#antitheism

I was once asked why I don’t find the bible to be a trustworthy source of information. When discussing theism I nearly immediately dismiss Bible quotes when they are used as ‘evidence’ in support of a position. In response, I wrote the following:

Let’s assume for a second that each reader of the bible has a perfect understanding of the words they read. There’s no miscommunication what so ever between the text of each page and the reader’s mind. Nothing is taken out of context and all of the passages that are metaphors are rightly understood to be so, and all of the literal parts are correctly understood to be literal. 

That’s not likely, but let’s give the Christian the benefit of the doubt and assume a perfect understanding of the texts. 

Well, we know that the Bible was compiled from multiple sources. Let’s assume that *before* the reshuffling, the Bible was wrong, and *after* the reshuffling it was corrected to the perfect intent of the word of God. Let’s assume there were no political motivations for the compilations or what was left out or added into the bible. 

That’s not likely, but let’s give the bible the benefit of the doubt and assume a perfect compilation of the texts. 

Well, we also know that the Bible was not written in English, that various sections were translated from Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek to Latin and then into English. Let’s assume that the people doing the translations got the translations perfectly. 

That’s not likely, but let’s give the translators the benefit of the doubt and assume a perfect translation of the texts. 

Well, we also know that the New Testament spent anywhere from 70-300 (For the New Testament, thousands for the Old Testament) years passed down orally. Let’s assume that each oral record keeper remembered every single line and parable exactly correctly, without a *single* memory lapse. 

That’s not likely, but let’s give the record keepers the benefit of the doubt and assume a perfect recall of what they’ve heard. 

Well, there still was the first eye witness testimony. The person who saw each event in the first person, and relayed it to the first Oral record keeper. Given what we know about eye witness testimony being completely unreliable, let’s still assume that every eye witness of every event in the new testament perfectly saw each event. None were drunk, none had dust in their eyes. None exaggerated or fell to confirmation bias. Each event was during perfect weather with great visibility. 

That’s not likely, but let’s give every witness the benefit of the doubt and assume they had perfect perception of the events they saw. 

Well, there still was the initial event those eye witnesses saw. Let’s assume that none of the involved parties engaged in any slight of hand. There was no deception or delusion, no ill intent or narcotics. Each person involved was completely genuine and earnest in their role. There were no political power plays, none fell into the normal mental lapses caused by joining cults with charismatic leaders. 

That’s not likely, but let’s give Jesus/The Apostles the benefit of the doubt and assumed that everything they said/did was 100% earnest and accurate. 

So to surmise, let’s assume we have a perfectly understood, perfectly compiled, perfectly translated, perfectly remembered and told orally, perfectly witnessed events by genuine folks that would never lie to gain power over their peers. 

We STILL are left with events that could have natural causes that weren’t seen or understood at the time due to a lack of education. Even something as unlikely as aliens interfering with ancient civilizations, time traveling humans, or just extremely unlikely coincidences. 

But in reality, NONE of the things above are likely to be true, and as such we are left with a book that few understand, compiled by people who may have had a political agenda, translated by people who may have added their own interpretation, written down be people who may not have understood oral historians, who may have misremembered events that may have happened differently than eyewitnesses remembered that were driven by people who may have been deceptive around events they may not have understood. 

This, in my opinion, lands the trustworthiness of the bible at approximately zero.