Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events-in detail-many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors. ~ Dr. Hugh Ross
With these words Dr. Hugh Ross simultaneously opened and eviscerated his article Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible. Are there really about 2000 prophecies that have been fulfilled “to the letter” with no errors? Is that claim reliable? Is it true in any sense of the word? Would it pass peer review? There is only one answer to these questions: a definitive NO spoken with profound exasperation and pity. His claim is so far off the charts of absurdity that it can only be described as the ravings of an utterly delusional mind. And worse, the evidence he presents is riddled with the most elementary errors in logic and fact. He repeatedly begs the question by assuming the reliability of the Bible on the very points required to prove it. He committed this fallacy numerous times in his short article which lists thirteen examples chosen because they “exemplify the high degree of specificity, the range of projection, and/or the ‘supernature’ of the predicted events.” I begin with his second example:
(2) In approximately 700 B.C. the prophet Micah named the tiny village of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Israel’s Messiah (Micah 5:2). The fulfillment of this prophecy in the birth of Christ is one of the most widely known and widely celebrated facts in history.
The assertion that it is a “fact” that Jesus was born in Bethlehem is absurd. There is no evidence outside the Bible if, let alone where, Jesus was born. Ross simply assumed it is a fact because the Bible says so. It’s no different than if he claimed the virgin birth was “one of the most widely known and widely celebrated facts in history.” And worse, the Biblical record is highly dubious on this point because the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke strongly contradict each other. Luke has the family living in their home town of Nazareth, traveling to Bethlehem because of a census (which almost certainly never happened and which contradicts Matthew’s timeline), and returning to Nazareth shortly after the birth. Matthew, on the other hand, speaks as if they were residents of Bethlehem when Jesus was born and has them moving to Nazareth only after they returned from their flight to Egypt long after the birth. Luke makes no mention of the slaughter of the innocents or the flight to Egypt and Matthew seems entirely ignorant of the fact that they lived in Nazareth before the birth. The most rational resolution of this confusion seems to be that Jesus was known as “Jesus of Nazareth” in the earliest layer of the oral tradition since he is known by that title in all four Gospels (a rare point of unanimous agreement). It looks like Matthew and Luke simply invented stories (which clearly stretch credulity) to account for the contradictory traditions that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but known as “Jesus of Nazareth.” And in his characteristic style, Matthew justified the move to Nazareth by claiming that it fulfilled a prophecy:
And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. (Matthew 2:23)
Now consider the irony here. The Gospel writers, especially Matthew, had a habit of accenting their stories with claims of “fulfilled prophecies” that are, when examined, found not to be messianic prophecies at all. They are simply ripped out of context and arbitrarily applied to Jesus. Here are four examples just from the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel:
- Virgin Birth: So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” (Matt 1:22)
- Flight to Egypt: When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” (Matt 2:14)
- Slaughter of the Innocents: Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying: “A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more.” (Matt 2:17)
- Move to Nazareth: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” (Matt 2:23)
Not one of these supposed “prophecies” was actually written as a prophecy in the Old Testament, let alone a prophecy about the coming of a messiah. The fourth one is not even found in the Old Testament. And there is yet another problem. Matthew misquotes the prophecy from Micah! So much for “to the letter” accuracy. Ross’ claims are not merely wrong, they are egregiously wrong. They are absurd. We see the same kinds of problems with his third example:
(3) In the fifth century B.C. a prophet named Zechariah declared that the Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave—thirty pieces of silver, according to Jewish law-and also that this money would be used to buy a burial ground for Jerusalem’s poor foreigners (Zechariah 11:12-13). Bible writers and secular historians both record thirty pieces of silver as the sum paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying Jesus, and they indicate that the money went to purchase a “potter’s field,” used—just as predicted—for the burial of poor aliens (Matthew 27:3-10).
Again, Ross simply assumes that these unsubstantiated Bible stories are fully reliable historical facts. Did it never cross his mind that someone might have made things up after the fact? At least Ross got one thing right – the prophecies are from Zechariah. Unfortunately, Matthew disagrees and erroneously claims the prophecies are from Jeremiah:
Matthew 27:3 Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” And they said, “What is that to us? You see to it!” Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.” And they consulted together and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, “and gave them for the potter’s field, as the LORD directed me.”
This is supposed to inspire confidence in the reliability of the Bible? The book can not even quote itself correctly and we are supposed to believe it can predict the future? And again, what actually happened is highly dubious. As with the contradictory birth narratives, the Bible does not agree with itself about what happened to Judas or even who bought the Potter’s Field! Matthew says the priests bought the field after Judas “threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself” whereas elsewhere we read that he bought the field himself and then “falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out” (Acts 1:18). This is supposed to be “to the letter” accuracy? If anyone has fallen “headlong” and had their “entrails gush out” it sounds more like Christian apologists who try to prove that the reliability of the Bible. Their endeavor is the destroyer of minds.
Moving on to Dr. Ross’ final example, we see him indulging yet again in a blatant public display of petitio principii:
(13) One prophet of God (unnamed, but probably Shemiah) said that a future king of Judah, named Josiah, would take the bones of all the occultic priests (priests of the “high places”) of Israel’s King Jeroboam and burn them on Jeroboam’s altar (1 Kings 13:2 and 2 Kings 23:15-18). This event occurred approximately 300 years after it was foretold.
In this case, there really was a prophecy given in 1 Kings 13:1-2:
And behold, a man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Then he cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD, and said, “O altar, altar! Thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David; and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men’s bones shall be burned on you.’ “
And the record of the fulfillment is stated quite directly in 2 Kings 23:15-16:
Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he broke down; and he burned the high place and crushed it to powder, and burned the wooden image. As Josiah turned, he saw the tombs that were there on the mountain. And he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar, and defiled it according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.
One little problem. The books of first and second Kings were originally one book that was probably written by a single individual who told many other amazing stories about such things as prophets causing an iron ax head to float on water, calling fire down from heaven, flying up into heaven in a fiery chariot, and sundry other somewhat dubious historical narratives. I cannot imagine how anyone could suggest anyone put confidence in a single man’s story of a prediction and its fulfillment. My head hurts.
Conclusion:
With each of his examples, Dr. Ross presents a guess about the probability of a chance fulfillment. He gives a chance of 1 in 105 for the prophecy of the birth in Bethlehem, 1 in 1011 for the crucifixion, and oddly, 1 in 1013 for the prophecy about Josiah (which was one of the weakest). He then calculates the probability that all thirteen could be fulfilled and concludes that the Bible is more reliable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
Since these thirteen prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence for all thirteen is about 1 in 10138 (138 equals the sum of all the exponents of 10 in the probability estimates above). For the sake of putting the figure into perspective, this probability can be compared to the statistical chance that the second law of thermodynamics will be reversed in a given situation (for example, that a gasoline engine will refrigerate itself during its combustion cycle or that heat will flow from a cold body to a hot body)—that chance = 1 in 1080. Stating it simply, based on these thirteen prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.
