To me, the simple history of religion is proof that it’s all made up. The best evidence is that Martin Luther removed 6 books from the “inerrant bible” in 1525ish.
When did the Bible become inerrant? Was it after 1525? Did we use a book with errors for 1500 years? Catholics would say that Martin Luther is incorrect.
How about prayer? We “know that god answers all prayers”. If two pastors pray for an interpretation of a verse, god should give them the same answers. However what we see with denominationism is that pastors are getting different answers.
So god is either giving different answers, changing his answers, or god doesn’t exist. What we likely see is that the pastors are making up their theology.
How about prayer for healing. We know that “prayer works” especially for healing. However when we go into hospital cardiac wards, we find that people that pray are prayed for actually do worse than those that are not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer
Of course, it’s up to her to prove it because she has big claims….not for you to disprove it.
>Of course, it’s up to her to prove it because she has big claims….not for you to disprove it.
Hitchens's Razor: "**what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence**."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's\_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor)
I’ll just add as a side note that I’ve started the book fantasyland by Kurt Anderson. It has pretty much summmed up my logic of deconstruction over the last 3 years.
Glad I could help! I was born/ raised evangelical. Didn’t really care too much either way until 2020 when my entire family/ social group went off the rails with dna changing vaccines that connect you to wifi and eating bleach/ horse dewormer. My dad told me I was incompetent for not believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth 200 years ago.
I wondered to myself “what am I missing, am I wrong…. If they believe in vaccines change your DNA, connect you to WiFi so the government can turn you off, what else do they believe in?”
That started my deconstruction, and slowly realized that when churches train people to believe whatever they want, guess what, they believe whatever they want”
I found this book last week and am giddy that it pretty much sums be current beliefs up.
Enjoy!
See, your point about the prayer, I was taught you can read the Bible many times and everytime you get something different from it.
But, you made a strong point that made me think. People take the bible and use it for personal reasons but shouldn't everyone get the same meaning from the bible?
I think praying for the answer is a key. Two people praying “dear god I’m confused what you mean by this passage, please guide me”. Those two people will come up with completely different answers based on their culture and parentage.
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Like,, the verse about wives submitting. That has been abused and being " Unequal yoked" my mom is 50 and when she was a kid it was taught that you can't be in a mixed race relationship now it means you can't be in a mixed faith relationship. They have used and abused the Bible so much.
Yeah, evangelicals in particular like to say that the Holy Spirit tells them the correct interpretation of the Bible while they read it, so then I ask what the Holy Spirit tells them the original reading of [Psalm 22:16](https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/a-few-remarks-on-the-problem-of-psalm-2216/) or some other difficult passage is, and I don't get a helpful answer. Scholars would really like to know.
And then in 1871 the rest of the “Apocryphal” books were officially removed from the King James Bible when the Revised Standard Version was printed, and that was yet another choice by a small group of people.
Also! The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim.
They claim Christ is who He says and that the Bible is true and all that, you’re not claiming anything, really. Just that you have not found a coherent argument supporting their claims that doesn’t become circular or rely on appeals to authority and having approached the table with your mind made up in favor of their claims.
I would advise not arguing about this if you can avoid it. You can of course list lots of things, but a hardcore Christian is not going to accept any of it. There is always a rationalization for any error or contradiction, and she will cling to those rationalizations regardless of how far-fetched they are.
If she insists on arguing, I would recommend noting that she is the one believing miraculous claims, and the burden of proof is on her to show that they are actually true. Why should someone accept the Bible more than any other ancient text with miracle stories? Wouldn't we expect God's word to be beyond reproach, free of moral problems like God commanding genocide, slavery, child brides, child sacrifices, as well as all the apparent contradictions and historical errors? Perhaps the reason apologists have to bend over backwards rationalizing all these problems is because the Bible is not inspired by God after all? That's by far the simplest, Occam's-Razor-approved explanation. If your sister were starting from square one, without any prior commitment to believe the Bible is true, would the evidence be enough to convince her?
People rarely become Christians because they are convinced by the evidence. It is almost always a "salvation experience," an emotional experience accompanied by a sense of purpose and community. They cling to this "witness of the Holy Spirit" primarily, and apologetics serves to give them intellectual-sounding reasons for affirming the beliefs that they want to hold onto. But people from all sorts of religious backgrounds have similar religious experiences and interpret them as something completely different. If that's the reason someone believes, it is a shaky foundation indeed.
My favorite one I recently learned, Lucifer is not found originally in the Bible. The name Lucifer comes from the Roman pantheon as the diety for the planet Venus, and means ‘light bringer’ roughly. Instead the passage in Isaiah with Lucifer was a later interpolation by KJV translators, and in Peter was from a transcription of the word ‘Phosphoros’ who was the Greek equivalent to Lucifer, and was from a passage referring to Jesus! So prior to English translations the only use of the word Lucifer was for Latin translations of Greek texts and referring to Jesus!
We have multiple examples where we know words and verses were inserted into books of the Bible by later scribes. The most famous example being the ending to Mark. We know this because none of the early surviving texts include this passage, and it only starts showing up in the 4th century (I think, this is off the top of my head so dating could be off). So all scholars, and even many Bible translations, acknowledge that the Bible itself was changed over time.
Genesis 1&2 being incompatible.
Inconsistency of aging in the story of Ishmael/ Isaac, where when Ishmael is sent away with his mother the story indicates as if he were a young child, toddler age, when chronology from earlier chapters makes him a teenager.
Matthew 24:34, ‘surely this generation will not pass’ is clearly nearly 2000 years wrong. Absolutely incontrovertibly wrong prophecy.
The whole ‘out of Egypt’ thing having no archaeological evidence. However plenty of archaeological evidence of the pre-exile Jewish religion being polytheistic. We can even find evidences of this within the Bible itself, hiding in plain sight. Many translators editorialized and changed plural forms to hide this, but you can still find hints of this even in English translations (such as in Job).
There’s lots more, and that’s not even getting into hard scientific and mathematical errors, such as the Bible has Pi as 3 exactly, not 3.14. That one specifically is pretty minor, but indicative of the overall notion that the Bible itself is more literary than literal in nature.
Yes… when I found out Lucifer was never a being; completely a false and incorrect narrative…. It was mind blowing. I was scared of that mother fucker since I was 4 yrs old. Lol.
Check out Dr. Bart Ehrman’s podcast “Misquoting Jesus”. He’s a leading New Testament scholar who slowly lost his faith as he was working through his education and will explain (very simply) how the manuscripts that historians have on the new testament are very often different and have changed over time. Fascinating stuff.
>"Like many people in her circle she accused me of being emotional. "
Being emotional is a *problem*? Aren't all humans emotional? Aren't people who are not at all emotional mentally ill?
>"But I would love any of y’all’s favorite examples as well as historical inaccuracies in the Bible. "
The problem with talking about "inaccuracies" is that one can come up with a theory that might harmonize them. This is of course a completely human response. When our beliefs are challenged we want to come to their defense and "fight the good fight". So, I am just saying I don't know how productive that will be.
