Why believe The Bible?

[Autodidact]

Autodidact, that's not what you were saying before. You were just coming out and saying people were wrong, not that their oppinion was valid but you believed they were wrong. Yes, this is a place to throw oppinions against those of others, and if that's what you are doing fine.

Well, here's what I said:

Well that begs the question, then, doesn't it? I mean, you're advocating that believers do their homework, but you yourself haven't done even the most basic homework. You claim that there is historical support for the Bible as a first century document (although little of it dates from that period)--can you tell us what that is? You claim that prophecies have been fulfilled, but have no clue whether the Q'uran or the Book of Mormon has more, less, or the same number of allegedly fulfilled prophecies.

I'll make a wild guess that what actually happened is NOT that you did a scholarly study of the Bible and its historical support and objectively fulfilled prophecies, but rather that you had an emotionally satisfying experience in which you felt a beneficial connection to Jesus/God, and then went back and patched together some historical or prophetical support for your new belief. Am I right?

I don't even find myself telling anyone that they're wrong, let alone that their opinion is not "valid," whatever that means. First I point out that the poster contradicted himself, then I ask him a question, then I take a guess as to how he formed his opinion, and ask him whether I'm right.

 

[Autodidact]

I don't know, however if one were to find other texts, UNRELATED to the Bible, that narrated the same events, I would take that to mean that something along those lines happened, or atleast that many people percieved those things to happen.

Yes. Are there any?

 

[Paintanker]

Yes. Are there any?

Don't know, don't care. That's not what I'm quarreling with; all I want to know is why people put faith in this book alone, and all the logically ridiculous things in it, because, yes, many things in it are contrary to logic. That's all I'm after.

 

[Autodidact]

You're confusing me, Paintanker. My question is a direct followup to yours. I mean, if you want to know why people believe, and agree that unrelated texts might provide a reason, then isn't it logical to ask whether there are any?

 

[Paintanker]

Unrelated texts may provide evidence that some parts of the Bible are true. Someone said that some parts of the Bible are true a long time ago and I was agreeing with whomever that was.

Cased closed on the believeable part of the Bible, now onto what I was saying.

(dramatization)
Bible: ... and angels came and saved the fisherman
Christian: The bible says angels saved a fisherman one time, thus they are real!
Me: You're an idiot

(dramatization over)

While I would never say that to someone because he believed it, you get my point. I am questioning people's belief in the extraordinary portion of the Bible.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I am questioning people's belief in the extraordinary portion of the Bible.

And doing it very poorly ... :yes:

 

[madcap]

What exactly does it mean to "believe the Bible"?

Does it mean you have to interpret it literally (which, I suppose, means to not interpret it at all)? Does it mean accepting that Jesus was the divine son of God and/or that the universe was created in seven days? Do you have to accept as factual every supernatural event chronicled therein, and also believe the prophecy of Revelation? Does it mean all four of the Gospels are accurate registries of the life of Jesus, even where they contradict each other?

I suppose the implication is that if you don't accept the veracity of every miraculous event in the Bible, it follows that you don't really have a good reason to believe any of it. And if you do take a fundamentalist approach to accepting without qualification that everything that Bible says happened actually happened, then what authority other than the Bible itself leads you to think this way?

I don't personally have any answer to the question because I don't, strictly speaking, "believe" the Bible. I find it to be a helpful guide to understanding what it was like to be an ancient Jew or early Christian. And I certainly admire the teachings of Jesus, at least as disseminated in the New Testament. But I can't help but think that if the miraculous could be so commonplace that God spoke directly to his children, the last pages of the Bible would have been written within the hour rather than nearly two thousand years ago.

 

[timjamz]

Well those of us in the reality-based community like to use this thing we call "evidence." And there's no need to tar Obama-voters with the irrationality of religious devotees.

Better he be tarred with the irrationality of Obama devotees?

No matter, it's probably best we leave politics out of it. I used it as an example for the sheer point of expressing that, politicians are politicians and human beings believe what they believe because they want to believe it.

Some people want to *not* believe in a higher power, because it suits something else in their worldview. Some people choose to believe in a higher power because their worldview doesn't relieve the tensile nature of existence.

Is it right or wrong? Who am I to say? I do know that what Jesus REALLY said, i.e. Love God, and Love your fellow human beings, in that order, prior to anything else, is a GREAT way to live and leads toward spiritual enlightenment -- and away from the discombobulation we see in man's efforts to direct and control things like human evolution, social order, and imaginary economies.

 

[Father Heathen]

Skeptic's Annotated Bible / Quran / Book of Mormon

Well, off to the dust bin with it.

 

[Autodidact]

Better he be tarred with the irrationality of Obama devotees?

What is an Obama devotee? Is that anything like an Obama supporter?

