So today marks 8 years that I’ve been doing this blog. That’s a pretty big milestone! I had two posts on November 14, 2006, and I thought it would be fun to repost them here (along with a little commentary).
Here’s the first:
Wish me luck… 🙂
So that was innocuous enough. Now here’s post number 2:
I think 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 best explains the way in which Christ’s gospel was/is a mystery. As vs 18 says:
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
We can see from this passage that God’s plan of salvation makes no sense to those who refuse to believe it, but to those of us who accept it, it’s brilliant! Verse 21 goes on to say:
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
See, because the world is so “wise,” it views the concept of God as foolishness. They have been blinded by their own pretensions. For the Jews and Greeks of the day, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in the supernatural; it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in deities. Their problem was that they thought they already knew what God would do. The Jews already had a fixed idea of what the Messiah would be, so when Christ appeared and didn’t lead them to victory against the Romans, they refused to accept him. The Greeks didn’t accept Christ because they couldn’t conceive of a god allowing himself to be put to death by his own creation. And because they already had things “figured out,” they missed their chance.
Today, people do the same thing. They would rather put faith in scientific theories that have not been proven. They would rather believe that all of the order we see in our universe (the fragile food chain, vast differences throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, the very specific orbits of planets, etc) was created through a giant explosion (something that, in all practical applications, has only been shown to destroy, not create). Have they been blinded by their own “wisdom?”
Too often, even those who profess to be religious only listen to their own ideas about what God wants. Many times they view the Bible as a collection of stories or suggestions, and not the “wisdom of God that leads to salvation” that 1 Corinthians purports it to be. How is that different from what the Jews and Greeks were condemned for?
Throughout the Bible, passages talk about truth and understanding. I firmly believe that God gave us understanding and intellect for a reason. We are supposed to be able to understand God’s message for us. It’s not supposed to be “mysterious” any longer. It’s not supposed to be some “better felt than told” experience. No, God’s word is supposed to be powerful and undeniable. It’s supposed to move us and touch us in a way that nothing else can. But for it to do that, we have to read it, study it, know it.
It’s a little painful to read through that. I cringe when I read how badly I understood things about evolution and the Big Bang back then, or when I alluded to non-Christians as just being those who “refuse to believe it”. It’s kind of funny, but I was guilty of the same thing I was accusing others of. I thought I had the answers, but I had never taken time to really examine any other point of view.
The one decent thing from the post that serves as a bit of foreshadowing about where I would eventually wind up is the last paragraph. You can see that while I was firmly ensnared in Christianity, I believed that it was not supposed to be utterly mysterious. It was supposed to be consistent and “undeniable.” It took a while, but I finally realized that Christianity just didn’t deliver in that regard.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little jaunt down memory lane. Someone suggested to me recently that I should think about doing this kind of review with more of my old posts. I’ve been considering it… Thoughts?
Finding Truth 
Kathy I have mad respect for your vigor. Why do you believe?
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vigour lol
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kathy,
this isnt exactly right,
“You are attempting to conflate literal disorder with disagreement over meanings / context.”
it’s not disagreements over meanings and context, it’s a disagreement among passages. Examples like the matthew and luke’s genealogies have been given.
Both state it’s jesus line through joseph and they are quite different. That’s confusing and it’s not in order, as in it’s in disorder.
Sure, I’ve seen excuses like nate mentioned, but they’re all conjecture;. all guesses by people who want the two to be right and cohesive, even though they are not – what contradiction or discrepancy couldnt be “answered” in such a way?
you’re line of argumentation makes it look like you’re taking things out of context and that you have yet to master objectivity – you can always do better.
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“My point is that you have NO evidence to prove it’s false.” – kathy
…except that they each say something different…. they each give a different list of Joseph’s ancestors… they cant both be correct.
the attempts to explain this obvious issue away is the thing without evidence.
the only concrete evidence there is shows that it’s false… that’s the entire reason people try to think up “fixes” to get around the problem. If there was no issue, no one would have invent and guess at “possible” ways this discrepancy and contradiction is anything but.
does this make sense to you?
