The many contradictions, inconsistencies, and errors in the Bible are proof that the Bible can't possibly be the inerrant perfect document they believe it to be. This means that their God isn't the perfect God they believe him to be, because the Bible is His book. Or it means that the Bible is entirely the product of the human imagination, with a bit of history thrown in to make it more convincing.
And yes, Christians are taught to believe in the perfection of the Bible (which they know is perfect because the Bible says it is).
They get around the disagreements amongst the gospel accounts of Jesus' life by claiming the Bible is the accurate representation of what the witnesses said. This doesn't account for the differences between the two genealogies of Christ, nor does it explain why Christ even has a genealogy traced through Joseph if he was conceived by the Holy Ghost.
The key word is "irreconcilable." Reconciling the inconsistencies and contradictions of the Bible is part of what's called "apologetics."
A Mormon site claims the Matthew lineage was about legal, not genetic, succession. Fair enough. Then they point out that Luke's version could apply to either Mary or Joseph since they were cousins. This seems to come from what Catholics call "tradition."
Apparently, you can reconcile the infallibility of the Bible with its inconsistencies by having a Perfect Deity fail to insert qualifiers saying why the two are different. You can also leave out aspects that could be read "wrong," such as a cursed king being part of Jesus' lineage.
8 comments:
Never underestimate the power of the human mind to rationalize away inconvenient evidence.
I'll respond to this post—when I've stopped laughing.
There are NO 'problems' with the Bible that can't be reconciled. There are lots of COMPREHENSION problems, though.
Lots, lots, of troglodytes out there—
For me, Bart Ehrman's book, "Misquoting Jesus" was a revelation for me. I know many Christians just assume that the apostles wrote the first books of the new testament themselves. Ehrman points out to glaring differences in the stories between each testament. He also traces back to when in history some of these changes were actually made.
"Misquoting Jesus" CLEARLY demonstrates that the bible is a work of fiction.
Ehrmann's latest book makes a case for some of the writings of Paul being forgeries. The inconsistencies between the "real" and the forgeries are part of the case he makes.
Hi.
I've been lurking here off and on for a while, and I thought there were some good comments made along these lines in the last thread. When you get some time, could you maybe give those arguments the attention they deserve?
"Belief in Protestant fundamentalism naturally might lead to atheism, because the Bible was not meant to be read in isolation from Christian Tradition.
Ehrman's agnosticism is pretty predictable given his background."
(Siddhartha)
Credible biblical scholars don't accept Bart's assertions.
LA, I noticed the local grocer has a big sale on unicorn meat—should I pick you up some??
The troll that I banned has been reading the Bible in isolation and he's batshit crazy. I think if Christianity is to continue, it should throw out the Bible completely, admit that it's a cultural institution and not really historical, and just go on praying and singing and feeding the poor, which are not bad things to spend your time on.
Thanks for this page. Don't know how I missed it before but I just added you. Was discussing and researching this issue when I found your page. Very good stuff.
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