No matter, it's probably best we leave politics out of it. I used it as an example for the sheer point of expressing that, politicians are politicians and human beings believe what they believe because they want to believe it.

Some of us believe because of evidence.

Some people want to *not* believe in a higher power, because it suits something else in their worldview. Some people choose to believe in a higher power because their worldview doesn't relieve the tensile nature of existence.

And some people don't think there is evidence of a "higher power," or even that "higher power" is a coherent concept.

Is it right or wrong? Who am I to say? I do know that what Jesus REALLY said, i.e. Love God, and Love your fellow human beings, in that order, prior to anything else, is a GREAT way to live and leads toward spiritual enlightenment -- and away from the discombobulation we see in man's efforts to direct and control things like human evolution, social order, and imaginary economies.

You do? You know what Jesus really said? How--were you there? Did you talk to or read something by someone who was really there?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

I agree with Dunemeister here. There are many reasons that I accept the Bible as revelation. Even though I was born into a Christian family, I abandoned the religion for several years and earnestly experimented with other religions that I considered to be more "enlightened", more modern, more liberating. I had a good many reasons to continue denying Christianity. As I have said before, the best way to convert to a religion is for it to be pulling you by the feet with your fingers still grasping the rug. I was a reluctant convert, and the fact that I was convinced that the very thing I hated was infact true remains a certain individual proof for me.

Beyond that, its the over all narrative of the Bible that convinces me- its odd and twisted and unexpected- though just about in the way that it should be. I think it was Chesterton who said that the Christian faith was "the perfect blend of philosophy and myth that satisifes both the mind and heart". There seems, to me, to be a remarkable consistency across its narrative, a gradual deepening and fulfillment of symbols and imagery that reveals to me a single mind or aim behind a text which has a plurality of authors across a decent span of time.

Finally, when compared to other faiths, I believe biblical faith has the most accurate, the most humanizing vision of what humanity actually is. As I attempted other forms of spirituality which merged God and man, or saw God as a kind of "force", or as the human spirit summarized, I came to the conclusion that it was only under the light of a personal God- a God who himself is love "and in himself lives a mystery of personal loving communion", that God whom is revealed in the Cross of Christ, that humanity really is seen as humanity, that all of our characteristics, goals, hopes, deficiencies and mysteries are really set in proper order and given proper value.

 

[Autodidact]

We notice that:
1. It has absolutely nothing to do with evidence.
2. By sheer, wild coincidence, it just happens to turn out to be the exact religion you were taught to believe as a small child! How about that?!

Jordan: Did you ever ask yourself whether there is a God at all? I ask because I spent 4 decades thinking about the nature of God, before I thought to ask myself whether there was any such thing.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Well, the evidence is of a subtle and personal nature. The truth of the faith can not be laid out upon the table as though it were a set of empirical facts- nor does the Bible ever make a claim to being self-evident in this matter. It claims only that God is implicitly known in all people's hearts, but the content of specific revelation is, by its very definition, of a different order of knowledge.

Yes, I was raised in a Catholic home. You can take from that what you will, but I don't believe that this fact was an imporantant factor in my return to the faith. My parents, especially my mother, though faithful were by no means apologists. They had a lay person's graps of the faith. I fought very hard to earn the right in my family to practice a non-Christian religion. I stirred up the household, refused to attend Mass and disturbed, above all, my relationship with my mother. In time we came to an understanding and her concept of religion was significantly broadened, by her own words, as she began to explore new forms of spirituality with me.

Today, I would say I am significantly more adamant doctrinally than she is.

And yes, I did consider the possibility of atheism. The temptation is still with me every day.

 

[Autodidact]

Well, the evidence is of a subtle and personal nature.

If it's personal, then it's not evidence. Evidence means something accessible to anyone in a position to observe.

The truth of the faith can not be laid out upon the table as though it were a set of empirical facts- nor does the Bible ever make a claim to being self-evident in this matter.

No, that's for sure. Whatever it is, it's not factual.

It claims only that God is implicitly known in all people's hearts, but the content of specific revelation is, by its very definition, of a different order of knowledge.

So people who claim not to know God are what, lying? Nothing like assuming what you're trying to determine.

Yes, I was raised in a Catholic home. You can take from that what you will, but I don't believe that this fact was an imporantant factor in my return to the faith.

Right. It's just sheer coincidence, just like the sheer coincidence of the overwhelming majority of the world's religionists. Had you been born in Riyadh, and brought up Muslim, you'd still have ended up Catholic, just by the weight of the evidence.

My parents, especially my mother, though faithful were by no means apologists. They had a lay person's graps of the faith.

And they never took you to church before you were an adult, and never told you over and over that Jesus is God and the Catholic Church His true Church.

