RE: How can a Christian reject part of the Bible and still call themselves a Christian?
October 4, 2016 at 7:16 pm
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2016 at 7:20 pm by Simon Moon.)
(October 4, 2016 at 6:29 pm)vorlon13 Wrote:(April 29, 2016 at 3:53 pm)wiploc Wrote: You can't be a Christian unless you cherry-pick which parts you want to believe. The bible is shot thru with contradictions. If you read that god can do everything, and also that he can't defeat iron chariots, then you have to pick one or the other. You can't believe both.
Atheists, on the other hand, can read the bible literally. We can say, "That's a contradiction. The bible has to be wrong about at least one of the two conflicting statements."
As an atheist, however, I can insist the christers witnessing the Word to me be of the stripe that do believe all the bible, contradictions and all.
That it is literally impossible is not my problem, it is theirs.
I agree completely.
This is supposedly a set of texts, inspired by the all powerful creator of the universe, that contains the most important message possible. A message imperative to our eternity, and critical that we get it correct.
And yet, it does not contain any sort of instructions on which parts can be ignored, which parts are to be taken literally, which parts are metaphor, which parts are parables, etc. This fact has lead to thousands of sects, many with major disagreements in basic doctrine, all of them can point to passages in the Bible that support their position.
And this is the best that this god can do?
Have his followers write this message down decades or more after the alleged events, on pieces of parchment (which he should know will be lost and decompose), in ancient languages (which he should now will die and be misinterpreted), only give it to a very small minority of the entire human population (which he should now would allow the majority of humanity to have a burden of cultural isolation, and create "false religions"), have them include obvious scientific, historical, and archeological inaccuracies... etc...
Yeah, not impressed....
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.