4S: Deconstructing the bible

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Good reasons to believe the truth claims of the bible

Don't get too excited by the title. When it comes to good reasons to believe the truth claims of the bible, I don't know any. But I can go over some of the arguments I have heard from Christians. I will try to come up with something original that might serve. But don't hold your breath.

Understand the question. It is not about whether or not the texts have been faithfully handed down. I don't think they have. But that has no bearing on whether or not the claims made in the Bible are true and should be believed. Lots of stories in modern times were handed down faithfully from one generation to another. That doesn't mean you should believe those stories or even waste a lot of time looking into them.

This starts with the realization that Christianity is a wholly biblical enterprise, and only the back third at that. You cannot get at the truth claims of Christianity via history or nature. It is a matter of special revelation. Without it, you not only don't have Christianity, you don't have the Christian god. It is all down to the Bible. So we have to find good reasons to believe it or the gig is up. This week's show focuses on reasons to doubt the Bible But I want to see if we can uncover good reasons to believe it. But first...

Bad reasons

In the video, Kristi said that she initially believed because everyone in a position of trust in her life told her that the bible was true. It is known. And we don't spend a lot of time questioning that which is known. Early in the maturation process, one of the only resources one has for know what is true is the word of people you trust. In some scenarios, it would be unreasonable to doubt certain propositions.

As we grow, we come to realize that trusted people in our lives are sometimes wrong. The first time it happens, it is just a glitch in the matrix. But the more it happens, the less justified we are to believe a thing simply because it was said to be true by someone we trust.

Our progress through studying history and science reveals that not only can a single person be wrong, but lots of people, in fact, almost everyone can be wrong about some things. Pattern recognition teaches us that there are certain areas of study and ideation where masses of people are more often wrong than with others.

We also become aware that some factors lead to masses of people being wrong or that are commonalities in such events. Sometimes, it is as simple as poverty and a lack of good education. It can also be a situation where the circumstances of a society is dire. Desperation can lead a person to jump to conclusions about things they do not fully understand. When people desperately want or need something to be true, they have a way of making it true.

We might also find that religion is often most practiced in places where the situation is most desperate. Evangelism seems to be the most effective when targeted at people who are at their lowest and most vulnerable point. That does not lead to good decision making and truth discernment.

Many of us were indoctrinated into a religious mindset as children. As we know, children don’t have a lot of tools for discerning truth. That is why they are so heavily targeted. If you can get them to trust the Bible and priests and rituals before they are able to properly apply reason to these things, they will likely hold uncritically to some part of them forever.

There is good reason to closely examine all religious claims you have accepted. Religious claims you took on board as a child should be treated with an extra measure of suspicion. Early indoctrination is an effective catalyst for belief. But that doesn't stop it from being a bad reason to believe.

Prophecy

If you challenge a Christian to give you a good reason to believe the truth claims of the bible, one of the first things they will offer is prophecy. For me, the conversation is pretty much over at that point. I no longer have the patience to explain to people why prophecy is a bad reason to believe anything. I will just make this observation:

Many religions feature prophecy. It can also be found in nonreligious contexts. Without spending decades of your life, you can quickly recognize why it isn't worth your time in other contexts. So you should be able to recognize why I find it not worth spending time on in the context of your particular religion.

I will also add that the Hebrew Scriptures from which Christianity finds their prophecies are largely observed by people who use those same passages to repudiate Christianity. Jewish people do not appreciate their religious heritage being the target of religious appropriation by a competing group.

Finally, prophetic language is never straightforward. It never means exactly what it seems to mean unless that will help the case of the person using it. It can never be taken literally so it is always open to interpretation. I see no reason to trust a part of thing that is so interpretively malleable to support the whole of a thing that is so interpretively malleable. Hard to understand prophecies cannot be the validation of a hard to understand bible.

It is emotionally satisfying

Think about all those Christians who have told all those unbelievers over the years to just get a bible and read the book of John. I have read the book of John many times. It is not the pathway to a great awakening of the soul. Yet many Christians still believe that it is. If they can just get you to read some part of it that makes an emotional connection with you, then you will accept the entirety of the sacred texts as true.

It is like the fire in the belly for Mormons. They don't make a lot of strong arguments for why their founding book is true. They just want you to read it and see if it will spark something within you. That is a purely emotional appeal.

I never understood why the book of John was supposed to do the trick. That seems like a weird place to start. My guess is it is the one book of the gospels where Jesus seems to be claiming to be god. He has many encounters with nonbelievers and is at his fiery best. There is a lot of emotion and pathos. Perhaps that is the key.

