A serious question for Iona and pete. This question demands an answer.

There were sixty gospels altogether, including the Gospel of James, Jesus' brother. Yet only only four were included in the Bible.

There are Bible scholars, made up of clergy and laity of all denominations, who have gone through these excluded gospels and compared them with the included four. One of the products of this extensive study is that they have made up a general breakdown of the quotations of Jesus in the included Gospels and gave each quote one of four ratings:

Definitely said.
Probably said.
Probably did not say.
Definitely did not say.

I won't go into detail about how they came up with these ratings, but they discussed, argued, and debated each quote long and hard before they drew these conclusions. Partial criteria were, how closely did the Gospels, included and excluded, agree, and how consistent is a particular quotation with the general views that Jesus expressed?

So, Iona and pete, even your "red-letter editions" of the Bible leave a great deal to be desired when it comes to Jesus' teaching.

The Bible is a book of mythology. This does not mean that it is all lies and fluff. Far from it. Nor does it mean that some events described in the Bible did not actually happen, if not necessarily exactly as described.

Oftentimes mythology can tell you a great deal, and express great truths. In fact, that's what a myth is all about. But the mistake is in taking a myth as historical fact, which is what fundamentalists and Biblical literalists insist on doing—often obscuring the real truth that lies within the myth. By nit-picking over such things as the details of Noah's flood—where did the water come from, did it cover the whole earth, or was it just a very large local event, etc., you miss the whole point of what the myth is trying to impart.

Instead, you writhe and twist trying to make meteorological, oceanographic, geological, zoological, and ship-building impossibilities fit in order to prove the reality of a whole string of impossibilities.

The story of Noah's flood, the ark, and the animals is a myth. Or at the most, it was based on a local event that has subsequently been mythologized.

The process of evolution is an established fact. The only arguments about evolution (apart from the ones that Creationists make because they find it inconvenient) is in the nuts-and-bolts details of how certain specific things took place.

By the way, evolution is STILL going on!

Did it ever occur to you that evolution is the mechanism by which God did it?

But to cut to the chase:   I know people who are scientists and who have no doubts whatsoever about the size and age of the Cosmos, and the age of the solar system, including the earth, and who do not doubt evolution--AND who would merely shake their heads over the attempts to rationalize the details of the Noah's flood myth—who are regular, church-going Christians. I know Christian ministers, including a couple of bishops, who can give you chapter and verse on where the Bible obviously goes off the rails as a book of moral instruction, and who certainly don't look to it for accurate historical facts. Yes, Christians, including clergy.

Answer this question please:   Do you believe that it is possible to question, doubt, or disbelieve some of the contents of the Bible and still be a Christian?

If not, why not?

Don Firth