I want to apologize for taking a while to get back to you about contradictions. I've been distracted by other things, and even now, I'd rather address something else first that you brought up, because it bothers me to have something that blemishes the character of God on this thread. Sig wrote: "Thus, if even a single aspect of the Bible is shown to be false or just downright evil (God's thoughts on selling your daughter into slavery anyone?), then the entire basis of your beliefs are called into question." I want to provide some context for the phrase "God's thoughts on selling your daughter into slavery anyone?" A phrase like this sounds absolutely horrible, and I definitely am against anyone selling their daughter into slavery. I think there are a few things to point out about this, and hopefully I can put it into context and make it clear that just because something was permitted in Scripture does not mean that it was God's ideal or even a right course of action for someone to ever take. First of all, there was a lot of violence and slavery in the world before and after the Flood. I know you know that the Bible says that people had gotten to the point where “the earth was filled with violence” and one person, Noah, was a “just man.” God did not approve of the violence yet waited a long time before sending judgement. God saved Noah and his family from the flood by means of the ark. And not too long after the flood, historical records from that time period show slavery and violence again became a part of society. So, God separated a family, the Israelites, to enter into a covenant with Himself. He didn’t have to. He could have let them be as the rest of the world was, steeped in violence. But He wanted some people who would come to know Him and have a relationship with Him. He gave them laws to keep, but I would venture to say that they weren't given for the purpose of creating a utopian society. Take a look at 2 of Hammurabi's Laws (existing a few hundred years before Moses' time) regarding slavery so that we can compare it to Mosaic Law. www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp. Hammurabi's Code: An Eye for an Eye: If any one finds runaway male or female slaves in the open country and bring them to their masters, the master of the slaves shall pay him two shekels of silver. If a slave says to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear. Now here is the passage I believe you are referring to about a father selling his daughter. At first glance it would appear that this could be a concubine marriage. However, there are some differing thoughts among scholars as to whether or not this was simply a maidservant or if it involved marriage. Whatever it means, Moses' law provided her with some rights: “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,[a] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.” Exodus 21:7-11 NIV Also, slaves were not to be returned if they escaped from their master: “You shall not give back to his master the slave who has escaped from his master to you.” Deuteronomy 23:15 So, although it is definitely terrible, she did have some rights, and if she escaped, she was to be protected by others, not handed back. This was better than the Hammurabi Code which rewarded those who brought back slaves. Now consider this: Is divorce an ideal action to take or should marriage be "happily ever after," for life? The Law of Moses permitted divorce: When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house…..Deuteronomy 24:1-4 Yet Jesus said that from the beginning it was not so, that divorce was allowed by Moses because their hearts were hardened. (Matthew 19:18) By comparing the Law of Moses on divorce with Jesus' statement, we can see that things were permitted in the Law that were not God's ideals. One of the purposes for the Law of Moses was to help us understand what sin is, to understand that there is a standard of righteousness that God sets and that we need a Savior. Galatians 3:24 “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”
I always find it funny when someone who's entire religion is based on the concept that there is an absolute right and wrong and who would entirely reject cultural relativism in any other setting (I generally reject it as well, btw) engages in cultural relativism. Sorry, but slavery is evil...full stop. Selling your daughter into slavery is pure evil. Any time, any place. The fact that others around you are engaging in "worse" version of that evil doesn't make it any better! And any god who didn't condemn such evil is themselves evil. Any god who allows thousands, tens of thousands? of daughters to be sold into slavery in order to make a point to "help us understand what sin is" is pure evil. BTW, I think you meant Matthew 19:8 (19:18 is inconveniently followed by Jesus telling us to sell what we have and give it to the poor, so better ignore that one quick lest one of the foundations of current conservative ideology be shown for the moral bankruptcy it is!) But back to Matthew 19:8, that's another fascinating verse. It continues "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” Its utterly amazing to me to see the pure spite fundamentalists have for homosexuals and their active attempts to deny them civil marriage and allow discrimination against them and refuse to allow them to be members of their congregation and disown their gay children "because of their faith" but nearly every last one of them voted for and fully supports a President unrepentantly living in the sin of adultery according to Jesus, a good number of them are doing the same, and all would be furious if a florist or cake maker refused to serve them for their second/third/fourth marriage. I can only hope you disavow such hypocrisy and do your utmost to point it out and stop it among your fellow fundamentalists before you try to "prove" the Bible to the rest of us, you know Mathew 7:5 and all that. Now what that has to do with what Judas did with the money he got for betraying Jesus or what day the last supper was I have no idea. Seriously, I don't get why you can't just accept the personal religious experience you've had, confine your religion to the realm of the religious, and stop making yourself look so ridiculous trying to "prove" obvious contradictions and evil. Which obviously exist because men wrote the Bible, decided which "books" were in it, and transcribed it over many years, often to their own ends. And some of those men were semi-literate goat herders and therefore the barbaric stuff you'd expect a semi-literate goat herder to believe is there. No need to wrap yourself up in pretzels and lose any credibility you might have for the ability for rational thought defending that, not to mention actively driving anyone with an ounce of intelligence away from what you believe. It's not at all required for you the have the faith that you described now 3 posts ago, and yet you are actively driving people from that experience by stubbornly insisting on "evidence" to support your faith. Which if you look at the definition of "faith", is an oxymoron. Are you really following the words of Jesus, or are you serving your own selfish need to be "right" when you engage in behavior that has never brought anyone to your faith but drives countless away?