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“This just isn’t true Nate. There are some seeming conflicts that I’ve noticed all along. The varied details of the core of Christianity – the resurrection.. are hard to not notice. And that you’re trying to claim the men who dedicated their lives to God and His word didn’t notice these while they were putting together the Bible just isn’t reasonable.” – kathy
so you’ve noticed conflicts, it’s most reasonable to you that all these conflicts you’ve seen at a glance and then the others you’ve seen in deeper study, etc is that a perfect author would in fact compose a work that has conflicts?
our understandings of the term “reasonable” must be different.
but I still dont think you’re quite understanding how the bible was assembled. it was a group of people. and there had been many books and letters in circulation, with some areas and congregations holding to some while others held to others. This counsel was to create uniformity among christians so that they could maintain unity. they voted on the books – at this counsel they didnt revise and edit, so much as they pick and chose what books were valid and which were not. They didnt have google to research anything, but their own knowledge of each text. a text didnt get enough votes, it was tossed, while the ones that did get enough votes were canonized.
it is indeed reasonable to see how a group of people could compile a group of works that arent completely harmonious.
You likely despise the obama administration and I would guess have at least nodded when many of their opponents have criticized him of shredding the constitution. but how is that reasonable when there are so any checks and balances and when there are so many who want the government and country to run smoothly?
it’s becuase they’re people and they are not perfect and because each of those people have to work with other people, with differing ideas, to get things done.
it makes sense… that is, if one were being objective.
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Kathy,
you said,
” It’s because they knew they weren’t truly contradictions and they trusted God. And it shows how carefully His word was preserved based on that trust.”
how is it god that you could trust in when the bible is a compilation of claims made by men? dont you really have to trust in those men first, before you in trust in the god they claim to speak for?
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Kathy, you’re so full of shit!
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Kathy, you said: “Just like when you add the word ‘all’ to the Tyre prophecy. It’s not there” – is the word, “part”? If I said, “I have a cake” – would you more likely assume that I had a whole cake, or just part of a cake?
“If you can’t trust Him on these minor details, how can you trust Him to take away your sins?” – I can’t even trust him to EXIST!
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“It’s because they knew they weren’t truly contradictions and they trusted God. And it shows how carefully His word was preserved based on that trust.”
No, it shows how carefully His word was preserved based on their fear.
Clearly, you have once again shown your complete ignorance of how the Buybull came to be. A full 65% of the entire Gospel of pseudo-Luke, written by an anonymous author near the end of the first century, was taken directly from the gospel of pseudo-Mark. By the time pseudo-Luke wrote, the Romans had already put down the Jewish revolt and totally destroyed the second temple – no more sacrifices, no more goodies for the priests to take home to the wife and kiddies – they were knee deep in priests at the unemployment line.
Some, including Paul, and whoever pseudo-Luke may have been, could see the tide was turning, so Paul invented the character of Stephen, for the express purpose of pointing the finger of blame at his fellow Jews for the death of Yeshua, and absolving the Romans of their part, thus demonstrating that he knew exactly whose ass to kiss. So Stephen rails against the members of the Sanhedrin, basically calling them “Christ-killers,” and they take him out and stone him to death. BUT how can this be? History relates, and it’s backed up by the Jesus story – that the occupying Romans had taken away from the Jewish Sanhedrin the power to execute, which is why Yeshua was shuttled back and forth between Caiaphas and Pilot, in an effort to get Pilot to order his death. So how is it that the same Sanhedrin felt they had the power to stone Stephen to death? Simple – they wouldn’t have – the death of Stephen was a pure fabrication on the part of Paul, to turn Christianity from the disbelieving Jews, still waiting on their messiah, to the gullible Gentiles, who had no such millennia-old traditions to cling to.
The REAL Luke was only a minor player in the entire scenario – in fact, he’s only mentioned a total of three times in the entire Buybull:
That’s it!
