for being a book of history and science, it can be considered suspect or disqualified. But does that therefore disqualify it for everything else then? If so, then how does that follow exactly?
The argument is that the errors and contradictions tell us that the authors were not reliable and not informed exclusively (if at all) by a transcendent prescience.
I think we've had this discussion about myths before. Others praise myths as being valuable vehicles for transmitting cultural values, but to me, that's how you teach children - with fables with moral points about crying wolf or the cost of being lazy. I may have heard them in stories first, but learning and wisdom come from understanding experience. Also, a chief value these myths teach is that man's troubles are the result of his sinful nature and punishment from God, that he is born spiritually defective. That's why he was cast from the garden, subjected to a near-sterilizing flood event, saw large cities destroyed, and confounded with mutually unintelligible languages. He deserved it for sinning.
I can't find a single reason to open a Bible except to quote it in these discussions. In addition to its history, science, and life lessons (myths, proverbs), I find no value in its moral code, its genealogies, or it's poetry. The greatest value of the Christian Bible to me is in the comparison of the two testaments which is a record of the evolution of its god from the angry, smiting strongman to the gentle pacificist, as well as a snapshot of what life was like then and how the moral code reflected their needs. But I've already done that, so there's nothing there for me any longer.
Are truthful allegorical stories about human nature and spiritual life dependent upon an accurate scientific understanding of cosmology and earth history? Nobody before the scientific revolution 300 years ago knew anything about being human?
Nobody from the past knew what it would be like to be human now. I find the life advice from the Bible to be either flawed or trivially self-evident. Consider the Ten Commandments. Obey the Sabbath is meaningless now, and don't kill or steal is something most of us don't need to be told and the rest don't hear.
That all depends on what idea of God you are holding in your mind, doesn't it?
My idea of any deity is that of the theist with whom I am conversing. For some, that is just the laws of nature or whatever is the source of the universe even if that isn't sentient. For others, it's a supernatural intelligent designer that one can talk to, often with orders for us to obey. My definition of a religion is a worldview featuring a god who is just that - a supernatural intelligent designer that can design and create universes. If that's not what a given self-identifying theist believes, then he's not really a theist to me.
It is completely detectable using your own being to do so. It's really simply a matter of opening the eyes. It's not some nebulous object in space like "dark matter" which is hard to detect. It's everything that exists, but is simply not seen because we disallow ourselves from seeing it. It's that tree. It's that child. It's that cloud. It's the entire universe. It's you. But do you see it as that?
It's everything that exists? I don't call that god. And when you say that we can't see it unless we allow ourselves to, that's a red flag to me. It says to me that I need to relax my standards for belief in order to see the truth and believe this idea. Those standards are chosen to minimize holding false beliefs. Also, there's the matter of the effect this type of thinking has on people. They claim to have hidden truths because they see further, but I think you know how it goes when one asks them to share some of this insight and to explain how it has helped their lives and would help those who they consider blind or myopic. It turns out this other way of knowing reveals nothing that deserves to be called truth as I use the word - just intuitions that seem to comfort some and appear to fulfill a need that unbelievers apparently don't have.
Usually books have many things and I don't think those can be called totally correct or totally wrong. We should go them through entirely, part by part, and then I could say what is not correct and explain why.
Does that apply to the Bible as well? If so, what are the criteria for rejecting some of it and accepting the rest? My criteria are those of critical thought. By those standards, anything based in the assumption that a god exists is unsound. How much is left after excising that which cannot be true unless this god exists?
I don't think there is any other religion that was developed while the "developers" were persecuted and the leader murdered. It is different thing if they are later persecuted, after it is already developed and have existed long time.
Why do you think that affirms the correctness of Christianity and the existence of its god? Persecution doesn't generally drive people from their beliefs, especially when you teach them to expect it and even to see it as a badge of righteousness. People are commonly willingly to die for a cause they support, including a country or another life - even a stranger if one is heroic.
I have read it and I have not seen any real contradiction in it. And I don't think it has errors.
What do you say to somebody who has found errors and contradictions? What explanation do you offer for why they see something you don't? Are they delusional?
If people of faith chose their belief by choosing from a hat, one out of millions of other possible beliefs, then chance might have something to do with it and what you said might make some sense.
How is the way they choose their religious beliefs different from choosing from a hat? For most, the choice is an accident of birth, but still an unexamined and insufficiently evidenced choice. Faith is untethered to the laws that govern the experience of nature (empiricism), and so there are tens of thousands of variations of Christianity alone. Go ahead and pick one, or one from some other religion. But there is only one periodic table of the elements. What's the difference? Religions can multiply without constraint because they are faith-based.
I’ve certainly never heard any Christian say followers of other religions are ‘deceived by Satan’. But then, I don’t live in America and I don’t know many evangelicals.
It's commonly heard from American evangelicals. That's how they frame reality - a cosmic battle between their god and a master demon. Everybody not with their god is in league with Satan:
"Whoever is not with me is against me" - Luke 11:23
Christians themselves admit that their belief comes down to a ‘subjective gut feeling’
And that is what they call evidence of a god even unto saying that they have met and know this god.
The Biblical scriptures have stood the test of time and continuous attack from skeptics
There will always be people willing to believe by faith, but no, the Bible has not withstood the criticism of skeptics among those who share the values of academia. Multiple passages have been falsified.
The Bible has more document evidence than almost any historical book
I don't know what that means, but there is evidence that confirms its historical (and scientific) errors. The global flood did not occur.
