contradictions, we shall then provide you with more.  You do not get to cherry pick the ones you answer, and you may not find the answers you seek in the bible.  Trust me, they're not there.

If this isn't how you want to play the game, then have a nice life.  You Christians seem to think that you can come to our message board and dictate your faith to us in the way you want to dictate it to us without accepting that this is not your message board, and we don't have to play your stupid mind games.  If you have questions, we're happy to answer them.  But in return, you get to answer our questions.  So far you have merely bored us with your canned responses.  How about actually using that gray matter and thinking up something original?   Or have you been brainwashed so long you're incapable of independent thought?

[Tom62]

Minstrelofc and Titan are much more welcome here than messenger. We may not agree with them, but at least they are friendly and have a sense of humor. Messenger was only a irritating pain in the you know where. But, I agree that I'd really love to see how minstelofc talks his way out of the contradictions in the Bible other than saying "it is a miracle". Some contradictions can only be explained logically ,if you don't take the Bible literally and accept that it isn't the perfect "word of God".

[brekfustuvluzerz]

id be interested to hear some one with the time and resources break down how the earth could have been repopulated after the flood. the flood, as i understand, happened about four thousand years ago. would it be possible to go from the hand full of people on the ark to the 6.7 billion alive today. how could the various races be explained? cultures? languages? what would the average family size have to be to make it possible to repopulate? how did plants survive the flood. it rained for forty days but didnt it stay flooded for a year? maybe my bible "facts" are off.
now to change subjects: if the earliest written gospels were written around 60 c.e., that would make the authors pretty old for the life expectancy of the time (assuming they experienced what they wrote about). also, how accurate could something as detailed as the sermon on the mount be when written from memory thirty years later? im no expert, just wondering. its not like anyone's gonna change their opinion here. am i right? ha ha . . a ha ha

[minstrelofc]

yeah. i just can't bring myself to respond to that.

Sorry, jcm - I was trying to summarize why I couldn't use any of those options for my project.

I love it when theists take this position. It's akin to saying that we can't study Marx from a feminist point of view because it's an "outsider" perspective. I think I mentioned this in one of Messenger's threads (imagine that). We have to look at things with differing perspectives. This is how we make progress. The problem theists run up against is that when religion is examined from nearly every other perspective (historical, anthropological, neurological, biological, psychological, sociological, etc) it just doesn't hold up. At all. The only way religion (the Bible, for instance) stands on its own two legs is if it is examined in a vacuum. Everything else is simply grasping at straws.

Of course you *can* study anything you want from any perspective you can conceive of (and can obtain). I personally believe that if you chose, you *could* see the Bible from a Christian perspective (without necessarily believing it). You choose not to, and for fairly understandable reasons (why put your mind in such a weird state for no benefit). The unfortunate part is that it makes for communication difficulties with those who accept that perspective as their default world-view.

To respond to your second point, there are "reasons" (which, as you say, do not make any sense from a non-biblical perspective) why this could be true. I won't explain them because I value your brain cells, and I'm concerned about the long-term effects   )

If I have misrepresented myself to you, or to anyone else on this forum, I humbly beg forgiveness. I did not come to these forums to further my understanding of the philosophy of atheism/agnosticism.

In my great hubris, I believe that that I have a decent handle on why someone would logically be an atheist/agnostic, why you don't go around killing and pillaging just because there isn't a god, and so forth. If I had unanswered questions, I'd gladly ask them, and I'd do my best to understand the perspective and insights you would have to offer.

My purpose of coming here was (as stated (implied?) in the OP) to explore my own beliefs in greater depth. My plan for doing so is to find something that is clearly verified by Science that I can validate and perform myself, yet would be impossible in a universe where the Bible is true.

Obviously, I have to exclude "Miracles" because outside interference makes scientific experiments difficult to impossible. So as attractive as the notion may be, no creating a woman out of one of my ribs.

The only other restriction is that I'll be examining it from my own perspective - which is one that starts with the assumption that the Bible is true. Yes, this makes things extremely difficult and eliminates very many potentially great ways to disprove the Bible, but if I don't evaluate things based on what I actually believe then I would be lying to myself.


