{"id":289,"date":"2009-11-01T11:22:32","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T19:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayivey.com\/wordpress\/?p=289"},"modified":"2009-11-01T11:22:57","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T19:22:57","slug":"ray-reads-the-foreward-i-dont-have-enough-faith-to-be-an-atheist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rayivey.com\/wordpress\/ray-reads-the-foreward-i-dont-have-enough-faith-to-be-an-atheist\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>

The author gets in trouble with me in the very first sentence by admitting his affection for Christian apologetics.\u00a0 Apologetics are, by their nature, non-objective and non-scientific.\u00a0 This book itself is an apologetic.<\/p>\n

The next sentence is so preposterous I must quote it in its entirety:<\/p>\n

There is an abundance of evidence for the reliability of Scripture, for the authority of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and that the Bible accurately portrays the historical events it covers, including the earthly life of Jesus Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is so much wrong with the above sentence I hardly know where to begin.\u00a0 But I’ll try.<\/span><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 The Reliability of Scripture.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reliability of scripture?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 How much time do you have for me to list the factual inaccuracies that run all the way through the Bible?\u00a0 One tiny example:\u00a0 There was NO census in Judea under Augustus Caesar, as the Gospels claim.\u00a0 It didn’t happen.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Also, rabbits do not chew their cud.\u00a0 The Bible says they do (Leviticus 11:6).<\/span><\/p>\n

And bats are not birds (Deuteronomy 14:11-17.<\/span><\/p>\n

And there’s the inconvenient truth that unicorns have never existed, though God says they do in Job 39:9-12.<\/span><\/p>\n

I could go on and on.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bible isn’t even internally consistent.\u00a0 Over and over again it gives two totally incompatible versions of the same events.\u00a0 For example, did Judas commit suicide by hanging or by throwing himself or by throwing himself headfirst down onto the ground?\u00a0 He couldn’t have done both.\u00a0 But the Bible tells both stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

The inconsistency of the Bible begins in the very first chapter of its very first book.\u00a0 Genesis begins with two contradictory creation stories.\u00a0 The order of creation is very different from the first story to the second.\u00a0 Both cannot be true.\u00a0 Therefore, at least one of them is wrong.\u00a0 So much for the reliability of scripture. <\/span><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 The authority of the Bible as the inspired word of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

How would you prove this?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The only way you could prove that the Bible couldn’t have been written by mere human beings is if it included information in it that the human beings of the time couldn’t have known.\u00a0 Is there anything in the Bible about the germ theory of disease?\u00a0 Thermodynamics?\u00a0 Geology?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 There isn’t a word written in the Bible that couldn’t have been written by a Bronze Age human being.\u00a0 Heck, as pointed out above, the Bible can’t even get simple animal science correct. I’m pretty sure the Creator of the Universe would know what a bird is and whether or not a rabbit chewed its cud.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 The Bible accurately portrays the historical events it covers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Really?\u00a0 Historians disagree, Michael.\u00a0 There is no historical corroboration, for example, of the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt, and no evidence that a large group of Hebrews wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years.\u00a0 None.\u00a0 Zip.\u00a0 Nada.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

There evidence for the actual life of a person named Jesus is whisper-thin, and a growing number of historians consider the references in Josephus to have been inserted by apologists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bible is not a history or a science book.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming up next:\u00a0 Ray reacts to the Introduction of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Average Rating: 4.4<\/span> out of 5<\/span> based on 214<\/span> user reviews.<\/span><\/div><\/p>

\n