(April 26, 2015 at 10:11 pm)nicanica123 Wrote: Hello, I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I have started a couple of threads already but I want help with one subject in particular...
The bibles lack of credibility.
I have heard many charges against the bibles lack of credibility. Such as, it is a collection of fairy tales, it is historically inaccurate, it borrowed from surrounding religious lore, etc.
Please understand that I am agnostic. I do not know what I believe but I am making an absolute stance on what I believe until I hash out some things. So please, give me links, facts, or whatever else you have to help me with this one subject. Being told, "you know that its a bunch of bullshit, right?" is not any of those things. It may be true but I want to see facts. I don't want to hear about specific JW misgivings, just the bible as a whole. Why we can know for certainty that it is absolutely not the word of a divine being. If you say something that I feel deserves a rebuttal, take it as my lifelong indoctrination or whatever else you want but I promise that I am looking at this from a skeptical viewpoint. I want to clear my mind of the doubt that lingers in my head. I would almost say that I am 70 or 80 percent atheist at the moment. So my 20 to 30 percent may argue. Thanks for your help! I look forward to hearing your thoughts
I would suggest going on a Bart D. Ehrman reading extravaganza. Don't try to read all his books, there are too many. But, he can show you how the New Testament shows evolution of theological thought among early Christians. He can also show you how various parts of it are historically impossible. But he will not ridicule it. He merely looks at it as a historical source and examines it as one might examine any other historical source. Most sources don't stand up very well if the standard is absolute truth and the Bible doesn't either. That is because it is a set of documents produced by and for humans. If it were divinely inspired it ought to do rather better than other texts but it does rather worse.
In particular I recommend: How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
