Re: A Critique of the Bible
Originally posted by mahasattvaMy dear Buddhist friend, why do you feel the need to criticise the Bible? As Buddhists, it is important that we don't criticise and judge others, in fact, we must respect and support all other religions like Buddha and the Dalai Lama says. Moreover, as a Buddhist, we have no quest for truth, as truth is self-revealing and in front of our eyes as we live in it.I wish you happiness and peace in your heart and the wisdom not to go out on a mission to criticise other religions.
I'd like to start this thread. This is a matter of purely intellectual discussion in our quest for truth.Christianity is a book-based religion. There is no evidence for the claims and dogmas of Christianity other than what is said in the Bible and this fact also makes this book the bedrock of Christianity. In the past as today Christians have picked through the Bible arguing with each other over the meaning of its phrases and words and tried to convince non-Christians of the truth of a book that they cannot even agree about themselves. But one thing which all Christians agree about is that the Bible is God's word - not that it contains God's word, but that it is God's word, an infallible and complete revelation given to man by God. We will examine this claim and show that like most of the claims made by Christians it has very little substance to it at all.
If the Bible really is God's word it indicates that he is a very strange being indeed One would expect that the creator of the universe would only speak to man when he had something of great importance to say and that what he said would be of universal significance. Not so. The book of Chronicles for example consists of little more than lists of names of people we know little or nothing about and who died thousands of years ago. No commandments, no ethical principles, no hints on how to live properly or to worship God - just page after page of useless names. Why would God waste his and our time revealing such things? And what about the Songs of Solomon? This book consists of a collection of erotic love poetry. Once again, with the world in such a mess one would have supposed that God could have thought of ...
Originally posted by Storm
Just wondering, do you attribute natural disasters to god as a punishment meted out upon sinners?
No, I attribute that to tectonic plates. But, I do believe that God designed the world the way it is and that God has a purpose behind everything. Punishment? definitely not, I see God using natural disasters as a chance to reveal himself to some people. I see many people being saved in India and Thailand right now as a result of Christian aid organizations. God works in mysterious ways.
Originally posted by Nellinator
No, I attribute that to tectonic plates. But, I do believe that God designed the world the way it is and that God has a purpose behind everything. Punishment? definitely not, I see God using natural disasters as a chance to reveal himself to some people. I see many people being saved in India and Thailand right now as a result of Christian aid organizations. God works in mysterious ways.
Re: Re: A Critique of the Bible
Originally posted by Wonderer
My dear Buddhist friend, why do you feel the need to criticise the Bible? As Buddhists, it is important that we don't criticise and judge others, in fact, we must respect and support all other religions like Buddha and the Dalai Lama says. Moreover, as a Buddhist, we have no quest for truth, as truth is self-revealing and in front of our eyes as we live in it.I wish you happiness and peace in your heart and the wisdom not to go out on a mission to criticise other religions.
My dear friend. If it appears that I have been hard on Christianity, I hope this will not be interpreted as being motivated by malice to criticise for its own sake.
No, that is not my intention. Some Buddhists may object to a thing like this, believing that such a gentle and tolerant religion as Buddhism should refrain from criticizing other religions. This is certainly not what the Buddha himself taught. In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta he said that his disciples should be able to "Teach the Dhamma(law), declare it, establish it, expound it, analyse it, make it clear, and be able by means of the Dhamma to refute false teachings that have arisen. " Subjecting a point of view to careful scrutiny and criticism has an important part to play in helping to winnow truth from falsehood. Criticism of another religion only becomes inappropriate when it is based on a deliberate misrepresentation of that religion, or when it descends into an exercise in ridicule and name-calling. I hope I have avoided doing this.
Originally posted by Nellinator
No, I attribute that to tectonic plates. But, I do believe that God designed the world the way it is and that God has a purpose behind everything. Punishment? definitely not, I see God using natural disasters as a chance to reveal himself to some people. I see many people being saved in India and Thailand right now as a result of Christian aid organizations. God works in mysterious ways.
Natural Disasters is part of this universal Law- the natural law of nature. It is inherently properties of the universe which underlies all phenomena. Thus, the law of gravity can be created nor destroyed?
I have problem with this hidden God. God wants us to believe in him so that we can be saved - but if this is so why doesn't God simply appear and perform a miracle so that everyone will see and believe? People will say that God wants us to believe in him out of faith, not because we see him with our eyes. However, according to the Bible, God in the past performed the most awesome miracles and often intervened dramatically in human affairs so that people would know his presence. So if he did so in the past, why doesn't he do so now?
People will say that God does perform miracles today (healing, solving personal problems etc) but being stubborn and evil most people refuse to believe. However these so-called miracles are individual and rninor and leave much room for doubt. If God performed a really impressive miracle which could have no other possible explanation, then most people certainly would believe.
According to the Bible when the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years, God fed them by making food fall regularly from the sky (Ex16:4). During the 1980's, several million Ethiopian Christians died slowly and painfully from starvation due to a prolonged drought. God had then the opportunity to make food fall from the sky, as the Bible claims he did in the past, in order to prove his existence, his power and his love. I would say, from this objective point of view, that this God, supreme being, did not manifest his presence because he does not exist.
This is question many non-Christians repeatedly ask. You called the miracles individual and this is true in many cases. But, this is a good thing because it is how God shows that he loves each person individually and how wants each and every person to come to know him. God does perform major miracles. I have seen hundreds of people praying together with authority to God to spare them from a hurricane and the hurricane (sorry I cannot remember which one) fell two or three classes in one day and then never reached mainland America. Some would say that it was the weather, but I believe God had something to with it. I have farmers pray for rain and receive it in the middle of drought that recently ended in my region. I have herad of people being raised from the dead (and they were actually dead) in the name of Jesus (this is a major miracle in my eyes). My own sister lost control driving on ice and crossed a median into oncoming highway traffic and was tee-boned directly on her door at 100 km/h and lived easily with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises despite being smashed into the windshield, the side window, and having her seatbelt dig deeply into the pelvis. Some might say it was luck, but I know that it was God's intervention, she would have died otherwise. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him." 2 Chronicles 16:9 (Another good verse from the Chronicles).
Originally posted by Nellinator
You still don't answer how dead people can be risen from the dead. It is a miracle that God uses to show his love for us.
Dead people cannot be raised from the dead. The bible is not a book of fact, it is a book a faith. However, the dead to rise from the dead, it is called reincarnation.
It happened in 2001. http://web.archive.org/web/20030203134422/www.cfan.org/offices/usa/testimonies/resurrection/page1.htm
Check it out. This is but one example.
Originally posted by Nellinator
It happened in 2001. http://web.archive.org/web/20030203134422/www.cfan.org/offices/usa/testimonies/resurrection/page1.htm
Check it out. This is but one example.
OK, you check this out.
http://www.greaterthings.com/Polemic/Daniel_Ekechukwu_Resurrection_Hoax/index.html
http://www.testimonies.com.au/topics/raised_from_dead_1.htm
Now try this. I thought you might like (or hate) this one because it is the testimony of a Buddhist monk.
I also understand that people will be skepitcal of people being raised from the dead. In fact a better hoax site than the one you gave me is http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/bonnke2.html to show you that I'm not naive.
You can argue yourself blind about the accuracy of the Bible and various aspects of this that and the other. But your missing the point, the only thing that matters is THE MESSAGE that there is a God and that our sins can be forgiven because Jesus was sacrificed/let himself be scarificed to pay for our sins.
It all comes down to belief, either you believe or you don´t, the seed is in everyones heart, we all know where we came from, some choose to hide it some, dont understand it, so try and find the answers.