Just one, one randomly picked bible contradiction

Post Reply New Topic

So, in fact, if you come to list all the contradictions in the bible. The huge numbers allows certain guys to dismiss the contradictions as a fallacy of numbers. So, here is an unimpressive amount of contradictions, just 1, try not to dismiss it . It is an apparent contradiction in the bible.

If this contradiction is found to be really a contradiction, it would shows that whoever wrote it was not consistent and certainly not perfect. Then you would have to wonder, if it can err, didn't it err in the part about how we should hate on gays or beat our sons when they don't obey, or don't wear tatoos...


PSA 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

JER 13:14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.

Edit: all right, bonus :

(a) “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2)

(b) “Each man will have to bear his own load” (Galatians 6:5)

It seems the bible can't even decide between socialism and capitalism.

Are you sure you are reading each of those things in their own contexts and not just comparing snippets?

Psalms and Jeremiah

This is a contextual issue. Its kind of like taking two clips of someone one saying yes and the other saying no; then declaring contradiction. What you have forgotten is the proceeding verses, thus depriving them of context. In these verses the peoples under discussion declare themselves the enemies of God (Jer 13:10). It also says in Jer 13:17 'But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears'.

This however is besides the point. The Psalms are talking of God's love, the book of Jeremiah is talking of God's judgement. God in Jeremiah has given the people of Israel every opportunity turn from their wicked ways, so God has judged them. God's mercy is certainly available for all, not everyone chooses it though. This separation between the two is probably put best by Paul “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23). In Jeremiah God is expressing his distaste for sin and his pain at watching his chosen people continually reject him. In the Pslams God is pointing out that his mercy is available to all. Hence, no contradiction.

Galatians

The words are translated as burdens; but that does not mean they both share the exact same meaning in the original language. In 6:2 the word is baros and in 6:5 it is phortion. The first relates to the carrying of burdens more than the average man can carry. The latter refers to everyday life. Phortion only ever means burdens without reference to weight, for example in Matt 11:30 Jesus refers to his burden being light. Probably the best example of both words being used together is in Matt 23:4 where barus (a related word to baros) is used to refer to phortion burdens, it is being used as a linguistic modifier to describe a heavy burden. 90% of issues people have with the Biblical inconsistency relates to translation or lack of context.

I'm making this my last post of the day. I'm sure all will understand...

It's the problem that some certain OTHER guys seem to think that by merely posting massive lists that no one can possibly respond to in a reasonable amount of time justifies what they think it to mean. It's dishonest. Congrats for stepping up and handling it reasonably.


I think that's fair.


Yes, yes--if the Bible can err on one thing, it can err on other things... Got it. But let's not jump ahead, as irresistible as it may be.



Easy. They have nothing to do with each other.

In general, a psalm is a poem, a song, or a broad kind of wisdom writing in the same sense as a proverb (or it IS a proverb). They are products of their function, first and foremost. They are also poetic. You can't read them TOO literally, and a well-informed literalist understands that.

THIS psalm is a song of praise describing God's greatness. You should read the whole thing. Verse 8 has "The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in faithful love." "Slow to anger" is indicative of God's patience but does not deny that God's patience can run out if the unrepentant persist in their ways. "Faithful love" refers to the covenant relationship between God and the Israelites, the promise that as long as the Israelites remain faithful to God and keep His commandments, God will look after them and bless them. The consequences for breaking the covenant are spelled out in the books of Moses. Even this psalm acknowledges these conditions, vs. 18: "The Lord is near all who call out to Him, all who call out to Him with integrity." And then vs. 20: "The Lord guards all those who love Him, but He destroys all the wicked."

The point is even the psalmist who penned the words you quoted recognized that certain actions could incur God's wrath. Understood in context, there is no contradiction here at all.

But by all means, let's continue!

Your Jeremiah passage is from the "Wine Jars" illustration. The Israelites have broken the covenant and God is about to visit His wrath upon them by allowing war and exile to come upon Judah. The short answer is that in all the prophecies, God always holds out for the Israelites and Judeans to repent. God ALSO gave hope that a faithful remnant would return from the exile to rebuild the nation, and that His chosen people would triumph in the end times. So in terms of God's warnings about the consequences of sin, Jeremiah and the psalmist are actually consistent with each other.


