deconversion

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  by Infidel 10 months ago

  I'll move to the forums. I'm still getting used to the site and recognized "The Wall" from my experiences on Facebook.
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  by Ubi Dubium 10 months ago

  Welcome. I hope you'll be posting on the forums whe're it's a little easier to comment.
  
  In any discussion of the "Bible" I think the first place to start is with exactly what you mean by "bible". First, there's the obvoius, that different branches of christianity have different sets of ancient writings that they call their "bible". They Catholics use apocryphal books that the Protestants don't, and if you look at groups like the Ethiopian church, you will see books that most Americans have never heard of. Whose "bible" are we talking about?
  
  Next, if we decide on which one to discuss, then we have the problem of authentication and translation. Even if you believed that the ancient writings were divinly inspired originally, we simply don't have any of the original manuscripts. Not one. We have many copies of copies of copies of copies, and they all disagree with each other. I've been reading lately about this problem, and even though the biblical scholars have been working diligently for many years to reconcile the texts, and figure out what was originaly said, they just really can't get there with the manuscripts we have now. There is just no way to be sure of the original text.
  
  Then, working with our flawed copies of original texts, there is the problem of translating the meaning accurately. All those different English translations out there are good evidence of the difficulty of this. Plus, for the gospels, we already have the problem that Jesus spoke Aramaic, yet the gospels were written years later in Greek. So there is already the problem of translation, right from the beginning.
  
  So is the "bible" valid? All those different versions and translations cannot all be correct. (They can, however, all be wrong!) Is there one you would like to single out for discussion?
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  by Infidel 10 months ago

  Ok. I changed my handle. My first one was just too doubtful. I know what's going on, I just need the courage to admit it.
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  by Infidel 10 months ago

  My first post. What do I say?
  
  I have been de-converting for several months now. I've been a christian for 30 years (I'm not sure I can say that any more) and I can't find my way any more. I started looking several weeks ago online for people who could, maybe, just maybe help me, but most of the sites I found with ex-christians posting on it all sounded pissed off. They seemed to ridicule believers and called the bible "myths" and "fairy tails". While that may or may not be true, I'm looking for honest, sincere discussion about the validity of the Bible since it is the foundation for 2 of the worlds 3 monotheistic religions. Therefore, validity of the Bible will support (or not) the validity of Judaism and Christianity.
  
  What caught my eye on this site was a post, "How did 3 million Jews leave 400 years of captivity in Egypt, wander around for 40 years and leave no evidence of it?" (or is there - I don't know) That struck home with me. If the evidence is there, great. If not, I don't want to pretend that it is.
  
  I'm a skeptic by nature, so be warned- YOUR arguments will be doubted too!