Protestantism is Right

My comment may have been misleading, I am not willing to ‘defend’ Catholicism and this is a shifting of the burden of proof. You made 3 claims that I am prepared to refute. I was willing to stick with the bible and argue over Dogma but not really understanding your position I will argue against the bible Debate set up You have not defined your position so I can’t refute it. There are as many flavors of Christians as there are people and I have not met two Protestants with the same version of God. There are any number of views from a literal 6 day creationist to those that deny that Jesus was God so I really do not know what your position is. What I do know You have made three claims that you need to present evidence for: 1. Protestantism is right (again, I don’t know for certain what this means because you haven’t defined protestant) 2. Protestantism has not strayed from God's teaching. 3. Claim 2 smuggles in a third idea: God presented teaching to protestants Assumptions for your review: I will assume that you attempt to follow the New Testament and accept that God accurately revealed in the Old Testament. You believe that the bible is useful for moral teaching and that the God of the bible is a moral being. You accept some version of hell or eternal punishment and that man’s nature is to do evil. I’ll also assume that your God is all powerful (but cannot do anything logically contradictory), all knowing and loves all of mankind. If you disagree with any of these points let me know and I will present biblical evidence to support them or reveal internal contradictions since I am arguing against the bible. Now onto arguments: The Bible is immoral and ambiguous when used for moral instruction The bible endorses behavior that we now realize is bad for everyone in society. An all knowing God could describe a better moral system that would help everyone and respect individual rights. In fact I would expect his moral code to be brilliant and revolutionize everything currently known. Instead we see exactly what we would expect of ignorant men a few thousand years ago struggling to work out the basics. The bible condones slavery, see Ephesians 6:5-8, and the early church and for many centuries afterward practiced slavery [1]. First Peter 2:18-21 encourages slaves to obey even cruel masters who beat them for no good reason. Exodus 21:20-21 says that you are allowed to beat your slave as long as he does not die within a couple days. In the Old Testament the death penalty was a common requirement arguably for minor offenses. The death penalty was commanded for anyone who worked on Saturday (Exodus 31:15), worshiped another god (Deuteronomy 17:1-5) or ‘cursed’ his or her parents (Exodus 21:17). Wouldn’t a perfect God be expected to work out a better solution for his people? The bible condones genocide on multiple occasions. In First Samuel 15:3 God commands the Israelites to kill the Amalekites making sure also to kill the children and infants. The God of the bible condones and commands immoral actions which is likely inconsistent with your position The problem of hell The New Testament presents an idea not reflected in the Old: eternal punishment for finite crimes. Matthew 25:41 indicates that God will send men to an eternal fire of punishment. For an all powerful creator there are better options: completely destroy sinners avoiding suffering, create a world where sin and punishment are not necessary or punish sinners individually based on what they deserve etc. Sin Nature: evil for existing The bible makes it clear that normal human behavior is evil but God created us and placed us in this environment. Even before ‘the fall’ and man’s ‘choice’ to sin Adam and Eve were naturally naïve and curious of the tree of knowledge leading to there downfall. The bible condemns normal sexual behavior as evil and Paul indicates that it would be better not to have sex at all in 1 Corinthians 7. The natural desire for prosperity is viewed as negative and Jesus indicates that it is extremely difficult for a rich man to go to heaven in Mark 10:25. Faith is a requirement for salvation and nonbelievers are sent to hell but this contradicts natural human behavior. Everything we have learned about knowledge and how it is acquired highlights the need for sound evidence and demonstrable claims. Just do a little reading on the scientific method [2] or consider the legal requirements to determine if someone is guilty of a crime [3]. Why is it everything about how we determine what is true is subverted by the bible without explanation? How is it that we are created so poorly that everything we know about truth contradicts how we could identify the most important truth? The bible as a comedy of errors God creates man. Man immediately sins and is kicked out of the Garden of Eden. A few chapters later mankind has become so evil that God just decides to kill all of mankind with a flood except Noah and his family in Genesis 6. 150 years later God is concerned that mankind is challenging his authority so he decides to mix up there languages so they can no longer talk to each other (Genesis 11). Next God decides to make a covenant with a chosen people who are promptly enslaved by Egypt (Ex 1). God frees the Jews from slavery after a series of miraculous signs and supernatural plagues (Ex 5-12), he parts an ocean so they can walk threw it (Ex 13), feeds them with bread that falls from the sky (Ex 16), leads them with a pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night. Moses leaves for a few weeks and they immediately start worshipping a golden Calf so God commanded the Levites (priesthood) to slaughter several thousand Jews. Why as God presented as this bumbling idiot that can’t seem to get the plan right? Every covenant and generation screws up and is subject to God’s wrath. The trend continues throughout the Old Testament. In the end God’s final plan is to sacrifice himself (Jesus) to himself to exploit a loophole in the law that he created. How does this sound like an all knowing, all powerful creator? Why the constant cycle of mistakes and rearranged plans? Wouldn’t we expect his plan to redeem mankind to be amazing, masterfully executed and minimize suffering. Instead we have this cycle of sin and vengeful punishment. Nothing supernatural about the confusing claims in the bible There is a strong argument that God would never communicate through an ancient language in a book that is so open to interpretation. There are roughly 41,000 denominations of Christianity [4] who all claim to have a more accurate version understanding of the bible and there are many confusing apparent contradictions [5]. Why on Earth would God choose to communicate in such a confusing fashion? If God wrote a book I would expect it to be amazing. I would expect it to include details that would revolutionize the way we think and live. Instead there is nothing helpful offered that this omniscient being chose to share that was not crudely understood but the violent marauding bands that wrote the Old Testament and the ignorant, early civilization that created the new. If primitive, superstitious men cobbled together there meager knowledge and speculation on the afterlife and God this product is exactly what you would expect. -- Well that should do it for now. Remember I need a clear position on some doctrine to refute your claims. Protestantism is very broad; I just had a lengthy debate over a single biblical issue, Atonement. I would recommend you lay out a few basic tenants of your beliefs that you feel are foundational. This may help to focus the rest of the debate. Looking forward to your reply! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://www.thethinkingatheist.com...