Sure


Referring to a spiritual community of believers. Vs. 2 is saying help each other out, support each other through the tough times. Vs. 5 refers to each person's accountability before God. We bear heavy loads at various times that we can't always handle by ourselves. Just because we help someone with their load, it doesn't mean we don't have our own manageable load to carry. We help each other, but we are also still responsible for our own actions as individuals.

We have neighbors that have had a death in the family recently. While they had to travel halfway across the country to deal with that, they were unable to supervise their children for the entire time. So it fell on me to supervise 3 pre-teen boys. Which was easy--let 'em kill each other in Halo: Reach, and just throw them a bag of Doritos every now and then (no, I'm NOT a babysitter). I still had responsibilities at work and around the house, same as I do without the boys hanging around on any other day.

Thanks to 91 in sharing the actual Greek. Excellent points about translation.

Wow, this is, not so surprisingly, lame. Vex, you didn't even pick apparent contradictions that require knowledge of the underlying texts to recognize aren't actually contradictions, but instead you've demonstrated your own inability to read.

Vexillifer is not entirely to blame.

He is speaking Conventional Wisdom for which he is not responsible - though he is to a degree culpable that he recycles it without thinking about it.

I am reminded [yes I am!] of a colleague. I criticized his teaching methods - a friendly and [most of our colleagues would agree] fair criticism.

He did not like that. Well, some do not like constructive criticism. Next day he came back at me - "You talk to students", he says to me. "That is unprofessional, and I do not need to listen to criticism from someone unprofessional."

The parallel:

Christianity says : War is bad. Slavery is bad. Nonconnubial sex is bad. Killing yourself with drugs is bad. Cheating and robbing your neighbour is bad.

People do not like to be criticized.

So they come back "Look, I found a contradiction in your sacred book! You are founded on a lie AND unscientific. I do not have to listen to criticisms from no stinking deceived Luddits".

------------

Sorry Charlie - you got it wrong. The Bible is not a textbook - and you want to bet a long term scholar and proofreader can't find contradictions, real and apparent., in the textbooks you learned from?

You want to find contradictions that MATTER? Find them in the hologram - the image of God and his relation to man that pops up even if you randomly tear huge chunks out of the text.

It does NOT depend on Jesus' family tree - which is one of the best contradictions, how could you miss it? It does NOT depend on turn the other cheek versus attack the businessmen at the temple. It does NOT depend on shalt not kill versus destroy the Canaanites.

Wake up - if you want to put down Christianity find something better than sophomoric doughnut hole trivia.

Or - if you cannot find anything substantive even after actually looking instead of borrowing the web equivalent of the National Enquirer [like my little brother bringing jokes from Boy's Life to the supper table] - maybe you should sign on.

I know he's not entirely to blame, but if he's going to recycle the same old "Mistakes of Moses" type arguments so prevalent among the excuse-for-idiotic-mockery seeking brand of atheists without acknowledging the sources he has derived his plagiarized material from (or at least the hermeneutic/heuristic that he's using along with an e-sword type search engine), then he ought to be willing to face the full firing squad since he's not sharing the credit for the crappy arguments. It is not quite as obvious that he's taken his expressed thoughts from another, such as Dawkins whose rhetoric is so easily recognizable that the blind would be able to see it coming a mile away, but still the juxtaposition acontextual quote mining of the Bible has been going on since at least the 1940's and has been copycatted throughout then by people unwilling to think. If Vex wants to act like it's his original thoughts, he ought to be willing to be dealt with as such also.

Here is the thing:

It is the flag-flopper's style to throw up a shocking - provoking link, usually with a comment befitting the ape with the Obama sneer he flaunts [it should not be a chimp when he puts it in a guerilla costume. I am grateful that he does usually include the comment, and many of his links are not videos.

Then he waits while the non-Bandar-Log get indignant and sits with the Obama look, occasionally dropping another stick.

His involvement is that of the boy who kicks the ant hill and hunkers down to watch them scrabble.