A full 95% of the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew was copied from pseudo-Mark, in many cases, word for word. But just in case pseudo-Mark wasn’t sufficiently convincing, pseudo-Matthew decided, in many instances, to take what pseudo-Mark said and double down. Let’s see what pseudo-Matthew did with his copied works of pseudo-Mark:
Unlike pseudo-Luke, who is toadying to the Romans and Greeks, Matthew too, is on a mission, a conflicting one – he wants to convince the Jews that their long-awaited Messiah has arrived, which is why, in HIS version of the crucifiction, he drags out a severe earthquake, the rising of many zombie corpses that go off to Jerusalem, guards on the tomb (an idea copied from Joshua), and a snowy white angel sitting on a tombstone.
No one knows who these guys were, Kathy – all we really know – based on the times in which they wrote, nearly a full 50 years after the alleged crucifiction – is that they didn’t actually witness the events they wrote about, they just phoned it in. If you read such stuff in a comic book, it would make sense that it was just written for entertainment, that no one was expected to believe it, yet here you are, swallowing it hook, line and sinker – what does that say about you?
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William,
“the only concrete evidence there is shows that it’s false… that’s the entire reason people try to think up “fixes” to get around the problem. If there was no issue, no one would have invent and guess at “possible” ways this discrepancy and contradiction is anything but.
does this make sense to you?”
Does it make sense to you that this “conflict” would have been left in the Bible?
They are not contradictions.. and both can be correct.
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cont..
“so you’ve noticed conflicts, it’s most reasonable to you that all these conflicts you’ve seen at a glance and then the others you’ve seen in deeper study, etc is that a perfect author would in fact compose a work that has conflicts?”
You missed the adjective “seeming” conflicts. If there are reasonable explanations, then they aren’t actually conflicts.
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Arch,
“Kathy, you said: “Just like when you add the word ‘all’ to the Tyre prophecy. It’s not there” – is the word, “part”? If I said, “I have a cake” – would you more likely assume that I had a whole cake, or just part of a cake?”
There was no adjective with the word Tyre.. like “all”. Your cake example does have an adjective.. “a”.. that implies the entire cake.
““It’s because they knew they weren’t truly contradictions and they trusted God. And it shows how carefully His word was preserved based on that trust.”
No, it shows how carefully His word was preserved based on their fear.”
But they didn’t “fear” discarding entire “gospels” from being included in the Bible. Sorry Arch, that argument doesn’t work.
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“Does it make sense to you that this “conflict” would have been left in the Bible?” – kathy
why do you ask this? have you never seen conflicts in books before? are you suggesting that conflcts in books cannot exist?
“They are not contradictions.. and both can be correct.” – kathy
except the genealogies are contractions and both cannot be correct. not a one of them says anything about adoptive parents or anything, but one says joseph’s father and grandfathers were one particular set while the other says that joseph’s father and grandfather were of another particular set… this isnt possible, hence the efforts to make up scenarios that the bible doesn’t say.
what is a contradcition on your mind and could you give an example?
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“You missed the adjective “seeming” conflicts. If there are reasonable explanations, then they aren’t actually conflicts.” – kathy
I didnt miss it, i just didnt think it was necessary. If something “seemed” one way to you, they you’d be expected to think that thing “was” the way it seemed…. but this is another tangent.
that’s not how things work. If the “reasonable explanations” are sheer guesses, which is what we have regarding the biblical issues we’re discussing, then that doesnt “resolve” anything absolutely, at best all you could say is that maybe they’re not contradictions because maybe these explanations someone just made up could be right, despite the source appearing to be in conflict.
the term for that is “wishful thinking.”
let’s play to illustrate the point. You provide a contradiction and i will try to provide a “reasonable explanation” to show how any contradiction can answered as easily as you’re suggesting the bible’s problems can be.
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“There was no adjective with the word Tyre.. like “all”. Your cake example does have an adjective.. “a”.. that implies the entire cake.” – kathy
bill was killed.
what does that mean? would you assume that his leg was amputated and the flesh of that leg died, or would you assume that all of bill died?
cities are like people in this way. If someone says that a city was attacked, then any part of it could be attacked and that statement would be true. But destroyed? destroy is like kill, in that it doesn’t work when the name of the proper noun is said to have been either destroyed or killed – it necessarily implies the whole.
