Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He’s best known for betraying Jesus by smooching him. This ID’ed Jesus to the cops who swooped in for the arrest (all in a day’s work for Jerusalem’s finest).
Judas had been paid in silver coins for putting the finger on Jesus. Two Bible authors appear to blatantly contradict each other about what happened next.
In one version of the story (Mat 27:5) Judas is feeling terribly about what he did. He goes back to his financers, throws those nasty coins down, and goes off to commit suicide by hanging himself. Afterwards, the chief priests decide to buy a field with that money for burying foreigners (hopefully after they had passed on).
In another version of the story (Act 1:18) Judas doesn’t return to throw down the coins and he doesn’t commit suicide. He keeps the money and instead *he* buys the field with it, not the chief priests.
The author of Acts is very sparse on the details, but apparently Judas trips on something while skipping along in his new field and falls headfirst onto some sharp objects, gashing out his stomach and redistributing his vital organs back to nature.
Not so much a suicide as a terrible accident.
Apologetics try to reconcile the contradictions by ignoring the problem with who bought the field. Clearly one says Judas and the other, the Chief Priests. Instead they claim that Judas was a waffler, a flip-flopper who couldn’t make up his mind about how he felt about his betrayal. In their explanation Judas took the money, then he felt badly so he returned the money, and (what the Bible doesn’t tell you) he started feeling OK again (possibly after seeing his therapist?) and returned to gather up those nasty coins he had thrown down to buy the field (why couldn’t he have been a strong steady betrayist?)
Some apologetics then claim that Judas hung himself from a tree next to a hill on his ill gotten property and when his rope eventually broke, they have him cart wheeling down the slope to conveniently explain his stomach gushing.
Some apologetics however do away with the hill and have Judas simply hurling himself onto a huge spike which they claim was the standard method of “hanging” in his day. This turns Judas into a Shish Kabob which they assert solves the hanging vs. innards dilemma.
This just goes to show that if people are willing to jump through enough hoops they can rationalize just about anything that would spoil their day.
“Hammer to fit and then paint it to match.”
That pretty much describes the attempts at explaining contradictory scriptures.
The whole problem is where christians and atheists start:
The christians believe before they explain, so they conjure up impossible explanations to support the Bible inerrancy, which they should not question. So when you tell a priest that you can’t see God, he tells you to believe in God first in order to see God…
Atheists do things the old scientific way: First find and explain all the possibilities and then believe in what you have logically assumed. We only have logic to rely on through our lives, and though senses often trick us, it is the only way to produce solid assumptions.
It’s logic vs blind faith and that’s all.
Be carefull Mr. Capella, that’s a double edged sword that your are weilding. People do try to rationalize anything that would spoil their day. Christians and skeptics alike. Some Christians will believe no matter what is said, BUT, some skeptics will NOT believe no matter what is said. To be so against something is to be a hypocrite. When you talk to a Christian, would you not want him/her to keep an open mind, and vise versa. So by you saying things like that, isn’t that being guilty of the same crime.
Respectfully, Thank you.
Mr. Giannis Stamatakis,
That’s an interesting point that you bring up about LOGICALLY assuming what you have found. Now contrary to popular beliefe Christianity is not close your eyes and believe. It is “see for yourself”. I don’t believe the evidence because I am a Christian, I am a Christian because of the evidence. I have followed what I found and logic led me to the Conclusion that there is a God, and that he loves us all very much and wants what is best for our lives if we let him. Deep down one must ask himself why he is here and how much sense does it make *with GOD* and how much sense does it make WITHOUT.
Thank You.
Dear Zulla,
It is a moot point, isn’t it? I’ve never seen any evidence of the existence of the christian god or any other. And the gain of believing yourself the chosen of some omnipotent deity for eternal life is so evident that I am completely unable to believe in the intelectual honesty of anyone that claims to have LOGICALLY arrived to the conclusion of the existence of some god. All religion is wishfull thinking and self-delusion brought into being by fear of death.
be careful saying there isn’t any evidence when you haven’t looked for it. I have been and remain an atheist, but the bible has a little more going for it than you might think. Ignoring the contradictions, of course, you can more or less verify that the new testament was written by semi-reliable sources, and the apologetics back up the OT by saying its prophecies are fulfilled. But before you deny its validity outright, talk to a christian about it for a while. Your beliefs make a lot of sense to you but the Christians have had just as much time as you have to come to understand their beliefs.
Malahci,
Starets hasn’t posted for 1 1/2 years so I’ll respond for him/her.
I disagree with the idea that the New Testament is from semi-reliable sources and that the OT has any reliability whatsoever. For example it’s well known by non-apologetic scholars that the Gospels were not written by the biblical figures they are attributed to (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John).
Much of Matthew and Luke were copied from the earlier gospels of Mark and an unknown gospel that scholars call “Q” (there were actually about a couple dozen gospels considered for canonization by the early Catholic Church).
The Gospels of Mark and Q were likely oral traditions that circulated for decades after Jesus was executed and in the earliest known version of Mark there is no mention of the resurrection of Jesus, just that his body is missing. The Gospel of John was written about 60 years after the crucifixion.
