Isaiah walks around naked for 3 years
Lots daughters have sex with him
A wall falls on 27,000 Aramean soldiers
Adam and God search the animals for a partner for Adam
Zombies wander the streets of Jerusalem after the resurrection
David and the "evil spirit from God"
(1 Sam 16:23 NRSV) And whenever the *evil spirit from God* came upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand, and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him.
Isaiah, one of the great prophets of the bible, is said to have walked around naked for three years.
(Isa 20:3 NRSV) Then the LORD said, "Just as my servant Isaiah has walked *naked and barefoot* for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia,
The daughters of Lot supposedly trick their father into having sex with both of them by getting him drunk twice.
(Gen 19:31-35 NRSV) And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father."
So they made their father drink wine that night; and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.
On the next day, the firstborn said to the younger, "Look, I lay last night with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also; then you go in and lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father."
So they made their father drink wine that night also; and the younger rose, and lay with him; and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose.
The bible claims that a wall fell on 27,000 Aramean soldiers.
(1 Ki 20:28 NRSV) …therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the LORD."
(1 Ki 20:29 NRSV) They encamped opposite one another seven days. Then on the seventh day the battle began; the Israelites killed one hundred thousand Aramean foot soldiers in one day.
(1 Ki 20:30 NRSV) The rest fled into the city of Aphek; and the wall fell on twenty-seven thousand men that were left. …
In the bible, out of all of the animals of the earth God and Adam searched and couldn’t find a "partner" for Adam.
(Gen 2:20-21 NRSV) The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the LORD God caused…
Solomon’s temple is exaggerated.
It was 90 ft long, 30 ft wide, and 45 ft high (1 Ki 6:2)
About twice the cubic footage of an average 2 story house.
For a small structure It took 183,300 men 7 years to build it. (1 Kings 5:13-16)(1 Kings 6:38)
Into it supposedly went 9,200,000 lbs of Gold and 92,000,000 lbs of Silver. (1 Chron 22:14)
Note: Archaeologists can’t find it anywhere…
The bible says that "zombies" arose and walked around the streets of Jerusalem after the resurrection.
(Mat 27:50 NRSV) Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.
(Mat 27:52 NRSV) The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
(Apparently they just sat there for 3 days until after the resurrection)
(Mat 27:53 NRSV) After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.
Many saints come out of the tombs and entered the city and appeared to many. How were they recognized? Why did they have no effect upon society and make names for themselves thereafter? Imagine if Abraham Lincoln and all deceased presidents suddenly reappeared in modern society. Wouldn’t someone make at least some mention of them? Also, were these saints naked when they arose? Did their number include women, or did women saints come later? Hmmm. Such a traumatic, earth-shattering event to blow over so lightly.
My comment is on Exodus 21:22 where it mentions that if a pregnent woman is injured and the baby dies then a fine shall be paid to the husband. It seems as though wives and children alike are viewed as chattle. According to most Christians babies that die will automatically go to heaven. How can it be argued then by these Christians that it is not better for these babies to go directly to heaven and bypass the horrors and pain of life on earth? Also doesn’t this insure that these babies will not go to hell? If these babies are born they might grow up without being saved(from God who is the danger). If they are sent to heaven before they are born aren’t they better off?
For the one about 1 Kings 6:2-
In 2 Kings 25:13-16, after the fall of Jerusalem, it says that the Babylonians stripped the temple of it’s articles. There’s the answer to your question about where At least, much of gold and silver went. It again talks about it in 2 Chronicles 36:18,19.
The problem isn’t where the gold and silver went. It’s the ridiculous amounts of gold and silver the bible claims went into it (4600 tons of gold and 46,000 tons of silver) and the ridiculous amount of man hours (5 billion) the bible claims to build a building about the size of two large houses.
Capella
In 1 Chronicles 22:14 it states that the David took great pains to provide all the materials needed for the temples. Therefore, a great amount of the people working weren’t even at the temple, but were gathering the materials. Lifting and moving all the materials was what probably took so many men.
As for the incredible amounts of gold and silver and the small space of the temple, I remain silent, since I don’t know enough about those things.
I realize that the Bible has some mysteries. For some, we will never find the answer, but there are mysteries everywhere and sometimes we just need to accept that we don’t know, and hold on to our faith. A few tiny faults in the Bible aren’t going to destroy my trust in God, who has provided me with tons of evidence, enough for me to believe.
Fine, but some people need a little bit more, especially when stories such as the building of Solomon’s temple and so many others in the Bible are so obviously ridiculous, erroneous, contradictory, unjust, or just plain gruesome as in the genocides of all of the men, women, and children of Canaan by Moses and Joshua or Kind David bringing back 100 foreskins of soldiers he’s killed to Saul so he can get engaged for examples.
Oh Jim L.
TINY faults in the Bible? Have you read it?
If you want to hear that Lot story, just go to the public defenders office. Every single child molester uses this same old excuse–blame the victim. That’s one of the least plausible stories in there.
What the Lot family did was far worse than the dwellers of the cities. Of course, incest was a favorite pastime in the OT and fully approved of by good ole twisted yahweh. Maybe that is why the bible is such an awful book. It was written by inbred retards.
