Why do Christians trust the Bible?

[RobbyPants]

I wonder why Christians trust the Bible as a valid source of information for what happened. I'm not talking about the obviousness of all the unsubstantiated accounts of magic happening. I don't mean how their apologetics show YHWH is untrustworthy (I already touched on that). I just mean the overall account of things:

• Stories being told by authors who had no witnesses to the events.
  
• Books being written by people who had "divine revelations".
  
• Satan as "the Deceiver".
  

The first two bullet points show how the story is written by people with no accountability for their fantastic claims. Hell, people have analyzed the texts and know for sure that Paul didn't write all the epistles. The exact number of them is in dispute, but we know that people claiming to be someone who had a divine revelation from God got their books inserted into biblical canon, and that doesn't even speak to whether or not Paul actually did have any revelation. How do people know this? How would they even be able to check to see if he's telling the truth? They are warned about false teacher and prophets and to not listen to them, but they have no way to be able to check the veracity of the author's claims. They could be false teacher poisoning the well against dissenting points of view.

And on the topic of poisoning the well, what about poor Satan? We are told flat-out that he is wrong, he is a liar, and to never trust him. This is a one-sided story where we are told to never talk to the other side to try and figure out what really happened. In any other situation, this would be highly suspicious and it would look like someone is trying to hide something. Put it in the context of religion, and suddenly everything is fine and it gets a free pass.

Shouldn't this alone be enough to put doubt into any adherent? Ignoring the absurdity of all the claims, the total lack of evidence, and the demonstrable wrongness of parts of the Bible, the book itself looks sketchy as hell.

[DramaQueen]

You're assuming they've read it
Many Americans don't even know who Job is, this is mind boggling for someone from the Muslim world. I don't understand how people who don't understand anything about their faith can call themselves **insert religion/religious**

[RobbyPants]

You're assuming they've read it
Many Americans don't even know who Job is, this is mind boggling for someone from the Muslim world. I don't understand how people who don't understand anything about their faith can call themselves **insert religion/religious**

Welcome to America. Many of these same people have very strong opinions on things they don't understand, like evolution, climate change, and the economy.

[vorlon13]

Why ??


Because Jesus said so. The bible records that too.

[Raven]

Americans don't particularly like to read, it seems.
Then, on top of that, around here if it isn't the KJV, it isn't worth diddly. Your average Xtian has a hard enough time with People magazine, you want them to understand Jamesian English?
Besides, if it was important, Preacher would talk about it during the sermon. You're tithing your 10%, let him do all the hard work for you, right?

As to why people trust it-you were raised to believe that this was the "Good Book", the inerrant Word of God. It gets drilled into you that this is what it is. It's hard to turn away from that. It was for me. I'm the only one out of my siblings who did. One sister runs the religious education program for her parish, and the other one is an ex-nun. She still believes though. It isn't easy to give up something you were always taught was both true and vital. I just hope the day comes when no one believes such nonsense.

[bladevalant546]

It is taught that truth is self evident. Basically the bible proves itself to be true. While I do not share Ravens anti-theistic ideals, I do with the indoctrination with out critical thinking.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Probably because they're told it's inerrant, and don't look into it beyond that.

As a meme, Christianity has stumbled onto a pretty good survival tool: doubting its main tenets will doom you to eternal punishment. People who are credulous enough to buy a talking snake, a burning bush, and so on aren't gonna turn their doubt on when they're told that the Bible was Divinely Inspired and therefore beyond criticism.

But yeah, most Christians I've met have only a sketchy knowledge of the Bible.

[DramaQueen]

I don't find Jamesian English isn't that hard for me. Maybe it's because I'm not a native English speaker.

[Crossless2.0]

A lot of this has to do with clergy who actually know something about the state of ancient/Biblical scholarship and choose not to divulge those findings to the laity. (Of course, I am not speaking of professional knuckle-draggers of the Evangelical/Southern Baptist varieties, who ostensibly believe in Biblical inerrancy.) I have personally known priests and Lutheran and Methodist ministers who were well read in modern scholarship and knew damned well that the Bible is not historically reliable but wouldn't breathe a word of that in their sermons.

The few I ever discussed this with said that their reticence had to do with not unnecessarily upsetting their parishioners, which is a breath-taking expression of contempt for the intelligence of their flocks.

Per$onally, I $u$pect there wa$ another motive in play.

[RobbyPants]

As a meme, Christianity has stumbled onto a pretty good survival tool: doubting its main tenets will doom you to eternal punishment. People who are credulous enough to buy a talking snake, a burning bush, and so on aren't gonna turn their doubt on when they're told that the Bible was Divinely Inspired and therefore beyond criticism.

Yeah, it's probably mostly these two things. I can see both of them in myself when I was still Christian.