God Did Not Write or Inspire the Bible

[Viva_Daddy]

Here's my argument: Most modern theists believe that God either wrote or inspired the Bible. I don't accept this. Notice that nowhere in the Bible does God condemn slavery, misogyny, or war. In fact, He allowed all of them and even encouraged them.

Nowhere in the Bible does God encourage or even suggest democratic values, representative government, gender equality or other values that are important to modern Americans. Did these things never occur to the Supreme Deity? Apparently they did not.

I submit that the answer is obvious. God did not write or inspire the Bible. The Bible was written by humans, all of them males. The thinking of these males reflects the prevailing patriarchal culture in which they were born and grew up.

So, unless you want to believe that slavery, gender inequality, and non-representative government are God-approved eternal values and that democracy, representative government, and gender equality are modern innovations that are contrary to God's will, I suggest you discard the idea that God wrote, inspired or even approved the Bible.

[unblock]

1. either that or maybe god is a republican after all?

so, why did god deliver the jews from pharaoh? is that not a condemnation of slavary?

[Viva_Daddy]

7. I wondered about Jesus being a Republican when I reread his saying that...

"To those who have it shall be given and to those who have not it shall be taken away even what he has." That sounds like a Republican to me.

I don't think God condemned slavery because, as you'll notice if you read Exodus and Joshua, the recently freed Jews started collecting slaves from the Canaanite population almost as soon as they entered Canaan.

[cleanhippie]

2. You are treading on the slippery slope of reason and rational thought...

And that just won't do.

[longship]

3. Try the Bible Geek

Robert M. Price.

The guy has a podcast that's updated multiple times a week. Highly entertaining, insightful, and informative.

Sorry, no link (iPhone laziness). Google "bible geek"

[Viva_Daddy]

11. Thank you for the suggestion.

I have now bookmarked Bob's blog and look forward to reading it and keeping up with his podcasts. I've learned a lot from Bob Price.

[rurallib]

4. it has been translated and retranslated so many times plus

when copies were made by hand mistakes were made.
All that said, i'd bet that what many read today is only a resemblance to the original.

[saras]

5. Solon of Athens and the Iroquois Federation vs the Bible and Mein Kampf

The religions of the book have resulted in over 2000 years of war, torture, terror, and oppression over substantial portions of the Earth, easily one of the single most culturally destructive forces on the planet.

A CLOSE reading of the Bible finds the Old Testament explicitly rejecting most of what the West now considers as morality, in favor of bizarrely twisted oppression - like cutting the ends of everyone's dick off. EXCUSE ME??? Jesus tries to fix the worst of it, and St. Paul, the original model for Rush Limbaugh, pretty much fucks it all up, and corrupts Jesus' message pretty thoroughly. If Jesus was for it, St. Paul was against it.

[Thats my opinion]

6. If you had the slightest knowledge of the history of Biblical criticism,

you would not have accused Christians of believing that God wrote the Bible. Only those critics from outside seem to say that. Moslems believe God whispered the very words of the the Qur'an into the ear of the angel who transferred it,word for word, into the mind of Mohammet who wrote it word for word. In all the history of the church it has never believed or said that. The literature clearly came up from the people trying to make sense out of life's most important questions, not down from above. If you are going to come on as a Bible scholar, please know a bit about the subject. Have you ever really looked into it? Have you ever seen any theist on this site affirming what you have accused us of? So why not deal with what we say,not characitures of what you want to ridicule

[laconicsax]

8. Are you saying that no Christians believe the Bible to be the literal Word of God?

'cause if that's what you believe, you're hopelessly out of touch.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/148427/say-bible-literally.aspx[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]In U.S., 3 in 10 Say They Take the Bible Literally[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]...

Protestants (including those who identify themselves as "Christian" but not Catholic or Mormon) are the most likely religious group to believe the Bible is literally true. Forty-one percent of Protestants hold this view, while a slightly larger 46% take the Bible to be the inspired word of God.

Two-thirds of Catholics believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, while 63% of those without a religious affiliation think the Bible is not the word of God at all. Other U.S. religious groups are too small in number to reliably estimate from a single poll.



Belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible is especially pronounced among churchgoing Protestants, as two-thirds of Protestants who attend church weekly hold this view.

