DRZ said:
The Bible is, if taken at face value at least, entirely contradictory.
The fact that it is a piecemeal work of fiction accounts for this nicely and it is usually quite a good debate with a man of the cloth if you take up with him why there are so many contradictions.
It doesnt make sense and it cannot be proven, therefore it didnt happen.
Complete cobblers.
Lets take the word BIBLE away and rename it the Jewish History Book.
If you say the Jewish History Book is a work of fiction then you can also say that all the writings of the Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans, Romans etc was all made up and of course Battle Of Hastings, Fire Of London, Black Death, Battle Of Trafalger etc. The only history we can really start to believe is the second world war because we had media where we saw pictures etc.
From when man invented the written word/symbols he has wrote his history down and The Jewish History Book is no different. 99.5% of the Jewish History Book has nothing to do with Jesus/God but concentrates on wars, plagues, diseases, laws, trade etc and now and then the word God gets mentioned.
Contradictions eg Eye For An Eye and Though Shalt not Kill. They're totally in different books wrote by different scribes who were 100's of miles away from each other (probably) and a 1000 years from each other.
The main problem non believers have (like me) is the Raising Of The Dead and Turning Water Into Wine nonsense. However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (other Jewish history documents) they now realise that they are sayings.
Water equals unbeliever and wine equals believer.
Dead equals unbeliever and living means believer.
Therefore Jesus turned unbelievers in believers.
Since the mid 70's I believed that Jesus was a normal man who was married and that was way before the Da Vinci code.
Sorry for the rant but it gets my blood boiling when people will accept the whole history of the world but selectively say that part of the world made everything up.