Atheism VS Christianity

15: The Bible and The Virgin.

14. How do you know the Bible is true? Name one thing it says that could not have been written by uneducated desert tribesmen 2,000 years ago. The cures for polio and smallpox, for example, can be written in just a few pages. Why doesn't the Bible contain anything like that?

I believe you are all pretty familiar with my style of answering, but for those who haven’t already guessed, I am going to pick this apart piece by piece and see what we’re left with.

A: How do you know the Bible is true?

Because it doesn’t contradict itself, and it doesn’t contradict today’s archeological findings or scientific findings. Instead, it actually predicts certain findings, like the discovery that there was, in fact, a King David.

B: Name one thing it says that could not have been written by uneducated desert tribesmen 2,000 years ago.

Firstly, you’re assuming it was written by uneducated desert tribesmen, when most of it was not. The first five books of the Bible (this includes the book of the law) were written by Moses, the adopted son of a pharoah’s daughter (the pharoah was Ramesses the Great, by the way). Moses would have had some of the finest education in all of Egypt.

I could give more examples, but I think you get the gist.  So, I will edit this challenge so that the facts are straight.

C: Name one thing that it says which could not have been written by highly educated desert men 2,000 years ago.

Well for one thing, I don’t have to, because the Bible was written by highly educated desert men 2,000 years ago.

No one (that I am aware of) has ever claimed that humans didn’t write the Bible.

This belief that Christians say that, stems from the fact that the Bible was inspired by God. That does not mean that God personally wrote it, but rather that He gave them a message, and they did their best to put it into words. Some parts of the Bible are God speaking word for word, others are people trying their best to convey God’s message.

But I think the question you’re really asking is this;

D: Show me one thing in the Bible that could not stem from human knowledge.

I will give one of my favorite examples; The prophesies about Jesus.

Please note; some of these could be fulfilled by anyone, but altogether it is pretty impossible for it to be anyone other than the Messiah.

1: There will be a messanger who will prepare the way for Him.

2: He will grow up poor.

3: He will be from an extremely rare bloodline. (The prophesy follows the bloodline, pinpointing exactly who the messiah would come from. This bloodline was nearly wiped out multiple times throughout history.)

4: He will have no children.

5: He will be from Judah.

6: He will be born in Bethlehem.

7: He will be called out of Egypt. (This prophesy wasn't extremely clear, however Jesus did live in Egypt for several years as a child until God told his parents to return to their homeland, according to the Bible.)

8: He will be kind.

9: He will share good news.

10: He will be a ruler from old. (Hard to prove if this one was fulfilled, however there are examples of times Jesus has known things that only those far older than himself should know.)

11: He will preach mainly in Galilee.

12: He will have protection from physical harm. (Which, if the Bible is true, Jesus gave up this protection for the purpose of his sacrifice.)

13: He will teach with stories. (Uncommon in those days)

14: He will ride the colt of a donkey.

15: He will be born of a virgin. (This is impossible to prove now, but his mother was unmarried, and the punishment for having sex outside of marriage was being stoned to death, making it less likely that this was the case. This makes the theory that Mary was a virgin as likely as it can be.)

16: The stars would tell of his birth. (Now this is very interesting, however I don't have time to get into this at the moment, but I have found proof that something incredible did happen with the stars. I plan to write a christmas book on this maybe next winter, but for those who are really curious, you can find the proof I found at; www.bethlehemstar.com I promise you, you will be blown away by what happened that night, and what continued to happen at the moment of Jesus' death.)

17: He will suffer silently.

18: He will be killed.

19: People will think that he was being punished for something he did.

20: His death was watched.

21: He will be sold for 30 silver coins that were later used to buy the potter's field. (Interestingly enough, after Judas gave the money back to the Pharisees in horror at what he'd done, they used the money to buy a field for burials. This field was called 'Potter's Field'.)

22: He was stabbed.

23: His clothes were gambled over and divided during his death.

24: After he left there would be a great division among the people, and even families would turn against one another. (After Jesus left, there was a huge seperation between those who followed him and those who listened to the Pharisees. Though there are no individual examples of this that I can recall at this moment, some of the stories are so horrific that I have no doubt this occured.)

These prophesies date as far back as 3,000 years before Jesus, all the way to about 350 years before Jesus. Yet they describe in insane detail what would occure. Some of them even describe Jesus expiriencing crucifixion before the method was even invented!

No one can refute the fact that this is more than mere coincidence.

E: The cures for polio and smallpox, for example, can be written in just a few pages. Why doesn't the Bible contain anything like that?

The problem with this question is that you are confusing genres’. Why does any history book not include medical material? Because it is not a medical book. It is a history book. The Bible is (largely) a history book.

Now please, can we put an end to this lack of knowledge as to the authors and genre of the Bible?

15. Which is more likely, that Mary conceived as a virgin, or that Joseph knocked her up. Billions of people have gotten pregnant the old fashioned way-which is more likely here?

Well that’s kind of the point, Jesus wasn’t like the other billions of people. Here’s the thing; a miracle, is by definition something which cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws. So science actually can’t argue this, because it is not claimed to be a natural event, just as science can’t argue the existence of God.

But for the sake of argument;

-Mary was not yet married, meaning she was expected to be a virgin.

-It was against the law to have sex outside of marriage, and the punishment for such was death by stoning.

-Joseph was a respectable man among the Jews, meaning that he was known to keep the law, and act in a righteous manner.

So really, it doesn’t fit the characters for this to have been anything less than God’s intervention. And unless we one day magically made a time machine and traveled back in time, and guarded Mary 24/7 in the days which she was to conceive, there is no way to prove anything for or against the claims that she was a virgin.