"the bible and it's many flaws" - Page 8

Andrew · 01-02-2007, 07:17 PM

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Originally Posted by Brandon

Since the subtitle of this category is "Discussion of the bible and it's many flaws and why people still choose to believe", I was wondering what flaws you were referring to? Do you know of any instances of flaws that you can point out?

Brandon, I assume that you are a theist, or christian? Anyhow the number of contradictions, and flaws in the bible number in the hundreds. I'm too lazy to list all of them, but here are a few examples

1. The story of the Tower of Babel

This is pretty much Babel In a nutshell- (Genesis)
Men building tower
Angels tell God they’re not worshipping enough
God questions the angels
God goes down to see himself
God gets pissed
God then curses all of men, with difference in race/language etc...

Alright. First of all, is God not omnipotent? Why does he need angels to tell him this? And why does god need to go 'down' to see for himself? Is he not omnipotent, is he not everywhere and anywhere?

2. What were the last words of Jesus?

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Matthew 27:46 (New International Version)
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

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John 19:30 (New International Version)
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

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Luke 23:46 (New International Version)
Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

3. The story of Job

The trials of Job were just ridiculous, without mentioning the absolute load of crap that was God and Satan having a chat and forgetting about the whole 'casting ol' Lucifer out of heaven and into hell because he was a bit of a cunt'

4. Predestination and Freewill

First of all there are No verses in the bible about free will

But there are numerous about ol' Predestination

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Ephesians 1:3-5 “Blessed be the god and father of our lord Jesus Christ, who has blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him, and love he predestined us to the adoption as the sons to Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will”

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Romans 8:28-30 “And we know the God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, for those who he for knew he also predestined to become conformed to the image of the son, so that he would be first born among many brethren and these whom he predestined, he also called, and these whom he called, he also justified, and these whom he justified he also glorified”

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1 Chronicles 2:7 “But we speak God wisdom and mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory”

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Acts 4:27-28 “For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the gentiles and the people of Israel to do whatever your hand and purpose predestined to occur”

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Ephesians 2:4-9 “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved

And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

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2 Timothy 1:9 “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began”
Romans 9:16-18 “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.”

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Revelations 20:12-15 “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

So either way, God has set out his ol' plan and most of us are doomed to burn in hell from the get go. We have no choice.

Anyhow I would mention the many verses on how God is a complete child killer, arsehole who promotes cannibalism, and has commanded genocides worse than a thousand holocausts but that's a story for another post.

Og · 01-02-2007, 07:26 PM

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First of all there are No verses in the bible about free will

Free will is a myth. It's a rational concept that this population has developed to govern how we evolve. We are made of the same materials as those rocks over there. From birth to death every action we commit is a stimulated response to a variety of sensory inputs as they modify the structure of our brain over time.

This is not a new expression of reality. It's been around for thousands of years:
Indra's Net - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Every interaction in this universe is observed to occur based on deterministic laws that govern every interaction. The moon does not choose to orbit the earth any more than we choose what to eat for dinner. It is simply a very complex interaction where something like the moon's orbit is a relatively simple 2-body problem involving an inverse-squared distance law.

Indra's net describes an infinate array of jewels on very thin strings. The jewels are polished perfectly mirrored and when you look into any jewel, you see every other jewel in the net.

It's reality. This is what we observe. With humans, our eyes and ears and such take in signals. Our brain processes them in a deterministic way (i.e. signals propagate between cells with no choice involved) and the result is something we call free will because it's hard for us to predict it.

Some sciences like psychology try to describe trends of behavior on large scales. Much of my desired work in neuroscience involves construction of complex systems designed to simulate the complexity of a human brain. The goal is to produce something we can not distinguish from life.

Andrew · 01-02-2007, 07:47 PM

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The moon does not choose to orbit the earth any more than we choose what to eat for dinner.