NYC was attacked on 9/11, but NYC was not destroyed even if some of its building were. Tyre was not destroyed (and certainly not forever) even if much if the city was attacked – yet ezekiel said it would be destroyed forever, never rebuilt and never found.
it wasn’t destroyed.
It was rebuilt.
and it’s very easy to find, especially for all those people who live, work and visit there.
the empty field on tyre’s mainland never was the footprint of the entire city as you’ve tried to claim in the past. At the time of the “prophecy” the island was always part of tyre and always the fortress part holding their biggest and oldest temple, which is why Alexander the Great wanted to go there.
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“But they didn’t “fear” discarding entire “gospels” from being included in the Bible. Sorry Arch, that argument doesn’t work.” – kathy
kathy, you’re creating this fantasy land of made up physical laws no one can break. People dont always make sense.
But if you undertsand people, it makes sense how these were preserved and unedited by them, while others were discarded.
these people read about the apostles casting lots, and levite jews pulling random rocks out of their pockets to get decisions from heaven, and they decided to vote on the books, much like they vote of the pope and the apostles voted on matthias.
it makes sense that some books made the vote while others didnt. they assumed, much like you do, that the books that were voted in were from god – so they didnt want to alter those books.
what “doesnt work” about that?
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Say you’re at a party and you ask for cake. The host says “we ate the cake.” Do you assume there’s still cake left? He didn’t say “all”…
Let’s say you have a friend who passes away. After his death, someone shows up claiming to be a long lost relative, and they want a substantial share of his estate. You already know the following:
Your friend’s name is Fred, his father was Bill, his father was Bob, and his father was Harry.
The person making a claim on the estate gives two “proofs” of their relationship:
The first document says that they are the son of Tom, Fred’s brother. Their father was William, his father was Robert, his father was Toby, and his father was Harry.
The second document says that they are the son of Jimmy, Fred’s brother. Their father was Reginald, his father was Ivan, his father was Timothy, and his father was Sebastian.
Do you give the person the inheritance?
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well, nate, I’m glad you asked.
since god is all-powerful, there is nothing that is impossible for him. If nothing is impossible, then anything is possible, and therefore “reasonable.”
so when there’s a problem withing the framework of any religion, all the believers of said religion have to do it create any imaginary solution so find a fix. Since all things are possible for an all-powerful being, there is nothing off the table. Nothing is absurd for a being that is not limited by anything.
dont think superman is real? well, if you assume superman isnt real then things like flying, super human strength and seeing through walls may sound impossible, but if you assume superman is real, then they suddenly become real and credible options. it’s the same with god.
If we believe the men who claimed that they spoke for god, then that god would be limitless in power and could do anything, to include creating contradictions that are simultaneously not contradictions.
sound crazy to you? that’s because you dont have faith.
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Apologists are great at this game William. Here is one of my favorites:
Has anyone ever seen God?
John 1:18 “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”
1 Tim. 6:15-16 “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.”
Compare these to:
Exodus 24:9-11 “Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.”
The answer? God the Father is God and he is the one that cannot be seen, so whenever Yahweh appeared to people in the OT it was actually Jesus God (God the Son) who is also God. Simple right?
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yeah, it boggles my mind. I just really wonder what a contradiction is in their minds?
I cannot think of any contradiction that cant be explained away in such a way.
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The real issue is that they’ve completely lost sight of “burden of proof.”
It doesn’t matter if you can come up with a thousand possible explanations for why Jesus is given two different genealogies. None of those explanations is given within the Bible, so there’s no need to believe it.
The height of irony with that specific issue is that both Matthew and Luke were obviously giving a genealogy for evidence! But since they inadvertently wrote two different ones, and those accounts were later combined into one book, they completely fail the authors’ purposes. It would have been better if they hadn’t been included at all. Now, instead of lending support to their stories, they create confusion at best, and make the accounts suspect at worst.