I tried to get to all 3 contradictions tonight and started with this one, and didn't get to the others yet.....maybe tomorrow. So, here's my response to the last contradiction you sent over, the one claiming that "Preparation Day of the Passover" meant it was the First day of Unleavened Bread. The First day of Unleavened Bread is when the lamb would be sacrificed. Instead, I would take the phrase to mean the "Preparation Day that came during the 7 day Feast of Passover." There is no contradiction here. Passover was a celebration that lasted 7 days. 4 “‘These are the Lord’s appointed festivals, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times: 5 The Lord’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. 6 On the fifteenth day of that month the Lord’s Festival of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. 7 On the first day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. 8 For seven days present a food offering to the Lord. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.’” Leviticus 23:4-8 NIV Mark and John are in agreement: “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb…” Mark 15:12 This would be Thursday evening. The story of the “Last Supper” follows. (Mark 15:14)Then came Jesus arrest overnight and Friday was the day of His crucifixion. “When evening had come, because it was the Preparation day, that is, the day before the Sabbath….” Mark 15:42 John has the same sequence of events, and during Jesus overnight mock trial states in 19:14, “Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover……" then later in 19:31, says “Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day).” So, both Mark and John link the preparation day with being the day before the Sabbath. Friday is the day the Jews prepared all that was needed to be done so that little work would need to be done on a Sabbath, the day of rest.
This thread is a slightly puzzling idea in the first place. I thought the idea was that Christians accept the Bible (and Christian teachings in general) on faith. I hadn't realised the faith was based on a rational examination of archaeological, witness and anecdotal evidence, leading to the choice of this particular religion over any other particular religion: that would seem to be the opposite of faith.
Exactly. But when you look at the logical contortions those people go to in order to "prove" their "faith" you can see that neither logic nor the definition of words work the same in their universe as they do in ours.
Passover is actually a day, it's the day we celebrate God killing all the babies and children whose only crime was to be the first boy born to their family, remember? But I digress into more pure evil. Let's go with this whole "preparation day" idea, because you actually contradict yourself in what you wrote. According to you, "preparation day" is Friday. According to Mark, 16 The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. 17 When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. 18 While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”" Notice the part I bolded, when it said they "prepared the Passover" and that same evening had the last supper. If we're going with your explanation, they would have "prepared the Passover" on "preparation day" which according to you was Friday, therefore the last supper was Friday night. Now let's look again at John 19, as inconvenient as it is for you since I noticed you tried to ignore it in favor of a different verse that didn't present such a clear contradiction. Again, it says "13 When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha).14 It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon." So clearly, Pilate judged Jesus on the day of "preparation for Passover", which again going with your words, is Friday. So somehow either Pilate judged Jesus on Friday at about noon and then subsequently released him and he went and had had the last supper where he not very impressively predicted something that had already happened, or they had the last supper on the Friday before the passover festival and 7 days (or I suppose a year or two years or anything else that allows that temporal timeline) later on that Friday at noon he was judged by Pilate......or these were two passages written down by two men, transcribed by many other men over 2,000 years at the direction of rulers who decided which books were in the Bible and what those books said to further their own often selfish ends and therefore aren't 100% consistent as would be expected in those circumstances. Occams razor and all that. For now, what, the fourth time, what do you see yourself accomplishing with this? Do you seriously think anyone, anywhere, ever, will see your "proof" that actually makes no sense and come to the personal relationship with God that you value and apparently yourself came to without "proof" and without needing "proof"? Again, don't you think it is a more effective use of your time to stop the rank hypocrisy of your fellow fundamentalists who daily perpetrate discrimination on homosexuals for their supposed sexual evils while ignoring Jesus' completely unambiguous words about those same sins among the divorced and remarried completely and blathering on about forgiveness and how we have all sinned (apparently that only applied to the "good" people, not the gays?) That would be witness to the words of Jesus.....what you're doing here, not so much. As is apocryphally attributed to Gandhi, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
I agree with the scepticism over the search for religious / Biblical "proof". I'm puzzled as to who this is all aimed at. A Christian surely does not need proof. They have faith in the Bible already. A non-religious person might rationally respect proof and evidence and facts and suchlike but has no doubt already concluded that the Bible is not the source for these things - if they thought the Bible was respected evidentiary source material, they would probably be Christians by now. So it must be aimed at one of two other groups - either religious people of other faiths who can be drawn away from their current faith and towards Christianity; which suggests they are only loosely attached to their current faith, hardly a great characteristic for a new convert or non-religious people who are too dumb to respect proof and evidence and facts anyway and will believe anything they're told. Either way, this is a colossal ego-trip.
