What do you think of the Bible?

Question

I already have an opinion..I just want to know what you think....
This is mostly for those who don't like the Bible...
Can the Bible be trusted...Tell me why...
People are always telling me they don't trust the Bible, or like it, but they never prove to my why...
I can't believe you until you SHOW me why....
Show, don't tell...

Why don't you believe in the Bible (or do)??

I already know there is a lot of reasons why the Bible can be trusted...

A lot...

But I want to know why people don't think the Bible can be trusted....
And those who don't, give specific reasons.....

Thank you though, for those who do believe it can be trusted who gave specifics.... They are also helpful

Answer 1

There are probably more literary analyses of the Bible than any single book ever written. Go to a bookstore and throw a rock and you'll probably hit one. Unfortunately, many are theological and start with the premise that Christianity is the correct religion. You'll have to look a little harder for a non-religious analysis or critique of the Bible, but they do exist. That's where you should look, not in some anonymous forum. I recommend you read Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian". It's not a biblical analysis, as such, but it is a reasoned, thoughtful essay that may shed some light on the thoughts of the non-believer, assuming that's what you're interested in. That said...

Personally, there are several main reasons why I'm unconvinced by the Bible:

1) It relies entirely on assertions. It makes hundreds of extraordinary claims and offers no evidence for any of them.
Example: Moses literally parted a sea so that people could walk on the floor.
Example: The entire story of Noah
Example: A woman literally turned into salt
Example: Any one of Jesus' miracles
Example: Jesus rose from the dead after three days

2) A literal interpretation of the Bible is fundamentally out of step with much that we know about the world from science. Say what you will, there is no way to rectify the story of creation with the evidence-based theory of evolution. There is no way to rectify the Noah story with what we know about Geology. Parthenogenesis (virgin birth) has never been observed in humans. Atoms of one element only become atoms of another via radioactivity, which only really matters for a handful of isotopes, and proceeds at a very regular pace. The spontaneous decay of all the radioactive elements in your body is a single instant is statistically impossible, and for ALL the atoms in your body to decay at all is entirely impossible, and for any of them to decay to table salt is even more impossible. On and on and on through the many wild bible adventures that make no physical sense and teach us nothing about ourselves and the only world we'll ever inhabit...

3) There are SCADS of internal contradictions in the Bible. As new editions come out, you find some of these getting washed out (presumably because some editor caught one), but older editions are always available to bring them out. Many of these are pretty trivial contradictions, number disputes and such, but the point that arises is a very important one: basing one's faith on the impossible infallibility of a text means that person's faith is baseless.

4) The (self-contradictory) ethical systems it lays out are, to me, fundamentally bad, impractical or, at best, not unique. The Old Testament prescribes capital punishment for what we now consider petty crimes. Also, the mere existence of Hell, a place of eternal torment, is alarmingly immoral. To even ALLOW your own creation, something that would not have existed were it not for your conscious intervention, to suffer, literally, for ALL time, is merciless at best, and sadistic and despicable at worst. These logically throw out the possibility of a "just and loving" God, by anyone's standards, and regardless of whether or not one exists. Now, in the New Testament, Jesus proffers a new ethic you might call "turn the other cheek". Not only does this fly directly in the face of what you learn from a literal reading of the Old Testament, it is wholly impractical. It doesn't take a lot of time in the world to realize that people, from time to time and without apparent cause, will take advantage of you and treat you badly. You will also garner a healthy bit a cynicism and realize that some people positively thrive on mistreating others. If you let these people know, openly, that you will accept whatever they care to do to you without resistance, you will have committed what is known as "passive suicide". This is the inevitable logical conclusion of "turn the other cheek". And since it is put forward without exception, there is no other way to interpret it. Finally, the cherished Golden Rule is unique to Christianity in no way. In fact, if you investigate the other major world religions, you will find that it crops up, in some form, in almost all of them.

5) Perhaps at the heart of the matter, the Bible was PHYSICALLY written by men. If God told them what to write, then they were merely transcribing a voice in their head (whether or not this voice was God's). We now know that many people hear voices in their head that they genuinely believe to be the voice of God, or the devil, or their neighbor's dog (Son of Sam), and we know that this is an all-too-common psychotic symptom, an unfortunate side-effect of having a brain capable of making and using language. Now, it seems impossible to expect that all of the original scribes of the first bible were in some psychotic trance when they wrote it, but there are other, also reasonable, possibilities. The possibility exists that some of these men were simply lying: lying about claims of God's interaction, lying about personal experiences, lying about what they witnessed Jesus do, etc.