I read the Bible when I was 18. It took about 3 months. What a waste of time!
Regarding Solomon’s temple:
If the temple dimensions were roughly 90 ft long, 30 ft wide, and 45 ft high that means that the temple’s volume is about 121,500 cubic feet.
92,000,000 lbs of silver, at roughly 656 lbs pounds per cubic foot, comes to about 140,244 cubic feet, or over 115% of the temple’s total volume. In other words, the temple could be solid silver and you’d still have silver left over.
Even using a more modest estimate of the weight of a talent, it still comes to 75,000,000 lbs of silver, equalling about 114,329 cubic feet of silver, or roughly 94% of the temple’s total volume.
One wonders where the rest of the materials fit, not to mention the people who were supposed to go inside.
Excellent points.
Like other ridiculous stories in the Bible, this temple tale rings of a fish story where the fish gets bigger and bigger every time the story is told. Add to that possible oral retellings over many generations and you get to ridiculous claims such as the silver and gold content and the supposed hundreds of millions of man hours to build such a ridiculously small structure.
Of course nobody has ever found Solomon’s temple so it’s possible that it never even existed. If it did ever exist, it was nothing like this grotesquely exagerrated Bible fish tale.
Excellent points.Also where is the historical reference-outside the Bible to the eclipse of the sun at exactly the moment Christ died,and the the renting of the temple curtain for that matter,not to mention the earthquake at that exact moment…???
A good example of this religious overlaying of myth is the death of King Herod,which IS historical fact and mentioned by Josephus the Jewish historian,but which in the Book of Acts is given a theological explanation.ie.that God struck him down.Acts 12 v 23
Jim L uses the lame old excuse of the ages: “I believe it. I can see the grandeur of God all around me. You’re all deluded.” Such is the lot of the hopelessly cemented human to religion. They would send their children to die in a war over religion (like the WAR ON TERRORISM) to defend their religion and its “good book” and most of them haven’t the foggiest notion of what the book actually says. It’s a vile, misogynistic, racist, sexist, homophobic book that contains so many contradictions that a rookie book editor would get fired for allowing it to go to printing.
I would agree that the Bible has obvious flaws and contradictions. However, I don’t feel that ad hominem attacks are the best way to point this out. Likewise, calling the entire book stupid serves no purpose. What is needed is a educated, polite talk. No bashing and name calling. Just polite discussion of the problems. This site is good, and I believe Capella has the right idea. I feel like the rest of you should try to keep the discussion up to that level.
I completely agree on the obvious flaws in the Bible, and I agree that ad hominem attacks are detrimental to getting our point across.
One thing I’ve started doing is going to church, finding someone willing to talk and inviting him to convert me. I listen and honestly try to see his point, then I counter with my thoughts and ideas. If he/she won’t allow a 50/50 conversation I find someone else who will. I’ve targeted the Jehovah witnesses becasue of their practice of going door to door. Oh, and I don’t sing in church, it’d be hypocricical of my to sing praises to a deiety that I don’t beleive in, and as far as I understand the singing is a type of brainwashing.
What contradictions are there? Give me examples.
These peculiar Bible verses contradict sanity.
Thou Shalt not Kill. Exodus
Kill men and women and children and do not show any mercy. Joshua
Josiah will die peacefully.
He was shot full of arrows and died. (Inner peace, maybe?)
Zediokim would die peacefully.
He watched his children murdered, was blinded, and dragged in chains to Babylon.
Tyre would be razed to the ground by Nebuchanezzer. It wasn’t. The Bible even admits it! It was conquered centuries later, butr Alexander’s conquest still didn’t fulfill it. It wasn’t destroyed.
The Nile would dry up and Egypt desolated for forty years. Everything after Tyre occurs in the book of Ezekial alone.
All may follow Christ unless you -
- Keep sinning
- Still love your family
- own possessions (he told you to sell them and give it to the poor! If you believe the Bible, let’s see you do it!)
- ever ever doubt for any tiny reason.
I will come soon and not tarry – Revelation. I would agree 2000 years is more than just tarrying -
The first one was enough for me.
Try as I might, it’s extemely difficult for me to fathom how people can believe the drivel in the “wholely buy bull.” Oh, to be sure there are some historical facts interspersed throughout it’s pages. However, I have read things written by historians and philosophers contemporary with the time of the alleged “Jesus of nazareth” they giving descriptions of what individuals wore and had for meals and not one of the writers (true historical writers, that is) had anything to say about this evanescent, charismatic, miracle worker, Christianities’ Jesus. One would think that the historians would have been falling all over themselves to follow him and interview him and chronical his every move. Yet…yet, absolutely nothing – that’s right nothing in the “real” world has been written about this alleged character, Jesus. Even the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (if they were in fact, real people) were decades after the alleged facts. If there’s somebody out there who can give me absolute proof that there’s a supernatural entity…in three forms, I’ll get down on my knees and pray my ass off and worship it for all eternity. Someone got a Buy Bull I can put my hand on which to swear?