You will not get to hium by reacting. He just wants the attention. I try with him - different strokes for different jokes - to restrict myself to pointing out the heavier idiocies with a soupcon of publish and be verdoemd.

@Vex, the central error in your argument is the presumption that faith and logic interact at all.

what does that say about any decicions made on the grounds of faith?

/me takes a quick break from working, pops his head in...

This may sound odd coming from me, but probably for the first time I actually have to disagree with 'keet. Vex is prima facie taking up a challenge that I and, indirectly, others have thrown down. He's meeting us on our own terms, on our own level. And it isn't a level or method that inherently favors our views. It's a lot more honest and fair, and atheists and Christians alike can learn a lot from it. I'll give Vex the benefit of a doubt. If we are to obey the Biblical mandate of "always having an answer," we also need to be fair. The last thing I want to do is put the challenge out there and the criticize someone for responding positively to it. The last thing any of us wants is to be is a hypocrite.

That is not an error. I have sad and say again, that is a mistaken stance from people who think faith is what OTHER people do, reinforced by people who think THEY are trhe only ones with fail, both of who are seriously in error.

The issue is not one of different processes, it rests on different [often poorly chosen] premises.

Ah, didn't realize that it's a response to a challenge.

A decision made on the grounds of faith - like your decision to drive to work, or use a credit card - is as good [neither better nor worse] as the sum of the premises and data on which it rests.

If I am crossing the street in Nairobi [if this be racism - in a sense it is - make the most of it; those who have been there will likely understand] and I see coming toward me a shabby car driven by a Luo or Kamba, I will walk briskly but unconcernedly to the other side.

If I see a newer car driven by a European [English, Danish, whatever] I will pick up my pace a bit and keep an eye on it.

If it is a large car driven by an Indian [one usually says Asian, but there are also Japanese around and I do no have data on their driving] I will run for my life to the nearest curb.

These rest on the premise of a somewhat jaundiced view of other people plus several observations of how different groups drive in Nairobi. I trust = have confidence = faith in those data and my conclusions.

Those decisions are good enough I am still alive.

But GIGO. A Indian friend of mine bought car insurance from a firm run by Indians. His premises included "we Indians stick together", his observations included a good price and friendly faces. He had an accident, asked for payment. They laughed. You bought insurance that lets you legally drive - now you want to be PAID???????

The outcome of faith depends on the logic it is based on.

what i was implying was that there would then be a very marked difference in what you can use faith based decisions for,

ah but the original premise is that faith and logic do not intersect,
they might but i would say one uses logic to sort ones religion thus proving that spirituality has little to do with what is written anywhere,
mid you when i say sort it might as well mean a person denouncing bad scripture as it might abandoning faith or even use religion in a total different capacity.

of course there is lots of inspiration to be had from scripture, yet it would mean none of it should be taken too literally.

/me wasting time waiting on a piano student...

Well, more so indirectly. I thought about starting a thread like this myself, but I didn't want to start something I didn't have the time for. I had previously complained that responding to a lengthy cut/paste job is just plain unreasonable. One or two contradictions is plenty for one post, and it still allows whoever raises the issue the initial upper hand in the argument.

@blau: Christians consider the Bible to be a collection of eyewitness statements to actual events that initially grounded the faith. People won't believe something they don't have a reason to believe. A book full of inconsistencies and contradictions is a poor basis for a religion that is purportedly based on fact. If the Bible is somehow found lacking, the Christian has no concrete evidence at all on which to base faith.

EVEN IF the Bible never existed, and it didn't always exist, it is still a reasonable conclusion from logic that God exists and is the creator and ruler of the universe, making manifest according to His will all that is good. Abraham didn't have the Bible, but He believed. Noah didn't have the Bible, but he believed. The earliest Christians didn't have the New Testament, but they believed Jesus. And I believe that it is well-preserved and reliably distributed because God still has an inspired message for us today through His words in the past. To be found to be errant, uninspired, inconsistent, and contradictory would be a fatal blow for Christianity. Even if it appears to be a futile exercise, confronting apparent contradictions is worthwhile in what you learn from it. ARE there difficulties in the Bible? YES. But the numbers of difficulties are vastly exaggerated. And NONE of them are magic silver bullets that disprove overarching Biblical truths.