I hope what I've just said there makes sense - I'm not sure I can put it any more clearly than that.


Thanks for all your input, I do greatly appreciate it. - Now off to research pre 300 "CE" dating systems...

[jcm]

1. The great flood would have needed cloud cover so dense it would have blocked out the sun, thus killing noah and all the animals he was trying to save.
  Miracle

2. Women are not made out of male bones.
  Miracle

3. Snakes don’t talk
  Miracle or They did then

4. The earth is not older than our sun
  ("science")The atoms that make them up would be the same age, (/"science") Way too many questions regarding sure determination of sun age, earth age, other things

5. The moon is not a “small sun” that creates light in the same way the sun does.
  The moon is a "lesser light" that "rules the night"

6. Rainbows existed before the great flood.
  You have no proof, only presumption that things were the same then as they are now

7. Thou shall not kill yet killing animals, insects, plants, bacteria, viruses and people who are deemed “evil” is morally acceptable.
  Thou shalt not murder - non-humans don't count, "state" executions are not murder, explicit orders from God overrule general principles

1. Wow, what an amazing cop-out. It is now up to you to show me some kind of evidence that the great flood did in fact happen.

2. Seriously?!? How would you believe that based on the overwhelming evidence for evolution? It is unbelievable that you would trust the bible’s claim that the first woman on earth was some how fashioned from the first man’s rib cage. Most life forms have two sexes and that is due to evolution, not from a special makeshift mutated piece of bone. Human beings did not simply pop into existence; it was a gradual process full of many proceeding forms of life that diverged into two separate sexes some time in the past.

3. WTF?. What evidence do you have that suggests snakes evolved to the point of having language? My theory on this is, ancient people saw snakes as evil because of their hypnotic eyes and poisonous bite. The fear and stories surrounding these creature may have been past down through generations and became warped and embellished. The shape of a snake is phallic and would carry sexual connotations and would evoke sinfulness. A tongue that is used to explore its environment might suggest an ability to communicate through language. I have not researched this, but this all seems way more likely than the devil talking through a snake.

4. So everything is the same age? Come on!
Matter (hydrogen) in a region of space condenses by gravity to forms stars and left over matter condenses to form planets and moons. This in happening now and has happened in the past. Stars are older than the planets that orbit them.

http://origins.stsci.edu/faq/planetary-systems.html

5. You are a poet and didn’t know it. The moon does NOT shine it reflects light from the sun. Day and night are earth terms that don’t really make sense out in the universe. The moon just happens to be there. And I guess the stars a perfectly positioned to help us too?

6.

A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. They take the form of a multicoloured arc, with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch.

A prism can be used to break light up into its constituent spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow). Prisms can also be used to reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarizations.

Rain drops are acting as a prism. Are you telling me that a triangular piece of glass would have Not separated white light into a rainbow before the great flood? Science can do that experiment today. Light from a distance star that is just now reaching us from BEFORE the time of the great flood can arrive on earth and separated by a prism into a rainbow.

7. I have heard my whole life “thou shall not kill” …something fishy going on there…
Regardless, how is it not murder to go around shooting animals for the sport of it? I knew a Baptist preacher who enjoys hunting and uses squirrels as target practice. How can it be morally justifiable to murder/kill creatures that have a desire to live, simply for fun?
Bad stewards, bad!

[Whitney]

Moderation related stuff split to separate topic:  viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2690

[Loffler]

What you need, OP, are some Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Jewish friends. This "Christian" and "Non-Christian" split you've got is a false dichotomy.

I don't want you to see the differences in the arguments from Christians and atheists. I want you to see the SIMILARITIES in arguments from people of different religions. For example:

People of nearly all religions will point to miracles as proof of THEIR religion.
People of nearly all religions will consider their religious texts holy and often inerrant.
People of nearly all religions will say non-belief or at least wrong action through non-belief will be punished in the next life.
People of nearly all religions will cite personal experience with their deity, and say this personal experience cannot be argued against.
People of any religion can go to the old mainstays of the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, or the appeal to design and say this proves THEIR God.