I fought very hard to earn the right in my family to practice a non-Christian religion. I stirred up the household, refused to attend Mass and disturbed, above all, my relationship with my mother. In time we came to an understanding and her concept of religion was significantly broadened, by her own words, as she began to explore new forms of spirituality with me.

And yet, as I say, by sheer coincidence, you're Catholic today. Isn't that amazing?

Today, I would say I am significantly more adamant doctrinally than she is.

And yes, I did consider the possibility of atheism. The temptation is still with me every day.

Why use the word temptation? Why not just try to figure out the truth? If atheism is tempting, is it because it might have some truth?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Actually, I was never taught that Catholicism was the true Church. We regularly attended a Catholic parish, but it did happen that we would attend an Anglican Church or even a more mainstream Protestant church dependent on the availability. I never heard any anti-Protestatn rhetoric in my home.

Yes, I do believe given the oppertunity to engage in Catholicism as I have I would still have converted even if I were born in Saudi Arabia. When I discovered the Faith- truly discovered it- I wept for the beauty of it. I was compelled by my conscience, is all I can simply say. I respect other faiths, especially the other monotheistic faiths, but I do see them as objectively deficient when compared to the doctrines Christian Faith.

Yes, I do experience atheism as a temptation. Of course it is a possibility, it could be true. I also experience atheism itself as a certain leap of faith. Given my personal experiences and the world before me there is a double image- one the path of faith and the other the path of disbelief. There is a certain plausability to both. Atheism, like faith, is a decision that one must make when confronted with the mystery of existence, the testimony of history and the mystery of the human person. I have chosen faith for various reasons, but not beyond all doubt.

The decision for belief, as Pope Benedict wrote many years ago,
"... means that man does not regard seeing, hearing and touching as the totality of what concerns him, that he does not view the area of his world as marked off by what he can see and touch but seeks a second mode of access to reality, a mode he calls in fact belief...."

It seems to me now that, without the gaze of faith, humanity would lose its way and would lose the understanding of what it means to be human, though of course never totally. As the Bible says, "man lives not on bread alone, but on every word the springs from the mouth of God". Man that just lives on just bread, that is, just on the brute empirical fact that can stand infront of him- of which we can be certain- does not really or fully live. Two instincts are at work, both opposed to one another, the instinct which regards the intangible reality beyond what we can see, and the other reflex which says 'only what we can see is real'.

The Christian faith teaches the intanglible reality has wrapped itself up now in our empirical reality and that the human person, being of both, needs both.

 

[Autodidact]

No you wouldn't, you'd be dead. It's illegal not to be Muslim in Saudi Arabia. But anyway, right. You're so unusual, so rare a human being, so much smarter and more insightful than all the people born in Saudi Arabia, that you alone would realize that what you had been raised with and taught since a small child was wrong (although this did not in fact happen to you in real life, and you believe what you were taught as a small child) and that in fact the religion of the infidels who have persecuted your people since the Crusades was actually true. Right.

Atheism is not a decision. Empiricism and logic compel belief. I can't say, "It's true but I don't believe it." It doesn't work that way.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

I can't say, "It's true but I don't believe it." It doesn't work that way.

I did not say that this could be said.

Also, why are you so angry and sarcastic?

 

[Autodidact]

You're straining our credulity, Jordan. Do you honestly expect us to believe that you are so unique that in your case it is mere coincidence that you happen to believe the religion you were raised to believe, while all those Muslims, Hindus, etc. who also believe the religion they were raised to believe are completely different from you; they're just deluded? I mean, how arrogant can you get? You seem to believe that you're vastly superior than virtually all the other people in the world. That's what you're asserting, Jordan. And yes, I find that level of arrogance quite annoying, as well as incredible.

Now, did you notice that I answered your question? Would you be so kind as to answer mine? Do you honestly believe that you are so special, unique and different that if you were born in Saudi Arabia, you alone, of the millions of other souls born there, would realize the error all around you?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

So you expect me to say, by default, that were I born into any other religious tradition I would simply have committed myself to its beliefs for life without any room for intellectual or moral freedom? That a person is either faced with accepting the religion of their childhood, or like you, blessed with the critical gifts to recognize that there is no God and that atheism is the truth?

Can I say with any certainty that, had I been born into a different family, I would still be Catholic? Of course not. But you are also not familiar with the strong level of anti-Catholicism (and Christianity in general) that I harboured. My home environment also adapted to that situation and freely and loving embraced my alternative spiritualities so that I no real motivation to become Catholic again. Something changed those feelings around. Something convinced me otherwise.

Are you saying that conversion from one faith to another is not possible? Or only from Christianity to atheism?

This has nothing to do with thinking myself "superior".

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Are you saying that conversion from one faith to another is not possible? Or only from Christianity to atheism?

I'd say conversion from the beliefs in which a person is raised is generally very difficult. Like the old Jesuit saying goes, "give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."