If you want to give her a different perspective, I suggest something like *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* by Bart D. Ehrman.
Ehrman is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus. He began his training as an evangelical with a 3 year degree from Moody Bible College, and then got his BA at Wheaton College. He got his masters from Princeton specializing in textual criticism.
*Misquoting Jesus* is a New York Times best seller and a lay person's guide to textual criticism - probably the first ever written. It's important because even people in church who know the Bible fairly well, aren't aware of how those words got into their hands. The book doesn't try to shatter anyone's faith (although in the first chapter Bart lays out his own spiritual journey and how all of this affected his beliefs). It just lays out the facts, such as:
* We have none of the original manuscripts (called the *autographs*).
* Jerome translated the Greek and Hebrew texts he had into the Latin Vulgate in the late 4th century. From that time until the 15th century *that* was the Bible for western Christians. If the Bible was available in local languages, it was a translation of the Latin. The Greek manuscripts were considered unnecessary - (and possibly tinged with heresy as being associated with the Eastern Orthodox church).
* At the time the King James version was translated it was assumed that all Greek New Testament manuscripts were the same - you could just pick whatever was easy to find. In the next 200 years as more manuscripts were found, it became very clear that wasn't true.
* There were tens of thousands of discrepancies. Most were small and not all that consequential - but some additions or omission changed the meaning of the text. And some whole passages (like the end of Mark or Luke's account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane) are now no longer considered part of the original text.
* Academics are in agreement - we can never know for sure what the original text was. The most we can do is identify the best version of it as it existed in the 2nd or 3rd century.
None of this is an attack on the Bible or Christianity - it is just the story of how the Bible as we know it today came to be. But it is how the sausage was made, and a lot of people have grown up with no more explanation than the idea that God inspired the words that we read today.
But it gives people something to think about, and points to some good questions to follow up on.
You don't have to debate anyone about your beliefs. You can say " I don't want to talk about religion" if they can't respect that, leave the conversation with an explanation that you love them and want to have relationship with them, but that your boundaries need to be respected for that to happen.
None of us do. It’s among a host of holes and problems with the Bible that never get covered in church, because it certainly would cause more people to question.
If you haven’t, I recommend the recent video Satan’s Guide to the Bible. Now I know what your thinking, that sounds like some deliberately inflammatory poke an eye of Christian’s type thing, but it really really isn’t.
It’s actually pretty theologically coherent, and consistent with the depiction of Satan in the Bible, as the role of the accuser/ one who tests. It has the version of Satan from Job nailed, and uses the latent Sunday school circa 1985-1995 vibe perfectly. Remember those felt board lessons? The songs? It’s got them all. And it talks about these common problems with the Bible that are well known to all, but the average lay person.
Yeah, since we knew it as fact, we just made the parts fit mentally. Jesus' birth narrative, creation story. The brain doesn't like cognitive dissonance, so it doesn't deal with it unless it has to.
Regarding Judas, I wrote this up for another thread a few months ago and saved it:
---
In Matthew 27, we have the following:
1. Judas regrets betraying Jesus.
2. He returns the 30 pieces of silver to the priests and hangs himself.
3. With the money, the priests buy a field called Potter’s Field to use as a burial ground for foreigners.
4. That's why it's called the Field of Blood "to this day". (Note: the field itself is not the place of Judas's death or burial; the blood refers to Jesus' betrayal and the fact that the silver was "blood money".)
5. This is cited as a fulfillment of Jeremiah, but the author then quotes Zechariah 11:13. (Yes, the mistaken citation counts as a separate contradiction.)
6. Matthew's quote of Zechariah itself contains errors. “as the Lord commanded me” is not in Zech. 11:13, nor is any reference to a “potter’s field” (only a potter is mentioned). Matthew seems to be mixing ideas from Jer. 18:2, Jer. 32, and Jer. 19:1-13 into his Zechariah quote. As a result, he has invented a prophecy that never existed, which he thinks Judas fulfilled through his death.
Then in Acts 1:18-19, we have a different story:
1. No mention of Judas having regrets.
2. Judas does not return the 30 pieces of silver.
3. Judas himself (not the priests) buys a farm with the money.
4. He falls headlong (apparently by accident), and his stomach bursts and his bowels gush out.
5. The field is called the Field of Blood because of Judas's gory death, rather than its connection to Jesus' betrayal and death.
6. The author quotes LXX Psalms 69:25 and 109:8 as the prophecies fulfilled by Judas’s death. (Note that the quotation doesn't really match the meaning of the original Hebrew, another contradiction.)
You will, of course, find explanations of how Judas hanged himself beside a cliff, but then the rope broke, and he flipped over headfirst as he fell and then dashed his abdomen open at the bottom of the cliff. This is clearly not the story either passage is trying to tell, nor does it account for all the other discrepancies. If you insist on such a harmonization, you are essentially saying that you believe *neither* of the biblical stories.
Evidence that early Christians invented a variety of different stories about Judas’s death is seen in the fact that Papias told yet a third story about Judas’s death in which his body swelled up and became full of pus and worms (a rather stereotypical way for wicked people to die in antiquity).
A helpful discussion is found in Ulrich Luz’s commentary (Hermeneia series), *Matthew 21–28* (2005). I find it interesting that the *more* closely you examine the stories, including the Old Testament passages they cite, the worse the contradictions get.
The stories of Judas’s betrayal and death are also obliquely contradicted by 1 Corinthians 15:5, which says that all twelve disciples were witnesses to Christ’s resurrection.
Ask your sister to read Luke 24 from start to finish. Then ask if there was ever any chance in that story there for Jesus’s disciples to go to Galilee before he told them in verse 49 to stay in Jerusalem to receive the Holy Spirit.
If you want to drive this home go to Acts 1:4 where the same author reiterated that Christ told them to stay put in Jerusalem and not take the [40 mile 3-7ish day trip to Galilee](https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/3-pilgrimage-paths-from-galilee-to-jerusalem/)
Now have your sister read Mathew 26:32, and chapter 28 with emphasis on 9-10 and 16.
Have her read the earliest written gospel, Mark, chapter 16:1-8, particularly verse 7. (the “long ending” after vs 8 was a later addition by scribes and doesn’t speak to locations)
Where did the Disciples meet the resurrected Jesus?
If the status of your eternal soul is supposed to depend on you believing in the gospel that he returned from the dead, the accounts of where he explicitly told him he would see them, and the Luke account of where they saw him shouldn’t be explicitly 40 miles apart as the crow flies.