6) It asks more questions than it answers. If you accept popular Christian dogma wholesale, you only really have a handful of "answers", and a myriad of questions. Here's what is answers:
a) All of the stuff in life that you consider unexplainable is the work of God. The problem with this is that the stuff that is unexplainable today is not necessarily unexplainable tomorrow. You don't have to look far back into history to find examples. 400 years ago, it was God who kept the planets in orbit around the sun (even that was a recent turn), and we were helpless to understand it any further. Now, General Relativity holds that gravity, and consequently the orbits of all the planets, is due to nothing more than the curvature of "space-time", and it makes awesomely accurate predictions about things like gravitational lensing. No need for God here, so where DO we need him? If God only exists in ever-closing gaps of knowledge, and we have a history of gap-closing to reflect on, isn't it fair to assume that there's nothing in the gaps at all?
b) The after-life is binary: you go to Heaven or you go to Hell. There are a few problems with this "answer". First, what are "you"? Are you your body? In that case, there's no possibility that "you" continue after death. There's absolutely no evidence for it, at the very least. Second, if you aren't your body, then where were "you" before you were born, or when you pass out, or even when you have a long, dreamless sleep? Finally, with the existence of an eternal "you" in hot contention, the assumptions of Heaven and Hell are not even worth pondering.

Answer 2

I was agnostic for years. Then I started doing research into it to find out for myself whether it was true or not. Now I'm a firm believer. I've found that most people that don't believe the Bible have never actually looked into it -

1.) Science. The Bible mentions many times the number of stars in the sky. Although only about 3,000 are visible to the eye even on a clear night. Jer 33:22. The Bible also says that each star is unique. 1 Cor 15:41. Stars all look the same to the naked eye, but they knew each one was different (which has now been proven). The Bible also describes the earth being hung on "nothing." Job 26:7. How would they have known the earth was suspended in space? The Bible also describes the circulation of the atmosphere. Ecc 1:6. The Bible also tells about the value of blood. Lev 17:11. This was said 3,000 years before it was proven. The list goes on and on. The Bible describes the circulation of water from rivers to seas...the amazing amount of condensation in clouds...on and on and on. Things they couldn't have possibly known at that time.

2.) Prophecy. It's been proven that the Bible was written over a time period of 2,000 years. This is undisputed. There are literally thousands of prophecies that came true. They are too lengthy to mention but are easy to find - do a search.

3.) Other Historians. Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus, both wrote about a man "called Jesus" but they were not religious writers. They were historians. They still talked about the amazing things he did and the persecution his followers (the diciples) endured.

4.) Women in the Bible. Women were nothing at this time. If the Bible were a story, no women would have played a part in anything. They certainly wouldn't have been the first at the empty tomb. And a woman wouldn't have been the key player in bringing the Saviour into the world.

5.) No dispute. Some of the Bible was written 50 years after the events and some say that makes it unreliable. Think about it - Abraham Lincoln died in 1865, that's 142 years ago, roughly three times longer than some of the Biblical events being recorded. If I were to write a book today saying that Abraham Lincoln didn't actually free the slaves, he grew up in Nigeria, and liked to wear high heels, how long do you think my book would last? Don't you think a few people would come forward and say, "I don't think so!!" Yet, the Bible has lasted 2,000 years after it was written. No one alive at the time disputed the events. They tried to squash the Christian movement, but couldn't. Why? Because the Bible is true. It's the inspired word of God.

Quit trying to find evidence against it - there's much more to be found for it.

Answer 3

Actually, you must difference your wording simply relatively: Hebrew Bible Roman Catholic Bible Protestant Bible The Jewish students completed the version of the Hebrew Bible in approximately the 3rd century. That textual content is incorporated in each the RC and Prot. Bible. The order of the books is one of a kind, when you consider that of underlying assumptions. The Christian Bible (the New Testament) wasn't fairly nailed down till close to the 10th century or so. After that, it was once locked in. This was once performed in a sequence of Church Councils. This textual content is the equal in each the RC and Prot. Bible, and the Old Testament is ordinarilly the equal in both of those Bibles, besides that the order is also a little bit one of a kind. The best change among the RC and Prot. Bibles is the presence of the Apocrypha -- a couple of books that have been unknown in Hebrew, however have been incorporated repeatedly in Greek language translations of the Old Testament that have been in trendy use across the time of the early Church. That Greek translation of the Old Testament (known as the Septuagint) was once so trendy (such a lot Jews didn't at the moment don't forget learn how to talk or learn Hebrew anymore) that every time you discover the Old Testament quoted within the New Testament, it's continually the Septuagint textual content they're quoting.

Answer 4

"What do you think of the Bible?"
It's the best written source that I know of to find out about God.