Dr. Ross did not give the details of his calculations, but I think we can be pretty sure that he didn’t account for the possibility that the “fulfillments” could have been written after the fact by over-enthusiastic and/or deluded believers since that would have made the probability about the same as flipping a coin and getting either heads or tails. Likewise, we can also be pretty sure he didn’t account for the possibility that they could have evolved through a natural process of rumor mixed with religious fervor, a willingness to believe, and a deep desire to for proof. I mean, what historian would be so foolish as to think that miraculous events written in ancient religious texts could contain anything but reliable history? It’s not like any believers have ever make up stuff (like utterly meaningless statistics with outrageously ludicrous conclusions) to prove their beliefs are true!
It is beyond my ability to articulate the absurdity of Ross’ conclusion. The Second Law is one of the most strongly established of all scientific laws. It is proved directly and by implication every moment of every day. To suggest that the Bible has any kind of reliability like this is so far off the charts it can only be hinted at with numbers like … say … 10138. We would need a new scale of lunacy to measure the mind of Dr. Hugh Ross.
Hugh Ross is a “doctor” because he earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy before committing himself full-time to his ministry Reasons to Believe, his vehicle for presenting his abysmal psuedoscientific arguments, such as the idea that the Bible reveals knowledge of modern cosmology it speaks of the heavens being “stretched out like a tent.” I don’t know what he teaches about the “pillars” that are supposed to be upholding the earth or the solid dome that holds up the waters above. And what do other cosmologists think of him? A good example is the leading cosmologist Sean Carroll who wrote about him in his post Reasons to Believe (that creationists are crazy) after hearing him speak at the Origins Conference sponsored by the Skeptics Society. After describing things about the conference that he liked, he gave his opinion of Ross:
But all of that just fades into the background when put into the same room as the sheer unadulterated looniness of the remaining speaker, Hugh Ross. Despite warnings, I didn’t really know anything about the guy before the conference began. The taxonomy of crackpots is not especially interesting to me; there are too many of them, and I’d rather engage with the best arguments for positions I disagree with than spend time mocking the worst arguments (although I’m not above a bit of mockery now and then).
So I was unprepared. For those of you fortunate enough to be blissfully unaware of Ross’s special brand of lunacy, feel free to stop reading now if you so choose. For the rest of you: man, this guy is nuts. And he’s not even the most nuts it’s possible to be — he’s an “old-earth” creationist, willing to accept that the universe is 14 billion years old and that the conventional scientific interpretation of the fossil record is generally right. Still: totally nuts.
Carroll went on to speculate why intelligent skeptics would invite such a ridiculous lunatic, offering this possibility:
Perhaps the conference organizers wanted to ridicule belief in God by having it defended by Hugh Ross, or perhaps they wanted to energize the skeptical base by exposing them to some of the horrors that are really out there.
The word “horrors” is not an overstatement. Dr. Ross has been actively contributing to the decay of society for decades by supporting religious delusions with utterly fallacious “reasons to believe.” It should come as no surprise that the subject of my article The Art of Rationalization: A Case Study of Christian Apologist Rich Deem began his career as an apologist under Hugh Ross. Read that article and you will see a detailed analysis of how commitment to delusions literally disintegrates the mind.
It is for these reasons, and many more, that I have concluded that Evangelical Christianity breeds a contempt for the truth. It corrupts the minds and morals of believers. This looks something like the apotheosis of irony when compared with their claim to worship the truth in the person of Jesus.
When i told you even what you thought you had was being taken from you it was, look at the following symmetry in the verse numbers…second number is English Total A1 – Z26
Hebrew Aramaic Greek – English
the 7373rd vs. = 1717 on your verse number page you have 1959
YOU are in BIG TROUBLE. a fearful expectation then destruction, you will be NO MORE
2617th vs. Exodus 37:12 Also he made thereunto a border of an handbreadth round about; and made a crown of gold for the border thereof round about. 2716 – 1041
2617 + 2716 ~ 5333rd vs. Deuteronomy 15:13 And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty. 2573 – 820
2617 + 1041 ~ 3658th vs. Numbers 1:53 But the Levites shall pitch round about the tabernacle of testimony, that there be no wrath upon the congregation of the children of Israel: and the Levites shall keep the charge of the tabernacle of testimony. 5597 – 1936
5333 + 2573 + 5597 ~ 13503rd vs. Job 27:21 The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place. 1365 – 816
3658 + 820 + 1936 ~ 6414th vs. Joshua 21:32 And out of the tribe of Naphtali, Kedesh in Galilee with her suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the slayer; and Hammothdor with her suburbs, and Kartan with her suburbs; three cities. 8745 – 1664
13503 + 1365 + 8745 ~ 23613rd vs. Matthew 14:15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals. 18347 – 1837
6414 + 816 + 1664 ~ 8894th vs. 1st Kings 5:15 And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; 2276 – 1070
23613 + 18347 + 2276 ~44236 – 31102 ~ 13134th vs. Job 12:5 He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease. 2265 – 872
8894 + 1837 + 1070 ~ 11801st vs. 2nd Chronicles 29:9 For, lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. 2817 – 1156
13134 + 2265 + 2817 ~ 18216th vs. Isaiah 29:22 Therefore thus saith the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob, Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale. 4150 – 1269
11801 + 872 + 1156 ~ 13829th vs. Job 38:35 Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? 1591 – 710
18216 + 4150 + 1591 ~ 23957th vs. Matthew 23:38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 3964 – 476
13829 + 1269 + 710 ~ 15808th vs. Psalms 112:4 Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous. 1926 – 1031
23957 + 3964 + 1926 ~ 29847th vs. 2nd Timothy 2:19 Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. 17654 – 1671
15808 + 476 + 1031 ~ 17315th vs. Proverbs 31:30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised 2635 – 830
29847 + 17654 + 2635 ~ 50136 – 31102 ~ 19034th vs. Jeremiah 4:6 Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction. 2483 – 1110
17315 + 1671 + 830 ~ 19816th vs. Jeremiah 34:14 At the end of seven years let ye go every man his brother an Hebrew, which hath been sold unto thee; and when he hath served thee six years, thou shalt let him go free from thee: but your fathers hearkened not unto me, neither inclined their ear. 7540 – 2220
19034 + 2483 + 7540 ~
19816 + 1110 + 2220 ~
Laurence,
Please try to be rational. Look at what you have written. Your number game proves nothing because there is no way for you to discern between CHANCE and DESIGN. And worse, what are those numbers even supposed to mean? The fact that you didn’t even try to explain yourself coupled with your absurd “warnings” that I am in “BIG TROUBLE” and soon will “BE NO MORE” indicates that you are something like the perfect storm of irrationality, religious delusion, arrogant pride, all wrapped up in juvenile rudeness. That’s quite a mix, dude. You might want to have a little chat with your “lord” who has given you such a shitty spirit.
the symmetry of the numbers occurs with every verse. that leaves out chance or coincidence. i do not have to explain anything to you…It would be like explaining what colors look like to a blind man… POINTLESS
What symmetry? Your assertion that it is found in every verse is self-evidently absurd. I’ve seen hundreds of folks like you over the years making grand claims that turned out to be total bullshit. And then when you say things like “that leaves out chance” I know you are ignorant of basic statistics. And then when you say it would be POINTLESS to give a rational answer I know you are deluded.
You are not providing an explanation because you cannot.
And one more thing – please don’t post any more off-topic comments in this thread. Feel free to comment on the article, but if you want to discuss your idiosyncratic “evidence” then register on the forum and start your own thread. Any further off-topic posts on this thread will be deleted.