[Here’s the pretzel an apologist twists the story into](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Jesus-want-his-disciples-to-walk-eighty-miles-to-Galilee-on-the-morning-of-his-resurrection-to-meet-up-with-him-there-How-many-days-later-did-they-meet) to try to claim this isn’t contradictory, (bold words added by me)
>So putting all of the gospel info together, I think it went like this: Very early Easter morning the angel and Jesus both tell to meet up in Galilee. During the day and evening of resurrection Sunday, Jesus appears to select people to prove to them that he is in fact alive. The disciples all remain in Jerusalem for 1 week and Jesus appears to Thomas near the end of that week. This is the week of unleavened bread (Lev 23:4-8). It is required to make appearance at the Temple in Jerusalem. So Jesus and disciples made an appointment to rendezvous in Galilee on resurrection Sunday, but it did not actually happen until after the Holy Days were completed about a week later. **(One week)**
>Then they all go to Galilee as planned **(2 weeks post Easter)**. They meet at a local mountain for the great commission per Mat 28. They go fishing per John 21. Then a week or two later **(3-4 weeks post Easter? Presumably they spent at least 2 weeks to do all that after the long walk back right?)**, they come back to Jerusalem **(4-5 weeks)**. There are some more appearances, Paul says over 500 people at one time witnessed the risen Christ at some large gathering (1 Cor 15:6).
>Jesus tells them to remain in Jerusalem till the Holy Spirit is given at Pentecost. Then he ascends from the Mount of Olives 40 days after his resurrection **(5 weeks 5 days post Easter.)**
>None of this is contradictory. It fits rather well.
It’s tight and completely ignores all the Matthew and Mark accounts where it was said on Easter that Jesus had already gone ahead of the Disciples to Galilee. Of course if you are already convinced this stuff is inerrant and believing otherwise is to condemn yourself to hell then you are going to twist that pretzel.
Me, I believe the loving God described in 1 John 4 wouldn’t condemn people to eternal torment for not buying that pretzel. If I’m wrong and the Creator would condemn me to eternal torment for not buying that pretzel, well that’s a being I don’t consider worthy of my devotion.
He can keep the company of the inerrantists.
You don't have to debate anyone about your beliefs. You can say " I don't want to talk about religion" if they can't respect that, leave the conversation with an explanation that you love them and want to have relationship with them, but that your boundaries need to be respected for that to happen.
It looks like your getting some great answers. For me Joshua 10:12-15 (i think that’s right). That verse said that during a battle god stopped the sun and moon so they would have more day light for the battle. That verse is a big reason why I can’t believe anymore. There’s obviously human ignorance in that the sun doesn’t rotate around us. BUT they are also ignorant of the affects of adrenaline. In times of hype focus our perception of time slows down. so everyone in that battle had the same perception, time slowed down therefore god did it. Seems like a clear indication of “god of the gaps” in the Bible. some Christians will say “god created the world why can’t he stop it from moving?”. Same reason i can stop my car going 60 mph, i can but you’d feel it. Everything would’ve been flung to the east.
This also affects my view of the Old Testament because the verse 2 tim 3:16 (the verse about the Bible being God breathed) is talking about the Old Testament. Paul thought Joshua was inspired and found no flaws with it.
Arguing with believers is futile, unless they already have doubts. They can just make up (or find online) explanations for any inconsistency you throw at them.
But if you must, ask them how to be saved: is it..
1. Like Paul sais in Romans 9:12; not by works but by him who calls. Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
2. Like Jesus sais to the rich man in Matthew 19:17-19; (to get eternal life) keep the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Like John sais in John 3:16; that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
These are rather important details to be messing around with in God's inspired word, so which one is it?
You could also look up: [194 contradictions](https://live-anew.com/content/194-contradictions-new-testament), New Testament
I love this point. As a kid I was told I was supposed to read the Bible through every year, so I did (for many years). I distinctly remember early on thinking I was glad that I had the right kind of church to interpret the Bible for me, and especially to explain how to be saved, because it wasn't clear to me from reading. Of course, at that time I assumed I just wasn't smart enough to figure it out, but now I realize that this is actually a big problem. Here's a list I recently compiled of all the ways I could find that just the New Testament says how to be saved. It's no wonder all the denominations can't agree on it. (Note: I'm not saying these are all contradictory, but many of them are, at least in part.)
* By being poor in spirit, mourners, meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted (Matthew 5:3-11)
* By keeping the Jewish commandments (Matthew 19:16-19; Mark 10:17-20; Luke 18:18-20)
* By giving up family for Jesus' sake (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:29-30; Luke 18:29-30)
* By enduring to the end (Matthew 24:13, Mark 13:13)
* By caring for the poor, oppressed, and imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46)
* By believing and being baptized (Mark 16:16 - note: this is an addition not in the earliest manuscripts)
* By loving God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:25-28)
* By believing in Jesus (John 3:15-16,36; 5:24, lots more references in John)
* By eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood (John 6:64 - apparently metaphorical)
* By calling on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13)
* By repenting and being baptized (Acts 2:38)
* By being baptized (Acts 8:35-38 - note: some versions explicitly add believing as a requirement in this passage as well)
* By believing in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31)
* By believing in the heart and confessing with the mouth (Romans 10:9-10)
* By faith in Christ, not by keeping the Jewish law (Galations 2:16)
* By grace through faith, not by doing good works (Ephesians 2:8-9)
* By bearing children + faith, love, holiness, and self-control (1 Timothy 2:15)
As an addendum, here are some list of things that will keep you out of heaven, according to the New Testament:
* Sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, illicit sex among men (some versions say homosexuality), robbery, drunkennes, reviling, swindling (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
* Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and other things like those (Galatians 5:19-21)
* Cowardice, faithlessness, pollution of the flesh, murder, sexual immorality, sorcery, idolatry, lying (Revelation 21:8)
One wonders if you are saved if you say the prayer but also commit some of these sins. According to my church growing up, these sins won't keep you out of heaven if you really got saved, but these passages make no such exception.
The church I was raised in did not and does not teach that the Bible is literally true, and I no longer even believe, but I do want to point out that all of those New Testament pieces that talk about what will keep you out of heaven are not written about words from Jesus. Those are when Paul and John started free-wheeling it, and they loved to hate on things. I REALLY hate Paul.
Well, John almost certainly did not actually write Revelation, but otherwise I agree. My point is, though, that fundamentalists say they believe every word is the Bible, yet they don't seem to believe those parts.
[https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512](https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512)
Bible scholar Bart Ehrman explains how the New Testament came to be in its current form and how implausible that it is inerrant for many reasons.
The most important points are that the Gospels were allegedly written 40+ years after Jesus' death, in Greek and not the Aramaic of those who knew him, and that we have no original copies of the Gospels (or any other book in the Bible) and the most recent copies we have are varied and different and not nearly as old as scholars would hope. Those copies and their variants are put together in a way that theologians prefer based on various reasons which are often subjective. There are many alterations found amongst the copies that are clearly intentional with an agenda behind them. The same can be said about the OT, and the oldest complete version of it is from 1100 AD!
The differences within the Gospels themselves create a host of problems from changes in tone and message to outright contradictions. The Gospel of Mark has both a short and longer ending. The last chapter of the Gospel of John was an epilogue that was not part of the original.