"Can the Bible be trusted...Tell me why..."
Because it can bring a person out of hopelessness and death if the words are believed.

"People are always telling me they don't trust the Bible, or like it, but they never prove to my why..."
Maybe you are not definitive enough with your questions. This forum is not very interactive. You get one shot, and then have a whole new set of answers on the next shot. Try asking someone who seems to know what they are talking about on e-mail or a message board.

"Why don't you believe in the Bible (or do)??"
Because God wants certain people to know what it means. He loves certain people, and it's those people who He's after. Other people He does not want, and they are the one's who really don't care in the first place.

Answer 5

The Bible is definately the inspired word of God...how do i know....when I have a problem and pray about it, open the scripture at random...theres my answer! Rigth there in black & white (or red & white) ...it is also singularly the most accurate historical account of all time....even after being translated into so many different languages....it only has a .02% inaccurcy from mistakes of scribes...scribes who had to count each letter left then to right to be sure of accuracy...the Torah (Jesish Bible -1st 5 books of our bible) has a .05% innaccuracy and the Koran being a little newer and like the Torah except Abrahams son Isaac is never mentioned or recognized but Ishmeal is instead. anyway it has an innaccuracy of 11%...No other book besides the Holy Bible has maintained this tremendous reord for accuracy which is amazing considering there were crusades to ban & burn Bibles in many countries alll over including USA. As hard as everyone tried to destroy it...would it have even survived if God had not supernaturally protected it?

You can find these refences at www.mbn.org

Answer 6

Even people who don't believe what the Bible says at least like it for the encouragement it brings (the parts that give encouragement that is). Either way, if you have an opinion, yet you still prefer to hear the opinion of those who believe in your opinion than you aren't really doing much to expand and back up your beliefs. If you have already a closed mind to the truth of the Bible than honestly, I can't convince you of it's truths. If you look at the authenticity of the Bible as you would go over a legal court case it passes with flying colors in terms of historical documentation (from believers and non-believers of the time, first hand eye-witnesses, prophecies carried out to a fault, etc. Now, even if someone can convince you that what is spoken in the Bible is true, only God can speak to your heart when you allow Him to about it's application in your personal life. That is what I think about the Bible. Nice question.

Answer 7

I DON'T believe God "dictated" it. I believe any mere mortals who claimed god inspired them to write it were lying for some unknown reason because nobody has EVER seen a god. NOBODY. EVER!

It's full of incredibly implausible reports of impossible events. When I first started reading YA, Christians used to say, "The holy bible is the true word of god." and they said, "Everything in the bible really happened and is true."

But months later, after much arguing with the non-religious, Christians have changed their tune and now say, "The stories in the bible are merely 'metaphors' used to teach with!" Well, how convenient that they can change their explanation so it sounds more plausible. But not to me.

I don't believe in the bible just because everybody else bought the story that it's the true word of god. How, honestly COULD it be? I mean, REALLY! God hasn't come to us EVER. Why should I think one exists at all?

If that isn't explanation enough for you, then I can't help you anymore.

Cheers.
.

Answer 8

It's a book that represents the worst of a culture far inferior to our own in acting in a peaceful, reasonable manor, as can easily be seen as women are constantly stressed as secondary, slavery is condoned, and violence is not looked down upon, and even encouraged in certain situations. Of ocurse all these passages are rarely read and largely disregarded, along with all the other twisted passages in the Bible.

That is just from a moral standpoint of why the Bible should not be trusted. Logically, anywhere near a literal interpretation has bene proven impossible. In fact, the OT has been ripped apart more than any other religious text. Unless you don't think it's scientific fact that the world has been here longer than 6-12,000 years. (Fact that can be observed through many scientific laws and observances).

Answer 9

Well, the Bible is a book. In fact, it is collection of several books written by different people over a huge span of time and put together in a compilation by other people, who somehow decided which books would and would not make it into this allegedly holy writ. It has been translated and cross-translated countless times over the centuries. I see absolutely no reason to trust or believe it any more than I would any other book that fits that description. As a guide for life, it has its place, but believe it as fact? Please.

Answer 10

i believe in the bible, because its the word of god. Even historians have found amazing things by reading the bible. Noahs ark, is one, its still on mount Ararat. Many things in the bible have been proved, Jesus lived and died, its been proved. Why do you think they use AD and BC for the years, if it werent true, why would historians, scientists, etc use these initials? I dont have much to show, sorry, i cant go up on mount ararat, nor can i go to israel....lol...

Answer 11

The Bible is the most interesting book I ever read. As time go on, more things are being proved that the Bible is true. I have 46 years of experience that the Bible do work for us. there is life and strength through His Word.