A Question For Christians

Post Reply New Topic

Whose teachings do you have faith in?

I ask this question because the more I look into the origins of Christianity, the historical accuracy of the bible, the historical context of the stories and sayings in the bible, and also the authorship of the New Testament, the less I understand why contemporary Christians believe what they do. In an age where knowledge and learning is at our fingertips, where we have easy access to scholarly articles and research how is it that so many fundamental issues regarding the historical nature of christianity go ignored?

For example, I learnt today that 666 is not the number of the devil. This is a common misconception because people do not read Revelations in its historical context. When it is read as it should be (a tale of impending apocalypse, it turns out that 666 is the Gematrical number for the Emperor Nero.

Isaiah 53 has nothing to do with the crucifiction of Jesus, it instead refers to the suffering and redemption of jews held by the Babylonians.

The Gospels were anonymous until 185 ce when Irenaeus decided to attribute them to Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. However the evidence overwhelmingly points tot these books having multiple authors and certainly not the attributed ones IE Mathew and John were not written by them and are therefore not eyewitness accounts. The reason Irenaeus settled on the four gospels? "it is not possible that there can be either more or fewer than four" why "because of the four corners of the earth and the four winds" So whereas historical study would show that the NT was written not by the people suggested and is in fact a conglomeration of conflicting stories from aural tradition, christians continue to believe that at least two of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts

Many of the Pauline epistles were not written by him.

Psalm 22 does not relate to the death and resurrection of Christ.

Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who believed the end of days was coming and some of the 12 would see this in their lifetimes.

The list of inconsistencies, misconceptions and falsehoods is astounding.

Even the fact that early Christian Jews were not only at odds with Orthodox Jews, they were also at odds with themselves, is rarely spoken off.

So I wonder what is it that contemporary Christians have faith in, and have they bothered to look into the historical events and place the passages of scripture they hold so fundamental to their beliefs into their correct historical and cultural context?

Honestly, I think that anyone can find any information they want to back up their own biases. Those who don't want to believe the bible will find as much info as they can on why the bible can't be true. Those who want to believe it will find as much info they can on why the bible is true. It's a stalemate.

In the long run I think that we all choose the path that we want and we seek ways to justify it.

Why did you start looking into reasons not to believe the bible?

It is not a question of finding what I want to find. I have been reading scholarly works on the bible which explain in detail the context of the scriptures and the reasons why the vast majority of biblical scholars believe that almost half the books in the NT have dubious authorship. It is not me interpreting what I read and making what I want of it, this it would appear to be the modus operandi of many christians, I am simply reading and understanding what it is modern scholars using historical evidence, reason.

As to why would I want to disprove the Bible. I have been sceptical of many things throughout my life and this one has always been on the top of the list, as, to a non theological, reader it simply makes no sense. However for some reason it has gained traction with billions of people, and I wonder why? I also do not see any religion as a force for good, let alone benign, this does not mean that there are not good religious people or good organisations which have a theological angle, but on the whole religion of all persuasions are a blight on humanity.

So again whose version of The Christ do you beleive in. More to the point are you aware of the historical deceits which surround your faith.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 24 May 2014, 2:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

Personally, I just wanted to find out the truth. The more I learn, the less I can believe in the Christian God.

Yes, but what about when you read something positive about the bible that is true. Do you accept it or do you dismiss it as insignificant because you have read so much that disproves the bible. There are 2 sides to every coin?

Like the specialist who deal with autism. They have different views that they put forward about it and we read up on what they write about their studies and observations and then we have to decide whose conclusions we are going to put trust in.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that other people don't benefit from the bible. I got to a point in my life where I thought, I'm not going to miss out on something that I like just because other people don't understand. I have to do my own reading and weigh things up, draw my own conclusions and make my own path.

If we are going to try and find the beginings of my interest in Jesus then thinking back I genuinely liked what I read about Jesus in the gospels, I like the man who is described and I like the succinct way he explains things. I like reading the gospels. That was probably the catalyst that began my interest in who Jesus was.

There are positive sayings in the bible which may be true as they are multiplie independentantly attested. My beef with the bible is that much of it appears to have little to do with what Christians preach and yet they demand we all live the way they believe is the way of Christ. I do not accept the idea that because some people find solace in Christianity it should remain inviolable. Unlike many Religious people if actual evidence was to surface showing that the tales of ressurction and devinity had a reasonable probability, I would begin to accept the stories as true. You cannot say that for most religious people who despite the overwhelming evidence that the beliefs they hold are based upon falsified accounts refuse to accept this.