Hi Richard:
I couldnt agree more! Dr. Ross is NOT what I consider an honest partner. He does not represent, in my opinion, the Christian faith. As an avowed Fundamentalist, Dr. Ross is a confused man trying to fit his version of GOD into a box too small for the subject at hand. You have sliced and diced his illogical logic to pieces. Well done!
Namaste
Mystykal
Hey there Mystykal,
Thanks for the encouraging words. I must admit it was like shooting fish in a barrel, (or perhaps a better metaphor would be shoveling horseshit), but in any case it was a job that needed to be done.
The non-fundamentalist forms of Christianity (or any religion) are not nearly so toxic to the human mind. They can cause problems in as much as they are dogmatic rather than based on evidence, but on the other hand, our experience as humans goes well beyond what can be proven scientifically so there will always be a place for metaphysics (of which religion is a subclass).
Great chatting!
Richard
Richard:
My friend, I appreciate your comments and you are very close to the kingdom indeed! …”And few there be that find it!” I think we will all be surprised when the final roll call is made up yonder. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but GOD looks at the heart.”
Namaste,
Mystykal
My uncle used to often say that folks would probably be very surprised to see who is there when they get to heaven. That’s a great metaphor, but I don’t believe for a second that there is any “heaven” let alone a God who lets some people in and excludes others.
The real problem is that a “god” who is like a super person makes no sense to me at all. There could be an intelligent mystical “ground of being” … but there’s not a lot we can say about that.
Hi, Richard.
Simple, but you have to dig deep and look around.
The righteous branch that would come from the dead stump of David’s kingly line (see the irony here–a dead tree will sprout new life?) in Hebrew is a “nat-sere-et”. Jesus is the righteous branch and indeed, the true vine… He lived in “nat-seret”. Nat-sere-et and nat-seret. Get it? It’s a little play on words.
Another one I’d considered from your post is Judas’s death. He’s hanging off a cliff. Touch his dead body and you’re ritually unclean for Passover as the Torah teaches, right? They cut him down and the body burst open. Or you can take the Greek to mean he did what most hanging victims do and had a bowel movement.
It’s all true, it’s all real. God is good and His Word is living, active and able to not only save, but refute any and all supposed contradictions.
Elsewhere here I read you are still considering how it is that the Bible has wonderful patterns of gematria. Sources today say the numeric values in Hebrew were assigned to the letters as late as the first century before Jesus. That’s right–God made sure all the patterns were there in the Hebrew Bible before the numbers were doled out. It’s the Word of God!
I read and enjoyed your fascinating story online but I did not see in your testimony where you were born again. I saw where you came to certain understandings and then worked on a Bible Wheel as well as try to understand numeric coincidences (God’s coincidences?) in your life. I’m not accusing you–indeed–I think you are saved and a backslidden Christian–but I don’t see where there was a conversion you clearly understand, and which would give you the peace only Jesus can grant.
Thanks!
Hey there Matt,
I’ve been familiar with that word play for many years, and I agree it may well have been in the mind of the early Christians. But the text of Matthew says he moved to Nazareth to “fulfill that which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.” There is no place where the prophets said that. So if we are free to deny what the text states in this context, why believe anything it says? The attempt to resolve contradictions by inventing stuff the Bible doesn’t say and ignoring what it does say contradicts the doctrine that the Bible is God’s inerrant Word, so why bother?
I’ve also been familiar with the attempts to resolve the contradictions surrounding the death of Judas for many years. I didn’t find them convincing when I was a Christian, and much less so now. It certainly would convince any rational skeptic. It is obviously an ad hoc attempt to patch over direct contradictions in the two accounts. And there is another contradiction. Matthew says that the priests bought the field, whereas Acts says that Judas bought it.
The solution you offered has no basis in the text. It’s merely a story made up to “harmonize” two texts. You could do that with any contradictions in any text, but you wouldn’t accept such solutions to contradictions in the apocryphal books, would you? Of course not. So you have a double standard. This is the sign that you are holding a false dogma above the truth.
And don’t you see the irony? Hugh Ross said that there were about 2000 prophecies fulfilled “to the letter” with “no errors.” And then he presented prophecies with BLATANT contradictions that can only be solved by special pleading and ad hoc inventions. If we are to RESPECT THE BIBLE we must not make up stories to make it fit our preconception that it has no errors. That dogma is both false and absurd.
I have always thought that it was quite absurd for folks to claim that the Bible is GOD’S WORD even as they make up silly excuses to fix obvious contradictions and errors. If God wants us to believe it was his word, why did he make it look like a typical, confused, contradictory human book? When I was a Christian, I answered this question by saying that God deliberately designed the Bible with stumbling blocks, so that anyone who wanted to believe would have everything they needed to believe but those who didn’t would have everything needed to not believe. I felt this was the HIGHEST view of Scripture because it presumes that the Bible really is God’s Word, exactly as God wanted it to be, whereas the typical fundamentalist who teaches the doctrine that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, actually makes God look like a moron writing in crayon who couldn’t get anything right and his book must be “corrected” by his army of absurd apologists who make a mockery of their doctrine of Biblical perfection in their effort to justify their obviously false doctrine.
Your assertion that the Bible can “refute any and all contradictions” implies that you have double standards and fallacious logic. Think about this – if you used the same methods to harmonize the Apocrypha, the Book of Mormon, or the Quran, you could not prove any contradiction in any of those texts! The only reason you think you can harmonize all the contradictions in the Bible is because you allow yourself to make up whatever is needed no matter how implausible. You begin by assuming the Bible is true, and saying whatever is necessary to make it so. The fact that you would not follow the same rules with any other book proves that your methods are fallacious.
As for gematria – I was always of the opinion that the patterns (holographs) could not have been deliberately designed by humans so there was no problem that the letter/number assignation came after they were written. I’m still mystified by the holographs. As far as I can tell, they still require explanation and they can not be the product of chance or human design. So how did they get there? I have no idea. But they do not justify the Christian beliefs which cannot be justified by anything because they are logically incoherent and contrary to reality.
Great chatting! I hope this conversation continues.
Richard
Hi Richard:
I think that you are kidding yourself to say that immortality is not possible. Statistically it is! How we achieve this state is the real issue. So the “heaven” location is not the issue or even the GOD substance per se – but rather how do we explain the mysterious. The true skeptic denies reality by some reverse logic which says all things are known. But some things are never understood. The “source” of such things baffles the human psyche. Puting the blinders on is fine if you you want to stay focused. But the real truth is out there behyond the constraints of skeptics and religious minds alike. “Be still and know that I am God.”
Namaste,
Mystykal
Hey there Mystykal,
Your comments confuse me. I never said immortality was impossible.
A “true skeptic” neither denies reality nor says that “all things are known.”
What “blinders” do you think I have on? I am open to anything supported by logic, facts, and experience.
All the best,
Richard
Hi Richard:
We are definitly “in the weeds” now!…. Hehe. Didnt mean toconfuse you! I guess my words are pointed and can be misunderstood if you choose. Let me explain the skeptic dilema as I see it. A skeptic is a “fence sitter”. There is no FAITH! Its the probelm of “Trust-BUT verify!… If verification is the issue – then faith cannot work. The way I see it in order to understand the Truth of anything especially the nature and reality of the Unknown – we must approach the subject with a different set of tools if you please, which are not the usual “prove all things” – mentallity. When you encounter Wakan Takan – The Great Mystery – you know it! Until then all things are as they are – pure confusion and probable. The Great Mystery is a presence which is knowable and certain. But it is only known by the true mystics in each culture of the world. You must encounter THAT before anything else makes sense.
Namaste,
Mystykal
Hi Richard,
I would never say the Bible was written with stumbling blocks in it other than that “unstable people can twist the scriptures to their destruction”.
We can show the Qu’ran and Book of Mormon, etc. are contradictory and outrageous in their claims on their face. Muhammed had no concept of time and has Pharoah ordering crucifixions and transposes OT prophets to incorrect times and etc. The 11 witnesses who signed the Book of Mormon and said they saw the plates? 9 of them recanted later including Smith’s wife and son! There’s no “smoking gun” like that for the Bible other than the usual contradictions that are easily explained in context.
**But the text of Matthew says he moved to Nazareth to “fulfill that which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.” There is no place where the prophets said that.**
The prophets did “say” that, nat-saret and nat-zaret are quite close in pronounciation. Matthew and you and I know it was a double fulfillment of prophecy–Jesus already is the righteous, living branch from the dead stump of the Davidic kingly line. The whole of chapters in Romans is about vine and trees, right?
Just because Matthew used the kind of word plays that the Rabbis have for centuries doesn’t make his quotations inexact. Matthew’s readers at THAT TIME were extraordinary literate and knew the scriptures from their youth. They had no problem with his mishnah or pesher work.
The contradiction happens only in English and when people make demands on the scriptures that were not relevant to the time. We know that these peoples (except for Luke) weren’t stuck on 1-2-then 3-then-4-comes-next retellings also.
I still think you’re on the right track, however:
You know the Bible wheel and codes demonstrate something is going on. You recognize that God would have to write a perfect Bible and one that demonstrates supernatural intelligence, wisdom and fulfilled prophecies. That’s what we have.
Most of the early Christians were Jews and numbered in the tens and even hundreds of thousands. Believe me, they would have certainly known in Israel and the Diaspora if Jesus never existed, never did miracles, and never rose from a grave.
Hey Matt,
I think Peter taught that “the Bible was written with stumbling blocks in it”:
When I was a Christian, I was very impressed by the analogy between Christ as the “Living Word of God” and the Bible as the “Written Word of God.” Both are spoken of as “stumbling stones.” We know that the Bible has plenty of stumbling blocks that could easily been avoided, so if we assume the Bible is the very Word of God which is exactly as God willed, then we would have to conclude that he designed them. Pascal expressed this concept by saying “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadow for those who don’t.”
Now you said: “We can show the Qu’ran and Book of Mormon, etc. are contradictory and outrageous in their claims on their face.” There are a billion Muslims and millions of Mormons would would disagree. And there are many people, myself included, who see similar problems in the Bible. I do think the Quran has more problems that the Bible, but that’s just a matter of degree.
Now you say “there is no smoking gun like that for the Bible other than the usual contradictions that are easily explained in context.” I don’t that is correct at all. The contradictions in the four accounts of the Passion Week most definitely cannot be “explained away.” No Christian in the last 2000 years has ever been able to produce a coherent narrative that accounted for all the events recorded in the four Gospels and Paul. This is is subject of Dan Barker’s famous Resurrection Challenge. If you think you can do it, click the link and post your answer there on my forum.
I’m surprised that you would say that “the contradictions are easily explained in context.” I’ve been reading apologetic works for decades, and know that there are many contradictions that simply cannot be resolved no matter how hard believers try.
As for the Nazarene “prophecy” – Yes, the word “netzer” would naturally apply to Christ and the wordplay is valid and would have been recognized by informed first century readers. But your solution is not the only possibility. The book “When Critics Ask” offers three. So it’s just a guessing game. But this point was only tangential. My main point was that it looks like Matthew was trying to resolve the contradictory traditions that Christ was known as a “Nazarene” even though he was born in Bethlehem. There is a real contradiction between the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke.
I have never recognized that “God would have to write a perfect Bible.” I have always considered that concept to be absurd on multiple counts. First, it directly contradicts itself because if the Bible were perfect, it would have to be exactly as God wanted it to be, but that would imply God wanted it to at least look like it was filled with irreconcilable contradictions. No rational person can deny that the Bible look like it contains contradictions. So why did God make it look like that? And worse, Christian apologetics often descends into gross absurdities in an effort to “fix” the contradictions that supposedly are not there. The whole concept of a “perfect Bible” in the sense of “inerrant and infallible” is ludicrous in my estimation. But this doesn’t mean that it could not be “perfect” in that it accomplishes whatever it was designed for. The problem is that simple-minded believers try to force the Bible into their own idea of what “perfect” means.
I find it rather ironic that you claim there are “fulfilled prophecies” given that you are commenting on my refutation of Hugh Ross’ failed attempt to prove that very thing. Perhaps you should read my article again.
There is no evidence supporting your assertion that the first century Christians would have known if Jesus had not risen from the grave. Just look at Mormonism. It started less than 200 years ago and now has millions of members. Believers don’t care about “fact checking.” Mormonism started with total lies in an age of newspapers when it was easy for folks to check facts, and that didn’t stop it from getting millions of followers. Why should we think thing would be any different in the first century when checking facts was much more difficult? And besides, the only evidence we have are the religious tracts left by those trying to convert new believers.
In any case, it is good to be discussing these things with you. I invite you to register on my forum where we can pursue these issues in more depth.
All the best,
Richard
Hi Richard:
Below is my comment from several weeks ago. I want you to comment on this idea of non-faith being the “blinders” we put on as skeptics…
I am all for living in a world of facts and provable logical experiences. However, there is a side of life which defies all logic! It is there that the Great Mystery resides. The “burning bush” analogy comes to mind. Some things in life are meant to be unexplainable! It is there that we touch the face of God!
Namaste,
Mystykal
—————————————–
We are definitly “in the weeds” now!…. Hehe. Didnt mean toconfuse you! I guess my words are pointed and can be misunderstood if you choose. Let me explain the skeptic dilema as I see it. A skeptic is a “fence sitter”. There is no FAITH! Its the probelm of “Trust-BUT verify!… If verification is the issue – then faith cannot work. The way I see it in order to understand the Truth of anything especially the nature and reality of the Unknown – we must approach the subject with a different set of tools if you please, which are not the usual “prove all things” – mentallity. When you encounter Wakan Takan – The Great Mystery – you know it! Until then all things are as they are – pure confusion and probable. The Great Mystery is a presence which is knowable and certain. But it is only known by the true mystics in each culture of the world. You must encounter THAT before anything else makes sense.
Namaste,
Mystykal
Hi there, I’m new to this site, and, I’d prefer not to offend anyone but…. The comment above here, mentions “The Great Mystery,” and, reads that it must be encountered / that you’ll know it when you feel it, in other words.
I believe I’ve “encountered” that feeling, though with the singularity spooks playing hive-mind, with all the latest weapons of mass mind destruction at their disposal, I wouldn’t call that feeling a “Great Mystery;” (perhaps, “hyper-drive”).
I’d prefer however, to address R.A. McGough, for he has precisely the background that could explain to me my own programming. I’ve asked numerous physicists, a couple computer programmers, even a mathematician, but they’ve all redirected me to: “Get Saved!”
So, I’ll be forthright: I have no education beyond the completion of high school, my birthday is 5/271981, birth time 6:33am. I don’t believe in aliens, though I have (what conspiracy theorists call) the reptilian blood type. My maiden name translates to the word: “silver” while my first name, in Assyrian, translates to “my heart,” or, “my love;” in Yiddish – “consecrated to God.”
My question is basically this: what is it about my numbers, that cause me to see the “real” truth? And, why is/are big B.E.N. and the rest of the spooks, so afraid of reality, that they hide behind the glass? If they are as smart as they claim to be, why don’t they call off their dogs, so we can have real matrix?
Oh, and what in the heck is a matched node? I know what I can do, but nobody will give me the proper definition.
Hi L.s:
Maybe you just add words at random to what people say… But I did not say you just feel the Great Mystery – Wakan Takan. I said “You must encounter THAT” before anything in the Spiritual realm makes any sense.
So no you haven’t offended me other than to show your ignorance of the English language!
Namaste,
Mystykal
**Now you say “there is no smoking gun like that for the Bible other than the usual contradictions that are easily explained in context.” I don’t that is correct at all. The contradictions in the four accounts of the Passion Week most definitely cannot be “explained away.” No Christian in the last 2000 years has ever been able to produce a coherent narrative that accounted for all the events recorded in the four Gospels and Paul. This is is subject of Dan Barker’s famous Resurrection Challenge. If you think you can do it, click the link and post your answer there on my forum.**
I harmonized the gospels to my satisfaction and sent it to a number of such challenge sites without reply.
**I have never recognized that “God would have to write a perfect Bible.” I have always considered that concept to be absurd on multiple counts. First, it directly contradicts itself because if the Bible were perfect, it would have to be exactly as God wanted it to be, but that would imply God wanted it to at least look like it was filled with irreconcilable contradictions. No rational person can deny that the Bible look like it contains contradictions. So why did God make it look like that?**
Rhetorical and circular. I’m reasonable and so are hundreds of people I know who cannot find all these contradictions you’ve noted.
**There is no evidence supporting your assertion that the first century Christians would have known if Jesus had not risen from the grave. Just look at Mormonism. It started less than 200 years ago and now has millions of members.**
The Jewish people who lived contemporaneous to Jesus and trusted Him could have refuted the story. There were numerous eyewitnesses who gave us NT documents.
**Believers don’t care about “fact checking.”**
This one does and so do you! Why else did you spend YEARS proving the Bible wheel you proved soon after you found it? I care about the facts.
Please send it to me. I will reply. But be sure to obey the rules. You are not allowed to leave out any details mentioned in any of the four Gospels or Paul’s writings.
Your words are empty. You wrote nothing that shows my comments were either rhetorical or circular. You need to address what I wrote. The hightest view of Scripture is to believe that it is as God intended. This implies that God intended it to appear to have many contradictions, errors, and absurdities. The fact that you claim you can’t find them suggests that you have never seriously thought about this issue at all. Anyone actually familiar with the Bible could easily recount a few of the countless problems with the text. Just look at the problems I exposed in Hugh Ross’ article. There are blatant contradictions in the birth narratives, the death of Judas, and the Bible even got it wrong when it quoted Zechariah but attributed it to Jeremiah. Now I know you can make up excuses for all this confusion, but you cannot say that there are no serious problems in the Bible. They are legion and you know it (or should, anyway).
Now THIS IS CIRCULAR! You are assuming that the Biblical record is true to prove it is true. You do not know if any of the NT documents were written by “eyewitnesses.” Even the early Christians knew they didn’t know who wrote the Gospels, and modern scholars have concluded that only half of of the Pauline corpus was actually written by Paul.
And you missed my point: There were LOTS of people living at the time of Joseph Smith who PROVED he was a fraud, but you wouldn’t know that if you began by simply assuming that the writings of the Mormon Church were true. That’s your error, and it is quite sophomoric. If this is the level of “proof” you accept you could just as well be a Mormon.
I was talking about the average “believer.” I think it is great that you care about the facts. And you are correct, I have always cared about the facts. That’s why the evidence for the Bible Wheel stands – I have always been careful to stick to the facts. And that’s why I am no longer a Christian. Neither the Gospel nor the Bible can be trusted as true. Just look at the crap that Hugh Ross wrote! If that’s the level to which apologists must descend to defend the faith, then the faith is self-evidently indefensible.
I rarely look at your site now that you’ve denied the Creator…but I use the Biblewheel daily…you can never take back the discovery of the holy wheel….for whatever reason Yahweh allowed you to see this glorious connection to the Word…knowing you would deny Him one day…well it’s a mystery. There may be time for you to turn and ask forgiveness and love Him again in truth. I still pray for you…He’s a merciful God filled with compassion…but He’s also a zealous One for His name and will not allow “man” to destroy it. You know He wins in the end…why are you on the wrong side? Is it working for you?
Hey there Lisa,
Your closing statement that “You know He wins in the end…why are you on the wrong side? Is it working for you?” is nuts. If I thought that God were real and that “He wins in the end” then I would still be a Christian. Duh.
I get the impression you have not actually read any of the reasons I rejected Christianity. You say that God is merciful? Where do you get that idea? What “God” do you think you are talking about? He shows no mercy when he condemns his creatures to everlasting torment in hell. He showed no mercy in the flood. He showed no mercy when commanding his people to commit genocide. Indeed, he explicitly told them to “show no mercy” when slaughtering the women and children. And there was no mercy for the hundreds of thousands of Midianite men, woman, children that he ordered to be slaughtered and the 32,000 sexy virgins that he commanded to be distributed to the very soldiers that had just slaughtered every person they ever loved.
And how do the leading Christian apologists deal with what the Bible really says? Their defenses of the Bible are ludicrous and utterly unbelievable. Christian apologetics is an abyss of absurdity. Just look at the article at the head of this comment stream. “Dr.” Hugh Ross writes utter hogwash in defense of the Bible. And other apologists are just as bad if not worse. Take a look at the articles I have written exposing Rich Deem and William Lane Craig. If Christ really is the truth, then he is being trampled underfoot by the most famous Christian apologists and all the sheeple just go ba-ba-ba ya-ya-ya and swallow the lies.
Now as for the Bible Wheel – the evidence stands as far as I can tell. But what does it mean? You seem to think it means that your own particular version of Christianity is true. But that does not follow. Open your eyes and you will see that the world is filled with contradictory versions of Christianity even though they all claim that the Bible is the “Word of God.” Therefore, the Bible Wheel does not justify your particular version of Christianity any more than the Bible does. It’s all in you head. It’s all just your interpretation of a book that others interpret differently. And so is your “God.” He’s just a figment of your imagination. The proof is obvious. Just ask him to do something – anything – and you will get no response because he does not exist. This is the central delusion of Christianity. God cannot be actually TRUSTED to do anything for anyone, yet Christians declare that he is more trustworthy than any human. But that’s simply insane. If God were only half as trustworthy as the average dentist there would be no debate about his existence.
I know how hard it is for a believer to admit what the Bible actually says because you have been taught that the Bible is the Word of God. Your teachers have taught you to make up what ever excuses necessary to protect the Bible from the truth. Unfortunately, the process of making up excuses (rationalization) tends to corrupt the minds and morals of believers. How ironic is that? The Bible is supposed to lead people into truth, not error!
