Do discrepenicies in the bible invalidate Christianity?

I studied religion in college, and we learned that there are severel contradictions in the bible. Below is a website detailing some of them.

www.gmau.org...

For fundamentalists, the bible is 'the word of God' inspired by the holy spirit. Therefor, to them every word is exactly what the deity, YHWH, has wanted written down, so then why are there contradictions. On the website I posted, fundamentalists believe that God is somehow testing us because of this.
For me, I thought that contradictions were evidence that the bible is just collection of histories and myths, like the Bhagavad Gita or any other people's mythologies. I disregarded any signifigance in the bible becaue I thought it invalidated itself.

It definately invalidates the claim that it is the direct word of YHWH, the angry Sky God who loves all his children but threatens us with eternal damnation if we dont do what the bible tells us to exactly.

How could a loving god do this, and why do the innocent suffer...

I thought Christinity was all B.S. because of this. Until...

My fiance is a devout Christian, not because she is dogmatic about it, but because she believes in the allegorical messages that Jesus taught about living a better life. Protestantism was all about having a personal reltionship with God or the divine. The bible can be used as a tool for this. The bible was wtitten by human beings, but humans who were attempting, for the most part, to decipher the energy of the great unknown, or as most people refere to it as God.

We are all God's children, every so much as Jesus himself was, we all come from the same source. Jesus as a wise person realized this and when he was inviting us to heaven through him, it was not in a literal sense, it was that we can follow the methods that worked for him to reach a state of grace.

The Christian churches of the past, and many now, have manipulated the teachings of Jesus. Casting a shadow of fear over them so that they can use people's insecurities for political manipulation.

It is not coincidental that Constantine alligned Christian Holidays with pre existing pagan holidays. It is also not a coincidence, that at the council of Nicea in 325, when the bible was codified, that the books of the bible, the gnostic gospels, that advocated spiritual freedom, were left out.

If you claim to be a Christian, be one who follows the four cornerstones of a good life, Love, Joy, God and Faith. Do not be a bully who tells people they are going to hell if they do not believe in something literally that was never meant to be taken that way in the first place.

Look at the parables. Those cannot be taken literally, these sayings of Jesus are meant to challenge each individual to think for themselves when contemplating God.

Jesus would be ashamed of how people have turned his life into a Empire of Fear and Hatred.

[edit on 13-11-2008 by 420prajna]

[edit on 13-11-2008 by 420prajna]

Not at all.


Relgious texts are cultural narratives, not scientific narratives.

Look at the Koans of Zen.. they push the mind because they are not resasonable... in Zen the whole point is to remove the process of rationality from the humans approach to life.


Christianity, is not a philosophy, it is not a science, it is a belief system in which "all things are possible".

When the concept of the physical Ressurection was questioned during the time of the Gnostics, Erasmus stated that the resurrection should not be viewed as symbolic. The reason for this was that belief in a physical resurrection, something that is completely unreasonable and irrational, has an effect in the follower of Christ which is allows them to step out of the logic of the world and into the Kingdom of Heaven.


Just my .02

I say yes it invalidates the entire bible. Just like anything else that is looked at from a scientific perspective; if you can disprove any part of it, then it has to be disproved as a whole. You can't just pick and choose what is real and what is fictional, as who is to say what is and what isn't fiction.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


I agree absolutely, I would respect a religion that challenges people to think for themselves much more than one making threats.

Yeah, it invalidated it for me. I wasn't an overly religious person in school, but I at least believed in the the christian god and that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. Then, I went to a religious college and was required to take a semester course in which we read the entire NIV bible cover to cover. Well, I started asking questions and the professor couldn't answer them well enough to satisfy me. I considered one in particular to be a game breaker so I've sworn it off since.

I do still believe in a divine being but my beliefs aren't in the same ballpark as Christianity.

reply to post by BlueTriangle

Which question in particular did you ask that was the game breaker?

Originally posted by Aggie Man
Just like anything else that is looked at from a scientific perspective; if you can disprove any part of it, then it has to be disproved as a whole.

utter rubbish, almost every scientific theory is modified constantly. thats like saying that if you can prove a single element of darwins books incorrect you need to abandon the theory of evolution.

personally OP, i can see where you're coming from, personally i assume the bible to be a collection of books, inspired by the divine rather than dictated, and then assembled by committee.

from that perspective, 100% consistency would suggest suppression of reality.

on the other hand, modern christian teaching does quite a good job of invalidating itself.

The book was written by man and is said to have been inspired by God.

The problem is that the more the book is compromised the further and further away from the divine it becomes.

It has been very compromised. What's more is that history makes it very unlikely for their to have been a Jesus at all, and all the accounts of how things went down don't agree with each other, and the bible at times completely parts with reality.

