The Question/Argument: In response to THIS article, then you would say that all of these verses were/are taken out of context, correct: www(dot)bibliotecapleyades(dot)net/biblianazar/esp_biblianazar_81(dot)htm ?
Hello,
First off thank you for your comment, we appreciate it when people take the time to ask questions or provide discussion material.
In regards to your question, I am a little unsure how you are wanting me to answer that based on the article/page you cited. Some of the content has already been addressed in our site, I’m not sure if you haven’t looked at it or it wasn’t explained to your liking, but please let us know what specifically it is you are looking for or what questions/arguments you’d like addressed in particular.
The page you linked appears to be a ‘shotgun’ type approach (that is, the auther compiles a big list of verses with a one sentence summary of why the verse or whatnot ‘proves’ that God is bad or the Bible isn’t real or some other similar thing), intended to overwhelm the reader into believing that, due to the amount of ‘problems’ the author has ‘exposed’ they MUST know their stuff and therefore they MUST have the truth about this God and His Bible…
There are a number of problems with this type of approach. Firstly and perhaps the most obvious is this: attempting to take a single verse or couple of verses (which yes would indeed mean they are taking it out of context), and then justify that the verse proves a certain point of view or theological aspect with a brief, one-sentence explanation, is ludicrous. I mean think about this for a moment. The Bible is likely THE most debated and argued over book in the world; scholoars, scientists, philosophers, theologians, etc, etc. (aka, some very smart, educated and well-respected people in their fields) have spent thier lives debating the content of this book and the ‘God’ questions and they still do and will continue to do so. BUT, here you have an author who compiled a (relatively short if you consider the content pool they took from) list of verses that they are attempting to say ‘prove’ God isn’t good or the Bible isn’t true with a one sentence explanation… A one sentence explanation cannot provide any depth or real information to backup their claim, all this results in is extremely shallow and in many cases silly arguments that don’t even make sense.
So, what does that say about the author of this article? I believe it says one of two things; either they are not very knowledgable about the subject matter they are attempting to disprove, which is why they would only take a few verses out of context, tag a brief explanation of why it ‘proves’ something and move on (aka, they are not really interested in actually discussing or finding the truth, they are simply wanting to find things to validate their point of view in their mind or attempt to convince other like-minded individuals of the same thing), or, they are knowledgable, they know none or very few of their points actually stand up under scrutiny and are simply banking that their readers will not actually do any research into their topics and will just accept the author’s word as fact and move on…
For example, the ‘unicorns’ the author mentions in Deuteronomy 33:17 is simply a translation issue and only found in a few of the many translations/versions of the Bible. This article goes into more detail about that and a simple google search on the subject will provide more easily accessible and understandable information on this. My point being it’s extremely easy even for someone who doesn’t have much knowledge or understanding of the Bible to recognize the author’s claim in this instance as erroneous.
Another example, Genesis 6:6-7, the author claims because a ‘few’ people displeased Him, that God regretted creating humans and decided to remove them from the earth… Again, if you read Genisis 6, it’s obvious the author blatantly lies to their reader as it’s apparent if you bother to read Genesis 6:5 that it’s ALL the human race that had become evil… It goes further to talk about Noah and whatnot (aka because God found a single person who wasn’t evil, he did in fact NOT wipe out everyone) but the point being, the crucial and MOST important aspect of this passage (that it was ALL of the human race that had turned evil) was conveniently masked by the author and replaced with false information that changed the entire premise of the topic and suited their personal belief or point of view. So essentially, the author took a couple verses (yes, out of context), changed some crucial information in those verses and then attempted to pass it off as fact/truth and claimed it ‘proved’ their point.
Lets continue with another example, the author mentions Exodus 21:7-8 as ‘proving’ a father may sell his daughter as a ‘sex slave’ and therefore the ‘barbaric’ and ‘evil’ ways of God and of the Bible and how civilized we are in our society (where porn is king I might point out…) and how much better off are we without believing in this God and His ‘laws’. So firstly a simple search on the subject shows there is no mention of ‘sex slaves’ this article goes into further detail and there is plenty of other information on this and on what ‘slaves’ in Biblical terms actually meant (this article talks about what ‘slavery’ meant in that time/culture). Secondly, the author is taking the culture of that time period, not to mention specific Jewish traditions/laws and attempting to apply them to our current culture and claim that because they don’t co-align that God and the Bible must be bad…
So again, what do these few instances tell us about the author? I believe it proves one of two things. Either a) the author has extremely poor knowledge of the subject matter they are attempting to discredit (they don’t know the Bible or haven’t bothered doing even basic research into the book/history/translations, etc.) or b) they do know the subject matter and are intentionally modifying/hiding various bits in their article in hopes that their readers would be too lazy and/or lack the knowledge to know or find out the truth of the matter and just accept their information as ‘fact’.
In either instance. that type of work isn’t the kind of information that will provide relevant data to find the truth with. If you are simply looking for something that coincides with your viewpoints that you can toss at some ‘Christian’ people to ‘prove’ their belief is false without doing any work or having any real knowledge of the Bible or God, then this sort of article would certainly appeal as at first glance it does indeed appear to have a variety of points that ‘prove’ the Bible is wrong and God doesn’t exist or is bad or whatever… However looking at the actual information the author provides and doing just a bit of research begins to put some serious holes in their logic and expose some fallacies in the information they provided.
I guess the bottom line here is it depends on you and what you are looking for. If you’re genuinely looking for the truth and answers, there isn’t much in the article you quoted that stands up to any sort of scrutiny and can be easily discredited/discounted. If you are simply posting it in an attempt to validate your own feelings/beliefs about the Bible/God and are not really concerned with what is actually true or not, then you will probably have better luck doing that on an Athiest forum/site as you’ll be received with numerous agreements and head-nodding and the like I’m sure and very little examination/evaluation of the actual information provided.
We have gone into more detail about many of the points this author mentions, for example: Rape Victims, Slavery, Killing Non-Believers, Fighting/Wars, Genocide, etc. I could continue going through the author’s content point-by-point, however most of it can be easily discounted with a bit of basic research into the subject matter, or has already been addressed in our site, and if not will certainly be addressed at various other sites, as all the author’s points are quite theologically shallow and what I would consider ‘basic’ in terms of understanding and ease of addressing. As such I don’t see any point in continuing, but I’d love to discuss or address any specific issues/questions you may have, so please let us know if you did have anything in particular about what the author mentioned or any other questions/arguments and I’d be happy to get into them.