Einstein: Bible is childish, God is product of human wkness

Give me solid proof that the Bible is "rubbish" and I'll immediately renounce everything that I've always believed. That's how sure I am it's true. It makes more sense to me than everything happening by accident.

The truth is, every theory out there has its apparent "holes". "What caused the big bang?" "Who created God?" I've seen it all before.

You can't prove the non-existence of something, last I checked. Tell me when you can.

btw please don't close this thread unless it really gets out of hand. I'm hoping for some intelligent discussion on this topic, all I usually see on the WoW forums is meaningless babble such as "no u" and "DO A BARREL ROLL" when it comes to the Bible, on both sides of the argument, and the thread is usually closed before I get done typing my post.

I see where you're going.

First, the Bible has been translated countless times. While this definitely does cause inaccuracies to some degree, the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls did show that very little was lost in translation, at least up to the point of the translation to the King James Version (side note that I thought was interesting: the people in charge of translating scripture were very rigorous. For one thing, they were allowed to ignore any interruptions, even if the king or emperor himself walked into the room. They also did not only copy the scriptures word for word - they copied them letter for letter, mark for mark, if they saw it on the original scripture it was placed in the exact same way in the translation. So while whether or not the Bible is true, I personally - and without bias - doubt that much at all was lost in translation, if anything was, whether or not the Bible is true). If anything was lost in translation, it would be exact numbers. More than likely these are estimates. Besides, the Bible is a history book (of sorts), and an old one at that, and should not be used for determining mathematical principals.

Well that was longer than I thought... anyway, moving on...

Second point: people confuse science and religion as contradicting each other: on the contrary I think they complement each other. Science asks "how" and religion asks "why". "Why" will never be provable. "How" will almost always be. I have little doubt the Big Bang happened. The evidence is there. Maybe God is a myth, maybe he's not. We'll never know until we die. I think it's like an emotion: emotions are very real, but you can't prove you have them. You can show signs of them, you can say you have them, you know you have them, but you can't prove it to people that you have them, they have to take your word for it.

I think I answered the 3rd point there as well. I will agree with you on what you said to MQ: no one will ever win this argument. You can't prove God doesn't exist, but you can't prove he does. Personally, I choose to believe in God because it makes the most sense to me. I can't bring my self to believe that everything is an accident. Maybe it's pride, maybe it's ignorance, but I simply can't believe that the universe is an accident.

And to the last comment... thank you for actually being intelligent in your post. You don't get many people with an IQ that is higher than their age over on the WoW forums

You're right... there is no point. But it is fun

Hold on a minute. Now, I mean no offence but have you actually read the Bible before reading this book that listed arguments against it? I think that most people that look at it with an open mind (which is hard for anyone to do, even me sometimes), they'll realise that the Bible is not a law book. Both sides of the argument get into this mess when they enter that frame of mind. The Christian side will say "Yeah, well Leviticus 18:22 says that you aren't supposed to lie with men [if you're a man]", to which I reply "Well, Leviticus also says that children may be punished by death for cursing their parents". It's insane to extract 3-4 bits from the Bible to back up your point, but then deny the rest of the "laws" that just seem too insane for enforcement. The Bible wasn't written for the audience in the year 2008, it was written for the people of that generation to understand in the context of their world. In order to see where the Bible is coming from, you can't look at it from a modern point of view where it's easy to manipulate passages to back up a skewed belief about the book being for or against a current issue (like homosexuality, abortion, or kittens). It's done by Atheists as well when they try to prove that the Bible mandates violence from its followers and encourages men to treat women as subservient. Society of those times dictated the cultural norms and they happened to be written down. Guess what? The world that the Bible was written in was violent and women weren't allowed to prance around in mini-skirts. This argument, for both sides, is idiotic.

Furthermore, evolution and the Big Bang Theory don't disprove God. There are various interpretations of Genesis, the more prominent one (in Judaism) is that it's never been necessary to believe the literal meaning. In fact, most Jews don't and Maimonides confirms this when he says that it is an acceptable practice to interpret scripture as figurative when science can logically prove a concept. In Christianity, many evangelicals believe that Genesis is the literal true account of a process that took place by the hand of God. I'm not going to judge them on that because different minds perceive truth in their own way. The only thing I cannot abide is when people attack each other for the sake of making the other person look like a child in order to make themselves appear intelligent (which seems to be the sad underlying truth in most internet arguments about faith v. science). Einstein refers to the Bible as childish because he has his own predefined views of the idea of God and the Bible conflicts with that. We all want to be in the right and put the others in the wrong. We all want to make other people look like they've been victimised by the opposing side to support our own. Smart humans do it, stupid humans do it.

The Bible is powerful for the passages within it that contain wisdom and abstract ideas that can still apply for today. You're using passages that reflect the culture of that time period as evidence that the Bible is a book that incites hatred and violence when it's not. The only way that the Bible functions as an inflammatory book is when people can't read the book in its context. The Pentateuch offers compelling evidence that the beginning of the Bible was written by Moses (whether or not the books were written by his own hand is disputed, some believe in the JEDP theory) to convince the Jews that leaving Egypt and going to Canaan was the right thing to do. This is just one of the examples as to the Bible being a work written with a specific audience in mind. The Bible was forward-thinking in its time, but the only way that the book can be wholly applicable to societal changes would be if it were constantly rewritten. The same goes for any other work that was written in its time period.


Isn't as great as he's supposed to be? To me, he's great because he created the universe, me, the people I care about, the animals, the trees, everything I am able to sense. The role of creator that God takes is a powerful and great role in its own right, the Bible never diminishes that. As for lying, how could anyone know if it had? There are so many interpretations of the Bible, from loose to literal, that it can never be certain. The Old Testament tells these stories using exacting words that were able to unravel various meanings. As for the New Testament, various translations can tilt the Bible's meaning one way or another depending who translated it and what their intention was. This is the case for all works that are translated. The translator has to choose what he thinks is the true meaning of a sentence, and it's never easy to do.


You just gave admission that you choose to not read something with a fair and open mind. Why am I supposed to honor your argument when you admit to refuse to read something because of a preexisting bias? I'm not saying that you shouldn't argue, I'm saying that your argument is inherently biased.


I disagree though. I think the way to win an argument like this is to get to a point with a person where they (and hopefully you) realise that the opposition has a valid point. In that sense, there is no such thing as winning an argument in theology. The best you can do is explain what you believe, why you believe it, and where unfair implications have been made toward your belief. If anyone happens to become more understanding as a result, then good. If anyone happens to become even more biased as a result, then that's when arguments go wrong. This is why I dislike seeing people drag each other down with personal insults. It makes both sides entrenched in their beliefs to the point where they refuse to listen to anyone with a different opinion.