I chose (emphisis on the chose) to eat pizza for dinner last night, I could have saved money by eating a mixture of whatever that was in the back of the cupboard and that stuff in the jar in the fridge, but I chose to eat Pizza. Freewill isnt a myth and anyone who says so is just trying to be somewhat philosophical, Over thousands of years our minds evolved to the point of being so superior, as to the ability to question our existance or to choose to eat pizza or whatever that stuff was.

Og · 01-02-2007, 08:00 PM

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I chose (emphisis on the chose) to eat pizza for dinner last night, I could have saved money by eating a mixture of whatever that was in the back of the cupboard and that stuff in the jar in the fridge, but I chose to eat Pizza. Freewill isnt a myth and anyone who says so is just trying to be somewhat philosophical, Over thousands of years our minds evolved to the point of being so superior, as to the ability to question our existance or to choose to eat pizza or whatever that stuff was.

I know you feel this way. And our society would collapse if people started thinking otherwise. That's the point.

And I'm not trying to be somewhat philosophical. I'm a neuroscientist. I've seen and measured these signals responsible for "choice". A doctor can scoop out your personality or disconnect your muscles from your control. A doctor can stimulate your brain and make memories arise or make your body behave outside of your conscious control.

That people continue to believe in free will as REALITY and not as an applied concept for social stability is just an image of how people don't quite grasp the scales or complexities of systems involved in the processes that they see around them every day.

Think of it this way: A neuron connects to your arm muscle. When you "choose" to flex your arm muscle, a signal activates that neuron and your arm muscle flexes. But what was connected to that neuron? Another neuron. And to that one? Another Neuron. The brain is a mass of 100 billion neurons forming 100 TRILLION connections with one another.

That you call it free will is no surprise given that perception seems to understand things on the complexity of a game of billiards or chess when untrained. In fact, the actions of your body are in no way any different than the formation of a storm and subsequent precipitation. The clouds don't make a choice.

Og · 01-02-2007, 08:04 PM

Furthermore, groups certainly used to associate anthropomorphic properties to the weather (i.e. rain dances and such). Today, we know that it's simply complex and can predict it with some degree of accuracy.

Life is complexity. That is what differentiates you and me from a rock or a cup of water. The similarity between all of those examples is, however, the deterministic nature of the universe.

The laws of physics control every synaptic cascade in your brain in the same way it governs every molecule in that cup of water!

It's amazing!

sagepowder · 01-04-2007, 10:41 AM

I am new here, just saying hello

<3 sagepowder

Bfpri · 01-05-2007, 11:41 PM

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Scientifically proven fact that inbreeding causes birth defects and mutations.

That's so what.

But Adam and Eve were "perfect" remember? it takes time for copying errors to accumulate so the chances of birth defects were much lower back then.

**George** · 01-06-2007, 12:32 AM

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Originally Posted by Bfpri

But Adam and Eve were "perfect" remember?

Says who exactly?

Og · 01-06-2007, 09:37 AM

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But Adam and Eve were "perfect" remember? it takes time for copying errors to accumulate so the chances of birth defects were much lower back then.

This is a humorous example of someone taking what a mythology denotes as literal truth and trying desperately to hold onto it because letting go of it's literal meaning drops them into the world of agnosticism which is too scary for most people to get into.

So, they hack the story in some bizarre way to incorporate PART of the irrefutable reality of science and discard the rest so that the opiates can continue to flow

Heh.. or maybe it's a joke and mocking people who do that. It's hard to tell in ascii text.

Bfpri · 01-06-2007, 06:28 PM

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This is a humorous example of someone taking what a mythology denotes as literal truth and trying desperately to hold onto it because letting go of it's literal meaning drops them into the world of agnosticism which is too scary for most people to get into.

As ridiculous as trying to use science to contradict the supernatural? It is part of our belief that Adam and Eve were perfect. Now i'm not sure how hard it is to understand that. Just like some agnostics believe God exists.

Genesis 1:31 "And God saw that it was very good". Does it go to stand that God would create Adam with genetic errors?