Inconsistencies and Contradictions of the Bible

A few months ago I was talking to my sister and the topic of inconsistencies in the bible came up.  I tried to show her several scriptures that say things that are inconsistent with each other, and some that say completely opposite things.  If you’re curious about what these scriptures are, a simple Google search will lead you into more knowledge.  But that’s not the point of this post.

My sister is a vey conservative, bible believing christian; fundamentalist…  Every time I brought up one of these inconsistencies, she would tell me that I wasn’t reading it right or that I hadn’t done the proper exegesis.  She would always point me to some BS source like Answers in Genesis for a “proper” understanding of the scriptures we were discussing.  But I can’t accept the answers from these sources since they are usually based on pseudoscience and a particular denomination’s viewpoint of theology.

The other day at work I was thinking about these issues and the thought occurred to me that the real proof that there are inconsistencies in the bible are the christians themselves.  Another easy Google search will show you that there are anywhere from 3,300 to over 40,000 different versions of christianity.  All of them disagree on some point of theology or another.  Yet, ALL of them claim to be basing their theology on the exact same book, the bible.  All of them consider themselves to be true christians, and many consider themselves to be the ONLY true christians.

Now if all of them are true christians and they are basing that belief on their interpretation and reading of the same book, it stands to reason that something about that book is flawed.  How else could there be this many ways of believing, based on the exact same source material, if the source material didn’t have some contradictions, inconsistencies, and vague teachings?

Point made.