[Thats my opinion]

13. Of course there are church members--millions who say that the Bible is the inspired word of God.

What that tells us is that the church has been so terrible in helping people to understand their religion that there are swarms who have succumbed to superstition. And that is very sad. Even so, the word "inspired" just as easily can mean that people struggled with meaning and the depth of human experience and "breathed in" what they found there. It has not meant in history that it floated down in a black book in King James English. But the writers were inspired. Bach was inspired, Shakespeare was inspired, Christopher Wren was inspired, anyone who lifts her/his head up to see beauty and meaning others may not have seen, is inspired.

What saddens me is the fact that most of you reject the very sort of religion I reject. We are on the same side, and yet this site is full of people who fight off ideas about religion that never or hardly ever appear here. If you want to argue, argue with what those theists who post here hold. It is what scholarship--modern and historic hold to be true.

The fact that so many religionists have drifted into superstition is terribly unnerving. But there is another side to religion. Why not argue with it instead of with the deluded that you find out there. I argue with them too, but they just don't post here, so let's talk about what is here.

It is more obvious all the time that what some of us say about religion is terribly threatening to those who just want to put down all religion--so they spend their time fighting a popular sort of religious thought that is not here.

[laconicsax]

15. Sorry for attacking your enemies.

Really, TMO. First you deny the existence of this shared enemy of ours, then feign irritation over the criticism of them.

Either you acknowledge that the fundamentalist religionists exist in significant numbers and constitute a real threat or you don't. You can't acknowledge the threat while denying their existence and you can't acknowledge the existence while denying the threat.

Stop trying to have it both ways.

(Oh, and as I recall, whenever criticism of this "other side" to religion is made, you start whining about 'vicious attacks,' so again it looks like you want it both ways.)

[Thats my opinion]

19. Fundamentalist Christians exist in significant numbers.

It is a terrible problem and has given religion a very bad name. But it is not the only Christian alternative both now and throughout Christian history. So why, given the alternative, do you all want to savage it?

[laconicsax]

29. Just a few posts upthread you denied they even existed!

In your comment, #6, you stated that the idea that any Christian believes that the Bible was written by God is a caricature that no Christian church believes or says that the Bible was written by God

Now, after being confronted with reality, you admit that not only do such Christians and Christian churches exist, but in significant numbers.

Then you go on to acknowledge that the religious right "is a terrible problem and has given religion a very bad name," but just two sentences later, question the desire to confront and attack it!

The day you agree with yourself can't come soon enough.

[Thats my opinion]

31. Sorry I wasn't clear.

What many of you seem to want to savage is any Christian alternative to fundamentalism--as if that is somehow a threat to you.

[laconicsax]

33. There you go again!

Someone attacks fundamentalists, and you respond as you have here.

[Thats my opinion]

21. No, what i object to is your lumping us all together

so your can blast us all at once. The fundamentalist distortion really exists. They exist and they are a threat!!! I have never denied that. We both agree about that. So deal with what we say as to our objectives.

[laconicsax]

30. YOU lump all Christians together!

You denied that the fundamentalists exist in #6 and when criticism is leveled at those significant numbers you're now backtracking on, you take offense by claiming that criticism of fundamentalists lumps all Christians together!

Maybe if you'd take a self-consistent position on whether the religious right exists, you'd stop seeing attacks against them as attacks against you.

[Thats my opinion]

32. Give it a break!

i have not and do not deny that fundamentalists exist, even in large numbers--only that they are not the only expression of Christianity. Somehow you just don't want to hear that. But that's your problem.

[laconicsax]

34. Your exact words:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/121812118#post6

If you had the slightest knowledge of the history of Biblical criticism, you would not have accused Christians of believing that God wrote the Bible...In all the history of the church it has never believed or said that.

I replied to point out that a significant number of Christians believe that God wrote the Bible and that churches do teach that fiction. At no point did I attack the so-called alternative to the religious right, yet you launched right into accusations of lumping all Christians together and attacking the progressive ones.

You can't have it both ways--either there are people who believe the nonsense described in the OP, or there aren't. Either I was talking about fundamentalists as the idiots who believe that shit, or I wasn't.

