Can the Bible be proved wrong? (page 7)

The Quiet One

Jgnat: fascinating, thanks for sharing that :) Lore: I see what you're saying. Incidentally, I've always loved Spiderman comics/films. Can't believe I just admitted that... Psacramento: If the Bible isn't to be taken literally, but as a 'possibly based on a true story but we can't even prove that' collection of tales, as you seem to be suggesting, then why live our lives believing in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or anything else contained therein, any more than we believe in the Tooth fairy (as wobble put it)? You're free, as am I, to believe in anything you want, I'm not attacking you or that right in any way.. My point is that I can understand people who say it's all a bunch of myths, but I can't understand how anyone can defend the Bible and one of its characters (Jesus) as being based on reality, but at the same time say that some things (such as the flood) did happen, based on the Bible, but not as the Bible actually said? And if the Bible has been written with 'artistic license', as you suggest, where does that leave the gospels? Do you believe Jesus was just some man who said some good things and the rest is just hype? It's probably just my born-in black and white mentality, I'm still adjusting to reality, so please forgive me if I come across as agressive or critical :)

trevor

The thing is that the bible is not a linerar teling of the history of the world, it is a story of a people and of God's dealings with those people and the only way to prove the bible wrong in THAT regard is to prove that God never dealt with them, at all.

Am I alone in concluding that the onus is on Israelites and Christians to prove that there is a god as described in the ‘Holy Bible’ and that god has, at various times, chosen various nations and individuals to be his chosen ones?

Without a reliable record of those dealings, can we be forgiven for assuming that the whole biblical tale is a romping fictional yarn?

PSacramento

You guys really need to re-think your "either / or" attitude that you had as Jw's.

Just because the WHOLE of the bible isn't to be take literally and concretely, doesn't mean NONE of it is nor doe sit mean it has NO value.

That is the type of thinking that drives people to the two extremes of the spectrum - Fundamentalisim and Atheisim.

cyberjesus

The Bible can never be proved wrong.... if you are a man of faith. That is all is required... Faith!!! You dont need knowledge of the Bible, nor of history, you dont need logic, nor intelligence. you just need faith, which is to believe that God wrote or or inspired it. and that some things are real some are symbolic.

You want us to prove the gospels wrong? but why? Why dont you prove the gospels right? could it be because you havent really research them let alone study them? Maybe because you have faith?

if you have faith then you can believe it comes from God and you have no need of anyone else to help you.... just believe it. Thats it. Dont get your life complicated. The problem is when you dont want to use faith and want to use intelligence and reason and logic. Then you have a problem... because then you wont pass the first chapter of the bible and you will think is a bunch of bullshit. You will think that you were lied and that you spent all your life so far believing a lie..... Why make it hard? Just have faith.

The bible can not be proved wrong for those who WANT to believe in it.

tec

I don't try to see God through the OT. We don't know what happened thousands and thousands of years ago, and we don't know the nuances of communication from a people that long ago - telling in myths (Aesop's fables), describing one place as 'the world', sayings that meant something then but are misunderstood now (like slang).

But the OT is not the Way, the Truth, the Life. Neither is the NT, for that matter. Christ is the Way, the Truth, the Life. I see the NT accounts as witnesses to Christ. Witnesses do not have to have every detail right, in fact they rarely ever do. That does not discount them as valid witnesses though. Especially not if you have a lot of them (and we have much more then just what is contained within the bible), witnessing to similar things about the same man and his life.

So I consider the bible accounts as valid, as they point to Christ, but they do not have to be inerrant or infallible. But Christ lives outside the pages of a book. He is Spirit, and as such, felt/discerned/heard/known in spirit.

Peace,

Tammy

jgnat

I get you, Quiet One. If the bible is not to be taken literally, where does the myth end and the truth begin? I don't think you can hope for a definitive answer. My process of rediscovery has taken years. I treat the bible like a hearty meal. I eat the meat and spit out the bones.

Some intriguing links, not geared to beating the bible literalists:

http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday5.htm Judaism 101 illustrates that the Jewish people have enriched the bible stories with symbolism far beyond anything the Protestants can offer. From reading these accounts, I realised I was taking far too much literally.

Historical Jesus, just to show how long people have been working on this.

PSacramento

Psacramento: If the Bible isn't to be taken literally, but as a 'possibly based on a true story but we can't even prove that' collection of tales, as you seem to be suggesting, then why live our lives believing in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or anything else contained therein, any more than we believe in the Tooth fairy (as wobble put it)? You're free, as am I, to believe in anything you want, I'm not attacking you or that right in any way.. My point is that I can understand people who say it's all a bunch of myths, but I can't understand how anyone can defend the Bible and one of its characters (Jesus) as being based on reality, but at the same time say that some things (such as the flood) did happen, based on the Bible, but not as the Bible actually said? And if the Bible has been written with 'artistic license', as you suggest, where does that leave the gospels? Do you believe Jesus was just some man who said some good things and the rest is just hype? It's probably just my born-in black and white mentality, I'm still adjusting to reality, so please forgive me if I come across as agressive or critical :)

See my post above, but to expand on that:

It falls on each individual to decide for themselves according to their own understanding.

I base my understanding on quite a few different things, faith being the starting point, not the end.

It works for me and I feel it is base don reason and rational, as much as it can be ;)

I believe thet Jesus was NOT just some Man but the Son of God and I beleive that based on the evidence I have (personal and investigative).

Note I said evidence and not proof.

I take what the bible says about a given event and person and based on research and my own understanding, I decide if I should take it as literal, literal and concrete, as symbolisim, as parable or as Man doing what Man does best - screw Up the Word of God. :)

AGuest

Well, it certainly can [be used to] prove that IT is NOT God's Word, dear QO (peace to you!):

John 1:14

Revelation 19:13

John 17:17

John 14:6

Lot of folks tend to miss that, though...

Again, peace to you!

A slave of Christ, the Word of God...

SA

The Quiet One

Thanks jgnat, the historical jesus link was exactly what I wanted. No disrespect to cyberjesus, but I don't want to have a blind faith in anything ever again, I had that with the Watchtower and look where that got me.. Ah well, if push comes to shove and I can't find evidence worth believing in, there's always the Flying Spaghetti Monster... LOL

Pika_Chu

That depends. Any skeptic can point to some Biblical error, but an apologist may counter that with some alternative interpretation. The problem with that, is that you can do the same thing with any holy book (or any secular text, really). Many of those alternate interpretations rely on circular arguments as well...meaning, when someone does things like that, you can't "prove" them "wrong" because they can always come up with some reply, but you can point out logical error where it may exist.

Can the Bible be proved wrong?

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