The contemporary Christians who believe literally in the Bible are a minority. But they are a very vocal minority. With a great deal of political influence, which gives them an even bigger bully pulpit.

@Hurtloam: I think part of the problem for Dent is he lacks any kind of experience with what being a Christian really is. It's entirely an experiential thing. If you have that and you come to accept it, it is difficult at best to escape it. A person who has reached that sort of full acceptance of the gospel as truth probably will never abandon it. People like Ehrman have never had those inescapable kinds of life experiences, so I think maybe it's easier for them to see the Bible as full of conflicting and contradictory information. I think fundies are closer to that kind of experience, especially on a superficial level, than maybe other people are, and that makes it difficult to abandon those kinds of beliefs. I don't think people like Ehrman are really all THAT common, but Ehrman is evidence that not ALL even fundamentalist evangelicals are so strongly rooted in their beliefs. But what the Bible DOES indicate is that acceptance of the gospel is a choice we all have to make and nobody can do it for us.

Lately I've been more inclined to, more or less literally, question EVERYTHING. Dent and I have had a dialogue on circular reasoning within the scientific method and how one resolves the issue of a logical flaw within a universally (I assume) accepted methodology. Dent's answer was roughly that there are some assumptions we HAVE to make and that the apparent problem of faulty reasoning is an unsolvable one. In short, and I'd agree with Dent on this one (I'm guessing), we simply have to go by what we believe works.

Personal experience trumps "evidence" (in the verificationist use of the term) every time. The hard empiricist viewpoint is that personal experience is invalid because 1) It is unrepeatable and unobservable, i.e. unfalsifiable, and 2) we have evidence of hallucinations among other things. The way I see it, this arrangement sets up a quasi-gaslighting situation in which the empiricist calls us all crazy and delusional, whereas the theist is unable to deny the reality of the experience. The theist in the argument will often miss a golden opportunity here: If our experiences are real and the anti-theist is denying them, that makes the anti-theist crazy and delusional. It's an impasse created by our fundamental assumptions: The anti-theist assumption that we're wrong, founded on another assumption that personal experience don't count; and the theist assumption that our senses are reliable and that the supernatural is a part of that experience.

Hard empiricism is demonstrably wrong since absolutely nothing is off-limits in terms of verification and you ultimately have to assume what you're trying to prove. It's a fatal logical flaw in the empiricist argument.

Theism is not without the same problem because when it comes to God we still have to assume what we're trying to prove. You simply resolve the logical problem the same way a scientist would: Certain assumptions like logic, observation, abstractions, etc. are axiomatic. There's no need to prove them. They're merely tools are language to describe or prove other things. Something/Someone like "God" can't be empirically proven (except, say, "Creation is evidence of a Creator," etc.). God, then, would simply be a transcendent being we're aware of through our experiences with him. We already know God exists, just like a scientist "knows" things like numbers, logic, methodologies, and so on exist?so why would we assume he DOESN'T exist? I like the psychological term "gaslighting" when describing it, because it looks as though the anti-theist is attempting to make us question our sanity. The empiricist isn't really going to question verificationism or even then scientific method. So why doubt God? There's really nothing wrong here, and nobody deserves to be manipulated.

I don't think there's anything that can't be called into question on one level or another. Not all questions have good answers, either. And while I do respect the anti-theist questioning my beliefs, I don't believe that anti-theistic beliefs are above questioning, either. That includes the false assumptions behind Biblical textual criticism, and I find Ehrman's and similar views to be suspect. The biggest question in my mind is how do we know the historical Jesus and the Biblical (NT) Jesus really were different? I don't take issue with a critical text such as the Novum Testamentum Graece because Christians do have an active interest in contemporary Bible translations being as close to the original sources as possible. It's when we add more assumptions to critical text, such as "nope, didn't happen" revisionist attitude that I think we run into trouble and the critic loses credibility.

And I'm not just talking about myself here?I think perhaps all Christians understand and share a certain kind of "feel" to faith that makes it so real and so certain that their faith remains unshaken even when presented what to an anti-theist might be incontrovertible evidence. Not all of us are sufficiently educated enough to counter those kinds of claims, but there's just something "not right" about not believing. That's not very "bright" or "intellectual," but then again, Christianity is not a religion for "brights" or "intellectuals." It doesn't exclude anyone, but you don't have to be especially bright to get it. The idea of something being open for everyone regardless of education or experience is at the heart of Christian faith, and it's this accessibility that Christianity offers that sets it apart from ivory-tower academia. I think Christianity encourages scholarship?but by no means is scholarly effort a prerequisite for salvation. It's more about Who knows you than how much you know.

