Looking For The Truth About The Bible

"The interest I have in believing a thing is not proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire

"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be." Albert Einstein

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

If you haven't already guessed, the "it" in the blog title is the Bible. I named this blog after the 1926 classic by Joseph Wheless, Is It God's Word?, and I'm afraid most Christians have not done a real investigation into the answer to this question.

I was indoctrinated from an early age and always just accepted that the answer was yes, and as I got older I only looked for evidence to confirm what I already believed. Uncritical acceptance of the Bible as the verbally inspired word of God was strongly encouraged, and I accepted it as true doing a nominal rather than an actual investigation of the claim. Any of this sound familiar?

An Introductory Note

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Many Christians make extraordinary claims about the Bible, God, sin, hell, heaven, salvation, miracles, etc, and put pressure on others to adopt their beliefs. In other words, they are trying to sell us an extraordinary bill of goods that they think we need. And we, as potential buyers, have every right to be skeptical and ask hard questions  and expect rational, convincing answers. If these types of answers are not forthcoming, we have every right to reject what they are selling. Always remember that the burden of proof is squarely on the person making the claim, especially an extraordinary claim.

This blog is about whether the Bible is the inerrant, verbally inspired word of God or not, and by extension whether Christianity is valid or not.

I plan to post articles that I have written as well as articles written by others. Some posts may be nothing more than a short quote that I think is interesting, informative, or gets a point across in a  humorous or incisive way. I will also probably comment on articles from church websites, especially those close to where I live. The blog will probably do some evolving.

I especially wanted to start this blog because there is a lot of information that Christians, especially fundamentalist Christians, are not aware of.