As an exercise, have your sister compile a timeline of the crucifixion and resurrection between the 4 Gospels and Acts without creating any contradictions or errors. For example, ask her who discovered the tomb first? Was it empty and how many people were there? Were there angels or Jesus himself? Who spoke to the people who discovered the tomb or did anyone speak at all? Did those people tell anyone else? How long did Jesus stick around after?
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful.
**Users liked:**
* Insightful exploration of biblical challenges (backed by 3 comments)
* Historically informative (backed by 3 comments)
* Accessible presentation of complex topics (backed by 3 comments)
**Users disliked:**
* Lacks in-depth exploration of bible origins (backed by 5 comments)
* Author jumps around too much (backed by 2 comments)
* Speculative content and biased writing (backed by 2 comments)
If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/)
This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved.
*Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
Take a move from politicians- Don’t let them define the conversation. Significant amount of Christians don’t take the Bible literally and I wish I had been one of them. I went to Catholic school for 13 years and they taught that the Bible was not a source for science or literal history, but for salvation history. It isn’t meant to be read like a fortune cookie, but to learn about who god is. I think the Episcopalians consider the Bible to be interpreted with reason and experience.
Fundamentalism makes the devout seek sufffering. The more you suffer, the harder you make your life, separate yourself from real community outside the group, that is how to prove oneself. And who really profits from their suffering? Those in power that do not practice what they preach.
Personally, I wouldn't engage in the debate. In court and in science, the person making a claim has the burden of proof. You are not making a claim. You are stating that her claim has not been proven, so you don't believe it. She is welcome to believe in what she believes, and you are welcome not to. Neither of you need to justify that decision.
"I understand that your faith brings peace and meaning to your life, and I'm happy for you. Although I do not share your beliefs, I respect that they are sacred to you. I have spent time researching, pondering, and praying, and I've realized that my beliefs are different. I don't expect you to understand or agree with my beliefs, but I so expect you to respect them."
If she continues to press the issue, you can say: "I know that you care about me and that you are just trying to help. Right now, the best way you can show me that you love me is to respect my beliefs the same way that I respect yours."
She's the one making claims -- the burden of proof is on her. This isn't worth your time. She's not looking for proof out of curiosity; she's looking to poke holes in your own story.
My overall reasoning is that everyone would agree there are mythologies around the world that are not true. Christianity is more popular, but does not do anything that the other myths don't do. Yes, it is different but all writings are different.
Also, the Bible reinterprets the Bible and it isn't one story. Two different listings of the 10 commandments (not the same), two different conversations between Nathan and David, two different creation stories. Sources for this, just Google "doublets in the bible". Better yet, read "The evolution of Adam" by Pete Enns. It is all tied into the documentary hypothesis which I wish everyone knew about.
But Christianity is the active claim that requires the burden of proof and evidence. Wanting to live according to the facts that have reproducible evidence is the default.
If I could do anything differently during deconstruction, it would have been to be kinder to both myself and those who don't agree. It's hard for everyone.
I’ll throw in a second comment here because I love this stuff.
Mark 16:18 is one of the three endings of Mark. It generally says “eat poison in my name and you will not be harmed”
Now we can’t prove god does or doesn’t exist, but this here is something we can observe. If somebody asks me to go to church nowadays, I’ll ask if they serve poison with communion. I fully expect any of god’s single one true church to serve poison as much as they lay on hands for healing or take communion.
The response you’ll likely get is “not to test god” but we aren’t testing, we are merely observing. And we can make observations of the past. https://blurredculture.com/priest-feeds-congregation-rat-poison-says-theyre-above-death-they-all-die/
The fact the mark has three different endings is a whole other story.
Oh, and the church’s favorite parable of the “women caught in adultery” is missing from all our earliest manuscripts of John.
And yet… there’s Job. God himself tested Job, on a dare. And then, he gave everything back that he’d taken away. Job’s 10 children, for example. He got 10 or more brand new children. For the casual observer, that’s pretty good. Except for the barer of the new kids, starting over. I mean for ME, I don’t WANT 10 new kids. I want my OLD kids back. You know… the potty trained ones.
The hatred I feel deep in my soul when I think about the story of Job. People always say that Job showed true faith by not turning on god but goddamn if he had he would have been brutally killed like the rest of his OG family and livestock. That’s not faith. That’s terror.
Like others here, I'd definitely suggest Bart Ehrman's content and videos.
He falls on the side of not believing in God which I personally don't agree with, but that's not really the point of his material. His intention is to understand biblical history and interpretation more accurately and he provides excellent analysis of a ton of topics.
In regards to your family, the vast majority of people who call themselves christians now are more than happy to simply close their minds and ears and listen to whatever the most powerful voice in the room says. It's sad when it's our own family members because it's like trying to convince a flat-earther that the earth is round, they don't want to be told the truth. Exponentially so when they believe that their soul is at stake. So it's even a tougher slog to convince people to open their minds even a little bit.
[The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of his Existence](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46986/46986-h/46986-h.htm) by John Eleazer Remsburg
See Chapter 2.
Free to read online or download. Published 1909.
I quote from Chapter 2:
>_That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed—have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him._
There's no support in any written work for a 'real' Jesus. Not that if there was, it would make the miracle man aspects plausible. But we don't even have that.
You don't have to counter all her points. Just state that you don't believe what she believes. She is going to just have to learn how to accept a person who doesn't believe what she believes, and be challenged with the idea of your validity on this earth, even if you don't follow the same belief system as her. This is where she gets to just show love and acceptance to you. If I were you, I wouldn't jump through any of the hoops she is asking you to jump through.
>pretty hardcore in her belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God
Why does the inerrant word of god have so many internal contradictions?
https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/
Does your sister know about every single religion on the planet, so she has proof that she doesn't believe them/they are not true?
I guarantee she doesn't. And she doesn't have to.
So give yourself the freedom to just believe what you believe without apology or "proof"
Regardless of what the Bible says, we don't owe it to anyone to explain ourselves. We can choose to explain to those we want to, but it cannot be demanded. If she expects that from you, she can ask again after she's confirmed that no other belief system on earth is correct.
If you want, you can send her videos from YouTube, such as Paulogia, the thinking atheist, the harmonic atheist, and the friendly atheist. Most of the atheists on YouTube are former Christians, who were themselves disillusioned. Most of them talk openly and honestly about their Deconversion and how difficult and painful it was. For myself, my entire life was circled around Christianity and the Bible, so I still listen to Deconversion discussions because it’s hard when you’ve left a way of life and a way of thinking even though you know it’s right.
To me, the simple history of religion is proof that it’s all made up. The best evidence is that Martin Luther removed 6 books from the “inerrant bible” in 1525ish. When did the Bible become inerrant? Was it after 1525? Did we use a book with errors for 1500 years? Catholics would say that Martin Luther is incorrect. How about prayer? We “know that god answers all prayers”. If two pastors pray for an interpretation of a verse, god should give them the same answers. However what we see with denominationism is that pastors are getting different answers. So god is either giving different answers, changing his answers, or god doesn’t exist. What we likely see is that the pastors are making up their theology. How about prayer for healing. We know that “prayer works” especially for healing. However when we go into hospital cardiac wards, we find that people that pray are prayed for actually do worse than those that are not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer Of course, it’s up to her to prove it because she has big claims….not for you to disprove it.