Thou shalt now “murder” is how my Bible reads Exodus 20:13. There is a difference between killing someone and murdering them. Killing is ending a life(if you’re a soldier and kill an enemy, you are not a murderer) whereas murder is ending a life for your own selfish reasons. See the subtle difference?
(rest edited out per posting policy, sorry)
So if someone according to you is “ending a life” for “unselfish” reasons, say in warfare. Those “unselfish” soldiers aren’t committing murder? How far can we extend this unselfishness? “Ending the life” of an abortion doctor or a liberal politician for example? Assisting suicide for someone in pain?
I’m sure you will at least disagree with the last one and hopefully the first two as well. This shows the inconsitencies in this sort of thinking.
In the Joshua stories they were *MURDERING* (with swords) men, women, children, and babies while stealing their land and forcing some of the young Canaanite women into “marriages” (rape). There was nothing unselfish about that.
If you really want to scare yourselves, invest in a copy of the Life Application Study Bible. The annotations explain in clear and simple language what God REALLY means, and how you can apply this knowledge in your daily life to earn points with God. For example, when I read about Jesus admonishing the crowds to “turn the other cheek” and “Love your enemies,” I think, ah! Some useful advice on how to behave in a beneficial manner for the good of the human race. But lo and behold, the correct interpretation and the real reason for religion is revealed in the annotations in Matthew: “[Loving one's enemies] is possible only for those who give themselves fully to God, because only he can deliver people from natural selfishness.” Turn the other cheek? “God doesn’t want you to take the law into your own hands.” Nuff said. A scary book gets scarier.
The Bible was written by a bunch of drunken, sexist, pig headed religious men that favorite past times was fucking little boys.
* Some story in the bible have good moral and may be based very loosely on truth, or older story that were share for century such as noah ark, which was actually a merchant running from debt, on a small boat with just his own family.* If noah ark occur, scienist would have found evidents of a flood in all of the stone cover the entire earth. Has Proof of this been discover no. I believe there was a man named jesus (maybe) and he was a carpeter, and at age 14-15 he went to india to study buddist and learned many tricks, return home around his twenty, tought love and peace perform the tricks he learn, which where called mircales by his people, and was punished for being a hippie, was wounded on the cross, arose (not from the dead) and ran away to italy with hs wife and had child. I don’t believe he die on the cross. ( its highly likely that this thoery did not occur either, there isnt much proof to back it up)
Think about it. Friendships are lost & one because of ANY religion. Wars are fought for ANY belief. You’re basing your life on a BOOK that was written BY MAN. Grow up Humanity.
“Blind faith requires ignorance as it’s guide dog.” -David S.J. Guilmette, 1996.
You can use this, but please provide my name as the resource.
And that’s for you, Jim L.
Gah. You guys missed the best one: Zechariah 14:12-13, the zombie apocalypse after the final persecution of the God’s people.
“12 This is the plague with which the LORD will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. 13 On that day people will be stricken by the LORD with great panic. They will seize each other by the hand and attack one another.”
Lets not forget a significant minority of all women mentioned in the Bible, are prostitutes.
Rahab, Mary Magdalene, Babylon the Great, Tamar, etc. I dont understand how there can be soo many prostitutes when its supposed to be banned by death. Another mystery is that w/ all the prostitutes there are no customers ever mentioned or criticized. Does anyone have any figures of the percentage of prostitutes to “honest” women in ancient Israel ?
The great examples here show why it is just so hard to take seriously anyone of any religion who believes that their ‘holy’ book is anything more than the work of men. (Usually men!) I’ve a mind to start a new ‘holy book’: “In the beginning was Cyberspace and Cyberspace was without form…”
The info on Solomon’s temple made me smile. I’ve had this same conversation with my wife. She still does not believe me.
To expand on the metaphor a little bit: How can i turn my other cheek when the first hit hurt? I don’t understand why i should do this?
I have read the bible a couple of times and have found many different errors if you will. Some times I think that it was written to help but there are many contradictions that say otherwise.You can perceive it in many different ways also.
Solomon’s temple is a good one.
A nice work of fiction. It has the makings of an HBO series.
Jim L. advises us that the bible has some mysteries and it is best for us to just accept them. That suggestion only works for people who don’t like to think, and invites the kind of ridicule you see here. In Numbers 31, Moses leads his troops in a mass slaughter of little innocent Midianite children who were prisoners of war. In Matt 17, when Jesus (the embodiment of “god is love”) is transfigured, Moses appears. Now why is a mass murderer of little children brought by god to the transfiguration? Should I just accept this as a bible mystery or be morally repulsed? I choose moral repulsion. I’m glad to be an atheist and not have the need to explain away this kind of dreadful immorality. I suppose if Jim L. was walking by the time and place of this infanticide, he’d just say, “Oh, that’s one of god’s mysteries unfolding. We should just accept it.”
@ Robert #30
“The info on Solomon’s temple made me smile. I’ve had this same conversation with my wife. She still does not believe me.”
Lol, I can relate to that.
I can’t belive people still think about the Bible as if it’s a real, documented book.
Greg.