As you study all the thousands of religions out there and find that they are all just as convinced and steeped in their beliefs as Christians, you'll have to face the uncomfortable truth that even if you did want to believe in something greater, you have no way of knowing which religion is true.

[Xalle]

Sorry, first post here and I am sure this gets said a lot... but surely the response to this is;

You cant prove a negative.

Its not our job to disprove the bible.. its YOUR job to prove it. You say its the truth, you say its right. Prove it. Provide me with evidence.

[curiosityandthecat]

Sorry, first post here and I am sure this gets said a lot... but surely the response to this is;

You cant prove a negative.

Its not our job to disprove the bible.. its YOUR job to prove it. You say its the truth, you say its right. Prove it. Provide me with evidence.

Hah, like theists care about evidence.  

[toadhall]

What you need, OP, are some Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Jewish friends. This "Christian" and "Non-Christian" split you've got is a false dichotomy.

I don't want you to see the differences in the arguments from Christians and atheists. I want you to see the SIMILARITIES in arguments from people of different religions. For example:

People of nearly all religions will point to miracles as proof of THEIR religion.
People of nearly all religions will consider their religious texts holy and often inerrant.
People of nearly all religions will say non-belief or at least wrong action through non-belief will be punished in the next life.
People of nearly all religions will cite personal experience with their deity, and say this personal experience cannot be argued against.
People of any religion can go to the old mainstays of the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, or the appeal to design and say this proves THEIR God.

As you study all the thousands of religions out there and find that they are all just as convinced and steeped in their beliefs as Christians, you'll have to face the uncomfortable truth that even if you did want to believe in something greater, you have no way of knowing which religion is true.

[Miss Anthrope]

What you need, OP, are some Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Jewish friends. This "Christian" and "Non-Christian" split you've got is a false dichotomy.

I don't want you to see the differences in the arguments from Christians and atheists. I want you to see the SIMILARITIES in arguments from people of different religions. For example:

People of nearly all religions will point to miracles as proof of THEIR religion.
People of nearly all religions will consider their religious texts holy and often inerrant.
People of nearly all religions will say non-belief or at least wrong action through non-belief will be punished in the next life.
People of nearly all religions will cite personal experience with their deity, and say this personal experience cannot be argued against.
People of any religion can go to the old mainstays of the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, or the appeal to design and say this proves THEIR God.

As you study all the thousands of religions out there and find that they are all just as convinced and steeped in their beliefs as Christians, you'll have to face the uncomfortable truth that even if you did want to believe in something greater, you have no way of knowing which religion is true.

Hi toadhall, I'm confused about what your banging head icon was in reference to. Does it show your frustration of religious people who don't recognize the inherent similarities, or does it show that you think Loffler doesn't "get it"? It was a very good argument, I've even heard some devout Christians acknowledge
such things.

[Ihateyoumike]

Of course you *can* study anything you want from any perspective you can conceive of (and can obtain). I personally believe that if you chose, you *could* see the Bible from a Christian perspective (without necessarily believing it). You choose not to, and for fairly understandable reasons (why put your mind in such a weird state for no benefit). The unfortunate part is that it makes for communication difficulties with those who accept that perspective as their default world-view.

I choose to not see anything from a christians perspective, same as I choose to not see anything from any other religion's perspective. I do this because I choose to believe in rationality and facts, not parable and fables. I see your bible from the perspective that it was written by man in a long period of time after the events in the bible were claimed to have occurred. You are correct when you ask why I would put my mind in such a weird state for no benefit, I wouldn't because for me there is nothing beneficiary in the bible. If I were to blindly believe in the bible and ignore the facts which science presents to me, then I could possibly see things from a christian perspective.
As for the communication difficulties of which you speak, I do not have to accept your perspective to communicate with you. You do not have to accept my perspectives to communicate with me. Now, for you to change my mind, I would have to accept your perspectives. A complete lack of evidence to support the claims of the bible lead me to believe that is not going to happen.
That being said, do you choose to see anything from a muslim perspective? Or a jewish perspective? Or a mormon perspective? My guess is you could try to all you want, but until you completely believed what they do, you won't be able to do it.