Is The Bible Just a Good Book?

@Brandon9000,

Quote:

By "pre-scientific," I meant before 99% of our science was known. In science, we generally adopt hypotheses because there is some evidence to suggest them. Then we test them and reject them if they fail to pass the tests repeatably.

The percentage of known 'science' does not affect the approach science uses. 'Reason' is ageless. Aristotle and other early thinkers used the same approach. At the current exponential rate of progress, anyone 200 years from now would consider us pre-scientific by your standard.

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You doing that with the Bible?

Of course. The book itself proposes many tests for validity and I've found them to be consistent and repeatable so far.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
By "pre-scientific," I meant before 99% of our science was known. In science, we generally adopt hypotheses because there is some evidence to suggest them. Then we test them and reject them if they fail to pass the tests repeatably.
The percentage of known 'science' does not affect the approach science uses. 'Reason' is ageless. Aristotle and other early thinkers used the same approach. At the current exponential rate of progress, anyone 200 years from now would consider us pre-scientific by your standard.

My point was that believing something because a book claims it without evidence is not a good method for determining truth. Believing something because a book, written before even common, everyday natural phenomena were understood, claims it without evidence is an even less reliable method for determining truth. For instance, someone might postulate a magical explanation for rain because the scientific explanation was not known yet. The best method of determining what is true about the universe is observation, logical deduction, and testing.

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
You doing that with the Bible?
Of course. The book itself proposes many tests for validity and I've found them to be consistent and repeatable so far.

Please give one (and only one) example.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Quote:

Leadfoot quote:
"Of course. The book itself proposes many tests for validity and I've found them to be consistent and repeatable so far."

Please give one (and only one) example.

The one that comes to mind frequently is:
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you".
in context 'all these things' meant - everything you need and want.
The other part of that promise says 'He (God) will pour you out a blessing more than you can hold'.

These were quotes from Jesus BTW.

I knew I wanted to know all about God but being a very unmotivated college dropout from a very poor family I thought this one would be a tough sell but it has proved to be true. I have no idea what to do with it all.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
Leadfoot quote:
"Of course. The book itself proposes many tests for validity and I've found them to be consistent and repeatable so far."

Please give one (and only one) example.

The one that comes to mind frequently is:
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you".
in context 'all these things' meant - everything you need and want.
The other part of that promise says 'He (God) will pour you out a blessing more than you can hold'.

These were quotes from Jesus BTW.

I knew I wanted to know all about God but being a very unmotivated college dropout from a very poor family I thought this one would be a tough sell but it has proved to be true. I have no idea what to do with it all.

So, if I understand you correctly, you learned about God according to the Bible or by other methods and then experienced positive results in your life. What did you do to eliminate the possibility that positive things would have happened to you in your life anyway, or that positive things happened because your religion made you happy, in contrast to your attribution of the positive results to God himself? To me, this doesn't sound like a very unambiguous link between cause and effect.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Quote:

So, if I understand you correctly, you learned about God according to the Bible or by other methods and then experienced positive results in your life.

Not possible to fully describe the process by which I came to know God. Just knew none of the people around me were curious about how the world came to be. At age 7 I must have heard the term 'God' somewhere (didn't go to church) so asked God one day "If you are there, tell me what all this means, I need to know".
An endless string of 'coincidences' told me to always follow the path of reality and just be honest about EVERYTHING. I didn't pick up a bible until almost 16 years later.

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What did you do to eliminate the possibility that positive things would have happened to you in your life anyway,

Mainly the math. If you flip a coin and get heads 100 times in a row, more than good luck is at work. I sure didn't work for it. I did poorly in school because I only wanted to think about stuff I was interested in. Flunked out of college in first year too. Never looked for a job, they always found me.

Quote:

or that positive things happened because your religion made you happy, in contrast to your attribution of the positive results to God himself?

Didn't get all positive things although I never lacked the things people think most about, money, job, debts, etc. Eventually did see that promise in the bible and said 'OK, I'll not worry about that, keep showing me what it's all about'. He did. But I did have other terrible things happen. Every single one of them taught me another piece of the puzzle. All the pieces fit perfectly and began to paint a picture I saw nowhere else and I liked it.
One big terrible was the perfect marriage and family I thought God had given me disintegrated. So did two others. I thought WTF have you done to me God. Wanted to die at one point. Tried. But all those experiences were needed for me to find the final piece of the puzzle. Seeing the complete magnificent thing and everything I went through to see it, it could not possibly be coincidence.

