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I want to share an interesting yet brief interaction I had with an atheist who came to me at work while on break as I was reading my Bible. They knew I was a Christian because of my shirts that I wear almost daily. read then offer your thoughts on it. I recorded as much as I could right afterwards because I wanted to share it. Straight the point.
He asked “I see that’s a Bible you’re reading right & I keep on seeing your shirts.”
He introduced himself & told me he was an atheist & said “I would like your answers to something I have that has tripped up other Christians”
“Alright”
“We know that the Bible of full of contradictions & errors, especially in the New Testament since the Gospels don’t match & even contradict each other in various places. So what do you say?”
He handed to me a few pieces of paper stapled together with hundreds of supposed errors & contradictions. I almost needed a magnifying glass to read them, the font was that small. I sped red through it & actually many of them I recognized because I studied them already.
I answered “have you studied these yourself?”
“No need to. They speak for themselves, & Anyone in their right mind would agree with me when they read that.”
“I have studied many of these myself already. I don’t see a problem with any of these. How do these ‘contradictions’ & ‘errors’ affect the main Gospel message?”
He was shocked at that “how could you not see a problem there? This is your book so it’s a big deal.”
“First off, It’s not my book & secondly, I won’t make a big deal what you’ll make into a big deal. That won’t happen, besides What were you expecting?”
“You Christians claim that this book is word for word perfect & if there’s a single contradiction or error here, the whole thing falls apart.”
“Actually, that’s not the case”
“How so?” As he leaned forward a little
“In these times, nothing was ever verbatim. It wasn’t the specific words that mattered, it was the heart of the message that mattered. Believing this book to be word for word perfect is mere fantasy. I have learned from J. Warner Wallace with Cold case Christianity & InspiringPhilosophy on YouTube that we ought to expect some kind of “corruption” in the Bible to be realistic, especially when it comes language barriers that have to be worked around. I have a lot of notes on that, that I can share here & now.”
He tried to avoid that “So you can make sense out of these contradictions & errors?”
“Yes. Many of them are called unintended eyewitness support statements. The Bible is full of them. No two witness will ever agree on every detail. In fact, from what I’ve learned from these two sources, if the Gospels were anymore alike than they are now. Then I would be skeptical.”
“So what do you make of the 400,000 or so variants we have found?”
“Not a problem”
I could see he was a little startled “how so?”
“Less than 2% of them actually effect the meaning of the text. Watch the sources I mentioned earlier or their website. I have a lot of notes on this stuff plus their oral traditions. I can share them right here & now.”
He tried to avoid it again “So then you don’t care If you offend anyone with your truth?”
“I wrote down these words from Jordan Peterson so I wouldn’t forget them, ‘if you’re gonna think in a culture that’s doesn’t want you to think, especially contrary to it, then you have to run the risk of being offensive to everyone around & being offended be everyone around you. Just like with you, you’re willing to risk offending me for the sake of what you believe to be true. That’s freedom of speech for you. I also have that right’ So I don’t mind offending you. Would you like to hear my notes or I can send them you to read.”
“No thank you. So, why should you trust in that book since it was written by people & people make mistakes, big ones over two thousand years?” As he pointed to my Bible.
First I thought, did he really just ask that?
Then replied “You know, you just eliminated everything written by people including the books you trust in & any book you would write. Even more, you just eliminated everything you said before this. So why should trust what you say then? I have notes on that too from the sources I mentioned earlier called chain-of-custody. Lastly I remember read this from the book “God’s War on Terror” beware of those who are willing to deny historical facts to have their way.” Then I challenged him, “Try approaching the Bible with the same level of skepticism as you would the Quran or any other religious book, & without a philosophical bias. Nabeel Qureshi & Lee Strobel are good ones to learn from, then meet with me again”
I could tell he had enough & he left. I guess I won’t be meeting up with him again.
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