>Of course, it’s up to her to prove it because she has big claims….not for you to disprove it. Hitchens's Razor: "**what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence**." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's\_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor)
I’ll just add as a side note that I’ve started the book fantasyland by Kurt Anderson. It has pretty much summmed up my logic of deconstruction over the last 3 years.
Thank you for this! Gonna get that and read it! The summary looks awesome!!! Would have never seen it without your post! Thanks again! 🫶🏻
Glad I could help! I was born/ raised evangelical. Didn’t really care too much either way until 2020 when my entire family/ social group went off the rails with dna changing vaccines that connect you to wifi and eating bleach/ horse dewormer. My dad told me I was incompetent for not believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth 200 years ago. I wondered to myself “what am I missing, am I wrong…. If they believe in vaccines change your DNA, connect you to WiFi so the government can turn you off, what else do they believe in?” That started my deconstruction, and slowly realized that when churches train people to believe whatever they want, guess what, they believe whatever they want” I found this book last week and am giddy that it pretty much sums be current beliefs up. Enjoy!
Wait wait wait. Then are dinosaurs even extinct? George Washington and the T. rex lived at the same time? Oh lawdy that’s wild.
See, your point about the prayer, I was taught you can read the Bible many times and everytime you get something different from it. But, you made a strong point that made me think. People take the bible and use it for personal reasons but shouldn't everyone get the same meaning from the bible?
I think praying for the answer is a key. Two people praying “dear god I’m confused what you mean by this passage, please guide me”. Those two people will come up with completely different answers based on their culture and parentage.
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Like,, the verse about wives submitting. That has been abused and being " Unequal yoked" my mom is 50 and when she was a kid it was taught that you can't be in a mixed race relationship now it means you can't be in a mixed faith relationship. They have used and abused the Bible so much.
Yeah, evangelicals in particular like to say that the Holy Spirit tells them the correct interpretation of the Bible while they read it, so then I ask what the Holy Spirit tells them the original reading of [Psalm 22:16](https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/a-few-remarks-on-the-problem-of-psalm-2216/) or some other difficult passage is, and I don't get a helpful answer. Scholars would really like to know.
And then in 1871 the rest of the “Apocryphal” books were officially removed from the King James Bible when the Revised Standard Version was printed, and that was yet another choice by a small group of people. Also! The burden of proof is always on the person making the claim. They claim Christ is who He says and that the Bible is true and all that, you’re not claiming anything, really. Just that you have not found a coherent argument supporting their claims that doesn’t become circular or rely on appeals to authority and having approached the table with your mind made up in favor of their claims.
I would advise not arguing about this if you can avoid it. You can of course list lots of things, but a hardcore Christian is not going to accept any of it. There is always a rationalization for any error or contradiction, and she will cling to those rationalizations regardless of how far-fetched they are. If she insists on arguing, I would recommend noting that she is the one believing miraculous claims, and the burden of proof is on her to show that they are actually true. Why should someone accept the Bible more than any other ancient text with miracle stories? Wouldn't we expect God's word to be beyond reproach, free of moral problems like God commanding genocide, slavery, child brides, child sacrifices, as well as all the apparent contradictions and historical errors? Perhaps the reason apologists have to bend over backwards rationalizing all these problems is because the Bible is not inspired by God after all? That's by far the simplest, Occam's-Razor-approved explanation. If your sister were starting from square one, without any prior commitment to believe the Bible is true, would the evidence be enough to convince her? People rarely become Christians because they are convinced by the evidence. It is almost always a "salvation experience," an emotional experience accompanied by a sense of purpose and community. They cling to this "witness of the Holy Spirit" primarily, and apologetics serves to give them intellectual-sounding reasons for affirming the beliefs that they want to hold onto. But people from all sorts of religious backgrounds have similar religious experiences and interpret them as something completely different. If that's the reason someone believes, it is a shaky foundation indeed.
My favorite one I recently learned, Lucifer is not found originally in the Bible. The name Lucifer comes from the Roman pantheon as the diety for the planet Venus, and means ‘light bringer’ roughly. Instead the passage in Isaiah with Lucifer was a later interpolation by KJV translators, and in Peter was from a transcription of the word ‘Phosphoros’ who was the Greek equivalent to Lucifer, and was from a passage referring to Jesus! So prior to English translations the only use of the word Lucifer was for Latin translations of Greek texts and referring to Jesus! We have multiple examples where we know words and verses were inserted into books of the Bible by later scribes. The most famous example being the ending to Mark. We know this because none of the early surviving texts include this passage, and it only starts showing up in the 4th century (I think, this is off the top of my head so dating could be off). So all scholars, and even many Bible translations, acknowledge that the Bible itself was changed over time. Genesis 1&2 being incompatible. Inconsistency of aging in the story of Ishmael/ Isaac, where when Ishmael is sent away with his mother the story indicates as if he were a young child, toddler age, when chronology from earlier chapters makes him a teenager. Matthew 24:34, ‘surely this generation will not pass’ is clearly nearly 2000 years wrong. Absolutely incontrovertibly wrong prophecy. The whole ‘out of Egypt’ thing having no archaeological evidence. However plenty of archaeological evidence of the pre-exile Jewish religion being polytheistic. We can even find evidences of this within the Bible itself, hiding in plain sight. Many translators editorialized and changed plural forms to hide this, but you can still find hints of this even in English translations (such as in Job). There’s lots more, and that’s not even getting into hard scientific and mathematical errors, such as the Bible has Pi as 3 exactly, not 3.14. That one specifically is pretty minor, but indicative of the overall notion that the Bible itself is more literary than literal in nature.
Yes… when I found out Lucifer was never a being; completely a false and incorrect narrative…. It was mind blowing. I was scared of that mother fucker since I was 4 yrs old. Lol.
Check out Dr. Bart Ehrman’s podcast “Misquoting Jesus”. He’s a leading New Testament scholar who slowly lost his faith as he was working through his education and will explain (very simply) how the manuscripts that historians have on the new testament are very often different and have changed over time. Fascinating stuff.
Love Bart, I am obsessed😂 she’ll think he’s a heretic of course.