But I would not expect you to accept that on my word. You have to experience it yourself to be convinced.

Quote:

To me, this doesn't sound like a very unambiguous link between cause and effect.

There were lots of other promises that were also fulfilled. You limited it to one though. But all of them are equally outrageous so again, coincidence just doesn't explain it.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

I'm glad that good things have happened in your life. However, you are presenting this as strong evidence for the existence of God. You are also claiming that it is testable in a repeatable manner. What I suspect is that you did not have such an absurd string of good luck that it is highly unlikely to be natural and simply enjoy believing in God. I am not going to take your experiences as evidence of magic without some clear knowledge of the allegedly preposterously unlikely series of events. One problem with your claim is that your alleged good luck is testable only by you. From what I observe in the world, the faithful are not all having a continuing series of preposterously unlikely positive events.

If you wish to make your point in a way that is meaningful to anyone else, you are going to have to list the specific events which are on the level of tossing a coin and have it land on its side five times in a row.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

As I wrote last time, I would not expect you to accept that on my word. You have to experience it yourself to be convinced.

Admittedly, these things are not easily proved because the primary benefits happen in your own mind. The money, good fortune, etc is just window dressing or 'all these other things' as the book called them. Still seems unlikely to me but incredible luck could explain them.

But I did tell you the requirements to experience the primary proof for yourself . I can't make you want it however. I often wonder why some do and others don't.

1 Reply

@mark noble,

mark noble wrote:

oralloy wrote:
That's why people do archaeological digs to see what was really there. If archaeological finds contradict a claim, then we know the claim was probably false. If they confirm a claim, then we know it was probably true.

The writings of one society can also be cross referenced with the writings of other societies.

For example, Egyptian writings include a pharaoh bragging of having wiped out the Israelites around 1200 BC. And archaeological finds show that a distinct culture had developed in the West Bank area around 1200 BC that seems to conform to the Israelite way of life. Thus it can safely be assumed that the Israelite culture existed in the West Bank at this time.

And you accept such as absolute 'truth'?

It is pretty likely to be true. We'll probably learn more with future discoveries, but most likely that will merely add to our current knowledge. Not very likely that future discoveries will overturn current conclusions about Israelite culture existing in the West Bank starting around 1200 BC.

mark noble wrote:

correlation between more than one party or 'ad populum' = Truth?

It greatly increases reliability if two sources that don't share the same bias say the same thing. Better yet if archaeological digs turn up evidence that agrees.

0 Replies

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Alright, an unpleasant likelihood, then.

There is no basis for presuming that that is any more likely than any other possibility.

Brandon9000 wrote:

From what we do currently know, our bodies are machines that can break and eventually do break. On the surface of things, it appears that thoughts are activity taking place in the brain. Therefore, based on what is known, it very much appears that when the brain stops, the thoughts stop. People often will accept the idea of an afterlife, because it is easier to accept than the unpleasant idea that you just stop. From what we can see of the relationship of the body to life, the body seems to just be a machine. There is no evidence to indicate that after death you live on somewhere else, but it kind of seems like you wouldn't if your brain stops working. Anything might be different from what the evidence shows, but in the absence of a contrary indication, I will go with the evidence. It would not be justified to say that there is definitely no afterlife, but it doesn't appear that there is.

There is so much that we don't know that we can't possibility presume that reality is limited only to what we currently understand.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

There are extremely few "facts" of historical background to the bible which have genuine historical evidence. The only one i can think of right off hand is the so-called Babylonian captivity--and even that does not have any direct historical source.

Evidence shows that Israelite society existed in the West Bank area starting around 1200 BC.

Evidence shows that Israelite society in the late eleventh century BC had a level of organization where they would have been ruled by chieftains. The names of these chieftains are not recorded independently of the Bible however, so there is no evidence that any chieftain went by the name "Saul".

Evidence shows that Pharaoh Shoshenq I really did invade the land of Canaan in the tenth century BC.

Omri and Ahab, two kings of the northern Israelite kingdom, are specifically mentioned by name in ninth century records. That shows that the Israelite kingdom existed in the ninth century, and shows that those two kings existed as its leaders.

There are ninth century records of the House of David, showing that the southern kingdom of Judah also existed at this time, and that the dynasty that ruled Judah started with a guy named David.