If there is any truth in there it is impossible to tell from all the rubbish, the message has not been preserved at all. So where is God in that? If he inspired the book why has he not bothered to preserved it in anyway? Why doesn't he look over the shoulders of Christians and keep them on the tract instead of letting them fracture into so many denominations, at times violently fracturing?

It's all very problematic and the more of a realist that you are, the more rubbish Christianity becomes.

[edit on 11/13/2008 by Good Wolf]

Originally posted by Aggie Man
I say yes it invalidates the entire bible. Just like anything else that is looked at from a scientific perspective; if you can disprove any part of it, then it has to be disproved as a whole. You can't just pick and choose what is real and what is fictional, as who is to say what is and what isn't fiction.

But the bible is not a scientific narrative... it is a cultural narrative.


So your story doesn't wash.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


I still submit to you that if part of it is fiction then all of it can be considered fiction. You can't pick and choose what is fiction vs. reality...as you can never prove it one way or another.

I never said it was scientific; only that things that are proven partly false would not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Originally posted by pieman

Originally posted by Aggie Man
Just like anything else that is looked at from a scientific perspective; if you can disprove any part of it, then it has to be disproved as a whole.

utter rubbish, almost every scientific theory is modified constantly. thats like saying that if you can prove a single element of darwins books incorrect you need to abandon the theory of evolution.

personally OP, i can see where you're coming from, personally i assume the bible to be a collection of books, inspired by the divine rather than dictated, and then assembled by committee.

from that perspective, 100% consistency would suggest suppression of reality.

on the other hand, modern christian teaching does quite a good job of invalidating itself.

Utter Rubbish huh? Well, look at it like this: In science, when a hypothesis is developed, it can be tested over and over and refined into theory, as there are always more samples to be tested.

With the bible, it CAN NOT be refined or tested over and over again; therefore, the only valid "sample" if you will, is the bible itself. AND, if any part of the bible is false, misleading, fictional, whatever...then the entire work must be thrown out, as it is all susceptible to the same potential for corruption as the parts that are known to be corrupt.

[edit on 13-11-2008 by Aggie Man]

Good question. I have struggled with that same thought from time to time. The answer I came up with was this - read the New Testament and get from it what you can and put it into action as best as you can.

As for the Old Testament. Well ... I don't pay it much attention.

Much of it was taken from the Summerians and I don't find much of interest or help in it at all. The entire OT is suspect as far as I'm concerned.

Yes I agree that if a holy text is full of errors then it invalidate itself. Thus all holy books, not just the torah and the new testament, invalidate themself. This is one of many hints that show us that there are no gods.

Or at least it show that no gods have contacted us on earth yet.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Good question. I have struggled with that same thought from time to time. The answer I came up with was this - read the New Testament and get from it what you can and put it into action as best as you can.

As for the Old Testament. Well ... I don't pay it much attention.

Much of it was taken from the Summerians and I don't find much of interest or help in it at all. The entire OT is suspect as far as I'm concerned.

I have a terrible problem with this line of reasoning. And . . it get's right to the heart of Aggie Man's point.

Jesus was a Jew. Not only a Jew, but an extremely devout Jew. Without the OT there would be no Jesus (both literally and figuratively). Let's not forget . . . Jesus preached and spread his message to the Jews . . . he did not include the Goyim, as he would have been opposed to God's chosen people mingling with gentiles. It astounds me that you can take the teachings of a man (real or not) that was of a certain faith and was speaking to a certain faith and then claim the mythology of that faith is bogus (and MANY Christians do this). How does that not conflict with Aggie Man's premise?

Unless you are a Jew today and believe that Jesus is/was the "messiah" . . . his words/works are not for you. You will not be saved . . . as Paul included the Goyim LONG after Jesus had passed. I'm familiar with the "appearance on the road" but, that was an invention by those that wished to spread this control beyond Palestine . . . much like Constantine seeing a "radiant cross" after staring directly into the sun for too long.

Moreover, outside of the flood myth . . . Jewish mythology has it's basis in Egyptian mythology not Sumerian. The myth of Noah/Gilgamesh probably wasn't even part of the Genesis epic until the exile in Babylon, long after the nation had been established.

If you take God and the OT away from Jesus . . . you're left with a politcally-radical Buddhist (which also predates Jesus by 500 years).

WWJD? . . . don't know, but he'd be most displeased with disregarding his father's/his story and ignoring God's law. Don't you think?

reply to post by 420prajna


Here is a pretty good website pointing out common differences between different texts, and offering explanations.

The index is at the bottom of the page:


www.bringyou.to...

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Good question. I have struggled with that same thought from time to time. The answer I came up with was this - read the New Testament and get from it what you can and put it into action as best as you can.

I took your advice dude , am getting me some females in and a big stick, having misread the old testament I've spent years "cacorting my neighbours ox", now I'm going for joy and happyness.

Luke 12:47 And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes

NRSV)First Timothy 6:1-6
Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be blasphemed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are members of the church; rather they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved.