Why Should Anybody Care What the Bible Says?
And a whole bunch of questions that must be answered before we do
Christians, typically, post verses as though we are meant to read them in awe, maybe convert to their version of their religion, or even take them seriously.
But why should we?
They will frequently say that we should take the Bible seriously because it's the word of God.
That raises a few questions, of course.
Firstly, how do they know it's the word of God?
Well, they say, because the Bible says so.
So, we're meant to believe that the Bible is the word of God because the Bible says it's the word of God?
That's not even close to how proof works.
It's called circular reasoning, and you could use the same "logic" to prove that Spiderman or Harry Potter exists.
The first question they need to answer before we take the Bible seriously is this: where is the evidence that your God is real?
And by "evidence", I mean actual, would-stand-up-in-a-court-of-law evidence. Something tangible, something more than "I feel it in my heart", or "just look at the world around you", or "it's common sense", or "I just know it".
None of these are proof of any god.
And even if you go with the "well, all of what you can see must have been created by something", that in no way leads to their specific God - it could be any of thousands of gods, many of whom have been believed by their adherents to be the source of all creation.
Their problem is that, until they can prove the existence of their God, they cannot reasonably claim that the Bible is that God's work.
Moving on, though, even if you accept that their God is real (and there is, of course, no evidence that it is), the next question would be, "How do you know the Bible is the word of God?"
There are those who claim that God wrote the Bible, and those who claim the Bible was inspired by God.
The first is clearly not a viable argument.
According to Christian mythology, their God is all-knowing.
If that were the case, why would this omniscient god of theirs make so many mistakes? Here are two out of the many that exist:
why do the first two books of Genesis describe contradictory creation stories?
why did God not know that bats are mammals and not birds?
Now, they could claim that these errors crept in because of all the translations and edits made by humans - because there have been many of those.
My problem with that is this: supposing that God did indeed write the original Bible, and it was perfect. Why would he allow his creation (i.e., human beings) to screw it up and make so many mistakes in it?
The other, much more likely explanation, is that the Bible was written by humans, even if we don't know exactly who wrote each of the 60+ books.
So, was God dictating these books to these people?
If so, how?
Because people have been claiming for centuries to hear God talking to them, and we used to lock many of those up in asylums.
Or, perhaps, these people wrote about what they imagined their God wanted?
Now we're getting closer.
But the Bible says that no man may know the mind of God. (Which is funny, because many Christians claim to know exactly what God wants, until you ask them a question they cannot answer, at which point it's suddenly a case of "God works in mysterious ways".)
The most likely explanation is that men wrote the Bible based on the workings of their own mind, and the need for control.
After all, the Bible is, amongst other things, a misogynist book that treats women as second-class citizens, and you can still see the effects of that today.
Organized religion has been a successful way of controlling people. As Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying, "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
So, back to my original point.
If:
Christians cannot prove that their God exists
and they cannot then prove that the Bible was written by their God
and they cannot explain why so many versions of the Bible have been created
and they cannot explain why an all-knowing God would create a book so full of ambiguity that there are tens of thousands of versions of Christianity, each with their own interpretations
…then why should we take the Bible seriously at all?
True, there are some verses that are well written - but there is a lot that isn't, that would never get past an editor these days - and there are some useful instructions in it such as the Golden Rule, not that Christianity was the first or only religion to come up with this idea.
But there is also a lot that:
makes no sense (such as Exodus 10:4-5, where a plague of locusts covers the face of the earth)
is immoral (such as the condoning of slavery - see Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:2-11, Colossians 3:22-4:1, and 1 Timothy 6:1-2)
is downright horrific (such as 2 Kings 2:23-25, where 42 boys are ripped apart by two bears for making fun of a bald guy).
Christians have a LOT of work to do before anybody (including themselves) should take the Bible seriously.
bedroom wall
covered with scribbles
nobody owns up