They person they're trying to convince is really themselves. There's actually a third type of fundamentalist beyond the gullible and simple minded and the power manipulator, kids who are raised fundamentalists. In my experience it's pretty hard core brainwashing, you go to a fundamentalist school, only associate with other fundamentalists, and in my little cult no-one even had TVs. So not until high school are you even able to realize there's any other world out there and then only when you start to see all these internal contradictions and start looking for answers. At that point, from a psychology point of view, it's a huge lift to even come to the point of considering that all of what you were brainwashed into believing was 100% true without the slightest doubt.....might be a lie. So the natural human brain thing to do is to try to come up with explanations for the contradictions that are in line with your existing worldview, no matter how convoluted and ridiculous they look to an outside observer. That's the point these guys are in their evolution. Some of them will give up, it's a hard thing to do just internally, nearly impossible when you face being ostracized from everyone and everything you know because of it. Some people will eventually morph into regular Christians of faith. Our friend @Student is getting pretty close to that point, and I wish him well in reaching it. And others will full out reject the entire religion, but even they often reach that point gradually over the space of many years. That kind of full immersion from birth brainwashing is just incredibly hard to get over.
tomorton wrote: "I agree with the scepticism over the search for religious / Biblical "proof". "non-religious people who are too dumb to respect proof and evidence and facts anyway and will believe anything they're told" In modern academia there is a suppression of any evidence or arguments that gives credibility to a Creator and the Bible. Below is a video of Dr. James Tour presenting evidence that the origin of life has not been explained. Below his information is an article by Dr. William Lane Craig presenting arguments for God's existence. Both of these professors are well-educated. Timestamps: 1:20 Dr. James Tour: “Go ahead, ask your synthetic chemist friends, to listen to what I have to say. if they have anywhere a Master’s degree or beyond in synthetic organic chemistry, have them critique what I say.” 5:17 How widespread is the misunderstanding over the origin of life? Dr. James Tour: “This is how far the misunderstanding has gone. Even science professors, even biology professors, think that there is a near building of life. That we understand all the ways to build life. We do not.” Biography: James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. After spending 11 years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, he joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. Tour has about 650 research publications and over 200 patents, with an H-index = 129 and i10 index = 538 with total citations over 77,000 (Google Scholar). He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2014; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014; recipient of the Trotter Prize in “Information, Complexity and Inference” in 2014; and was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2014. Tour was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine, 2013. He was awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, 2012, Rice University; won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society, 2012; was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2011; and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009. Tour was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade, by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey, 2009; won the Distinguished Alumni Award, Purdue University, 2009; and the Houston Technology Center’s Nanotechnology Award in 2009. He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. Tour was the recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007. He also won the Small Times magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Innovator Award in 2006, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, Department of the Navy in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society in 2005, and The Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005. Tour’s paper on Nanocars was the most highly accessed journal article of all American Chemical Society articles in 2005, and it was listed by LiveScience as the second most influential paper in all of science in 2005. Tour has won several other national awards including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry. https://chemistry.rice.edu/people/james-tour#:~:text=He won the Feynman Prize,in organic chemistry in 2007. Here is a very lengthy article with some attached videos by Dr. William Lane Craig presenting strong arguments that God exists. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/does-god-exist/ Excerpts: Does God exist? This is one of the most important questions a person can consider. Your belief in the existence of God has enormous implications on your views of life, humanity, morality, and destiny. In this article, Dr. Craig offers three reasons why life would be meaningless without God and then presents five strong arguments for the existence of God, demonstrating the reasonableness of believing that God exists. Does God exist? Here are five good reasons to think that God exists: God makes sense of the origin of the universe. God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. God makes sense of objective moral values in the world. God makes sense of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God can be immediately known and experienced. Biography William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif. He lives in Atlanta, Ga., with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. At age 16, while a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971), and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977) and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980–86, he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987, they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until 1994. https://www.biola.edu/directory/people/william-craig
Suppression? The media generally do not bother to repeat statements which are demonstrably false or mistaken. In that sense there is indeed a suppression going on, but only in the same way the media do not research and report on iceberg risk in the Caribbean. But in the west at least there is no widespread suppression of Christian and Creationist ideas. Even if they are wrong in evidentiary terms.