A believer wrote to me, on my Quiz Show: Bible Contradictions video, the following:
“…The questions is, regardless of our thoughts and opinions, do the synoptic gospels, when read collectively, reveal an actual and technical violation of the law of non contradiction, when communicating the resurrection account.”
My response to this person, and anyone who similarly tries to eliminate the points the video makes by taking the semantic approach of defining and/or redefining what ‘contradict’ really really means, follows.
That’s what the question is? No.
That’s not the question at all.
The question is, whether a being capable of CREATING physics, designing the laws that led to the formation of galaxy super-clusters, and who fine-tuned the mathematical constants of the universe with such inconceivable precision, would leave, as its written message to its favorite species, this garbled book of contradictory, slip-shod, wierd, altered, mistake-ridden texts and tell us that if we didn't believe the message they could possibly (by some) be interpreted to convey, then we would suffer eternally after death.
THAT, sir, is "the question". And the answer is "You've got to be fucking kidding me.”
Read new testament history. Learn about the process by which these texts came to be put together, how random, how prone to errors, how late, how infused with the competing ideologies of the day they are.
Think of the breathtaking amount of faith you have in the veracity of people you've never heard of - such as the third and forth guys to copy Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, or the fifth and sixth guys who copied the second letter to the Corinthians. Or the first to translate James’ letter into Latin. Or Greek, its original language, for that matter. Do you think James spoke Greek? Had you even thought of that? Do you think that the first translation into Greek, or Latin, was a good translation? How would we know? Seriously, how would we know that it was a good translation or a lazy one, or an inaccurate one, or even a complete one?!
You don’t know anything about the people whose translation and copying skills you trust to be absolutely flawless. You simply operate on a certainty that they were incapable of making errors.
You're trying to sell to me the idea that this book is the perfect non-contradictory record of the concerns of the being that came up with pi, nuclear physics, and quantum theory IN ITS IMAGINATION. Those things are literally mind-bogglingly accurate, measurable, confirmable. That, if anything, is the fingerprint or signature of a god. Not this jumbled, mistranslated, garbled thrown-together bunch of decades-old records of hear-say tales.
It’s perfectly accurate, just like the laws governing physics? Well, I know for a fact that there are puns attributed to Jesus that wouldn't have worked in the language he spoke, and that he therefore certainly didn't say. They were added later by anonymous editors. I know that there are stories that don't appear in any ANY copy of the gospels for the first 300 years and then gets suddenly inserted. I know that there are competing translations of a few of Paul's passages in which scholars can't know for certain whether he really said x or y, because textual traditions of both can only be traced back so far until all the earlier manuscripts are lost. I know that there are things inserted into the texts later because they interrupt literary forms egregiously.
So, keep trying to tell me that these texts are perfectly non-contradictory, and keep trying to tell me that the only reason I see the texts as anything other than perfectly divine is that I'm coming to them with personal biases. Keep telling yourself that, more like it, because that's all you're really here to do anyway. Keep telling yourself - "He's got biases! That's the only possible reason why anyone would question the perfection of these texts!!”
You’ve only got facts to contend with.
“…The questions is, regardless of our thoughts and opinions, do the synoptic gospels, when read collectively, reveal an actual and technical violation of the law of non contradiction, when communicating the resurrection account.”
My response to this person, and anyone who similarly tries to eliminate the points the video makes by taking the semantic approach of defining and/or redefining what ‘contradict’ really really means, follows.
That’s what the question is? No.
That’s not the question at all.
The question is, whether a being capable of CREATING physics, designing the laws that led to the formation of galaxy super-clusters, and who fine-tuned the mathematical constants of the universe with such inconceivable precision, would leave, as its written message to its favorite species, this garbled book of contradictory, slip-shod, wierd, altered, mistake-ridden texts and tell us that if we didn't believe the message they could possibly (by some) be interpreted to convey, then we would suffer eternally after death.
THAT, sir, is "the question". And the answer is "You've got to be fucking kidding me.”
Read new testament history. Learn about the process by which these texts came to be put together, how random, how prone to errors, how late, how infused with the competing ideologies of the day they are.
Think of the breathtaking amount of faith you have in the veracity of people you've never heard of - such as the third and forth guys to copy Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, or the fifth and sixth guys who copied the second letter to the Corinthians. Or the first to translate James’ letter into Latin. Or Greek, its original language, for that matter. Do you think James spoke Greek? Had you even thought of that? Do you think that the first translation into Greek, or Latin, was a good translation? How would we know? Seriously, how would we know that it was a good translation or a lazy one, or an inaccurate one, or even a complete one?!
You don’t know anything about the people whose translation and copying skills you trust to be absolutely flawless. You simply operate on a certainty that they were incapable of making errors.
You're trying to sell to me the idea that this book is the perfect non-contradictory record of the concerns of the being that came up with pi, nuclear physics, and quantum theory IN ITS IMAGINATION. Those things are literally mind-bogglingly accurate, measurable, confirmable. That, if anything, is the fingerprint or signature of a god. Not this jumbled, mistranslated, garbled thrown-together bunch of decades-old records of hear-say tales.
It’s perfectly accurate, just like the laws governing physics? Well, I know for a fact that there are puns attributed to Jesus that wouldn't have worked in the language he spoke, and that he therefore certainly didn't say. They were added later by anonymous editors. I know that there are stories that don't appear in any ANY copy of the gospels for the first 300 years and then gets suddenly inserted. I know that there are competing translations of a few of Paul's passages in which scholars can't know for certain whether he really said x or y, because textual traditions of both can only be traced back so far until all the earlier manuscripts are lost. I know that there are things inserted into the texts later because they interrupt literary forms egregiously.
So, keep trying to tell me that these texts are perfectly non-contradictory, and keep trying to tell me that the only reason I see the texts as anything other than perfectly divine is that I'm coming to them with personal biases. Keep telling yourself that, more like it, because that's all you're really here to do anyway. Keep telling yourself - "He's got biases! That's the only possible reason why anyone would question the perfection of these texts!!”
You’ve only got facts to contend with.
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