Hi Phat,
In order to answer this, I ask myself what divine inspiration is? Is it possible? Well, it has happened to me, so how can I dismiss it?
You have been divinely inspired to do what?
My status as a believer was initially fostered by what I perceived as a divine impartation. The "born again" experience, if you will.
Which could be simply a psychological phenomenon. I mean, people from every faith will tell you the same thing, their experience is so real that it MUST be true. You believing that you have had a religious experience does not make that experience a reflection of reality.
Did you go to a doctor and tell him about your experience?
OK. I can see some of what you are insinuating, but how can you "trash" someones experience?
Quite easily. The same way that born again Christians trash other peoples’ experiences of their God.
Do you think that Hindus can speak to Brahma?
What about "internal harmony"?
What internal harmony?
What little harmony there is can easily be explained by the fact that the Bible has been edited by various different ‘schools’ and many conflicts have been removed. But, there are still many contradictions and historical inaccuracies in the text.
What do you tell the believers?
Fortunately, in the UK, there only appears to be a tiny minority who are of this gimmicky Bible inerrancy nonsense. But, I would tell believers to think for themselves and to avoid websites that use juvenile arguments like Kreeft, and Giesler who only reinforce what most atheists believe, that the born again Xian will grasp at any straw to support their faith. It is idiotic, and the Bible even insists that faith is superior to hard facts.
Tell them they were brainwashed and produce evidence of how hypnosis works?
That’s one way.
But, I would prefer education, actually teach them why the Bible was produced, how it was produced and outline some of the difficulties.
Education is the key, not reading these silly websites about moon dust and NASA computers finding Joshua’s long day.
Assume that once they see facts, they will dismiss their feelings and experiences?
This would depend on the individual, as to some people it would not matter how many errors you showed them in the Bible they would still be unable to acknowledge it.
I will agree that much of organized religion is a self serving sham. This is human nature. Make a buck. Make a buck "disproving" the Bible, perhaps?
You will find that there are many more people who make a fortune out of gullible Xians than make money out of ‘disproving’ the Bible. The scholars who people think are out to disprove the Bible are normally scholars who write for journals and write academic books, they really do not make that muck money. If you want to make money then write a pro-bible book and watch the money roll in.
Check out how many copies that Josh MacDowell has sold of ETDV I and II, his work is utter trash yet he has made a fortune to of people who thinkhe knows what he is talking about.
But scholars who *appear* to be disproving the Bible are actually trying to discover how and why the Bible was composed. They do not set out to disprove anything, they set out to try and discover the truth.
So how is it that some can view the Bible as a scattered early collection of writings by authors with an ulterior motive while others find a cohesiveness of meaning within this book?
It is all to do with the approach. Like I said before, many people are brainwashed into thinking that the Bible is something that it isn’t, they find it hard to let go. Others are lazy and find it comfortable to sit back and blindly accept these tales.
Others, who have a personal religious experience, need to justify their experience by showing other people that the source of their God’s history and deeds is perfect, thus keeping their ‘experience’ real.
How someone can look at the books of, say Genesis and Exodus, and think that everything happened exactly as written is beyond me, I would need to put it down to some psychological phenomenon.
If the Bible provides us with this wonderful access to God’s ideas, then why don’t we all see it?
Ok, Brian. You have a theology degree. What do you believe about the concept of "original sin"?
Original sin is a concept thought up to explain why God is so hopeless. The Israelite intelligentsia had to explain why a perfect being can create such a mess of a world, it obviously cannot be His fault so they need an excuse for God. Sin is a cracking excuse, add a couple of lumps of free will and God is off the hook, He is not as useless as it appears, it is all OUR fault that God had to scrap his first attempt and start again.
We need you objective guys to keep from hysteria,
Yes, but not all Xians think this way Phat, many believe that the objective guys are purely attacking the Bible, but we aren’t. Many atheists study the Bible because they believe that it is an amazing collection of ancient literature, or it contains some accurate history that contributes to our understanding of the past.
but we also must acknowledge that the origin of ones basic belief is also important. If you think that truth will be found through education, you MAY be right and you MAY be wrong.
But these can be demonstrated to others, your personal experience is not something that anyone else can share with you, you cannot say ‘here Brian try this. What do you think?’
