Do you have any unanswerable Biblical contradictions?

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on January 25, 2012 at 11:54am

Hi Mantiki,

Well first of all I'd say that trying to find contradictions in the Bible is almost always the wrong strategy, simply because, even if the Bible was consistent or didn't contradict itself (which shouldn't actually be that hard of a feat), that still wouldn't mean that it was divinely inspired. By trying to disprove their claim you are implicitly saying that you've accepted the legitimacy of their claim in the first place.

Also, most Christians don't have any problem recognizing that there are inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible. It's really only the most literalist strain of Protestant theology that takes issue with that; Catholic and Orthodox theology is centered around the fact that the Bible can be inconsistent and can't be taken literally or at face value, and most intelligent Protestants have more or less gone along with this.

But anyway, a simple case of two inconsistent stories are Luke and Matthew's varying accounts on the genealogy of Jesus, the year of his birth and the birth narrative in general.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Otheus on January 25, 2012 at 10:57pm

Good points, all.  BUT many atheists who were once Bible-worshippers say that their faith began to crumble when they realized that there were parts of the Bible that simply could not be explained away.  I was never one of those people but I will have to ask the next one I come across what Bible contradictions/inconsistencies were the ones that were most corrosive of their former delusions.

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Permalink Reply by Will Faithless Sophia on January 25, 2012 at 7:14pm

One contradiction that has had a direct physical impact on me is:

The concept that body modification is a sin because we are created in the image of god who is perfect so any change to that perfection is evil.... and yet almost the first thing you're supposed to do to your new boy child is to cut off a piece of his penis (the foreskin) to please god- a missing foreskin is supposedly his- gods way of branding his sheeple... So what? god forgot to get rid of the foreskin himself and needs you to cut it off for him!? 

Personally I don't like most of the body modifications out there- hair removal is one exception to this general rule... but nothing comes close to the disgusting-ness level of routine genital mutilation.

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