[skepticscott]

48. +1,000,000

for the whole sub-thread. The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty spouted by this person ever since they came onto the board is staggering. He and a few others here DO want to have it both ways. One of his very first posts here was to upbraid people for always bringing up and criticizing the negatives about religion and declaring that those types of posts should be off-limits. And having, to his and his close relative's surprise, found his arguments meeting genuine and fundamental intellectual challenges (probably for the first time in his life), he now seems to need to demonstrate his/their anti-fundamentalist credentials at every opportunity.

[edhopper]

18. I think I have asked this before.

Do you believe Jesus was the son of God and that God is the Creator of the Universe?
That is the basis of our disagreement. Belief in the supernatural.

I also think many here do find it important to post how wrong and destructive religion often is in our society.

[Thats my opinion]

20. Since you have a predetermined definition of God I must hold,

as a big super person or a being who does things, your question is unanswerable. If you would only take my definition--which I have often spelled out elsewhere at some length, then I could give you an answer. I'm not dodging the question, but suggesting that your preconception gets in the way of an honest answer. But do you honestly want an answer because you are curious, or because you can use anything i say as "gotcha!"? You probably know I have long-since refused to respond to that latter sort of query.

[edhopper]

22. I do want an answer.

You can just link the post you mention rather than repeat yourself.
I thought you consider yourself a Christian (perhaps you don't). So while you don't hold the beliefs of the Fundamentalist, I just wonder if you consider Jesus as Divine and the Bible as inspired by God. Since you talk about modern theology, and not anthropology, I assume you think there is divine revelation in the Bible of some sort.

[Thats my opinion]

23. Good enough

Let me quote myself from my book, "Building a Biblical Faith," where I have a chapter on that question.

Jesus is all of God we can see in human form--all of God we need to know, all of how God wants us to live.

The people who first told the stories that much later were revised, recorded and finally collected, were inspired by their search for meaning and purpose to life, and saw clues to that meaning and purpose in the depths of life as they found it in their culture and as they were touched by the energy and purpose which is God.

God inspires, not from above but from the crucible which we call life.

While this is not fundamentalism, it is orthodox Christian teaching. My stuff has been accepted and used in seminaries and churches all across the world.

You bet I'm a self-identified Christian!

[edhopper]

26. Thanks.

So you do believe in a conscience identity that is God, though I we cannot really know him?

[tama]

27. How well

can you know yourself? The theology of 'know thyself' does not stop at conseptual self-definitions and images.

[edhopper]

28. I'm not looking for

a meaningless discussions of whether I am a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
I was trying to understand TMO's belief.

[skepticscott]

49. Are those the same seminaries all across the world

that teach acceptance of homosexuality? That's almost all of them, according to you, right?

[Viva_Daddy]

9. 2 Tomothy 3:16 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God...."

As one who grew up attending church, I and my fellow attendees would be very shocked to hear that God did not inspire the Bible and that it only came "from the people trying to make sense out of life's most important questions".

[laconicsax]

10. *psst*

Timothy, not Tomothy.

[The Straight Story]

16. Except the NT had not been written/put together at that point

Nor the bible in general, so the question becomes - what scripture precisely was being talked about?

[Warren Stupidity]

37. nor the bible in general? The torah dates to c. 600BCE.

That would be the first five books. And it is held to be the divine word of god as transmitted to moses. Also it is full of appalling awful shit.

[The Straight Story]

39. I would not call that the 'bible in general'

A big difference between Torah and Bible.

[Warren Stupidity]

40. So precisely what do you mean by the "bible in general"?

Everything in th Christian OT predates the 1st century BCE.

But hardly the point. The first five books claim to be the received word of god as transmitted to Moses. Christians and Jews both contain those books on their bibles. Claims up above that these are not held to be the word of god generally by Christians are dubious at best.

[Kalidurga]

12. I have never been to a church that didn't believe the bible was at least inspired by God...

I doubt that such a church even exists. There are perhaps churches that have a larger than average number that understand the bible is hokum, but those would be rare indeed.

[Thats my opinion]

14. They are out there.

In the DU mail send me your e-mail and where you live and I will introduce you to a couple.

[Angry Dragon]

17. Some disagreement here

The poster never said he was a biblical scholar
They gave their opinion
And there are some Christians that believe the Bible was written by god
and the theists on this site are not the only Christians
and just because a person studies religion does not make them an expert
I have yet to see any proof related to their studies

[Thats my opinion]

24. If I am going to pontificate about astronomy, for instance,

it might be helpful to have some knowledge about that scientific discipline.
There are statements in the OP that are not opinions, they come across as irrefutable axioms.

[Angry Dragon]

25. Then point those points out

Religion is very personal
Much like love
So to have theists state what works is just their personal opinion
Where are the facts to back them up??

[Viva_Daddy]

35. As they original poster, I would like to weigh in.

Last edited Sun Mar 4, 2012, 04:59 PM - Edit history (1)

My purpose for writing the op was not to dispute whether or not believers accept divine inspiration for scripture but to point out that religious institutions and scripture tend to give “divine sanction” to the status-quo (i.e., the then current social and cultural norms). All “innovations” that have occurred in the history of religion have come from reformers like the OT prophets, Jesus, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and the chief opponents of these reforms have been the religious establishments.

So it seems curious to me that scripture, which believers contend came from the all-knowing mind of God, has rarely been a source of ideas that we moderns would consider to be humanely enlightened models for civilization (other than preaching the values of justice and mercy). Instead, the Democratic values we Americans hold dear (like separation of Church and State, limited powers, checks and balances, representative government, etc.) have come from human social reformers.

And so, to my modern American-made mind, ideas of the thinkers of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Rousseau, and our Founding Fathers who were the students of the Enlightenment, have done more to advance human society than the ideas all the Gods of all the religious of the world.

[Warren Stupidity]

36. Or the abrahamic god is just a rotten mean spirited deity.

It does not follow from your list of really horrible shit in the bible that therefore 'not the word of god'. Why does a deity have to be good? What if god is a mean sob who likes to inflict pain and suffering? Given the state of the world wouldn't that make more sense?

[Sal316]

38. God didn't because I said so...

Wow, what a cogent argument.

It didn't happen because it doesn't say what you think it should, looking back with a post-enlightenment 21st century mindset.

Thanks for clearing that all up for us!

[laconicsax]

41. So you're going to argue that God wrote the Bible.

Shouldn't you, a sophisticated theologian, know intimately well that the Bible was written by multiple anonymous authors over many centuries?

[Sal316]

42. Nice try, but that's not what I said.

What I was pointing out was the absurdity of the OP's proposition.

But, hey, feel free to twist that however you like.

#ThisIsMeNotCaring

[laconicsax]

43. You mean the absurdity of Biblical hermeneutics?

Although I tend to see "because he said so" more often there.

#ThisIsntTwitterYourHashtagsAreMeaningless

[mr blur]

44. Yeah, but they were *inspired* by their god

or an angel, or some such drivel.

[AlbertCat]

45. Well...... duh!

All you need to notice (and you actually did) is that this god never seems to know anything more than the people of whatever time the book was written know. Like slavery and so on. God never enlightens those ancient people about, say, germs. Never mentions that washing up or boiling water might be helpful in fighting disease or that they could make antibiotics out of mold! He never tells them they are orbiting a star.... or even what a star actually is! No info on the fact there's a whole continent or two they don't know about. Y'know.... he never tells them something they don't already know... even if it would be useful and easily accomplished at the time

[deacon_sephiroth]

46. how about option C

as it stands, I'd have to believe in a god for either of those outcomes.

A. God is a bastard and all the really sick depraved things in the bible that he has done or is credited for, or a the very least advocates, aided or abetted, are accurate reflections of his general douche-baggery...

or

B. A bunch of ambitious, but misguided half-literate Middle Eastern goat-herders, parroted their bigoted, misogynistic world views into a book that does not reflect god's character.

I'll take

C. The bible is a work of fiction, that depicts a right bastard as the creator / ruler of the universe, and the innumerable inconsistencies involving it, and history, science, ITSELF, the human conscience, the social contract, and the ever evolving standards of morality point to its lowly, laughable, and OBVIOUSLY mortal origins. It should be read with all the reverence and fervent belief of a Harry Potter novel, and have just as much influence over the laws of my country.