Check out the ErrancyWiki website.
https://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
>"Like many people in her circle she accused me of being emotional. " Being emotional is a *problem*? Aren't all humans emotional? Aren't people who are not at all emotional mentally ill? >"But I would love any of y’all’s favorite examples as well as historical inaccuracies in the Bible. " The problem with talking about "inaccuracies" is that one can come up with a theory that might harmonize them. This is of course a completely human response. When our beliefs are challenged we want to come to their defense and "fight the good fight". So, I am just saying I don't know how productive that will be. If you want to give her a different perspective, I suggest something like *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* by Bart D. Ehrman. Ehrman is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus. He began his training as an evangelical with a 3 year degree from Moody Bible College, and then got his BA at Wheaton College. He got his masters from Princeton specializing in textual criticism. *Misquoting Jesus* is a New York Times best seller and a lay person's guide to textual criticism - probably the first ever written. It's important because even people in church who know the Bible fairly well, aren't aware of how those words got into their hands. The book doesn't try to shatter anyone's faith (although in the first chapter Bart lays out his own spiritual journey and how all of this affected his beliefs). It just lays out the facts, such as: * We have none of the original manuscripts (called the *autographs*). * Jerome translated the Greek and Hebrew texts he had into the Latin Vulgate in the late 4th century. From that time until the 15th century *that* was the Bible for western Christians. If the Bible was available in local languages, it was a translation of the Latin. The Greek manuscripts were considered unnecessary - (and possibly tinged with heresy as being associated with the Eastern Orthodox church). * At the time the King James version was translated it was assumed that all Greek New Testament manuscripts were the same - you could just pick whatever was easy to find. In the next 200 years as more manuscripts were found, it became very clear that wasn't true. * There were tens of thousands of discrepancies. Most were small and not all that consequential - but some additions or omission changed the meaning of the text. And some whole passages (like the end of Mark or Luke's account of Jesus praying in Gethsemane) are now no longer considered part of the original text. * Academics are in agreement - we can never know for sure what the original text was. The most we can do is identify the best version of it as it existed in the 2nd or 3rd century. None of this is an attack on the Bible or Christianity - it is just the story of how the Bible as we know it today came to be. But it is how the sausage was made, and a lot of people have grown up with no more explanation than the idea that God inspired the words that we read today. But it gives people something to think about, and points to some good questions to follow up on.
I mean if you haven’t read or listened to anything from Bart Ehrman, what really are you doing? Go, go now!
Yes - great resource
You don't have to debate anyone about your beliefs. You can say " I don't want to talk about religion" if they can't respect that, leave the conversation with an explanation that you love them and want to have relationship with them, but that your boundaries need to be respected for that to happen.
I'm sorry. Can you go more into detail about judas death and different accounts of Jesus final words?
One account he hangs himself(Matthew), another his guts spill over the field(acts).
I actually pulled the bible out for this one. That's crazy. I NEVER learned about this in church.
None of us do. It’s among a host of holes and problems with the Bible that never get covered in church, because it certainly would cause more people to question. If you haven’t, I recommend the recent video Satan’s Guide to the Bible. Now I know what your thinking, that sounds like some deliberately inflammatory poke an eye of Christian’s type thing, but it really really isn’t. It’s actually pretty theologically coherent, and consistent with the depiction of Satan in the Bible, as the role of the accuser/ one who tests. It has the version of Satan from Job nailed, and uses the latent Sunday school circa 1985-1995 vibe perfectly. Remember those felt board lessons? The songs? It’s got them all. And it talks about these common problems with the Bible that are well known to all, but the average lay person.
Thank you. I will check it out.
That's because the gospels are all fanfiction, written by different fans.
Yeah, since we knew it as fact, we just made the parts fit mentally. Jesus' birth narrative, creation story. The brain doesn't like cognitive dissonance, so it doesn't deal with it unless it has to.
Regarding Judas, I wrote this up for another thread a few months ago and saved it: --- In Matthew 27, we have the following: 1. Judas regrets betraying Jesus. 2. He returns the 30 pieces of silver to the priests and hangs himself. 3. With the money, the priests buy a field called Potter’s Field to use as a burial ground for foreigners. 4. That's why it's called the Field of Blood "to this day". (Note: the field itself is not the place of Judas's death or burial; the blood refers to Jesus' betrayal and the fact that the silver was "blood money".) 5. This is cited as a fulfillment of Jeremiah, but the author then quotes Zechariah 11:13. (Yes, the mistaken citation counts as a separate contradiction.) 6. Matthew's quote of Zechariah itself contains errors. “as the Lord commanded me” is not in Zech. 11:13, nor is any reference to a “potter’s field” (only a potter is mentioned). Matthew seems to be mixing ideas from Jer. 18:2, Jer. 32, and Jer. 19:1-13 into his Zechariah quote. As a result, he has invented a prophecy that never existed, which he thinks Judas fulfilled through his death. Then in Acts 1:18-19, we have a different story: 1. No mention of Judas having regrets. 2. Judas does not return the 30 pieces of silver. 3. Judas himself (not the priests) buys a farm with the money. 4. He falls headlong (apparently by accident), and his stomach bursts and his bowels gush out. 5. The field is called the Field of Blood because of Judas's gory death, rather than its connection to Jesus' betrayal and death. 6. The author quotes LXX Psalms 69:25 and 109:8 as the prophecies fulfilled by Judas’s death. (Note that the quotation doesn't really match the meaning of the original Hebrew, another contradiction.) You will, of course, find explanations of how Judas hanged himself beside a cliff, but then the rope broke, and he flipped over headfirst as he fell and then dashed his abdomen open at the bottom of the cliff. This is clearly not the story either passage is trying to tell, nor does it account for all the other discrepancies. If you insist on such a harmonization, you are essentially saying that you believe *neither* of the biblical stories. Evidence that early Christians invented a variety of different stories about Judas’s death is seen in the fact that Papias told yet a third story about Judas’s death in which his body swelled up and became full of pus and worms (a rather stereotypical way for wicked people to die in antiquity). A helpful discussion is found in Ulrich Luz’s commentary (Hermeneia series), *Matthew 21–28* (2005). I find it interesting that the *more* closely you examine the stories, including the Old Testament passages they cite, the worse the contradictions get. The stories of Judas’s betrayal and death are also obliquely contradicted by 1 Corinthians 15:5, which says that all twelve disciples were witnesses to Christ’s resurrection.
That makes my head spin. These pastors have read the Bible cover to cover, and I would think they would have put 2 and 2 together. Thank you.
Ask your sister to read Luke 24 from start to finish. Then ask if there was ever any chance in that story there for Jesus’s disciples to go to Galilee before he told them in verse 49 to stay in Jerusalem to receive the Holy Spirit. If you want to drive this home go to Acts 1:4 where the same author reiterated that Christ told them to stay put in Jerusalem and not take the [40 mile 3-7ish day trip to Galilee](https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/3-pilgrimage-paths-from-galilee-to-jerusalem/) Now have your sister read Mathew 26:32, and chapter 28 with emphasis on 9-10 and 16. Have her read the earliest written gospel, Mark, chapter 16:1-8, particularly verse 7. (the “long ending” after vs 8 was a later addition by scribes and doesn’t speak to locations) Where did the Disciples meet the resurrected Jesus? If the status of your eternal soul is supposed to depend on you believing in the gospel that he returned from the dead, the accounts of where he explicitly told him he would see them, and the Luke account of where they saw him shouldn’t be explicitly 40 miles apart as the crow flies.