From the worldview of a believer, humanity at its very core does not even want to acknowledge the truth of a Creator.
That’s exactly how the Church planned it. Think about it, how can a good and perfect God be responsible for all the evil in the world, all the bad things had to be someone else’s fault, inventing the idea of sin and hell was a masterstroke, it certainly controlled the masses of ignorant peasants for hundreds of years. However, the modern day world has many explanations for things that were considered miraculous thousands of years ago, and a great deal of the biblical events have been shown to be untrue. The bible is a great collection of literature (well the OT is, I find the NT probably the most boring collection of texts on the planet), but what bugs me is these halfwits who make the Bible into a gimmick, all it does is to make them and others look stupid. What does it matter of there wasn’t a worldwide flood or that Joseph was a complete work of fiction?
If we take the Bible totally out of the equation, how would a Christian form a worldview except based on their own internal feelings?
You don’t have to take it out of the equation, you just need to realise that everything in it is not 100% literal and it wasn’t written to be. You have to realise that if Methuselah did not live until he was 969 years old then it doesn’t affect the Book at all, but we have all sorts of clowns coming up with crazy ideas to try and ‘prove’ things like this.
How COULD a Christian form a worldview from a detached factual mode and still be a Christian by definition?
You can accept the core teachings of Christ and reject some things on a literal level. You can accept that Jesus died for your sins and his sacrifice gives you the opportunity to have eternal life with him in heaven, you can accept all this without performing mental contortions to try and prove something that cannot be proven. All these arguments for the existence of God are all doomed before they begin, and as far as I am concerned, every time someone links to sites such as Kreeft’s it just confirms my suspicions.
Some would argue that we MUST trust our own internal conscience because only through that plus basic logic can we avoid deception.
That’s fine and well, but how do you demonstrate to others that your conscience is guiding you to the truth?
A wise point, although we are still faced with our belief on humanity as ultimately benevolent and good or humanity as flawed without a personal committment, surrender, and acknowledgement of a personal and loving God.
But this argument doesn’t hold any water either. Many Xians argue that if there was no God then everyone would be running around murdering, raping, stealing and all manner of other atrocities. If this is the case then how do you explain the fact that many atheists are very moral people? I personally would never intentionally break the law or hurt a fellow human being, but I know many xians who are extremely cruel to other people, mainly in a verbal context of course.
A theologian without a belief in God is nothing more than a philosopher of religious human ideas.
What is wrong with that though? What if, ultimately, theology is simply another branch of philosophy, wouldn’t you rather know the truth?
And so, if we do not believe in this Bible, all that we have to go on is our belief in our perception. Our belief in our internal locus of control. I think that we all share this belief.
There is no problem with believing the Bible, but you have to realise that every single syllable in it has to be taken on faith. What I am getting at are these silly arguments that crop up all the time, do you seriously think that people like myself are going to think there is a God because someone found giant finger or that Jesus must be God because we know he wasn’t a liar? It is ludicrous.
Christianity is a faith, you have to believe in it on faith. You are never going to ‘prove’ that Christianity is true.
Some of us believe, ultimately, that internal wisdom is the source of all knowledge.
But then you expect us to believe that your internal wisdom is accurate when it suggests to us the complete opposite to what we can demonstrate? We can show where the Bible has been edited, we can show the ragged edges where the texts do not quite fit, and we can show where the historical inaccuracies are, but your internal wisdom is yours alone.
Others believe in God. I can't explain or prove the difference between these two conclusions. Ultimately, I believe that He can.
Ultimately I believe that a personal religious experience is just that, personal. Why people try to justify it with arguments about the odds of one person ‘fulfilling’ 300 plus prophecies is nonsense. If you have experienced God, then good luck to you, but you really cannot complain when others have not had the same experience and come to different conclusions.
The three reasons I gave were not meant to apply to every Xian, only to the ones who point to gimmicks in the Bible to try and argue that it HAS to be the word of God.
If they love the Bible so much then maybe they should study it a bit more at a decent level and stop regurgitating crap they find on the Net. There are a lot of people making a lot of money out of arguments that have been shown to be childish so many times that it does get frustrating.
Brian.
™ Version 4.2
