One of Jehovah's Witnesses needs your help

[Won2blv]

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

[Minimalist]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/56102396/The-B...ein#scribd


Here.


Scribd can be a PITA but it is a free read. 

This is the crib notes version, written by Israeli archaeologist, Ze'ev Herzog in 1999 and published in Haaretz in Israel...where it touched off a firestorm.

http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=...90%2Fposts

[robvalue]

Hello again

One quick question to ask yourself: if you had never seen the bible before, and picked it up off the shelf in the library, what would you make of it? Would you think it is a load of weird stories, or would you be blown away by it and think it has to be divinely inspired? If you haven't already read it front to back, you'll most likely be very surprised when you do.

What reason do you have to think it's anything other than stories? I imagine the main reason is being surrounded by people who tell you time and again that the book is special. To be objective, it's time to forget about what people have told you. Examine the book as if for the first time. Don't say "Can this be disproved", you wouldn't ask that of Lord of the Rings right? Ask "Is there any reason to believe any of this is true?" That is the sceptical question. The former question is what is called the argument from ignorance fallacy (covered on my website) which is a way of trying to hold on to unsupported beliefs through unfalsifiability.

I have great respect for you trying to take an objective look! So often I hear that phrase, and people spend about 5 minutes and then they're back to "Well I choose to believe it."

If you think about why you reject other religions such as Islam, you'll probably find we reject your religion for exactly the same reasons. Sure, it could maybe somehow be true (although not really, because it is so full of contradictions) but you can say that about Lord of the Rings.

Here's a great page about bible contradictions and such:

http://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_m...tions.html

[vorlon13]

Eerie similarities (plagiarism) from much older pagan texts has to be concerning to any sincere religious person.

So to obvious contradictions, failed prophecies, and gobs and gobs and gobs of Bible verses no one wants to follow, even in the Jehovah Witness orbit.

Menstruating women allowed in your buildings on Sunday ?   Why ?

And Sunday?  Why not sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, just like God ordered ?

God hates divorce in the OT in Malachi, but permits it elsewhere, Jesus puts the kibbutz on it for good in the NT, but yet we still have Christers divorcing and remarrying with wild abandon.  I don't know if JWs can divorce and remarry if they can't, good for them.  If they can, WTF ???

Can JWs wear mixed fabric clothing?  Go to church with a rash?  Read horoscopes? Eat pork?  Have gay sex?  Are you allowed to discuss (recall) Amelek?  Can JWs use bitter herbs to end an inconvenient pregnancy?  Are women allowed to speak in Kingdom Halls?  Can JWs eat cheeseburgers?  Shrimp? Pork? Lemons picked on Sunday?  On Saturday before sunset?  Can JWs handle deadly serpents and drink poison with no ill effects ?  If they can't, why not?  Can JWs heal any ailment with a laying on of the hands?

And any idea why Jesus didn't heal the fig tree instead of smiting it ??

[Minimalist]

And any idea why Jesus didn't heal the fig tree instead of smiting it ??

He was a prick?

[vorlon13]

Ding ding ding

we have a winner.


And he created the damn thing, didn't he realize he made it to go into and out of season ?? WTF JESUS, the poor thing is just following your instructions !!

[robvalue]

Maybe this is covered in Min's video book, but there's the problem that it's pretty hard to demonstrate Jesus actually existed at all, let alone did the stuff attributed to him. Up until recently I'd always assumed Jesus must have been real. After researching it, if he was real, it was clearly just some guy who got a whole story woven around him.

[Minimalist]

That's not a video.  That's the whole book.

[robvalue]

Ah OK, sorry. My Ipad displays things weird at the moment and it's hard to tell what is what. Being stupid doesn't help either, I can see it's a book now

[AFTT47]

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible is a pretty good expose'. It not only shows that it is an inconsistent and self-contradictory mess, it shows why it is not something worth following even if it is true.