There are many parts of the New Testament that either contradict or likely never happened such as the time of the birth of Jesus, genealogies of Jesus, the story about him going to Egypt as a baby, Herod’s purge of the innocents, when the transfiguration and when the fig tree withering supposedly occured, whether John the Baptist was supposed to be “Elijah,” how many animals Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, what color his robe was, what time he was executed, how many women supposedly discovered the empty tomb, how long after the resurrection Jesus was supposedly around before he ascended to heaven, how Judas died, what happened to Paul during his conversion, etc…
The OT is even more suspect because of it’s early stories being similar to neighboring culture’s mythologies, the presence of what scholars call “doublets” (two complete stories edited together, about 20 of them), different writing styles that were obviously later edited together, contradictions, errors, absurd stories (such as Jonah living inside of a fish underwater for 3 days and Lot’s daughters having sex with him without him knowing it), etc…
As far as prophecies, there are very few prophecies in the Bible that don’t follow the standard tricks of psychics and fortune tellers of being so vague and numerous that some prediction out of dozens can be later reinterpreted to loosely fit an event.
In rare cases where an OT prophet went out on a limb and gave concrete details about a future event either the event was inevitable or their predictions simply failed. I’ve listed a few of these prophecy failures that are iron clad.
In every case of so called fulfilled prophecies about Jesus from the OT there are three situations: either certain details of the prophecy obviously doesn’t fit Jesus (and in many cases the prophecy was cited in the OT to already be fulfilled), the prophecy cited obviously wasn’t a prophecy at all, or the author of a Gospel obviously contrived stories or changed what happened to Jesus to make it appear to fulfill an OT prophecy (often with errors or contradictioning other authors).
In various articles on my website I’ve listed all of these bible problems that I’ve mentioned here in more detail as well as others.
“As far as prophecies, there are very few prophecies in the Bible that don’t follow the standard tricks of psychics and fortune tellers of being so vague and numerous that some prediction out of dozens can be later reinterpreted to loosely fit an event.”
Well spoken and said. It is easy to interpret things to fit the occasion. Especially if prophecies are somewhat loose.
Ravi
Why can’t you possibly believe in the existence of God? Just by looking at your surrounding, you can never explain why things function amazingly just the way they are. Why do you think gravity exist? Who could possibly made them? I don’t really think that all the things just accidentally formed and produced this little thing called “Earth”, with the creatures (called “HUMANS”) in it. It’s an insult to our part to adapt the story of Darwin (we came from apes?). Why haven’t all apes transformed into humans by now?
Meggan, just because we can’t explain something doesn’t mean that whatever favorite god we happened to believe in is behind it. Our ancestors made the same mistakes because they didn’t understand where rain and clouds come from, what causes the wind to blow, what the Sun is, how crops grow, how digestion keeps us alive, etc… so they imagined gods to explain them. Today we look back in sympathy at them because we understand those things today.
The lesson from this is that just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean a god did it. We may or may not understand it someday but it’s best to simply put a question mark there in the meantime.
As far as the apes, the current apes and we both evolved from earlier different apes. Current apes took a slightly different evolutionary path apart from humans. Who knows what they or we will evolve into millions of years from now. In other words, apes aren’t destined to evolve into humans. Evolution doesn’t work that way. It just happened in our case.
With regards to the ape thing, then we shall expect that these remaining apes will eventually turn to humans one by one? Why does the “human path” of evolution ended million years ago? Sometimes, intelligence makes people forget Who made them. I strongly believe in what the Bible says and all the things which are written in there. Living in a life with no God, gives you the feeling of emptiness and lack of direction.
Meggan,
No, it’s not expected that apes will all eventually turn into humans and as a matter of fact it’s extremely unlikely that any modern apes will evolve into anything like humans. Again, evolution doesn’t work that way.
Humans are not some evolutionary destination of apes. There is nothing currently guiding the evolution of apes into humans. It just happened that way in the past as we evolved from a common ancestor of the modern apes. Humans are not the final product either as we like all living things continue to evolve. If humans don’t kill themselves completely off in wars or by other means someday, we’ll certainly look and behave differently millions of years from now as we continue evolving.
As far as “living with no God,” I was once a believer myself. I prefer living in reality to a life with rose colored glasses on. I have no feeling of “emptiness” or “lack of direction.” That’s propaganda by the churches. If a person does feel like they have unmet emotional needs, rather than imagine an invisible father figure they need to look to their quite real family and friends. There also should be no problems in seeking the help of a good therapist.
Meggan,
I am convinced that human beings just feel better if there is an explanation for the mysteries of life. Part of the problem is organized religion wants us to believe the “mysteries” of life are in some way evil and if they’re not evil they are the devine workings of God and should not be questioned, let alone understood. Personally it all seems a little too convenient, in favor of the church and convincing us that we absolutely need their guidance.
“I have no feeling of “emptiness” or “lack of direction.”
I totally feel the same, I can’t see where believing in God would fill a blank in my life, though I understand it does for some people, or actually, they haven’t tried anything else. It’s like it’s the reason/answer to all good in their destiny (With God’s help…, Thanks to God…, God will show you the way…)
Best Regards,
Tom.
@starlets
Quote:
“All religion is wishfull thinking and self-delusion brought into being by fear of death.”
I think this could be a very dangerous way of thinking in terms of not believing in a religion.
Personally I can understand but didn’t one famous philosopher say that it was incredible foolish to deny the existence of a heaven or a hell.
I think you’re thinking of “Pacal’s Wager” which tries to scare people by suggesting the only possibilies are hell and no hell as if his (Pascal’s) particular religion was the only possible one to be correct, completely ignoring all other religions and their various scary outcomes if you don’t follow them.
I’ve written an article about this called: Afterlife Roulette