Christianity's unanswerable question

Uh, no, that's not what I said at all.

What I said (for those that just want to insist that my faith makes me an idiot) is that it doesn't matter how much knowledge of the Bible I have if I don't have the faith that it is the truth.

On the flip side, you have blind faith that there is no god. You have no conclusive evidence to prove beyond doubt your point, either.

You can't believe something simply by reading it. You have to actually have faith that it is what it claims to be. Otherwise, they are just empty words to the reader.

Knowledge is not bad. I love knowledge. But everything I learn is subject to my own analysis and study. When I find it to be correct, I believe it.

The whole point to this thread is to make people who recognize Christianity question their faith. There is no other point to this.

I'm sorry if my statement wasn't clear. I hope this clarifies what I was trying to say. And if you still think it's silly, contemplate this: atheists say there is no god without any real evidence to support their claim yet harass believers for doing what, in their words, is the same thing. Atheists can gain knowledge in areas of study such as Darwinian evolution (which is also lacking solid evidence), and insist that it is true (mostly because they believe it to be, albeit with a major lack of hard proof). Another example of how knowledge without faith is worthless...if they didn't believe in evolution, they'd have a heck of a time trying to explain how we all got here.

 

How can you say their are contradictions when neither side has been proven...

 

Your faith isn't what does that. It is your diction. What you said lacks grammatical sense. It also lacks sense to suggest that believing in a book is more important than understanding it. I say this as someone who has studied the history and origins of ancient literature, and I have absolute faith based on knowledge that the vast majority of Christians are woefully ignorant about these details.

I actually am not an atheist. I do think that the energy of life runs through the whole universe. There appears to be a pattern to cosmic events. Life itself suggests more than purely mechanical process is at work.

I am just tired of people who have a third-hand knowledge of a book they don't understand spouting nonsense. If you knew what I knew about your book, you wouldn't have so much faith.

This is not how I read any book. I examine the ideas and judge them for myself. I don't allow anyone to tell me if a book should be believed.

One of my favorite books, Illusions: Confessions of Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach, covers this quite well. It says, "never let any book replace your thinking."

More ignorance. Those who question evolution do not understand it. It is not subject to debate. It has been observed. There may be questions about the origin of species and life itself, but I repeat: evolution is not subject to serious debate.

Theories are not just random speculation. They are coherent, testable premises which have survived all previous attempts at disproving it. Natural selection has survived as the dominant theory in biology for well over a century. That is as close to scientific fact as we can come on past events.

Gravity is "just a theory", too. Not much faith required, just a little common sense.

 

The answer is just simple, BIBLE was the word of God, but got manipulated, so it ain't in its original form any more.

 

Who would pay to translate blather? Certainly not the blatherers.

That's right, except for the "word of god". Read the original form here:

El is the King of the Gods in that book, too. There is a flood survived by a single mortal family who built a large boat. The Tower of Babel story is alluded to.

And there are more gods and goddesses than you could count.

 

Ah, ok. I agree with your explanation here. Forgive my crappy sentence formation. I see where we got mixed up. You are right, it does absolutely no good to believe a book if you don't understand it. That's the point that I was trying to make, actually.

I'm sorry, I must have mistook you for an Atheist. My apologies. However, my knowledge of the Bible is strictly first hand. In my faith (and according to scripture), we aren't just supposed to take someones word that it says this or that. We are supposed to study the words, so that we may know what they say as well as confirm them. I will admit that I'm no Biblical scholar. That may be a good thing, because there are many who are called scholars who twist the Bible's teachings to fit what they FEEL. Third-hand knowledge is not good, nor is it reliable.

We are also in agreement in this. Belief comes through hearing/studying/learning what the book teaches. One must examine the book and apply thought and cross-examine it. At least, that's what it teaches. For me (and the people who have the same faith as I do), we don't let the Bible replace our thinking, we use it as a guideline for our life. Unfortunately, there are many who are religious and who DO let the Bible replace their thinking. We believe that God gave us freewill to choose to either follow his teachings or not. Christians, as shown by Biblical example, are not zombies, but people who choose to follow the teachings. Doing so by force or without freely choosing would defeat the purpose.

Gravity can be duplicated in a laboratory.

Also, while I will concede that there is an element of 'survival of the fittest', evolution as taught in academia is a theory that scientists claim has been observed and proven. How did they do this? I was under the impression that it took millions of years for something to evolve...at least that's what I was taught in school. I believe that animals and people can adapt *to an extent* to certain situations and learn to work better with what they have, but I've yet to see any proof that Darwinian evolution exists beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understand what they were trying to teach us about evolution, and I only question it based on the fact that there is no way to duplicate the effects in a lab, and the 'natural process' takes far too long for anyone to be able to document it, so there is really no way to prove that it is a reality. Thus, it is a theory, unproven, and should not be taught as a fact (as it is in schools).

You do know that you can find the original manuscripts in their original languages, right? Oh, and people who speak those languages tend to make pretty good translations. For those who want to know, it's there.

I find it interesting that many different ancient societies have stories of a great flood, but their theology differs. Considering that they weren't privy to the events that took place immediately surrounding the flood (referring to Noah and his family), it's remarkable that they have similar stories and records to the Bible. Perhaps it's evidence that this flood did occur, yet since those who wrote the stories didn't know Noah's god they just attributed the events to their own gods? Just a thought.

 

It's beautiful how you can say that since we oppose you we have no brains and never look into anything. It's very logical

Speaking of which I studied the bible for 18 years before I turned away... There are an ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF CONTRADICTIONS, but when you believe that the bible is perfect and the word of some perfect god, you will seek any explanation that confirms your thinking.

 

So can mutation and natural selection. Actually, a laboratory is not the only place scientific evidence can be collected. Natural selection can be demonstrated in relationships between species which exist today. With an understanding of genetics, sexual reproduction, and survival of the fittest, all of biology would have to collapse in order for Darwin's theory to be untrue.

Did they teach you about the spotted moths in England? That was a real-time example of observable evolution. Repeatable, too.

Again, this simply is not true. A theory is not merely an unproven set of speculations. It is a coherent, testable explanation which predicts a particular outcome. The ID crowd has abused the term, confusing it with the popular usage. A crackpot's theories and a scientist's are not merely two different levels of authority. They are two different types of proposition that have nothing in common.

If I say, as I do, that stars are living beings, this is NOT a theory. This is merely speculation. Perhaps a hypothesis. To be a theory, I would need to predict certain signs of life, design a test capable of disproving the hypothesis, carry it out, publish the results, and have them repeated by an independent research facility.

Do you get it yet? Evolution is as true as it gets. There is little of absolute certainty in science, and all is subject to future discoveries. The only difference between evolution and other theories which are taught is that some reactionary monkeys get mighty upset at being called apes.

Right. The only problem is chronology. The polytheistic texts are older.

So it is the Hebrew version which adapted the pagan myth to serve the monotheopoly.

There seems to have been some flooding. It may have simply been a terrible year in the Fertile Crescent, or it might be a sign of an earlier civilization which suffered submersion. This may have been Atlantis.

These texts aren't lies. Nor are they truth. They are poetic hymns which contain important clues to what may have really happened.

I say, putting aside this faith for a moment, what good reason do you have for saying the Old Testament is the word of God, yet the older text which was obviously the source for part of it is not?

Really, why don't you all just follow the Epic of Gilgamesh?