The Bible is not God's Word

Thank you so much for understanding, Con :) I was forced to automatically forfeit the last round due to my internet connection shutting down on me. I suppose I will just pick up with what I would have written in round 3. You said "You had kings, shepherds, prophets and poor men a simple study of the life and culture of people in the time shows how greatly the culture differences where for these groups. There is a vast difference in the culture of a poor man and King." I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. They all still came from the same region and share the same cultural values. Take the example of the USA, a region many times larger than Canaan. While there is a rigid division of social class in our society, all Americans generally agree that freedom is good and oppression is bad. In the same way, all Israelites would have generally agreed that absolute faith and love in God is good and disobeying God is bad (major theme of most of the Old Testament stories). In addition, you did not address the fact that the compilers of the Bible purposely included only stories with similar themes for the Bible; there are several stories left out of the Old Testament that are included in Hebrew scriptures. You said "...you want me to use my knowledge and logic to respond to a video that is not yours or your logic. Why is ok for you to use the work of others but when I reference the fact that these so called contradictions are all addressed in a book already, all you can do is say why not use my own logic? Really thanks for the laugh." This sounds like an attempt to stall time so that you can just make a general claim that all Bible contradictions are misunderstandings, rather than actually address specific contradictions. I can list every single Bible contradiction I know if that is what you want; I simply thought that it would be more interesting and convenient for everyone if I presented them in an easily accessible video; your book is not accessible at all to me. That is why I would rather that you disprove specific Bible contradictions, or maybe find and post your own anti-Bible contradiction video. I don't mind if you use your book as a source, but don't just name a book and think that you have convinced anyone that the Bible is the non-contradictory word of God. You said "...many historians consider minor variations to be evidence in favor of the truth of an account, and in fact if they all totally agreed then it would be said that they are only copies of one another." When I say "Bible contradictions", I do not mean minor variations in how the story is told, like the Jesus-Centurion-Daughter story. I mean when it clearly states one thing, and blatantly states the opposite of that somewhere else. This occurs several times throughout the entire Bible, especially when describing God himself. (SEE VIDEOS IN ROUND 1). Historians don't invalidate a source based on minor variations between accounts; they will, however, invalidate a source if it clearly contradicts itself over and over and over again. You said "...at times people will die for a lie they believe is the truth, however no one will die for something know is a lie." I am not saying that parts of the apostles' stories couldn't have been true. All those miracles Jesus did, including the Resurrection and whatnot could have been true; after all, God made the laws of nature, so he is not limited by them. However, the apostles are only human, and the blatant contradictions between their writings prove that they were not all inspired by God, even though they were most definitely writing for God's cause. They were no doubt very devoted to Jesus, which is why they were so dedicated to the spread of Christianity and were willing to tell white lies in order to achieve that goal (e.g. Christian exclusivity, all Christian prayers being answered, etc). The Romans weren't punishing them for their white lies; they were punishing them for encouraging disunity in the empire through the introduction of a new, monotheistic religion that went against Rome's polytheism. The apostles weren't risking their lives to defend their white lies; they were risking their lives to defend the spread of Christianity as a whole. You said "[the Gospels were written] within the lifetimes of both friendly and hostile eye witnesses. So if these writings were false they could have easily been challenged and changed, or shown to be totally false, take notice to the total lack of these type of writing anywhere in history." Also take notice that to most people, Jesus was nothing more than random homeless preacher who had gained some really loyal followers. Not many people knew Jesus personally during his lifetime. Many of his followers were most probably illiterate, as they came from the poorer classes of Judea. Meanwhile his haters couldn't care less about his life or teachings; all they wanted was to remove a threat to the Roman Empire's unity. There was no motivation to write anything about Jesus other than to spread Christianity, and that is what the apostles were doing in their writing of the New Testament. The rest of your argument seems to be about the historical validity of the Bible, and I must remind you, that even if the Bible was a valid source of historical information, it does not mean that it is God's word. A book can be historically valid without having any trace of divinity in it. We can have a separate debate purely over Biblical historicity later. To summarize, the apostles were risking their lives to spread Christianity because they were just that devoted to Jesus, their Lord and Master, and they were willing to stretch the truth to accomplish that goal. But honestly, the single most convincing argument for the Bible's non-divinity is how self-contradictory it is. And by the way, the Old Testament is an even larger part of the Bible than the New Testament, so even if you could prove the New Testament's divinity (which you haven't) then you would still have left out the majority of the Bible. Once again, thank you for your consideration, Con. Back to you.