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agreed. and if any possible way a contradiction can be rectified should be accepted, then any possible refutation of the bible should just be accepted as well. I mean, if it’s possible, why not accept it?
it’s a stupid argument.
the very reason people try to invent solutions is because there’s an obvious error.
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Love to watch the jig Kathy dances, to try and make her book make sense. It’s funny.
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Nate,
“Say you’re at a party and you ask for cake. The host says “we ate the cake.” Do you assume there’s still cake left? He didn’t say “all”…”
Again, “the” establishes the entirety of the cake. What word in the Tyre prophecy establishes “all” of Tyre?
And you never addressed these questions in regards to the “contradictions” in Jesus’ genealogy..
“What “evidence” do you require here? ..WHY do you require evidence here?? Why can’t you just accept that any of those could be the correct explanation and move on? There’s no real reason to not do so except that you don’t WANT to. My point is that you have NO evidence to prove it’s false. ”
You: “The real issue is that they’ve completely lost sight of “burden of proof.”
It doesn’t matter if you can come up with a thousand possible explanations for why Jesus is given two different genealogies. None of those explanations is given within the Bible, so there’s no need to believe it.”
You’ve completely lost sight of your place Nate.. God doesn’t “owe” you ANY proof. The burden is certainly NOT on Him. He will pay no consequences if you choose to reject the proof He HAS given you.. that which HE decides to give, not you. You repeatedly, in every situation, set the standards that need to be met before you will believe. You try to claim that the standards are in scripture, but as I’ve shown, they are not.. not according to the actual scripture.
There IS a need to believe it if you want to save your soul. As I’ve pointed out, there is NO proof that the “conflicting” genealogies are false.. and there ARE explanations to allow you to move on and keep your faith. But you’ve chosen not to do that.. your choice, using your free will.. that is NOT backed up by any proof.. it’s only backed up by YOUR requirements of proof before you will accept God.
“The height of irony with that specific issue is that both Matthew and Luke were obviously giving a genealogy for evidence! But since they inadvertently wrote two different ones, and those accounts were later combined into one book, they completely fail the authors’ purposes. It would have been better if they hadn’t been included at all. Now, instead of lending support to their stories, they create confusion at best, and make the accounts suspect at worst.
Yet again, you prove MY point.. that you still haven’t adequately addressed.. this “proof” (which is correct, it is given as evidence/ proof) has been overlooked, according to you.. by people who’ve dedicated their lives to God and His word.. yet somehow they’ve overlooked this “contradictory” proof.
“It would have been better if they hadn’t been included at all. ”
But it WAS included. And it wasn’t because it was “missed”. The problem is that you aren’t discerning the entire bulk of evidence well enough. That it’s included IS the compelling evidence of it’s truth.. if it hadn’t been included, the claim could have been made that it was to “edit” God’s word. The “purpose” of the authors was to be as truthful as possible. The more information that is included, the more likely that it is based on truth. We all know that when lying, say as little as possible.. the authors of the Bible knew that then too. God knows that. But people without honest objectivity don’t seem to know this.
These “contradictions” serve an important purpose.. as I’ve pointed out several times now. But for some reason you all can’t seem to grasp this.
As with the Tyre prophecy.. 99% of the prophecy was amazingly fulfilled. But instead of giving that the weight it deserves, you instead give all the weight to the 1%. Same with the genealogy.. most of it is amazingly the same.. you can’t claim “copying” because then there wouldn’t be the “contradiction”.. but instead of weighing the evidence fairly, you give all the weight to the one small exception. This reveals your bias.. your lack of objectivity.
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William,
“NYC was attacked on 9/11, but NYC was not destroyed even if some of its building were. Tyre was not destroyed (and certainly not forever) even if much if the city was attacked – yet ezekiel said it would be destroyed forever, never rebuilt and never found.”
Old Tyre was destroyed, never to be rebuilt and in the sea.. just as the prophecy said.
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