Why bible

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You'll be amazed what you discover about God, and about yourself. If this God is indeed your judge, before whom you will someday give an account of your life, it truly behooves you to be aware of who he is and the simple thing he asks of us before that solemn time comes.

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These passages led many naturalists in the Middle Ages to think such mythical creatures actually exist. White summarizes the historical results of relying on the Bible for answers about the physical world.

Being so greatly in error regarding the tangible and observable universe, the Bible cannot be considered a reliable guide for spiritual and ethical issues. Prophecies in the Bible further strengthen the Humanist view.

Because many of the prophecies turned out to be false, they prove the Bible is not inerrant. The Bible itself contains a test for determining whether a prophecy was inspired by God. Applying this test to the Bible leads to one conclusion: the book contains many statements that were not inspired by God.

Genesis says the Lord warned Adam and Eve about the fruit contained on the tree of knowledge. And he said, Here am I. Isaiah prophesies that Damascus would cease to be a city, become a heap of ruins, and remain forever desolate. Yet some 27 centuries after the prediction was made, Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world and is still going strong.

Jeremiah predicts the Jews would be captives in Babylon for 70 years, and II Chronicles views the prophecy as fulfilled. But the Jews were taken into captivity by the Chaldeans when Jerusalem fell in B. And Cyrus of Persia issued an order in B. Thus, the Babylonian captivity lasted about 48 years. For example, he was wrong in predicting the world would end within the lifetime of his followers.

Similarly, Jesus is depicted at Mark as listing signs that shall accompany the end of the world. These include the sun becoming darkened, the moon not giving any light, the stars of heaven falling, the son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and angels gathering the elect. Jesus also erred in predicting the amount of time he would be in the tomb. But Mark and Matthew tell us he left the tomb sometime on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Either way, the amount of time was less than three nights. Another significant false prophecy is at John If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it. And the graveyards are full of people who prayed to him for health. As is the case with other incorrect statements in the Bible, false prophecies cast doubt on all biblical claims. Historians have long known that the biblical story of a worldwide flood is a myth. For instance, Andrew White says nineteenth-century Egyptologists found that Egypt had a flourishing civilization long before Noah, and no flood had ever interrupted it.

The book of Exodus claims to contain a historical record of the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But historians and archaeologists have been unable to verify any of the events described in the book.

No known Egyptian records refer to the biblical Moses, the devastating plagues God supposedly inflicted on the country, the escape of the Hebrew slaves, or the drowning of the Egyptian army. The book of Esther purports to describe how a young Jewish girl named Esther was chosen by the Persian king Xerxes I to be queen after he had divorced Vashti. Although historians know a great deal about Xerxes I, there is no record that he had a Jewish queen named Esther or was married to Vashti.

Additionally, the book of Esther describes the Persian empire as having provinces, but historians maintain there was no such division of the empire. The book of Daniel describes events that supposedly happened during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews.

The fifth chapter states that Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, was succeeded on the throne by his son Belshazzar. But historians tell us Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar and was never king. In contrast, historians know that Cyrus of Persia took Babylon. In the New Testament, the second chapter of Luke asserts that shortly before the birth of Jesus, the emperor Augustus ordered a census throughout the Roman world. Luke claims that every person had to travel to the town of his ancestors for the census to be taken.

He identifies the census as the reason for Joseph and Mary traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Jesus is said to have been born. In his book Gospel Fictions, Randall Helms says this type of census was never taken in the history of the Roman Empire.

According to Genesis chapter 1, Adam was created along with the rest of the universe during the course of one week. The Bible thus views the human race and the universe as having existed for a relatively short period, probably no more than several thousand years.

Historians and scientists give a much longer historical record. Matthew chapter 2 avers that shortly after the birth of Jesus, King Herod ordered the massacre of all male children two years of age or under in Bethlehem and its vicinity.

Matthew alleges that while Jesus was on the cross, there fell over the whole land a darkness lasting from midday until three in the afternoon. Andrew White explains that although Romans such as Seneca and Pliny carefully described much less striking occurrences of the same sort in more remote regions, they failed to note any such darkness occurring even in Judea.

Finally, the previously discussed contradictions can be cited as examples of historical inaccuracies. In each instance where the Bible contains a contradiction about an alleged historical event, at least one of the accounts is wrong.

The Bible writers were poor historians, let alone conveyers of messages from an infallible God. There are other reasons why the Bible should not be considered the word of God. Some people use Bible verses to justify beating children, withholding medical treatment, handling snakes, drinking poison, chopping off body parts, plucking out eyes, driving out demons, withdrawing from the affairs of this world, renouncing the pleasures of life, and expecting the world to end.

Many compelling and morally sound reasons support the Humanist position that the Bible is not divinely inspired. Instead of being inerrant, the Bible has far more errors and immoral teachings than most other books.

By treating this mistake-ridden book as the word of God, humanity has been led down many paths of error and misery throughout history. In too many ways, the Bible continues to produce such results. But in some cases, the errors caused by the Bible have been corrected and the harms have been stopped. Biblical truth and scientific truth will never conflict as a matter of principle because, as past theologians have told us, God has given us two books to reveal who he is, namely the book of nature and the Bible.

While these two books will never truly come into conflict, our interpretations of one or the other, or both, may be wrong, which brings the appearance of conflict. Genesis , the main biblical account of cosmic and human origins, describes these events using figurative language, which should be obvious to all readers and has been obvious to most through the ages.

Church fathers like Origen and Augustine recognized that real days with evenings and mornings must have a sun, moon, and stars. When Genesis describes the formation of the first man as God blowing on dust, that too is figurative language. After all, does God have lungs?

And through the tools of science, we see that natural history is best understood as a long, slow process of cosmic and biological evolution, leading to the creation of human beings.

This presents no real threat to the teaching of the Bible. The Bible was written by ancient people, to be sure. The earliest writings come from the second half of the second millennium BC and the most recent parts from around BC. The New Testament is more recent, but even those books were written almost years ago. They were written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek by people who were culturally different from us. Even without taking into account the claim that these authors speak on behalf of God, such a charge would be the height of our own cultural arrogance.

Yes, ancient people did not have computers, cell phones, video games, or even electricity or cars, neither did Shakespeare or Plato, and would we also say that these writers are too ancient to say anything true or meaningful? We have made remarkable advances in our understanding of natural world since biblical times, and the biblical authors often reflect their ancient worldview that, say, the world was flat and perhaps at the center of the cosmos.

But the Bible does not intend to teach us about cosmology, and the faulty cosmology that it assumes does not affect its intended message. Others believe that the Bible is primitive in its understanding of the supernatural. Dying people are miraculously healed, the dead are brought to life, and the sea opens up to allow the Israelites to escape the Egyptians.

But perhaps the modern view of the cosmos as materialistic here is the mistaken one. Jews and Christians value the Bible much more than any other literature, ancient or modern, since we recognize that God speaks to us through the human authors of the Bible the Hebrew part to the Jews and the Old and New Testaments to Christians.

In other words, while the books of the Bible were not written to us, they were written for us and have continuing relevance for us today. Christians often come to different conclusions on what the Bible teaches on a whole host of subjects. Christians disagree on many things, such as as how to interpret Genesis , how to understand the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of humans, what happens during communion, when someone should be baptized, how the gifts of the Spirit manifest themselves in us, when Christ is going to return, and on and on.

But such a conclusion misses a very critical point.