I know it is shocking to actually THINK about what the Bible actually says and to accept it rather than trying to make up excuses for God, but if you are going to say that the Bible is the “Word of God” then you have no choice, unless you want to be lost in a strong delusion.
All the best,
Richard
[And you missed my point: There were LOTS of people living at the time of Joseph Smith who PROVED he was a fraud, but you wouldn’t know that if you began by simply assuming that the writings of the Mormon Church were true. That’s your error, and it is quite sophomoric.]
No. “Born again” means “was a converted skeptic.” My faith comes after my facts. I’m certain yours does also.
[And that’s why I am no longer a Christian. Neither the Gospel nor the Bible can be trusted as true. Just look at the crap that Hugh Ross wrote! If that’s the level to which apologists must descend to defend the faith, then the faith is self-evidently indefensible.]
I wouldn’t jump off the Empire State Building because Mr. Ross did, and I’m already used to defending the age of the Earth and etc. against Mr. Ross’s teachings. Now, I’m certain that you remember warnings in the Bible against false teachers, but to say the scriptures are off because some apologist goes beyond reason, sounds untrue to me. I hope it does to you also.
As for what God intended the Bible to look like or read like, we both know Jesus spoke in parables in fulfillment of prophecy, and then told the plain meaning of His parables privately to His disciples, and they had a bit of trouble until after the resurrection and Pentecost. We further both know that Peter defines Paul’s epistles as scriptures even as he says Paul writes things challenging to understand that unstable minds distort to their own destruction.
No, I COMPLETELY agree with you that there are a lot of ISSUES as I’ve been “offered” hundreds of different contradictions. About one or two of them remain contradictions in my mind, perhaps copyist errors with numbers, and most of the rest vanish by using common sense. But we both also know common sense is out the window where religion is involved! 🙂
Hey there Matt,
It’s good to be digging into this with you. You wrote:
I don’t understand what you mean. Are you saying that being “born again” is the “fact” that justifies your faith?
And I think there is some confusion about “faith” – you don’t need “faith” if you have the facts. There is much confusion (deliberately generated, it seems) about the meaning of “faith” in Christianity. Apologists typically like to assert that it means “trust in what the facts imply” but that’s simply not true. In Christianity, saving faith is “believing without evidence” as Christ said “Blessed are those who believe but have not seen.”
That’s pretty funny because the age of the earth is one of the few things that Ross got right!
That would be true if the problem were with a few scattered apologists here or there. But that’s not what we see. The problem is with ALL APOLOGISTS who have ever attempted to defend the truth of the Bible. They have all failed, and their failures reveal gross moral and intellectual corruption that is generally accepted by other leading apologists. To use a biblical metaphor, “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores” – that is the condition of the entire body of Christian apologetics in my estimation.
True, but I don’t see how that solves any of the problems I have exposed.
You answer seems absurd to me. First, there are many direct contradictions in the various numbers in just the books of Kings vs. Chronicles. Sure, they may be due to copyist errors, but there are many more than two. And there are many highly significant contradictions that are not answered by “common sense.” On the contrary, “common sense” screams that they are blatant errors and the only reason you can’t see them is because you don’t want to. The post you are answering gives many examples. 1) The birth narratives are totally contradictory. 2) The four accounts of the passion week are totally contradictory and no one has ever been able to answer Dan Barker’s Resurrection Challenge. The death of Judas is obviously contradictory. And so on and on and on. To claim there are only “two contradictions” indicates a profound cognitive bias.
Great chatting!
Richard
*In Christianity, saving faith is “believing without evidence” as Christ said “Blessed are those who believe but have not seen.”*
The context of John 20:29 I’m sure you know; not being a doubting Thomas who had heard 11-plus eyewitnesses to the resurrection, the ADDED blessing of believing based on the facts without being a contemporary of Jesus (like most Christians), etc. It doesn’t mean without evidence. The very next verse speaks of many convincing proofs NEXT given during the pre-Pentecost period! When you write something of this caliber I’m a little surprised. You know context very well.
*That’s pretty funny because the age of the earth is one of the few things that Ross got right!*
I’m thinking he thinks it’s younger than you think, though. And my point remains that I wouldn’t point out an extremist as a reason to leave trusting Jesus. Your next point about all apologists doesn’t apply either. You can take me for an example. You said you found gaps in my logic. Do you find moral failings in me?
*To claim there are only “two contradictions” indicates a profound cognitive bias.*
I read the Bible daily. Again, I myself often see something of concern in the English, and then I check my own understanding with a little research. It is usually (99%) of the time resolved. I’ve had hour-long conversations with people who know the Bible as well as I do and there’s only one or two contradictions we are stuck on. I’m being honest in my reflections to you.
Hey there Matt,
I’ve read your comment many times but your words are not clear to me, so I will do my best to tell you what I think you are trying to say and this should expose my error so you can correct me. It seems like you are saying that Thomas had an “ADDED blessing of believing based on facts” which modern Christians don’t have because we were not there to see Jesus in the flesh. I understand that just fine. But then you say that Christ’s statement “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” does NOT mean “without evidence.” I don’t see where you got that from. You say it is because the “very next verse speaks of many convincing proofs.” That’s true, but what is the nature of the “proofs”? Do they give anyone any real l”evidence” or mere hearsay? Let’s see:
It’s pure hearsay. The only “evidence” offered are things John wrote in a book. Now just to be clear, let me remind you of the definition: Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience.
Furthermore, this view of believing without any objective evidence coheres precisely with what Paul taught when he said that believers “walk by faith, not by sight.” And this is confirmed in Hebrews 11:1 which says faith is “the evidence of things not seen.” And I don’t think I am overstating things when I say that the vast majority of Christians have always understood that faith is something that cannot be proven with objective [scientific] evidence, and so no one has any choice but to believe “without evidence.”
As for Hugh Ross – he agrees that the earth is about 4.5 billions years old and the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Google it.
I did not “leave trusting Jesus” because of any human, “extremist” or not. I left the faith because I do not believe any of its many varieties is true. My point concerning the apologists is that they are good evidence of the falsehood of Christianity. If there are NO APOLOGISTS who can defend their faith with integrity despite 2000 years of trying, then I have good reason to suspect that the reason is that their faith is indefensible, and worse, that it tends to corrupt the minds and morals of believers *(which is the apotheosis of irony since their religion is supposed to be the source of all that is good and true).
I have no reason to doubt your honesty, but I do have reason to believe your judgment is skewed because of many cognitive biases. I would be delighted to discuss the contradictions with you in more depth. An excellent place to start would be the post at the head of this comment stream. I exposed a lot of serious contradictions in the “fulfilled prophecies” claimed by Hugh Ross. You could choose to explain one of them if you feel so inclined.
Great chatting!
Richard
*I’ve read your comment many times but your words are not clear to me, so I will do my best to tell you what I think you are trying to say and this should expose my error so you can correct me. It seems like you are saying that Thomas had an “ADDED blessing of believing based on facts” which modern Christians don’t have because we were not there to see Jesus in the flesh. I understand that just fine. But then you say that Christ’s statement “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” does NOT mean “without evidence.” I don’t see where you got that from. You say it is because the “very next verse speaks of many convincing proofs.” That’s true, but what is the nature of the “proofs”? Do they give anyone any real l”evidence” or mere hearsay? Let’s see:*
Sorry, I meant Thomas doubted and received verification in person. We receive truth by reason and reading. We are most blessed because we trust and verify as opposed to distrust and distrust and distrust like Thomas. Thomas had eleven faithful eyewitnesses and the scriptures demanded two or three to verify facts in evidence.