Evidence shows that the northern Israelite kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire around 720 BC, and that the king of Judah at that time was Hezekiah (and that he was succeeded in office by his son Manasseh).

0 Replies

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

As I wrote last time, I would not expect you to accept that on my word. You have to experience it yourself to be convinced.

Admittedly, these things are not easily proved because the primary benefits happen in your own mind. The money, good fortune, etc is just window dressing or 'all these other things' as the book called them. Still seems unlikely to me but incredible luck could explain them.

But I did tell you the requirements to experience the primary proof for yourself . I can't make you want it however. I often wonder why some do and others don't.

The bottom line is that there is insufficient evidence which you can demonstrate to justify a belief in God.

By the way, I have had personal experiences sufficient to justify my belief that the human race is being observed by invisible magic elephants, but you will have to experience this for yourself to believe. I can't demonstrate it to anyone.

2 Replies

@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
Alright, an unpleasant likelihood, then.

There is no basis for presuming that that is any more likely than any other possibility.

Brandon9000 wrote:
From what we do currently know, our bodies are machines that can break and eventually do break. On the surface of things, it appears that thoughts are activity taking place in the brain. Therefore, based on what is known, it very much appears that when the brain stops, the thoughts stop. People often will accept the idea of an afterlife, because it is easier to accept than the unpleasant idea that you just stop. From what we can see of the relationship of the body to life, the body seems to just be a machine. There is no evidence to indicate that after death you live on somewhere else, but it kind of seems like you wouldn't if your brain stops working. Anything might be different from what the evidence shows, but in the absence of a contrary indication, I will go with the evidence. It would not be justified to say that there is definitely no afterlife, but it doesn't appear that there is.

There is so much that we don't know that we can't possibility presume that reality is limited only to what we currently understand.

But you are alleging something very specific, that we live on in some other way after we die, yet you don't have a particle of evidence that it is so. The fact that we can't disprove it is hardly be evidence to justify an actual belief in it. The only thing we actually do observe is that the human body acts like a machine and that thoughts appear to be electro-chemical processes in the brain. You can make up any fantasy you want about what might be true, but without a jot of evidence that it's so, it is not justified logically to believe it.

2 Replies

@Brandon9000,

Quote:

I have had personal experiences sufficient to justify my belief that the human race is being observed by invisible magic elephants

If that satisfies your need to know why you are here, good for the pachyderms.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

did he ever toss a coin across the Potomc?

Hey, a dollar went a lot farther back then!

0 Replies

@Brandon9000,

Magical elephants O.K., but INVISIBLE ones? Now that's crazy...

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
I have had personal experiences sufficient to justify my belief that the human race is being observed by invisible magic elephants
If that satisfies your need to know why you are here, good for the pachyderms.

My point is that this kind of argument is invalid. You need some actual repeatable, testable evidence that something is so to have a reason to believe it.

1 Reply

@TomTomBinks,

TomTomBinks wrote:

Magical elephants O.K., but INVISIBLE ones? Now that's crazy...

I cannot force you to believe in it, but I have spoken to them in my mind. You have to get there by yourself. No one can prove it to you. I know that invisible magic elements exist. Open your heart to them and you will see them.

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@Brandon9000,

Quote:

My point is that this kind of argument is invalid. You need some actual repeatable, testable evidence that something is so to have a reason to believe it.

I get that.
I have no problem with your position. If you have no existential questions in your mind and are at peace, may you live well and prosper.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

I may have to go to the zoo tomorrow to do some scientific research. I may even solve the monkey magic theory...

1 Reply

@Amoh5,

Don't bother, I figured that out already. See, the smartest monkeys started to figure out the really cool things like fire and stuff and the smartest girl monkeys thought that was the bomb an hung around them.
The smart guy monkeys thought to themselves, 'hey maybe if I figure out more cool stuff it will get me laid by those sharp chicks' and it worked! They had slightly smarter than average baby monkeys, the daddies clued the boy babies about how to attract the sharp girl monkeys and so this cycle repeated over many generations. After awhile, they started to look like us and there ya go.

Naturally the smart monkeys were stuck up and looked down on the dumb monkeys and didn't associate with them so the dumb monkeys never benefitted from those smart genes and were only good for zoos and medical research.

Eventually we smart monkeys lost that stuck up attitude though and now we'll screw any girl regardless of smartness. Mostly it's just boob size. That why you see these great big ta tas lately. Evolution Baby!

1 Reply

Is The Bible Just a Good Book?

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