[Thats my opinion]

47. or D

All through history in every culture, there were those who were confronted by life's most serious questions: Is there any meaning or purpose? Are there values--truth, beauty, reverence etc. which we may not fully understand but are implicit in society? Is there a thin place between what we know, who we are and the sublime which is beyond us? Is there any energy which gives meaning to whatever world or culture we can see? Can we really life by faith, hope and love? Are there people living now or in history who had a grasp on the profundities of life?

So they told stories that were remembered and passed down as holding in fragile vessels some truth about human existence. These stories were retold for generations, collected and finally written down. Every culture has them. And without them that culture would be bereft.

Some may ridicule these stories and those who produced them. But for others there is a touch of the Mystery under which we all live--admit it or not.

[skepticscott]

50. And we call those stories myths

and mature beings recognize that the literal reality depicted in them is tenuous at best, if it exists at all, and that basing "religion" or "faith" or "belief" on them, let alone laws or public policy, is delusional and destructive. Indeed, putting myths in their proper perspective is one of the hallmarks of intellectually mature people.

[deacon_sephiroth]

51. I fixed that for you

All through history in every culture, there were those who were confronted by life's most serious questions: Is there any meaning or purpose? Are there values--truth, beauty, reverence etc. which we may not fully understand but are implicit in society? Is there a thin place between what we know, who we are and the sublime which is beyond us(assuming there is one, there doesn't have to be)? Is there any energy which gives meaning to whatever world or culture we can see? Can we really life by faith(or should we actually seek knowledge and understanding), hope and love? Are there people living now or in history who had a grasp on the profundities of life?

So they told stories that were remembered (or made up) and passed down (or they'd kill you) as holding in fragile vessels some truth about human existence(according to the guys that would kill you if you didn't agree, profound thinkers all). These stories were retold for generations(or you know what!), collected and finally written down(and editted, abridged, ammended, rewritten, translated, retranslated, buggered up, killed for, died for, etc). Every culture has them(as we bear the mark of our lowly ancestry). And without them that culture would be bereft(according to you).

Some may ridicule these stories and those who produced them(Some of us absolutely live for it). But for others there is a touch of the Mystery under which we all live(Mystery: 1.Something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. 2.A handicraft or trade. -- I'm seeing a lot more #2 than #1 these days)--admit it or not.

Admit it? How admirable, you've given me the choice to either ADMIT the truths of your revrent world view or not admit it... I do more than simply not admit it sir, I (as you put it) treat the whole circus with the ridicule that I believe it deserves in a modern and (dare I say it) enlightened (sort of...) society. I place no more amazing truths and powerful keys to unlocking the mysteries of our origins in the modern religious texts than any other myths and legends from ancient man. I find no evidence, no answers, and no reason to believe in Zeus, Odin, Apollo, Allah, Yaweh, dragons, Tiamat, unicorns, fairies, nymphs, trolls, grumpkins, snarks, Cthullu, or Harry Potter. The fact that ancient, ignorant, and exceedingly bored and imaginative people came up with stories that survived because they enforced them with blood and oppression does not impress me or inspire deep feelings in me that I need to admit, or otherwise.

Thus, let me say this, on the main topic, I DO NOT believe that god, space aliens, ghosts, or time traveling Englishmen inspired the bible or any other religious texts because I do not believe in any of the afore mentioned improbable things. I do believe that over the course of human history, some of our very worst individuals have used "faith" and the threats of imaginary dictators, eternal punishments, and the promise of personal salvation to scare the gullible into exalting them. I believe these thugs then spread the myths as far as the power of the stories could take them, and where they encountered resistance, used muscle, blood, torture, and fear to carry it further by sheer terrible force of will. I believe that these survive today in the tamer more palatable versions that modern day gullible masses find more appealing. I believe that to this very day the behavior has hardly changed for some, who still plug "faith" as a way to simply exalt themselves over their fellow man and take their money. All this hand waving and spiritual buzz words is hollow and hysterical to me. I believe that men speaking from the very same imaginary authority of these ancient myths continue to oppress and persecute their fellow humans to this day.

The tools of beauty and self realization for the soul that you so eloquently depict as paintbrushes to be used upon the canvas of wonder to paint the mural of discovery in our vast and "mysterious" universe, are in the hands of others weapons. Nothing but cudgels to rally the ignorant and attack the enlightened, as they have always been, admit it or not.