I am going to take you on a journey, taking you step for step through the bible. Your pastors and ministers know about many of these issues, but they keep themselves and you in the dark about it. Well, it is time to shine some light on the subject. “The truth shall set you free”.
The most important thing you should realise is that if the Bible was the Word of an almighty God, it should not be possible for anyone to put together a book like this! The Bible should have been clear, true and simple. The problem is that it is not!
The Bible
"Many believers have been taught that Scripture is the ultimate measure of truth, never imagining that the bible itself might come under a higher measure of truth, under the scrutiny of reason." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith.
“There are many millions of people who believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, millions who think that this book is staff and guide, counsellor and consoler; that it fills the present with peace and the future with hope, millions who believe that it is the fountain of law, justice and mercy, and that to its wise and benign teachings the world is indebted for its liberty, wealth and civilization, millions who imagine that this book is a revelation from the wisdom and love of God to the brain and heart of man, millions who regard this book as a torch that conquers the darkness of death, and pours its radiance on another world, a world without a tears. They forget its ignorance and savagery, its hatred of liberty, its religious persecution; they remember heaven, but they forget the dungeon of eternal pain. They forget that it imprisons the brain and corrupts the heart. They forget that it is the enemy of intellectual freedom. Liberty is my religion. Liberty of hand and brain, of thought and labour, liberty is a word hated by kings, loathed by popes. It is a word that shatters thrones and altars, that leaves the crowned without subjects, and the outstretched hand of superstition without alms. Liberty is the blossom and fruit of justice, the perfume of mercy. Liberty is the seed and soils the air and light the dew and rain of progress, love and joy.” - Robert G. Ingersoll (1894)
The Christian religion has evolved from the Jewish religion of the Old Testament. Upon this foundation, the New Testament rest and grows from. People believe the Bible (old- & new testament) to be the absolute and inerrant Word of God. That God Himself wrote the Bible, through people that believed in Him. So far so good, or is it?
I Corinthians 14:8-9 "For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoke? For ye shall speak into the air".
1 Corinthians 14:33 "For God is not the author of confusion…"
Keeping these passages in mind, you have to wonder why there are between about 34,000* different Christian denominations, churches, groups and sects in the world who believe that [the same] God has revealed the absolute truth to them and that their doctrine is the correct version. All versions are based on the Bible.
(*According to David Barrett et al, editors of the "World Christian Encyclopaedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200 (2001)".)
The Bible consists of a collection of sixty-six separate books. These books were chosen, after a bit of haggling, by the Catholic Council of Carthage in 397 CE (Common Era) - almost 400 hundred years after the time of Jesus. This collection is broken into two major sections: The Old Testament, which consists of thirty-nine books, and The New Testament, which consists of twenty-seven books. (Catholic Bibles include an additional twelve books known as the Apocrypha.) The Old Testament is concerned with the Hebrew God, Yahweh, and purports to be a history of the early Israelites. The New Testament is the work of early Christians and reflects their beliefs about Jesus the Christ; it purports to be a history of what Jesus taught and did and also insights into the early church.
The composition of the various books for the OT began in about 1000 BCE (before Common Era) and continued for more than a thousand years to where documents for the NT were accumulated. Oral material was included. These stories passed from one generation to the next, and then various editors put it into written form. These editors often worked in different locations and in different times and were usually unaware of each other. Their work, primarily intended for local use and it is unlikely that any author foresaw that his work would be included in a "Bible".
No original manuscripts exist! There is, not one book, which survives in anything like its original form. There are hundreds of differences between the oldest manuscripts of any one book. These differences indicate that various copyists and editors made numerous additions and alterations to the originals.
Many biblical authors are unknown. Where authors have been named, the name was many times selected by pious believers rather than given by the author himself. The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are examples of books, which did not carry the names of their actual authors or the dates of when it was written. The present names were assigned long after these four books were written. In spite of what the Gospel authors say, biblical scholars are now (almost unanimously) agreed that none of the Gospel authors was either a disciple of Jesus or an eyewitness to his ministry. This excludes the fundamentalists groups, of course.
Although some books of the Bible are traditionally attributed to a single author, many are actually the work of multiple authors. Genesis and John are two examples of multiple authorships.
Many biblical books have the earmarks of fiction. For example, private conversations are often related when no reporter was present. Conversations between God and various individuals were recorded. Prehistoric events are given in detail. When more than one author tells a story, there are usually significant differences. Many stories, which in their original context are considered even by Christians to be fictional, were borrowed by the biblical authors, adapted for their own purposes, given a historical setting, and then declared fact.
The Flood story is an example of this kind of adaptation. Its migration from the earliest known occurrence in Samaria, around 1600 BCE, from place to place and eventually to the Bible, can be traced historically. Each time the story was used again, it was altered to speak of local gods and heroes.
But is the Bible, nevertheless, the work of God? Is it a valid guidebook? How can we know?
If the Bible were really the work of a perfect and loving God, it would be obviously superlative in every respect to anything that could be conceived by human intellect alone. It would be accurate, clear, concise, and consistent throughout.
Fundamentalists, in fact, hold this to be true. Using a circular argument, they say that because the Bible is without error or inconsistency, it must be the work of God, and because it is the work of God, it must be without error or inconsistency. It seems not to matter which proposition comes first, the other is thought to follow.
Notwithstanding the fundamentalist viewpoint, the Bible does contain a number of real problems. And some of these problems are absolutely fatal to its credibility.
Many passages relate God-ordained atrocities; such passages are unworthy of a “loving” God. Some biblical precepts are both unreasonable and unlikely since they are in obvious disagreement with common sense as well as the qualities of character, which are attributed to God. Some biblical statements are absurd in that they represent very primitive beliefs. The believability of many biblical stories, stories that are crucial to Christianity, is discredited by numerous inconsistencies. The picture is further complicated by the many different and conflicting interpretations that are often given to a specific passage by sincere, well-intentioned believers.
While Biblicists are capable of explaining nearly any biblical problem that can be uncovered, such explanations should be unnecessary. The point is not whether some explanation can be conceived, but rather that a perfect and loving God certainly could, should, and would do a much better job of it were he to have anything to do with the writing of a book.
The evidence that follows, taken from the Bible itself and from people far cleverer than me, is but a portion of that which exists. This evidence demonstrates that the Bible cannot be the literal, complete, inerrant and perfect work of a perfect and loving God. It also demonstrates that the Bible is not especially useful even as a guidebook. In addition, because the Bible reflects every important belief of traditional Christianity - the foundation of Christianity itself rests on shaky ground.
My approach is a holistic one. I have realised that if I want to refute something, particularly something as extensive and complicated as the Christian religion, I cannot just point out two or three problems in the Bible. I will have to tackle every thing in one go, otherwise it will be too easy for Christians to ignore it or just apply the “blind faith” patch.
Before we have a closer look at all the issues in detail I would like to point out I am going to analyse the Old and New Testaments. Christians are very quick to ignore the problems of the OT when it suits them, but they readily preach and quote from it whenever they need. If you are not going to remove the OT from your Bible and denounce it, you have to accept that it is part of your religion and take responsibility for it.
