Archive for April, 2010
I mean, what Christians mean when they say this is that it is written in their big book of silly old stories, aka, the bible, right? And there’s no proof that their god said or inspired anything that’s written in the bible; this is just what the lesser folk believe. So even if they really do believe this crap it’s still not being entirely honest to refer to the bible as “God’s word,” right? It’s a disingenuous act, isn’t it? An act meant to obscure the truth…
I wouldn’t say dishonest because many Christians are just misinformed.
However I would need evidence for the God first to believe in it and the Bible isn’t evidence. The Bible is just hearsay from thousands of years ago. That is not evidence at all. The problem with hearsay is its not verifiable to any outside parties. If someone were to accept hearsay from thousands of years ago they might as well accept the Pagan or the Hindu Gods. Modern personal experiences are the same. There are all sorts of people going around saying they were abducted by aliens, or saw bigfoot. People who even say they saw God and its Allah instead. There is no way to verify their experience so its not evidence and is not something that will lead anyone to any truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal
On top of that, no one even knows who these original authors were. They don’t even know their names. The names Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were added a whole century after the gospels were supposedly written. These people could have been anybody. Including con-artists, scammers, etc. If you saw any other book written around 2000 years ago and no one knew the authors and it said the author had a flying pet camel, would you believe it? People can say anything, about anything in books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospels
For decades the original authors (evangelists) didn’t even write down the gospels. They passed it down orally. This could have been a story that they made up for all we know. Also can you remember in precise detail something that happened 40 years ago, without ever writing it down? Things could have been forgotten, things could be embellished, or added for all anyone knows. I couldn’t even remember a song or play precisely over that span of time. Also look up the childs game called "Telephone" it will give you an idea of what passing things on orally are like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospels#Oral_tradition
There are also prophecy claims. It is very easy to make a prophecy fulfilled. Its trying to match up words with the countless events in history. Some people can also make a prophecy vague and something they thought was probably going to happen. They can get away with it that way. Another way is if the person knew the prophecy beforehand and intentionally made it happen. Since the bible is one of the most widely known books, people are able to do that. Which makes its prophecies not credible.
I have to say, I really don’t see any difference between faith (believing in things without evidence) and gullibility. There is no way to tell between religions that use blind faith to get people to believe in something irrational so they manipulate people to do things good or bad. Something that doesn’t want to give you evidence is very suspicious because its the same behaviour a con artist has. You don’t prove to people you are a king by showing up looking like a thief.
So there is no way to show people who already do not believe. Critical thought is something we humans need to determine if something is good or bad. If the Christian God punishes people for not believing in that, they are punished for being reasonable and wanting to know if what they are doing is truely good. Which would be irrational of a God that claims to be good. It is not good when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition, then putting a label of moral authority on it.