And that last point might be one of the hardest to get. If being supersmart and "intellectual" is all you know, and only one kind of evidence is all you'll ever accept, you're not going to understand Christians at all.

AngelRho I suspect you do not understand the subject I have raised in this post, it has nothing to do with whether God exists, or even if Jesus was the Messiah sent by God, it has nothing to do with the supernatural. It has everything to do with comparing the historical Jesus with the contemporary idea of him. Apart from not addressing my questions, just how many ad-hominins and logical fallacies can a single post contain?

You start with an appeal to mysticism; to paraphrase 'Dent doesn't get it because he has not experienced the wonders of the supernatural'. Well Rho, I am not trying to debate the supernatural, your experiences of it or mine. I am coming at this issue from the perspective of historical evidence, which (from what I have read via multiple sources) strongly points to the Jesus you worship not being the Jesus of the early christians. This is not a theological, supernatural nor mystical point but one of historical accuracy.

Rather than debate or try and refute my suppositions you go on a rant against the scientific method an empiricism.

You do not want empirical knowledge, for you experience is king, for you, whatever you experienced was divine and no amount of neuroscience will persuade you otherwise.

You claim to be questioning "EVERYTHING". I doubt this is true. have you looked into the science behind hallucination, and delusion? No, instead you simply discard the idea and say the people suspecting this to be the case are the ones who are actually delusional.

As to the idea of axioms. The concept that god is axiomatic in the same way empiricism relies upon sensory experience, is nuts. Go on, rely upon God and the inerrancy of the Biblical texts and see where it gets you. How many times has 'God did it', been replaced by naturalistic explanations, reached via the scientific method which by default is empirical.

The empiricism of the scientific method has given us the utterly bizarre world of quantum physics and the equally strange domain of the ultra cold, yet you claim that this method is flawed because "Hard empiricism is demonstrably wrong since absolutely nothing is off-limits in terms of verification and you ultimately have to assume what you're trying to prove" That is exactly what the method sets out to eliminate. Yes, sometimes all the evidence is not yet in and people make wrong assumptions, Newton's law of universal gravitation took centuries to disprove (yet it still falls neatly into the scientific concept that some ideas are more wrong than others). Others are quickly falsified, pertinent to this site is Andrew Wakefield and his nonsense regarding MRR vaccinations.

Regarding Ehrman, you claim he "never had those inescapable kinds of life experiences, so I think maybe it's easier for them to see the Bible as full of conflicting and contradictory information" and yet he was a fundamentalist evangelical christian who studied ancient Greek and Aramaic so that he could better understand the BIble and get closer to his lord. He did exactly what you accuse empiricism of, assuming what he wanted to prove ,yet he differs from you in the same way any scientist does. Once he had found that the evidence pointed away from what he believed to be true, he went with the evidence.

The major difference between myself and supernaturalists is that when an event happens that has no scientific explanation I will honestly say "I don't know what caused that" you and your ilk will invariably invoke God/Gaia/ Vishnu etc

I think that is a very interesting comment. Like what? I wonder if it's similar to my thoughts. Because I come from an athiest/agnostic background alot of things that Christians believe is completely outside of my experience and I don't understand why they have saints for example as I've never read anything about saints in the bible. I don't understand why priests are called "Father" when Jesus said that his disciples shouldn't have titles. And so on...

So I've been introduced the bible with little knowledge of religius traditions and wanted to read it as it is. I think it's interesting that you were discussing looking into original Greek words too because I find that inteesting, but then I am fascinated with language and I supose that would be a natural sort of angle for me to look at when approaching the bible.

I have had Christians talke to me about feeling moved by the Lord and that sort of thing, and I don't feel that way. I am not an emotional person, so I can understand why someone would look at the bible from a non emotional way.

Particularly when you remember that the Bible forbids independent thought. That's why it's so important to stop people from accepting it as, erm, gospel. If one truly accepts that the Bible is the only source of morality, then one is completely beholden to those words, which aren't a great source of morality.


OK then, ask yourself this. Is God absolutely perfect?

If God is absolutely perfect, that means he does not have the capacity to change - if he did, he would no longer be absolutely perfect, and a perfect being isn't going to make that mistake.

Any form of existence in time necessarily entails change (from a state of "going to" to a state of "doing" to a state of "have done"). As a perfect God cannot change, a perfect God cannot exist in time.

In order to interact with humans, who do exist in time, God would also need to exist in time - he would need to go from a state of "about to reveal himself" to "revealing himself" to "have revealed himself". This is incompatible with perfection.