*Furthermore, this view of believing without any objective evidence coheres precisely with what Paul taught when he said that believers “walk by faith, not by sight.”*
No, that is referring to the future. We believe the past events because of evidence. We trust God when walking forward, towards future ambitions and not by sight, of course.
As for revisiting contradictions with you, what would that accomplish? We both know if we are lacking visual, material sight on an object, we can be doubting Thomas’s or not, right?
We also both know that an apologist can only say in response to a contradiction, “Here’s what may have occured,” aka speculation. I’ve already put forth that careful reading of the scriptures in context, looking at the original languages, and studying the historical context are all that is required to solve most of them.
Hey there Matt,
You wrote:
Excellent. That’s very clear. Thanks. But it’s not entirely obvious to me that Thomas had good reason to trust the eleven witnesses on something as extraordinary as their claim concerning Christ’s resurrection. Some things simply cannot (and should not) be believed merely on eyewitness testimony. You say they were trustworthy? I don’t see that at all. Thomas had just witnessed the leading disciple, Peter, deny that he even knew Christ at all! And the other disciple, Judas, proved himself to be utterly untrustworthy. So now we have 2/11 (18%) of the other disciples having been proven untrustworthy in just the previous week! And they want him to believe they saw the risen Christ? What if it was an hallucination caused by the deep grief and trauma of seeing their supposed Messiah murdered? If anyone knew that fallible humans could not be trusted, it was Thomas. He had very good reason to doubt. And note, Christ did not chastise him for doubting. There is no indication that he failed to “obey Torah” concerning “two or three witnesses.”
Now you say that we modern folks “receive truth by reason and reading.” I agree. I have received much truth that way. And that’s why I don’t believe the Bible. When I take everything I’ve read in the Bible and elsewhere and evaluate it with my reason, I conclude the God of the Bible does not exist and the Gospel is not true. If I have erred in my judgment, I trust you will show me where so I can correct myself.
That’s a good explanation but I would not say that it applies only to the future. It seems to be of the same spirit as “blessed are those that have not seen, yet believe.” And Peter’s statement, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing” (1 Peter 1:8). And again, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood [evidence] hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). It seems to be the consistent teaching of Scripture that knowledge of God is through revelation rather than something that could be concluded through logic, facts, and evidence. This really does seem to be what the Bible teaches. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” I know of course that the “heavens declare the glory of God” but that says nothing about the specific God of Christianity.
That’s a curious response. First you tell me that I can find faith by “reading and reason” and now you say there is not sufficient evidence because “we are lacking visual, material sight on an object.” If I have erred in my understanding of the contradictions of Scripture you should be able to show me my error so I can correct myself. I speak with all sincerity. I truly believe that the Bible is unbelievable as an historical record. Sure, it contains much real history, but it also contains much myth.
Exactly correct! We both know that the apologist can only speculate about possible resolutions (which are often quite a stretch), whereas the skeptic can point to good reasons not to believe. Thus, the evidential route would almost never convince a rational skeptic. Apologetics is primary aimed at protecting the faith of those who already believe. To me it looks like one massive exercise in how to maintain a cognitive bias.
I am surprised at your quick retreat. Your assertion that the problems are easily solved by historical context and original languages is simply false in my estimation. The real “solutions” are all based on simply making up stories and believing them without reason because that’s what you want to believe. Case in point: There are big contradictions in the story of the death of Judas. Did he throw the money back and then go hang himself in a field that was later bought by the priests or did he buy the field himself and then go there, fall forward, and die by disembowelment? The ONLY reason anyone would believe that these two accounts could be “harmonized” is if they have an overwhelming desire to believe that their presupposition of biblical inerrancy was true. That’s pure, unadulterated cognitive bias that you would damn absolutely in any other context (such as a Muslim who begins with the presupposition that the Koran is the inerrant Word of Allah). And so I know, without any doubt whatsoever, that your “solutions” to the contradictions are not intellectual legitimate. I trust you understand I have arrived at this position as the result of reading, reason, and a love for the truth.
Great chatting! I hope the conversation continues.
Richard
*Some things simply cannot (and should not) be believed merely on eyewitness testimony. You say they were trustworthy? I don’t see that at all. Thomas had just witnessed the leading disciple, Peter, deny that he even knew Christ at all!*
Richard, this and the paragraphs in full are to me an example of lacking Bible context. The eleven including Thomas had been with Jesus three years and seen some heavy duty stuff! They were now saying they saw the Lord–who was explaining to them His resurrection and from the scriptures… However, as Peter wrote, even better than their eyewitness testimony was fulfilled prophecy…
*Exactly correct! We both know that the apologist can only speculate about possible resolutions (which are often quite a stretch), whereas the skeptic can point to good reasons not to believe. Thus, the evidential route would almost never convince a rational skeptic. Apologetics is primary aimed at protecting the faith of those who already believe. To me it looks like one massive exercise in how to maintain a cognitive bias.
I am surprised at your quick retreat. Your assertion that the problems are easily solved by historical context and original languages is simply false in my estimation. The real “solutions” are all based on simply making up stories and believing them without reason because that’s what you want to believe. Case in point: There are big contradictions in the story of the death of Judas. Did he throw the money back and then go hang himself in a field that was later bought by the priests or did he buy the field himself and then go there, fall forward, and die by disembowelment? The ONLY reason anyone would believe that these two accounts could be “harmonized” is if they have an overwhelming desire to believe that their presupposition of biblical inerrancy was true. That’s pure, unadulterated cognitive bias that you would damn absolutely in any other context (such as a Muslim who begins with the presupposition that the Koran is the inerrant Word of Allah). And so I know, without any doubt whatsoever, that your “solutions” to the contradictions are not intellectual legitimate. I trust you understand I have arrived at this position as the result of reading, reason, and a love for the truth.*
I’ve already addressed the situation with Judas. Bible Law = don’t touch a dead body or you are ritually unclean = Judas was cut down and burst open; and I gave two other plausible explanations. The process you are describing where an apologist is flailing to find solutions for what reasonable skeptics propose is not motivated by cognitive or confirmatory bias. It’s motivated by answering questions respectfully and patiently explaining the scriptures to others. Take Nehemiah 8, for example, which talks about the priests doing this for the people when the Torah was read aloud.
Also, I wouldn’t say “quick retreat”. I’m not fighting with you. I’m reiterating that basic hermenuetics has to do with looking at verses in context, considering their historical context and looking at the source languages. Examples: Skeptics are so quick to say the Bible condones slavery, when it says that slaves are to look to the heavenly life and not to pursue vengeance on their masters, etc. In actuality, kidnapping of a person is punishable by death, so that those who captured the slaves to sell them would have been executed under an Israelite theocracy. Context-another scripture-Historical context-slaves could witness to their masters/neither were they likely to be seen “marching in Washington, DC against slavery”-Original language issues-What did the Torah have to say about kidnapping and slavery (and indentured servitude, and voluntary servitude, all four being mentioned in the Bible).