It is kind of hard to make an emotional connection with Paul. We don't get enough from the disciples to become emotionally invested. Besides, most of them aren't discussed much beyond the gospels. Jesus is the one you need to know, and love, and believe, and hold in your heart as the person who saved you when no one else could.

That said, there are plenty of religions that have emotional stories and characters that create an emotional connection. Buying into the emotion of the book is a poor reason to buy into the truth claims. Truth can and probably should be examined dispassionately. Emotions can cloud our ability to recognize what is true. Just ask any con man how they use emotions to sell a lie.

I don't find the Bible emotionally satisfying, and never have. But I don't deny that others find it extremely so. It makes them feel loved, and seen. It answers their deepest existential questions. It gives them a sense of meaning and purpose. I get it. That is very powerful to some people. But it doesn't make it true. Many people get that same satisfaction from other sacred texts. Am I to accept those because of how emotionally satisfying they are? I don't think so. It is a bad reason to accept those sacred texts and it is a bad reason to accept yours too.

Spiritual confirmation

It is hard to argue against this one. If a person says they have spiritual confirmation that the Bible is true, there is little you can say to convince them otherwise. In fact, you are not in a position to say that such isn't the case. If god is the arbiter of all things spiritual, and you are getting spiritual confirmation of the Bible, then you are getting confirmation directly from god.

The problem with that line of thinking is that it only works for a select group of people. I, for one, have no spiritual confirmation of the Bible. So it convinces me of nothing. Moreover, millions more have never received this spiritual confirmation. If god wants everyone to be convinced that the Bible is true, wouldn't he make sure everyone had the same convincing spiritual confirmation? In the absence of everyone having this sign, it might be more likely that you are mistaking something else for spiritual confirmation.

Positive results

One of the better arguments for why one should believe the Bible is because it is said to have produced positive results in the world. People who follow it and practice the teachings therein have gone on to change the world in near-miraculous ways.

Let's just whistle past all the negative results, the wars, the division, the persecution of those who didn't accept the Bible, and so on. Let's just consider the positive results. Let's also completely ignore the positive results from those who followed other sacred texts.

The bible is not fundamentally a book about positive results to be had in this life. It is not a book of advice about how to live a prosperous and flourishing life on earth. Jesus said to take up your cross, not your flourishing chair. Jesus wasn't trying to help you pay your bills. He was trying to separate you from your earthly treasure. He wasn't trying to give you a happy family life. He was doing the opposite.

I think this is a point that needs to be emphasized. Jesus didn't tell his disciples that by being faithful, he would help them erect hospitals that could provide some treatment and comfort to the sick and dying. He said they could miraculously heal the sick, raise the dead, and do even greater things than what he did.

Jesus didn't care about fixing your society. His message was for you to obey those in charge and expect to be persecuted to death. Your salvation would come via the grave, not the political rally or the vote or the war to establish democracy. So the fact that the Bible has supposedly brought those things about is not proof that the Bible is true. It is proof that enough people ignored it to the extent that they could do what was necessary to create a better society -- one with more flourishing to be enjoyed and fewer crosses to bear.

Earlier, I promised to try to come up with an original thought that could help the Christian. At the time of this writing, I have not done so. But I will continue pushing the cursor to the right in hopes of something that will fit the bill.

Pregnant pause...

Conclusion: Many desire it to be true

At the end of the day, maybe the greatest proof of the Bible's veracity is not in the demonstration of its claims but the desire that so many have for it to be true. We create tomorrow's truth from today's desires. I can imagine a time when raising the dead (or what we consider dead) to be something that is routine. First, it will be the domain of doctors. But eventually, we will be able to do it with a $5 kit.

Today, a bad man like Bill Gates has cured more people of malaria than the good god of the Bible. Maybe he is just a fulfillment of some prophecy. Jesus sent out 12 apostles to spread the gospel. Today, a 12 year old girl can do it more effectively in 10 minutes on the internet than they could with all their power. Here are a couple of my favorite and hopeful passages in all of scripture:

This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel

after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.

And...

The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra's den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

You can find these sentiments in the Old and New Testaments. They are lovely ideas that have yet to find expression in the real world. We can secularize and poeticize these ideas and find them beautiful and hopeful. Might they one day come to pass in some way that we couldn't foresee? Perhaps. And perhaps that deep longing for all to be utopian is the thing that will actually bring it about and make the Bible the most real of all realities.

See you in the comments...

David Johnson