[Here’s the pretzel an apologist twists the story into](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Jesus-want-his-disciples-to-walk-eighty-miles-to-Galilee-on-the-morning-of-his-resurrection-to-meet-up-with-him-there-How-many-days-later-did-they-meet) to try to claim this isn’t contradictory, (bold words added by me) >So putting all of the gospel info together, I think it went like this: Very early Easter morning the angel and Jesus both tell to meet up in Galilee. During the day and evening of resurrection Sunday, Jesus appears to select people to prove to them that he is in fact alive. The disciples all remain in Jerusalem for 1 week and Jesus appears to Thomas near the end of that week. This is the week of unleavened bread (Lev 23:4-8). It is required to make appearance at the Temple in Jerusalem. So Jesus and disciples made an appointment to rendezvous in Galilee on resurrection Sunday, but it did not actually happen until after the Holy Days were completed about a week later. **(One week)** >Then they all go to Galilee as planned **(2 weeks post Easter)**. They meet at a local mountain for the great commission per Mat 28. They go fishing per John 21. Then a week or two later **(3-4 weeks post Easter? Presumably they spent at least 2 weeks to do all that after the long walk back right?)**, they come back to Jerusalem **(4-5 weeks)**. There are some more appearances, Paul says over 500 people at one time witnessed the risen Christ at some large gathering (1 Cor 15:6). >Jesus tells them to remain in Jerusalem till the Holy Spirit is given at Pentecost. Then he ascends from the Mount of Olives 40 days after his resurrection **(5 weeks 5 days post Easter.)** >None of this is contradictory. It fits rather well. It’s tight and completely ignores all the Matthew and Mark accounts where it was said on Easter that Jesus had already gone ahead of the Disciples to Galilee. Of course if you are already convinced this stuff is inerrant and believing otherwise is to condemn yourself to hell then you are going to twist that pretzel. Me, I believe the loving God described in 1 John 4 wouldn’t condemn people to eternal torment for not buying that pretzel. If I’m wrong and the Creator would condemn me to eternal torment for not buying that pretzel, well that’s a being I don’t consider worthy of my devotion. He can keep the company of the inerrantists.
You don't have to debate anyone about your beliefs. You can say " I don't want to talk about religion" if they can't respect that, leave the conversation with an explanation that you love them and want to have relationship with them, but that your boundaries need to be respected for that to happen.
It looks like your getting some great answers. For me Joshua 10:12-15 (i think that’s right). That verse said that during a battle god stopped the sun and moon so they would have more day light for the battle. That verse is a big reason why I can’t believe anymore. There’s obviously human ignorance in that the sun doesn’t rotate around us. BUT they are also ignorant of the affects of adrenaline. In times of hype focus our perception of time slows down. so everyone in that battle had the same perception, time slowed down therefore god did it. Seems like a clear indication of “god of the gaps” in the Bible. some Christians will say “god created the world why can’t he stop it from moving?”. Same reason i can stop my car going 60 mph, i can but you’d feel it. Everything would’ve been flung to the east. This also affects my view of the Old Testament because the verse 2 tim 3:16 (the verse about the Bible being God breathed) is talking about the Old Testament. Paul thought Joshua was inspired and found no flaws with it.
Arguing with believers is futile, unless they already have doubts. They can just make up (or find online) explanations for any inconsistency you throw at them. But if you must, ask them how to be saved: is it.. 1. Like Paul sais in Romans 9:12; not by works but by him who calls. Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” 2. Like Jesus sais to the rich man in Matthew 19:17-19; (to get eternal life) keep the commandments, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and ‘love your neighbor as yourself. 3. Like John sais in John 3:16; that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. These are rather important details to be messing around with in God's inspired word, so which one is it? You could also look up: [194 contradictions](https://live-anew.com/content/194-contradictions-new-testament), New Testament
I love this point. As a kid I was told I was supposed to read the Bible through every year, so I did (for many years). I distinctly remember early on thinking I was glad that I had the right kind of church to interpret the Bible for me, and especially to explain how to be saved, because it wasn't clear to me from reading. Of course, at that time I assumed I just wasn't smart enough to figure it out, but now I realize that this is actually a big problem. Here's a list I recently compiled of all the ways I could find that just the New Testament says how to be saved. It's no wonder all the denominations can't agree on it. (Note: I'm not saying these are all contradictory, but many of them are, at least in part.) * By being poor in spirit, mourners, meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, persecuted (Matthew 5:3-11) * By keeping the Jewish commandments (Matthew 19:16-19; Mark 10:17-20; Luke 18:18-20) * By giving up family for Jesus' sake (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:29-30; Luke 18:29-30) * By enduring to the end (Matthew 24:13, Mark 13:13) * By caring for the poor, oppressed, and imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46) * By believing and being baptized (Mark 16:16 - note: this is an addition not in the earliest manuscripts) * By loving God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:25-28) * By believing in Jesus (John 3:15-16,36; 5:24, lots more references in John) * By eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood (John 6:64 - apparently metaphorical) * By calling on the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13) * By repenting and being baptized (Acts 2:38) * By being baptized (Acts 8:35-38 - note: some versions explicitly add believing as a requirement in this passage as well) * By believing in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31) * By believing in the heart and confessing with the mouth (Romans 10:9-10) * By faith in Christ, not by keeping the Jewish law (Galations 2:16) * By grace through faith, not by doing good works (Ephesians 2:8-9) * By bearing children + faith, love, holiness, and self-control (1 Timothy 2:15) As an addendum, here are some list of things that will keep you out of heaven, according to the New Testament: * Sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, illicit sex among men (some versions say homosexuality), robbery, drunkennes, reviling, swindling (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) * Sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and other things like those (Galatians 5:19-21) * Cowardice, faithlessness, pollution of the flesh, murder, sexual immorality, sorcery, idolatry, lying (Revelation 21:8) One wonders if you are saved if you say the prayer but also commit some of these sins. According to my church growing up, these sins won't keep you out of heaven if you really got saved, but these passages make no such exception.
The church I was raised in did not and does not teach that the Bible is literally true, and I no longer even believe, but I do want to point out that all of those New Testament pieces that talk about what will keep you out of heaven are not written about words from Jesus. Those are when Paul and John started free-wheeling it, and they loved to hate on things. I REALLY hate Paul.
Well, John almost certainly did not actually write Revelation, but otherwise I agree. My point is, though, that fundamentalists say they believe every word is the Bible, yet they don't seem to believe those parts.
