Atheists -- I'm having this debate with a Christian?

Question

And he's a very smart Catholic. But the main point that I can't get passed is his rationale for the validity of the Bible. He says that, "The Bible was written by many people over the course of thousands of years (including the OT), and it makes a very consistent story."

Does the fact that the Bible is consistent throughout make it any more real? Is that leverage he can use against me?

Also, can you give me any points to bring up to show him how atheism is the only logical position?

Answer 1

Ehh its not worth your time.

Answer 2

One would expect it to be a lot more consistent than it often is if it were the product of divine will. That said one would expect it to have some consistency since it was written and later codified by people looking to make a cohesive story out of it. What about the books that if included would have lead to great variance and inconsistency if they had been included? These were declared heretical and excluded in the long process of creating the Bible and Biblical canon. The Bible didn't appear the day after the supposed cruxifiction, they took centuries after choosing which stories were accepted and mashing it into some unified, consistent story. I think what internal consistency we do have in the product of pruning and the selection process but it is by no means a convincingly consistent, inerrant, nor cohesive tale.

"The concern with apparent biblical inconsistencies has a long history. Already in the second century, a pagan critic, Celsus, complained that Christians manipulated their sacred texts at will. The church father Origen spoke of the "great" number of differences among Gospel manuscripts. The critiques of the early Jewish scholar Hiwi al-Balkhi had already raised concern amongst rabbis of the geonic period. The text, A Critical History of the Text of the New Testament, written by Richard Simon, a French priest, appeared in 1689. This was followed in 1707 by the ground breaking edition of the Greek New Testament by theologian John Mill in which he identifies some 30,000 places of variation (mainly spelling differences) from the oldest available texts. Another classic text which discusses some internal contradictions is The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, published in 1794."

The sites below are for you if you are interested, I think you are wasting your time with the person if they are commited to believe what they want to believe and especially if you are in it without a real firm grasp of the history of the development of Biblical canon, early church politics, and questions of authorship.

Answer 3

The fact that it is consistent means nothing. Your talking about a book that says all life on earth started with two people and that a senior citizen built an ark and filled it with two of every species on the planet. It's all fairy tales. Just because the fairy tale is consistent doesn't mean it's all of a sudden real. The Bible may have been written by men but it has also been deliberately altered by man for many different reasons. Not to mention the fact that it has been re-translated so many times that much of its original text has been lost in said translation. All this considered how accurate can it really be?

Answer 4

The bible is consistent only to the extent that the books of the bible were picked for a particular reason from hundreds of documents available at the time.

This is like saying that if we go to the library and pick out only the fairy tales the book that we make up from our selection will be consistent because they are all fairy tales.

Of course they will be because that is what we select. The bible was compiled under the auspices of the emperor Constantine. Its purpose was to subvert the teachings of Jesus. These teachings were problematic because Jesus taught that God was unconditionally loving and saw us as being perfect exactly the way that we are.

This did not sit well with the powers that were in control because they wanted a God that agreed with Roman ideas.

Thus only scripture that defined God as a judgmental punishing jerk was allowed into the final draft of the bible. This is the reason that the bible appears consistent.

There was an abundance of scripture available including the actual teachings of Jesus that supported the idea of an unconditionally loving God. This scripture was excluded from the bible and was declared heresy, including the actual teachings of the man Jesus. At that point the teachings of Jesus were declared heresy and were no longer allowed to be used as a part of the christian theology.

If this is your idea of consistent then your friend is correct. I personally don't see it that way and respectfully disagree.

By the way I'm not an atheist.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 5

There is not perfect consistency in the Bible (for a slew of contradictions I refer you to the following pages: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/contradictions.html
http://www.angelfire.com/droid/risky/reasons.html )

Harry Potter is a more consistent series of books with less contradiction. Does that make it more valid?

The Iliad and the Odyssey were not the product of one man (people say they were by Homer, but he was actually the first to be remembered as reciting it.), but possibly hundreds. Their story is more consistent that the Bible as well. Does that make it more valid?

Hell Aesop's fables have less contradictions, but teach more or less the same lessons as the Bible does. Does that mean that there are talking animals who display sentience, good judgment, and moral fiber? No, obviously they're meant to be allegorical stories to teach us lessons.

I think that's the only thing one should get out of the Bible, because the fact of the matter is, it does have some stories designed to teach us to be good people. But please, please, don't take it literally. There is minimal fact, minimal historical value, and minimal literal truth. Take it for what it is.

And for the record, I am an Atheist.

Answer 6

Personally, I think the Bible is a mass of inconsistent contradictions. ...and why shouldn't it be inconsistent? It's had forty separate authors and countless "editors."

It is impossible to prove the negative assertion that God does not exist because it is impossible to check and eliminate every possibility where He might be found. It is actually the fact that Christians are unable to prove their own positive assertion that God exists in the physical realm which proves absolutely that He doesn't.

Agnosticism is the only logically unassailable position.

Atheism assumes that future Christians will be no better at proving the existence of their God than past Christians, and thus atheist is a position of some risk.

Answer 7

How is it that the bible teaches that the sun revolves around the earth. We no that is not true today and never was. How it is possible that not one persons among those so-called thousands who followed Jesus, not one can remember even the year that he was born; And with all the information we have today, how is it that believers accept that Adam was the first made on earth when that tall tale is only about 4,500 years old, and we already know that a form of human life was on this planet over 25,000 to 40,000 years ago. The bile is not consistent at all, and it contradicts itself in many places. It also states that god is a liar and so is Jesus.
What you are dealing with is a person that you should get away from quickly. That person is indoctrinated and is not smart at all. Run away do not walk.

Answer 8

Alice in Wonderland is a consistent story but we know it's not real.
The real trouble you face is overcoming faith with science and rationale, it's a tough ask. If you have faith, by definition you don't need evidence.
I'd put the debate on hold, get your catholic a copy of "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, and assuming he's smart enough he'll actually read it. That book is one of the best plain English, logical, rational, educated and well thought out arguments against religion you're ever likely to find

Answer 9

Dr. Seuss's books if put through many translations would also be consistant. So, that arguement doesn't really hold water. He did have a good point by saying "it makes a very consistent STORY." That it is.

In the bible it states not to eat from the tree of knowledge, for ye shall surely perish (paraphrased). IMHO I believe that the tree of knowledge is logic and as soon as you realize that it is a man made story, you lose hope/faith.

Just my perspective and I don't expect everyone to agree with it.

Enjoy your day.

Answer 10

First, the Bible (including the OT) was written over the course of a few hundred years, not thousands.

Second, it is not consistent. Even with the best apologetics there are still some pretty glaring contradictions in the Bible. Here's a list:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_book.html

Even if the Bible was consistent, that wouldn't make it any more real. For example, Last Thursdayism (the metaphyiscal position that the world was created Last Thursday using materials that appeared older) is completely consistent throughout, but is obviously not real.

Answer 11

tell him the church pick and chose different gospels which agreed with each other, they rejected many, including Mary Magdolins gospel... anyway the bible was written 300 years after Jesus lived... the church picked what to put into it that sounded correct... the church is very dishonest... for instance in the middle ages, if your baby was died before baptism, it was in, 'limbo', neither hell or heaven... so the church got more money off people desperate to baptise their children before they died (as young deaths were very common in those times).