mister_lister

I guess I qualify on two points:

1) I view the bible as fabrication (white lies) most stuff is wisdom other stuff is basically lies (caused by delusional thinking).
2) I was a hardcore Christian for 18 years. I can not tell you how many times I have heard sermons and read the bible cover to cover. I know that book better than most of the population. I can quote you doctrine until the sun comes up tomorrow. I won't quote you verses, I think that is anal retentive .

If you want to know where the bible errors in it's many ways (there is not one "way" if you actually read the book you would know) check out this website:

Evil Bible

That is an excellent resource for what is fundamentally flawed about the Bible

If you are a true "truth seeker" and diligent as Christ demands, the bible is a stopping point on a long journey.

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"The trouble is not with what we don't know, it is with what we think we know that just ain't so". ~ Mark Twain

Jayhawker Soule

It's sad to see what passes for scholarship these days ...

niranjan

True, the goan inquisition perpetrated by the portuguese christians in Goa in India is quite infamous for its barbarism and great cruelty and slaughter of innocent men and women and children.


In Europe, the Goa Inquisition became notorious for its cruelty and use of torture, and the French philosopher Voltaire wrote "Goa is sadly famous for its inquisition, which is contrary to humanity as much as to commerce. The Portuguese monks deluded us into believing that the Indian populace was worshipping The Devil, while it is they who served him."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquisition
historian, Dr. T. R. de Souza

"The Goan inquisition is regarded by all contemporary portrayals as the most violent inquisition ever executed by the Portuguese Catholic Church. It lasted from 1560 to 1812.......... So harsh and notorious was the inquisition in Goa, that word of its brutality and horrors reached Lisbon but nothing was done to stop this notoriety and escalating barbarity and it continued for two hundred more years. Nobody knows the exact number of Goans subjected to these diabolical tortures, but perhaps it runs into hundreds of thousands, may be even more.......... Dr. Trasta Breganka Kunha, a Catholic citizen of Goa writes, "Inspite of all the mutilations and concealment of history, it remains an undoubted fact that religious conversion of Goans is due to methods of force adopted by the Portuguese to establish their rule. As a result of this violence the character of our people was destroyed. The propagation of Christian sect in Goa came about not by religious preaching but through the methods of violence and pressure." “

"Historians consider the Goa Inquisition the most merciless and cruel ever" Excerpts from interview with Richard Zimler, author of Guardian of the Dawn, by Lindsay Pereira of Rediff.com (14 SEP 2005).



The goan inquisition was brought to an end by the Hindu maratha warriors from the deccan who thrashed the portuguese.

__________________
You yourself are your only friend. You yourself are your only enemy.

---Krishna ( Bhagavad Gita )


“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

---Buddha


The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

---Thomas Paine

niranjan

Satans greatest successes are when he has the name of God on his lips.

--- Mahatma Gandhi

__________________
You yourself are your only friend. You yourself are your only enemy.

---Krishna ( Bhagavad Gita )


“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

---Buddha


The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

---Thomas Paine

El_Mariachi64

Hi Mary

I'll try to answer your question as best I can. I'm a history minor, so while I'm no theology expert, I do know more than most when it comes to the history of it.

Pretty much what cause the bible to lose its credibility, as far as I'm concerned is the history of not only itself but of other religions. For instance, many of the stories presented in the Bible have their origins in much ancient civilizations.

For example, the Moses story originates in the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations of Mesopotamia (Iraq - around 5000-4000 BCE), a story of a hero called Gilgamesh - Gilgamesh wasn't actually Moses - he meets a guy who did everything Moses did - this "Moses" was trying to teach Gilgamesh that life is not eternal and to stop trying not to die (Gilgamesh was a son of a God)

Another example is the myth of baby Moses being left on a basket in the river. Ancient Egyptians kings likewise had similar origin stories.

I've read accounts of the cross being a religious symbol long before Christianity even came into being, and that the concept of the trinity is also recycled from previous religoins.

One professor also said that Jesus might have lived 200 years before he supposedly was even born (ie - 200 BCE), and that his story of leadership and sacrifice against Roman cruelty carried on and expanded over the Roman empire, getting so big that it created a new religion.

Also, there's the fact that the bible was not written down by the apostoles. The first part was written down around 80 CE, the rest of it much later. As most stories were passed down back then, Christianity was taught through word of mouth.

