Christian-haters Tactics 101

1. Insult the stupid Christian

I have a PhD in organic chemistry from UCSD. Do you consider that education? What higher degree could I have gotten?

2. Make a broad statement via the "begging the question" methodology

We were discussing about whether the content of the Bible had been altered and whether any of the content have been proven wrong. So let's just use the desired conclusion as the starting point for the discussion: logical fallacy (beg the question).

3. Use lies when useful

All of the modern translations of the Bible (I only can testify about English and Japanese translations) were translated directly from Greek manuscripts for NT (possibly with an excpetion of parts of Matthew, which may have been written in Aramaic) and directly from Hebrew manuscripts for OT. I do keep hearing from skeptics that the Bible was translated many times successively, which is not true. I suspect that they get this idea from the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate. If the modern English translations come from those only, that accusation is partially true, but they don't. Besides, as I've stated, many Bible teachers consult the original Greek manuscripts before teaching so that any misguided English translation will not get in the way of teaching the Bible, and modern translations are very rarely off.

4. Switch the subject if you don't know the answer

For starters, archeological evidence:
-Joshua in Egypt, Israel in wilderness, Jericho, king David, Solomon and their descendants who were kings, king Xerxes, king Cyrus, Babylonian conquer of Judah, Herod(s), Pilate, Mary & Martha, Churches mentioned in Acts.... I can't list them all

Scientific evidence
Although the Bible doesn't address scientific issues, there are somethings that are mentioned that we didn't know from science until the last few centuries: currents in the ocean, the earth being a sphere, water cycle in climate, mountain formations, origin of fossils, the earth suspended in space, material made of invisible particles, etc etc
There are tons more that I don't have time for. These are evidences in support of the authenticity of the Bible. Not proofs.
So, what part of the Bible has been PROVEN wrong? Especially the historical stuff. I'd love to know! Don't switch the Q!

If you plant to hate stupid Christians, these lessons in logical fallacy tactics should be helpful to you :)

Wait, it's ok for Ehrman to use the content of the Bible to discuss its trustworthiness, but it's not ok for me? Please enlighten me here. And how does that translate in your mind into "All your arguments so far have been to point to the bible which is to say they have been an appeal to authority"??? I smell bias. how about you?

You put a wikipedia link to the Alexandrian manuscripts, but did you know that there are very little manuscriptual evidence that that codex is authentic and therefore almost all reputable modern translations of the Bible do not follow Codex Sinaiticus? They all follow the Textus Receptus (cant' remember the spelling) for the most part.

Finally how do you justify making a broad statement about the Bible as a whole in the middle of a specific discussion about details like comparing the Q doc theory with what's actually in the book of Luke? That's just name calling and not an intelligent conversation, I think. Oh, PS you still haven't told me what part of the Bible has been known to be false. What historical accounts in the Bible have been proven wrong? I'm dying to know. Please don't tell me to go read a book. If you've research to your satisfaction, you must know a specific example by heart, right? Besides, I believe in Jesus, which by your prejudice must mean I'm probably illiterate anyway (although I have a PhD)...

So how is Luke stating that he's a late comer in gospel writing unscientific? How does that conflict with any fact? It only conflicts with the Q doc THEORY. Don't base your facts on theories. But I know the type. You're probably one of those people who can't accept a single verse in Bible as fact because it's in the Bible. And don't preach to me about scientific in that derogatory manner unless you're qualified and it's necessary. I have a PhD in organic chemistry from UCSD :)

Also you appear to be misinformed about how modern (not the 15, 16th century stuff, but 17th and onward) translations of the Bible were made. For NT, they are direct translation from the Greek manuscripts. For OT, they're direct translation from the Hebrew manuscirpts although they do consult the Septuagint. Those manuscripts in the original languages are readily available. So when you're studying the Bible you can discern whether a particular translation of a word or a sentence is sound or not. I do that all the time.

I'll try to respond in full later, but your citation is Ehrman? Really? His book is simply textual criticism! I'm sure you know what that means practically. It just means scholars say "there are different tones in which text is written in this book. So there must be more than one author!" Even within one post on /., I change my tone sometimes. This is far from the Bible being "proven" to be altered.

Yes, I've heard about the Q doc. Just the fact that Luke admits to being a late comer in the gospel writing business alone puts that whole theory in doubt. There is nothing concrete that you've put forth here. Nice try tho

Really. When and what part of the Bible was changed? And WHO knows this? That's news to me. The AC above said that there are 1000 manuscripts of the NT, but that's inaccurate. there are ~25,000 manuscripts found to date of the NT. Except for some minor spelling errors, they're virtually totally identical. These manuscripts are found all over the world. If there was any error or change introduced in the past, that should have been reflected in some of the manuscripts, leaving the 25,000 manuscripts differing from each other. However, that's not the case. So it's one thing to say you don't believe the Bible was directly inspired by God, but it'd be disingenuous to believe that the Bible, especially the NT has been altered.

Also, the so-called "Q source" is most likely nothing more than the gospel of Mark, which was the earliest gospel of the four. I'm sure that the gospel of Mark inspired the others ones. In fact, here's how the gospel of Luke begins "Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write a careful account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught." (Luke 1:1-4, NLT)

So please do your homework. I'm not sure a quick search in Wikipedia really counts :Q

Please do some homework before putting people down. The oldest fragment of the gospel of mark that archeologist's have found come from the late AD 30's. Do you believe what's written in Homer's Iliad? There are ~1000 times more manuscriptual evidence for Jesus than anybody in Illiad.

Bingo! I wish I had mod points for this most informative post in the thread!

Sorry to say, but sincerely, you've shown your ignorance regarding the significance of the Dead Sea scrolls in the context of Christianity. Very briefly (somewhat watered-down version), the DSS are important to Christianity primarily because of the manuscripts of books like Isaiah, which contain detailed prophecies about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The criticism against the Bible used to be that books like Isaiah contained way too much details about Jesus' death especially that the critics used to say "Isaiah must have been written/altered after Jesus of Nazareth came about because Isaiah couldn't have predicted all these details!". However, the dating of the DSS prove that the book of Isaiah was written at least before BC100 and had not been altered since.

Therefore it's impossible that anyone has altered the prophecies about Jesus after the fact. Also because the bulk of the DSS were written before Jesus' time, there is NO New Testament writing in the DSS collection. So no Christian scholar is looking for NT books like you're implying.

So many people here are talking about this like they actually injected the patient with HIV. They didn't! They just had to use a retrovirus to modify white blood cells' genes. It could've been any retrovirus, but HIV was apparently the choice. That's all. So there is no "trade off" between AIDS and cancer that they need to be concerned about. The only issue now is whether this approach will work with a statistically significant number of patients or not.

Just type in "top" in a terminal. When done, hold Ctrl and press c. It's the best way to see what's using CPU w/out impacting the CPU usage.

I am thankful I have a job and a house, etc. However, my take home pay is barely >$2,200 / month. I got my PhD from UCSD in 2009 and I do get paid more than my peers who also have doctorates and hold the same position as I. But I still get paid less than a lot of high school graduates I know of... :(

That is very true. In the "real" academic science world, there is often little or no grant funding that could be allocated to address criticism or disputed results that came from your lab. Consequently, disputed matters get left behind because "scientists" are more interested in doing new experiments that they could put in their next grant proposal. So in a weird way, the mythbusters are more scientific than "real scientists".