I believe in the the truth of the bible because in it are promises. If we as believers do ABC we will receive 123. I did ABC and received far more than what I was expecting 123 to be.

Thanks for proving my point above, Drippy.

(October 9, 2014 at 11:24 pm)Drich Wrote: I believe in the the truth of the bible because in it are promises. If we as believers do ABC we will receive 123. I did ABC and received far more than what I was expecting 123 to be.

So, if all the promises were there except everlasting life would you still believe it ?

(October 10, 2014 at 12:10 am)FifthElement Wrote:

(October 9, 2014 at 11:24 pm)Drich Wrote: I believe in the the truth of the bible because in it are promises. If we as believers do ABC we will receive 123. I did ABC and received far more than what I was expecting 123 to be.

So, if all the promises were there except everlasting life would you still believe it ?

truth is truth. Reward or lack of it has no bearing on it.

If the bible lists and demonstrates truth the lack of eternal life in the bible has no bearing on the truth it does list.

Why here is a stupid person now. So Drich, other than enjoying the thought that you have special, secret knowledge that allows you to imagine yourself more righteous than others, why do you believe the bible is anything over and above a book? Wait, I guess you just answered that question.

(October 9, 2014 at 11:24 pm)Drich Wrote: I believe in the the truth of the bible because in it are promises. If we as believers do ABC we will receive 123. I did ABC and received far more than what I was expecting 123 to be.

You won't know about the payoff until you die.

That's the trick, you see.

(October 9, 2014 at 4:04 pm)Tonus Wrote:

(October 9, 2014 at 9:31 am)RobbyPants Wrote: I wonder why Christians trust the Bible as a valid source of information for what happened.

For me it was presupposition. If you automatically accept that god exists and the Bible is his letter to mankind, then of course anything it contains is true and accurate. That's why Christians go to such lengths to explain or rationalize the parts that sound horrible or crazy or don't make sense. It has to make sense, it's the word of god.

Just remember that for a long time the bible was only available in Latin which most people couldn't read. And the church killed anyone who did translate it.

The contradictory elements would've allowed the preisthood to claim anything they liked and be able to use the bible to back it up.

Chad32 said:

Quote:Cultural snowball effect. You grow up doing what adults say, on pain of punishment, and maybe you respect the opinions of people who have been aroudn the block a lot longer than you. in general this is a good idea, because kids can learn a lot of things from adults.

I didn't question my grandmother about these things because I assumed if there were such obvious flaws in the book, she would have picked up on it. You would be shunned at best, and killed at worst, for rocking the religious boat too much, so people just go along with it.

Very good point. We should not forget the power of indoctrination from the very beginning. As my wife is so fond of saying, kids are like sponges. They just indiscriminately soak up whatever they find themselves in. Your whole life from even before you can remember you get the message that this book is the truth, you get the message from all these religious tchotchkes all over the house, not too mention the hard sell in my own case of 12 years of Catholic school. You haven't a chance. They are just repeating what happened to them. They don't doubt this is right, and they don't want you to.

For a long time I didn't doubt it. Then when I did, I became spiritually radioactive or something. They won't talk to me anymore. That's OK, they were boring anyway.

(October 10, 2014 at 7:03 am)Raven Wrote: Chad32 said:

Quote:Cultural snowball effect. You grow up doing what adults say, on pain of punishment, and maybe you respect the opinions of people who have been aroudn the block a lot longer than you. in general this is a good idea, because kids can learn a lot of things from adults.

I didn't question my grandmother about these things because I assumed if there were such obvious flaws in the book, she would have picked up on it. You would be shunned at best, and killed at worst, for rocking the religious boat too much, so people just go along with it.

Very good point. We should not forget the power of indoctrination from the very beginning. As my wife is so fond of saying, kids are like sponges. They just indiscriminately soak up whatever they find themselves in. Your whole life from even before you can remember you get the message that this book is the truth, you get the message from all these religious tchotchkes all over the house, not too mention the hard sell in my own case of 12 years of Catholic school. You haven't a chance. They are just repeating what happened to them. They don't doubt this is right, and they don't want you to.

For a long time I didn't doubt it. Then when I did, I became spiritually radioactive or something. They won't talk to me anymore. That's OK, they were boring anyway.

Your doubt becomes a challenge to their self-identity.

(October 9, 2014 at 4:43 pm)KUSA Wrote:

(October 9, 2014 at 9:31 am)RobbyPants Wrote: the demonstrable wrongness of parts of the Bible, the book itself looks sketchy as hell.

This part confuses me. Why would the idiots that put the Bable together allow such conflicting things to be put in it. I guess they had shitty editors back then. If I was gonna write a holy book I would have made sure it was consistent.

Well, back in the day, they didn't have nice hyperlinked sites with cross references to make that sort of fact checking easy. That, and there is evidence of various parts being edited over time. If just one part is changed and the whole book isn't gone over to check for consistency, it would cause major problems.

If I look at this thing like software, and imaging being told to add an update that doesn't break the thing, I'd probably start crying when I look at the amount of effort it would take to properly test the whole thing.

(October 9, 2014 at 11:24 pm)Drich Wrote: I believe in the the truth of the bible because in it are promises. If we as believers do ABC we will receive 123. I did ABC and received far more than what I was expecting 123 to be.

That didn't address any of my concerns. I even put them in handy bullet points to make them stand out.

• How do you know the promises mean anything when the author had no audience when the promise was made? He could be lying and it could be empty.
  
• How do you know the promises mean anything when the author claims divine revelation? He could be lying and it could be empty.
  
• How do you know that any dissenting view point is automatically false? You aren't allowed to even discuss it.
  

Your promises are built on presupposition, and nothing more.