*That’s a good explanation but I would not say that it applies only to the future. It seems to be of the same spirit as “blessed are those that have not seen, yet believe.” And Peter’s statement, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing” (1 Peter 1:8). And again, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood [evidence] hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). It seems to be the consistent teaching of Scripture that knowledge of God is through revelation rather than something that could be concluded through logic, facts, and evidence. This really does seem to be what the Bible teaches. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” I know of course that the “heavens declare the glory of God” but that says nothing about the specific God of Christianity.(
We “believe” some occurence of the past because of evidence. The Bible says we “believe” in the resurrection and the creation, etc. due to evidence. But we “walk” towards future objects and future goals. I’m certain that the verses you mentioned refer to not seeing Jesus but trusting Him based on evidence. I would also take the Matthew 16 quote as the evidence that God supplies not the “evidence” of men (flesh and blood). Or we can take it as Simon putting together with God’s aid that Jesus who was plainly a worker of miracles was the Messiah, not Elijah resurrected or etc.
*That’s a curious response. First you tell me that I can find faith by “reading and reason” and now you say there is not sufficient evidence because “we are lacking visual, material sight on an object.” If I have erred in my understanding of the contradictions of Scripture you should be able to show me my error so I can correct myself. I speak with all sincerity. I truly believe that the Bible is unbelievable as an historical record. Sure, it contains much real history, but it also contains much myth.*
But I didn’t say there isn’t sufficient evidence! We are lacking empirical sight 2,000 years later on the person of Christ. We are not lacking documentary and confirmatory evidence.
Hey there Matt,
Sorry for the slow response. Thanks for having patience with me (both temporally and intellectually). When I spoke of your “quick retreat” I meant it only in the sense that you seemed to be backing off from your previous claims, not that we were fighting. I don’t think we are fighting at all. It is wonderful to be discussing these things with you. You are very articulate and thoughtful and you don’t take unnecessary offence. I think our discussion is very valuable for not only ourselves but those reading too.
Why didn’t Thomas believe? Apparently this comes down to a difference of opinion. I gave my reasons and you gave yours. I don’t think the “Bible context” settles the issue in your favor since I used the same context to come to an opposite conclusion. Thomas had good reason to doubt. He saw Christ brutally murdered with his own eyes. He didn’t see him rise from the dead and that claim was obviously quite incredible. And he was not reprimanded by Christ for his doubt.
And as for the “more sure word” of “fulfilled prophecy” – that’s what Hugh Ross failed so spectacularly to prove in the article we are discussing so it makes no sense for you to appeal to that as if it were an established fact.
I very much appreciate your respectful tone. You are an inspiration. But the answers you gave did not touch the real issues. First, the order of events. Was the field bought by Judas before he went to it and died, or by the priests after he died? A “common sense” reading seems to imply that the different stories about Judas were made up after the fact to fit the supposed “prophecies.” That’s what you would believe about any other prophecy in any other religious book other than the Bible, right? Why do you have a different standard for the Bible? Is that not the definition of a “cognitive bias”? I think you need to address this point. Here is what I had written: “The ONLY reason anyone would believe that these two accounts could be “harmonized” is if they have an overwhelming desire to believe that their presupposition of biblical inerrancy was true. That’s pure, unadulterated cognitive bias that you would damn absolutely in any other context (such as a Muslim who begins with the presupposition that the Koran is the inerrant Word of Allah).”
The Bible explicitly states that slaves can be permanently owned as property and handed down from generation to generation:
Leviticus 25:45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. 46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.
God ordained perpetual slavery (ownership of humans by other humans). That is a moral abomination in my estimation and it would be absurd to say that God ‘had not choice” but to conform to the ancient culture. Note also that the Hebrew slaves were to be treated differently – not with “rigor” – than the foreign slaves. This shows the error of your appeal to “kidnapping” because that verse only applied only to Hebrews (as is evident by context).
When the Bible says that the “heavens declare the glory of God” it is poetic language appealing to mere appearances, not real evidence. Primitive people ignorant of science looked to the sky and thought they saw a DOME with the stars embedded in it. They imagined that there was a “heaven” literally up there somewhere where God dwelt and sat upon a literal throne. That’s why many people were disturbed when we discovered that there was no “heaven” up there but only more space not fundamentally different than the space we live in down here. It is folly to presume that the Bible is speaking of “evidence” in the modern scientific sense.
You say “I’m certain that the verses you mentioned refer to not seeing Jesus but trusting Him based on evidence.” I must ask – what evidence does the Bible say I should base my beliefs upon? If it is evidence how do I know it is true?
I agree that Matthew 16 speaks of “the evidence that God supplies” – but that’s not “evidence” in the scientific sense. It is entirely subjective “evidence” known only to the one who receives it. Again, I really don’t see the Bible advocating a scientific evidential approach to faith. And if it did, so much the worse since there is nothing like sufficient evidence to believe the Bible.
This is where we disagree, and after years of reviewing all the major arguments I’m confident that my judgement is valid. But I’m certainly open to having my conclusion challenged.
Great chatting!
Richard
Richard, thanks for your kind words.
I very much appreciate your respectful tone. You are an inspiration. But the answers you gave did not touch the real issues. First, the order of events. Was the field bought by Judas before he went to it and died, or by the priests after he died? A “common sense” reading seems to imply that the different stories about Judas were made up after the fact to fit the supposed “prophecies.” That’s what you would believe about any other prophecy in any other religious book other than the Bible, right? Why do you have a different standard for the Bible? Is that not the definition of a “cognitive bias”? I think you need to address this point. Here is what I had written: “The ONLY reason anyone would believe that these two accounts could be “harmonized” is if they have an overwhelming desire to believe that their presupposition of biblical inerrancy was true. That’s pure, unadulterated cognitive bias that you would damn absolutely in any other context (such as a Muslim who begins with the presupposition that the Koran is the inerrant Word of Allah).”
Great points. My own experience aligns with this. I myself remember reading the conflicting accounts, and assuming that there was indeed a contradiction. Then I thought about the solutions to the problem and felt chastened (?) encouraged (?). How do we express, “God left me a little rope and I hanged myself on it.” (Pun intended.)
re: Slavery, there is so much to be said. Some important looks at the distinctions in slavery and indentured servitude, as well as understanding many of the slavery verses of the scriptures is here in exhaustive detail: http://bibleapologetics.wordpress.com/slavery-in-the-bible-25/
You say “I’m certain that the verses you mentioned refer to not seeing Jesus but trusting Him based on evidence.” I must ask – what evidence does the Bible say I should base my beliefs upon? If it is evidence how do I know it is true
There are many places we could begin. Personally, I find Isaiah 1, “Come, let us reason together,” compelling. God Himself will communicate with anyone who seeks the answers. I see Christ when I study cosmology, teleology, pray to God, and in my daily walk in other people, etc., etc., etc. I have very good evidence to believe. I have never found evidence to disprove God.
Hi Richard,
I posted an article on Dr Hugh Ross a while back… Thought you may be interested.
Dr Hugh Ross – Lying for God.
http://skepticalprobe.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dr-hugh-ross-lying-for-god.html
There has been a debate about the bible and evolution for many years. I believe that this story should set the record straight.
http://thesop.org/story/letters/2009/07/30/the-real-story-about-the-bible-and-evolution.php
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