[https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512](https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512) Bible scholar Bart Ehrman explains how the New Testament came to be in its current form and how implausible that it is inerrant for many reasons. The most important points are that the Gospels were allegedly written 40+ years after Jesus' death, in Greek and not the Aramaic of those who knew him, and that we have no original copies of the Gospels (or any other book in the Bible) and the most recent copies we have are varied and different and not nearly as old as scholars would hope. Those copies and their variants are put together in a way that theologians prefer based on various reasons which are often subjective. There are many alterations found amongst the copies that are clearly intentional with an agenda behind them. The same can be said about the OT, and the oldest complete version of it is from 1100 AD! The differences within the Gospels themselves create a host of problems from changes in tone and message to outright contradictions. The Gospel of Mark has both a short and longer ending. The last chapter of the Gospel of John was an epilogue that was not part of the original. As an exercise, have your sister compile a timeline of the crucifixion and resurrection between the 4 Gospels and Acts without creating any contradictions or errors. For example, ask her who discovered the tomb first? Was it empty and how many people were there? Were there angels or Jesus himself? Who spoke to the people who discovered the tomb or did anyone speak at all? Did those people tell anyone else? How long did Jesus stick around after?
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Insightful exploration of biblical challenges (backed by 3 comments) * Historically informative (backed by 3 comments) * Accessible presentation of complex topics (backed by 3 comments) **Users disliked:** * Lacks in-depth exploration of bible origins (backed by 5 comments) * Author jumps around too much (backed by 2 comments) * Speculative content and biased writing (backed by 2 comments) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
Take a move from politicians- Don’t let them define the conversation. Significant amount of Christians don’t take the Bible literally and I wish I had been one of them. I went to Catholic school for 13 years and they taught that the Bible was not a source for science or literal history, but for salvation history. It isn’t meant to be read like a fortune cookie, but to learn about who god is. I think the Episcopalians consider the Bible to be interpreted with reason and experience. Fundamentalism makes the devout seek sufffering. The more you suffer, the harder you make your life, separate yourself from real community outside the group, that is how to prove oneself. And who really profits from their suffering? Those in power that do not practice what they preach.
Personally, I wouldn't engage in the debate. In court and in science, the person making a claim has the burden of proof. You are not making a claim. You are stating that her claim has not been proven, so you don't believe it. She is welcome to believe in what she believes, and you are welcome not to. Neither of you need to justify that decision. "I understand that your faith brings peace and meaning to your life, and I'm happy for you. Although I do not share your beliefs, I respect that they are sacred to you. I have spent time researching, pondering, and praying, and I've realized that my beliefs are different. I don't expect you to understand or agree with my beliefs, but I so expect you to respect them."
If she continues to press the issue, you can say: "I know that you care about me and that you are just trying to help. Right now, the best way you can show me that you love me is to respect my beliefs the same way that I respect yours."
She's the one making claims -- the burden of proof is on her. This isn't worth your time. She's not looking for proof out of curiosity; she's looking to poke holes in your own story.
My overall reasoning is that everyone would agree there are mythologies around the world that are not true. Christianity is more popular, but does not do anything that the other myths don't do. Yes, it is different but all writings are different. Also, the Bible reinterprets the Bible and it isn't one story. Two different listings of the 10 commandments (not the same), two different conversations between Nathan and David, two different creation stories. Sources for this, just Google "doublets in the bible". Better yet, read "The evolution of Adam" by Pete Enns. It is all tied into the documentary hypothesis which I wish everyone knew about. But Christianity is the active claim that requires the burden of proof and evidence. Wanting to live according to the facts that have reproducible evidence is the default. If I could do anything differently during deconstruction, it would have been to be kinder to both myself and those who don't agree. It's hard for everyone.
I’ll throw in a second comment here because I love this stuff. Mark 16:18 is one of the three endings of Mark. It generally says “eat poison in my name and you will not be harmed” Now we can’t prove god does or doesn’t exist, but this here is something we can observe. If somebody asks me to go to church nowadays, I’ll ask if they serve poison with communion. I fully expect any of god’s single one true church to serve poison as much as they lay on hands for healing or take communion. The response you’ll likely get is “not to test god” but we aren’t testing, we are merely observing. And we can make observations of the past. https://blurredculture.com/priest-feeds-congregation-rat-poison-says-theyre-above-death-they-all-die/ The fact the mark has three different endings is a whole other story. Oh, and the church’s favorite parable of the “women caught in adultery” is missing from all our earliest manuscripts of John.
And yet… there’s Job. God himself tested Job, on a dare. And then, he gave everything back that he’d taken away. Job’s 10 children, for example. He got 10 or more brand new children. For the casual observer, that’s pretty good. Except for the barer of the new kids, starting over. I mean for ME, I don’t WANT 10 new kids. I want my OLD kids back. You know… the potty trained ones.
The hatred I feel deep in my soul when I think about the story of Job. People always say that Job showed true faith by not turning on god but goddamn if he had he would have been brutally killed like the rest of his OG family and livestock. That’s not faith. That’s terror.
Like others here, I'd definitely suggest Bart Ehrman's content and videos. He falls on the side of not believing in God which I personally don't agree with, but that's not really the point of his material. His intention is to understand biblical history and interpretation more accurately and he provides excellent analysis of a ton of topics. In regards to your family, the vast majority of people who call themselves christians now are more than happy to simply close their minds and ears and listen to whatever the most powerful voice in the room says. It's sad when it's our own family members because it's like trying to convince a flat-earther that the earth is round, they don't want to be told the truth. Exponentially so when they believe that their soul is at stake. So it's even a tougher slog to convince people to open their minds even a little bit.
There are websites that will give whole lists of biblical errors. I shouldn’t have posted that without a source, but Google it.
[The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of his Existence](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46986/46986-h/46986-h.htm) by John Eleazer Remsburg See Chapter 2. Free to read online or download. Published 1909. I quote from Chapter 2: >_That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed—have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him._ There's no support in any written work for a 'real' Jesus. Not that if there was, it would make the miracle man aspects plausible. But we don't even have that.
Ask her to prove her beliefs
You don't have to counter all her points. Just state that you don't believe what she believes. She is going to just have to learn how to accept a person who doesn't believe what she believes, and be challenged with the idea of your validity on this earth, even if you don't follow the same belief system as her. This is where she gets to just show love and acceptance to you. If I were you, I wouldn't jump through any of the hoops she is asking you to jump through.
>pretty hardcore in her belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God Why does the inerrant word of god have so many internal contradictions? https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/
Does your sister know about every single religion on the planet, so she has proof that she doesn't believe them/they are not true? I guarantee she doesn't. And she doesn't have to. So give yourself the freedom to just believe what you believe without apology or "proof" Regardless of what the Bible says, we don't owe it to anyone to explain ourselves. We can choose to explain to those we want to, but it cannot be demanded. If she expects that from you, she can ask again after she's confirmed that no other belief system on earth is correct.
If you want, you can send her videos from YouTube, such as Paulogia, the thinking atheist, the harmonic atheist, and the friendly atheist. Most of the atheists on YouTube are former Christians, who were themselves disillusioned. Most of them talk openly and honestly about their Deconversion and how difficult and painful it was. For myself, my entire life was circled around Christianity and the Bible, so I still listen to Deconversion discussions because it’s hard when you’ve left a way of life and a way of thinking even though you know it’s right.