Then, before Emperor Constantine came along, Christianity was seen as a backwater religion, its followers persecuted. But then Constantine saw a vision (was he on drugs? too much sun?) of a cross and he heard "by the symbol you will conquer." So he decided to change the Roman Empire (which was under some distress due to the Christians not converting to Roman Gods) to a Christian religion. He summoned the Christian teachers he saw convenient to assemble at the Council of Mycenae at around 450 CE to put together the bible, omitting and destroying all opposing Christian points of view (of which there were many), and thus the Roman Catholic Church and the Bible were born - as you can see, both political inventions of man put together to maintain an Empire through the power of religion. I figure Constantine pretty much though "meh, if you can't beat them, join then."

Then there's all the other competing religoins, like Islam (which has its own convoluted politically convenient story of war and conquest) which claims to be an Abrahamic religoin as well, but claims to be the ultimate, true version. So who's to say which one's right? Both? None? They both have just as much credibility as the other, which makes choosing one a logically impossible task.

The bible is a great book, has lots of great advice (as well as lots of bad advice - which any sane person would ignore) But that's it, imo

Mary, you just have to make up your own mind. Read everything there is to read about the subject, and then come up with your own conclusions. Don't let anyone tell you what to think, not me, not priests, and not professors (but do take into account who's talking - a bum on the street has less credibility than someone with a Ph.D in Physics). Listen, and then decide for yourself.

jaej

tell that to chap. she seems to think everyone's word is of equal merit..

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girlinterrupted364

im not sure there is any book thats all fact, actually i know there isnt... im sure german history books tell a whole different point of view of ww2 than ours in the us, or england do.. and i know our history books tend to skip over our the native american brutality that occurred around the turn of the century. the point is, you cant really prove that the bible is any more historically accurrate than a history text which is considered non-fiction. so maybe the bible is good for history class or philosophy class but, im not sure its all that accurrate

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I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

Kham

Just as an aside, it isn't.

El_Mariachi64

Yes I can actually, and while your point is taken, it is also deeply flawed.

Your claiming that the bible is just as historically credible as the thousands of books written by professionals who have devoted their entire lives to studying the stuff they are writing about.

While bias is definitely an issue, we're all human after all, all textbooks that are recognized by their peers (that is, other competing professionals) are not fabrications. They back up their claims. During the era of male dominance and racism, plenty of history was skipped over or downplayed, but I guarantee you none of it was made up. All the history you will find in a real history textbook is backed up by facts, research, and thousands of years worth of documented knowledge.

All this knowledge has been acquired through documents and ruins and accounts that have been preserved through history. Whenever there's a "dark age" its when no documents exist that tell us what happened, so we simply say, honestly, that we don't know - for example the Greek dark ages (the hundred years in between ages of Troy and Agamemnon and the golden age of Greek civilization - Athens and Troy) or even the Medieval period (which isn't even a real dark age- we know plenty about that era).

In the back of all history textbooks, usually a good 1/3 of the pages, you will see all the references used, the countless of essays and books and documents and <gasp!> evidence used to write the history book. Why do they do this? Because their not afraid of having someone accuse them of plagerism and/or fabrication, which is what your doing, which I must say, is quite the insult. So go ahead, pick up any textbook and try to prove them wrong with EVIDENCE, because I guarantee you, no matter who you will pick they will have a library of reference that backs them up, which is likewise backed up by hundreds of other libraries. Meanwhile, look in the back of the bible and what do you see? A toll free number that accepts donations maybe?

Right...there's even EVIDENCE <other surviving documents from that era> that tells you the origins of the bible. It is just ONE piece of evidence in the history of the world, one document, one source, that when compared with all the thousands of competing evidence that contradict it, any historian worth his salt would quickly dismiss the Bible as nothing but ONE book...just one book with absolutely no sources listed.

Come on, don't you write essays? Haven't you ever heard of a "Works Cited Page" or a "Bibliography"?

And the beautiful thing is that none of those history books are claiming to be infallible, they are all works in progress (any college student trying to sell their books back would know - damn new editions) which are constantly changing and being revised. And guess what? When overwhelming evidence comes up which contradicts the history of a particular textbook, (ie. any textbook written by Iran claiming the Holocaust didn't happen) it is simply discarded, ignored and shelved away, branded with the words "irrelevant." The bible, on the other hand, is well, garbage (except for the good advice)

jaej

And yet it's still got 2 billion people wrapped around it's finger...or rather Paul does....

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