So, if a God exists, either he is not perfect, or he does not interact with humans, answer prayers, reveal himself, perform miracles, or become fully human. I would suggest that either possibility present problems to the Abrahamic model.


Personal experience not counting is not an assumption, it is a conclusion...

I have bolded the central problems in your argument (as I understand them).

One of the reasons I held onto my faith as long as I did was because I "had a religious experience". In my early teens, I was feeling desolate one morning, prayed for strength, and felt a surge of strength that I called God. For a few years, in discussions such as these, I would say "I don't expect you to believe, but I feel I have to, because I experienced God first hand". Even as I saw more and more problems with the Christian model of God, I stuck to theism (increasingly moving away from the traditional exclusivist God to a pluralist God - is that the right word? - and then on to a Platonic/Aristotelian deity that had the ability to interact with souls but little else between universe creation and death) because of that experience.

Anyway, David Hume gave me a slap in the face and I realised I had to accept that, somewhere along the line, I'd made an incorrect assumption. It was more likely that I was hallucinating or otherwise mistaken than that a supernatural entity I had no other evidence for had decided to give me a morale boost. So I think theists can come to accept that their personal experiences are not real.

For further evidence that religious experiences are hallucinations, ask yourself why other religions also have religious experiences. These are often compatible with their religion, but not with yours. There are also trivial, but telling, differences. Christians who have near-death experiences and "visit heaven" will usually be sent back by a loved one, as it is not their time. Hindus will be informed by a celestial middle-manager that there has been an administrative issue, they meant the other Vijram Singh in Mumbai, and they'd have to go back now. Are dead Indians less happy to be reunited with their family members? Do Christians (and American children) just side-step the bureaucracy?

I assume you are saying that the statement "only statements that can be verified/falsified are meaningful" is not verifiable/falsifiable, and thus contradicts itself?

Although this is true, empiricism is not falsification. Empiricism is the best tool we have for finding out about the world. It is limited because it can only measure the material world; anything immaterial that has no impact on the material world will never be measured by empirical methods. Fortunately, we can safely ignore any such thing as it cannot possibly impact upon us.

God is quite clearly different from logic, numbers, and empiricism. I would suggest that, to some extent, we can test for all four. When we use logic, numbers, and empiricism, we can get the expected results. Nobody has ever discovered that "all As are B, all Bs are C, but no As are C". Multiplication yields consistent results; if numbers didn't to some extent "exist" then this would not be possible. 2*2 computes, leaf*pen doesn't. We routinely test the assumptions of empiricism and discover that our world does indeed behave in an ordered way.

Testing for God? Well, there's the issue of scriptural passages that forbid it. But if God answers prayers, we should be able to measure the effects of his answers, either by observing energetically-unfavourable reactions going on despite insurmountable odds, or just the macroscopic results such as regrown limbs.


And what exactly about that sets Christianity apart from the myriad of religions you don't believe in?

The Aztecs who sacrificed children to stop the sun destroying the world weren't particularly intellectual. That didn't stop them from being wrong.

I read an article on the BBC News website that I think fit into this topic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27554640

It is entitled: A Point of View: Is it better to be religious than spiritual? When I read it I thought, ah that's why some people feel like sticking with a religion without thinking about the origins of it.

This is the 2nd last paragraph:

I've bolded the bit that stood out to me. I don't really understand that view completely because I am not moved by community as much as your average person. I would rather feel like I was doing the right thing than feel like I was going along with what the community felt. Everyone is different I suppose, but I think this explains part of what Dentarthurdent was talking about in his initial question here.

Not sure why I'm answering on behalf of other people, but I used to be in the debating club in school and I'm moving the conversation forward I guess.

I was just expressing some of my thoughts, not looking for a debate. It's not that I don't want to answer any questions or discuss it, it's just I've got a lot of things going on IRL and am unable to get tangled up in a big discussion at the moment. The above quote was just the first thing I came to.

Yes, God is absolutely perfect.

Your "if/then" has some hidden assumptions. Why assume that absolute perfection excludes the capacity to change? What if the capacity to change is one component of absolute perfection?

BTW, and not really relevant, I don't hold to the idea that God DOES change. True, God wasn't a Creator before creation. But I think each progression God makes merely is another revelation of God's identity and character. It was always within God's nature to create?creation itself is merely the expression of God's creative nature. God is forgiving, which we wouldn't ever know if God at some point didn't first forgive. God is patient, which we wouldn't know if the perfection of creation wasn't a work in progress. And so on and so forth.

But IF it were to be shown that God does change, for instance the act of creation caused God to change, then all that means is that absolute perfection includes the capacity for change and God has not violated his own nature. That isn't reflective of my own belief about God and perfection, just simply what I see as a flaw in your reasoning.

