What Is a Book without Substantiation?

The Christian religion is a compound and combination of all the theological writings of the followers of Moses and Jesus. We have no evidence that either of these men wrote any part, either of the Old or New Testament. From Genesis to the Apocalypse of St. John, a vast variety of fact, fable, principle, wickedness, and error is exhibited to view. The book, though bound together, appears to be in many respects discordant; the historical part has no accurate connection; the moral part is distorted, deficient, or wicked; the doctrinal parts are either unintelligible, or contrary to moral and philosophical truth.... What is a book, whether it be denominated sacred or not, unless the human mind is capable of discovering the evidence by which the truth of such book can be substantiated? The Bible, which means nothing more than a book; the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which means nothing more than the heterogeneous writings contained in the former, and the incoherent and unintelligible will of various beings contained in the latter; what are all these to the correct decisions of human intellect, unless the matter therein contained can be collated with the immortal principles of truth in the system of nature?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Impossibility of Illogical Thought

Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically. It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an 'illogical' world would look like. It is as impossible to represent in language anything that 'contradicts logic' as it is in geometry to represent by its a coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist.... In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.... Self-evidence, which [Bertrand] Russell talked about so much, can be dispensable in logic, only because language itself prevents every logical mistake.--What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus   3.03, 3.031, 3.032, 5.473, 5.4731 (H/T: Roderick T. Long )      
Read more

Is He Having a Laugh?

According to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the government is God's appointed agent on earth, and each of us owes it allegiance and obedience. If that's so--and I for one don't believe either part of that statement--I'd like some believer to explain what God had in mind when he arranged things so that one of the two major-party clowns running for president will be elected in November. Is He having a laugh?
Read more

Happy Passover, 2024

In an earlier incarnation many, many years ago, I would be getting ready to celebrate Passover . This is the holiday that commemorates Yahweh's liberation of the children of Israel from enslavement in Egypt (long before the Arabs got there). Yahweh did this, according to the Good Book, by inflicting collective punishments on the Egyptian people -- ranging from turning the Nile River and other water sources into blood, to sending swarms of frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts throughout the land, to killing all first-born persons and cattle, even those of slaves (non-Israelites, presumably) -- 10 "plagues" in all. As unjust as that collective punishment seems, it was Yahweh's response to the recalcitrance of Egypt's absolute ruler, the Pharaoh. According to the story, he repeatedly changed his mind about "letting [the Israelite] people go" after promising Moses he would do so. That's why Egypt, that is, all Egyptians, kept getting hit with plagues.  Howe...
Read more