I like Hume, btw, but I disagree with a lot of his conclusions. The reason I like Hume at times is his wishy-washy attitude towards Christianity. In this case, it's a good thing to THINK about certain issues, which Hume challenges you to do, but Hume doesn't make up your mind for you. His position on miracles, though, is especially weak. First of all, he argues that people often lie, especially when they have an agenda to promote. While true, it is also true that people tell the truth. Why assume they're lying? Second, why assume that if miracles are confirmed they make miracles of other religions unlikely?

Aside from those questions, Hume is cool because of how tricky he is. I tend to lean more towards his compatibilist views. His development of the is-ought problem is insufficient, though, particularly in light of indefinables. Personally, I identify more with rationalists, but I don't think you can ignore Hume. Oh, I also spent a lot of time studying psychology against my will, so I came to dig the early cognitive stuff. Just my opinion here, but I find it a good study right before you get into behaviorism.

@hurtloam. Thanks for taking an interest in my original question, I note with interest that the usually vocal christians are assiduously avoiding it.

I get the whole community thing, (I would love to be part of a bigger group and have tried, but unsurprisingly I find it very hard to say the "right" thing, or understand what is being communicated with non verbal or between the lines interaction). But his does not explain why people trust the teachings of a book that in all probability does not represent the views of its main character, or even worse there is a reasonable argument to mount that given the early message of jesus (as told by the first christians) Jesus was errant in who he thought he was and what was about to occur.

I guess the lack of response tells me that people are happy in their ignorance and will believe whatever makes them feel better about themselves, whether or not that belief makes sense. But this does not explain why many who knowingly have faith in something that is likely errant try to lead others to the same lifestyle.

@Rho, seeing as you don't want to discuss my question, could you explain the rationale for thinking "God is Absolutely Perfect"

btw I would have thought "absolutely" was a redundant adjective

Because it is absolute.

Just as two different temperatures cannot be absolute zero, two different states of being cannot be absolute perfection.


Interesting viewpoint. Discovering the molecular formula of water didn't change water's nature. However, God is not something to be passively examined. Before he created, he might have been creative, he might have been the supreme manifestation of Creator, but he hadn't actually created. What of his changing covenant with humanity, or his physical manifestation of Christ? Did Christ not change?

I do think Hume's position on miracles is somewhat weak, but on a more fundamental level to you. My objection is his definition of miracle as "a transgression of the laws of nature". But we know that many of the "laws of nature" Hume knew were wrong, and the cases we found that "transgressed" it caused us to rewrite our laws of nature. By definition, then, miracles could not happen.

Why assume someone is lying? Simple. The "laws of nature" are compiled from a huge mass of human experience. Someone who claims to have witnessed something that goes against all this evidence is very likely to either be mistaken or lying, because one person's word against billions is worth little.

(Hume also claimed, for anyone interested, that we should further disregard miracle reports because they tend to come from "ignorant and barbarous" people who are unlikely to give reliable testimony).

I think that if you approach it from the point of view that God exists and he wants to communicate something with people via the written word, then he is going to make sure that it gets written correctly. So that's why people trust it. Also, the problem with all this happening a couple of thousand years ago is that we are looking back and trying to piece together bits of information that we find and trying to make sense of it. It's like having a jigsaw with a lot of pieces missing and several people are looking at it trying to work out what it makes a picture of. It's difficult to see the picture.

What do you mean Jesus was errant in who he thought he was and what was about to occur? Are you saying that the fact that Jesus didn't become a king and change things straight away means that he is not to be believed. That is us setting our own timetable for when we want things to happen, rather than waiting on him making a move at the more appropriate time. Which leads to more questions of course, but I don't want to write long sprawling posts.

Something did happen in the first centuary. He said that the Christians should get out of Jerusalem when they saw the Romans begining to attack. The ones who listened took off. I think about 4 years passed before the Romans actually fully completed their attack on the city, so that wasn't an instant occurance even back then. I read some interesting stuff about a prophecy in Jerimiah as well that indicates that there would be a big change, the written law would no longer be the main thrust of worship and it would change to a law written on hearts. I think that is what Jesus was talking about, so I believe that his words did come true and it did happen. Some might say this completely fulfills his prophecy and that he became King in the hearts of Christians, but that is not enough for me. I don't think it stops there.

This really interests me because I've thought about what Jesus said too about becoming King. It's interesting that his disciples asked him about it as well. So yes, I've wondered why, if this prophecy is still to be fulfilled, why has it taken such a long time to be completely fulfilled?