Yes, but if a basic point of the work is that God is the Creator, and He is able to do things which apparently violate the laws of physics, then there’s no internal contradiction.
Are you talking about evidence that something did not happen, or merely a lack of evidence that it did happen? I’d be interested to hear about the former, and couldn’t care less about the latter.
Forgive me, but you seem to be focusing on the wrong part of my post. My point is that all the arguments for Yahweh’s existence, power, and sovereignty apply equally well to Zeus and Odin. Do you ask us to believe that the Elder Eddas or the Iliad represent truthful relations of events? If no, then why is the Bible privileged?
Well, the word “substantially” does allow for a lot of wiggle room. I believe, for example, that the Exodus happened pretty much as reported. And Creation too, though I believe that it was slowly over zillions of years and the word “day” was poetic rhetoric.
AH! Now that’s a good question! Unfortunately, I have to go take care of dinner now. But I do promise to follow up sometime in the next 12-18 hours. Sorry!
Quoth Knorf:
Probably Biblical Archaeology Review. My dad’s always telling me about the latest exciting thing he’s read in there.
And Keeve, if you take the “Days” of Genesis as poetic rhetoric and so on, then what’s left about the Biblical creation account to be substantially similar to reality? Is it any more substantially correct than any other religion or mythological tradition’s creation story?
I think you’re missing his question. Part of the documentary hypothesis says that the various sources that make up the Torah or Pentateuch or whatever you want to call the first five books of the bible were redacted and combined at some point or another into the version we have now, and most of the documentary hypothesis people think that the redactor was Ezra and that the work was redacted after the Jews came back from the Babylonian exile.
A potential problem with this theory, though, is that the Samaritan Torah is substantially the same as the Jewish Torah. There are differences, obviously, but the two works clearly had one source. The problem is, this raises a potential problem with the idea of Ezra as redactor, given what it seems like relationships were between the Jews and Samaritans were at and after the time of Ezra. So the question is, how do you reconcile the existence of the Samaritan Torah and Ezra as redactor.
Well, they have to do it sometime. And since you believe that the absence of evidence signifies nothing other than a need to keep looking, you apparently want them to wait forever.
IMO all the evidence you need about the veracity of the Bible is in Matthew 21:19-22. That’s where Jesus promises that anyone who has faith will get whatever he asks for in prayer. He doesn’t say that “sometimes the answer is no,” and he doesn’t say that the result will be some ambiguous “sign,” within some undetermined time, that you must notice and interpret correctly.
He says you will get whatever you ask for, and he illustrates that the result will be immediate by causing a fig tree to wither, for the crime of not having fruit out of season. Note that this petty and spiteful curse also preempt the lame excuse that you are only allowed to pray for something noble or unselfish. He goes on to say that you can even ask for stupid, useless, show-off things, like casting a mountain into the sea.
His promise has been broken a thousand times a day for the last two thousand years. The simple peasants of 14th century western Europe had a faith untroubled by doubt. They did not question the literal truth of Genesis, as they knew nothing about evolution or astronomy that contradicted it. Most of them didn’t know anyone who wasn’t Catholic. And when the Black Death came, they must have prayed constantly for it to spare their village.
But it didn’t.
A lack of evidence for spectacular events that were visible to many people IS evidence that they didn’t happen.
If Jesus walked on water, and nobody was around but a couple of his disciples, then you’re right — the fact that it’s only reported in the Bible is not evidence against it.
But if Matthew claims that when Jesus was crucified, the Jewish saints came out of their tombs and walked around Jerusalem, and many people saw them, then the lack of any accounts of that outside the Bible, or even outside of Matthew, is IMO very strong evidence that he just made it up.
This morning, instead of commuting to work in my car, I just closed my eyes and magically teleported to the office. This should be completely believable to you, because if there is a God, and He is able to do things which apparently violate the laws of physics, then there’s no reason it couldn’t have happened.
Just wanted to note, Captain Amazing got it completely right (as usual. He truly is amazing). That is my question. Someone else posed it to me awhile back and…I haven’t found a good answer yet.
Is there any test that anyone can conduct to prove that I’m not the Son of God?
You can kill me, but Jesus allowed himself to be killed.
You can ask me to do a miracle but Jesus was unable to perform a miracle when the people around him didn’t believe in him. Or I can always fall back on “I’m not your trained seal.” Or, if it’s coming back after you kill me, “I will do that very soon, but no man knows the day or the hour (and it might be over 2000 years from now).”
You can pray to me for the power to do your own miracles, and I will cheerfully grant it. It will work just as well as the power Jesus granted to everyone in Matthew 21.
It ends up pretty similar to what the scientists say, too. Gases coalescing into stars and planets, directed evolution and all that. No problem.
Not necessarily “forever”. But they’ve spent a few hundred years of archaeology studying a few thousand years of history. That seems pretty imbalanced to me. Just not fair. Get back to me in a millennium or two.
Keeve, is there any argument for hte existence of Yahweh that does not apply to the existence of Ahura Mazda? Please explain your answer.
No, it is not even close. did the Earth come before the sun? Did grass and fruit trees come before the sun? Did whales come before snakes (creeping creatures?) Did birds come before lizards and at the same time as fish? And there are stars a lot older than the sun, not to mention the earth.
So, the creation story is correct except for being wrong in almost every particular.
The Bible says that David had an empire. There is no evidence of any such empire, despite the existence of historical records of the period. Empires do not hide.
If I remember from “Who Wrote the Bible” the buildings supposedly built by Solomon were dated to significantly later.
Good thing I’m Jewish, huh? 
Sorry if that sounds snarky; I don’t mean to offend, just clarifying my stand. See further on…
Yep, exactly. Maybe it did happen. Personally, I doubt it, but only because I’m not aware of any reason God would do such a cool miracle for you. But I have an open mind. On the other hand, if you would quote Him as having said something that would contradict things that I already believe - for example, If you’d quote Him as having confessed to making up this or that story - that would be a dealbreaker.
Just to clarify: Jewish belief does not depend on obeying a miracle worker. Rather, Jewish belief is a result of our relationship with God and listening to what he tells us. So if someone tells me to repent, I agree with him – there’s never a bad time to become a better person. If someone tells me to join his club because he can walk on water, I shrug my shoulders – he has neither proven nor disproven his case. But if someone tells me that God has changed His mind about something, that’s someone who I “know” is wrong. (I put “know” in quotes, because it is not a provable thing, but only part of my belief system.)
Nope, God has never changed his mind on anything. Ever. He just “repents” of things that he has done.
He goes from believing that what he has made is good, to believing that it is bad.
And he says that he intends to destroy people in anger, and then is argued out of it.
And he says that a man should be king, and then"repents" that the man was made king.
But that is not changing his mind. Nosiree.
Because if someone says that God has changed His mind about something, that’s someone who we know is wrong. And the authors of the Bible can’t be wrong.
I’d just like to thank Captain Amazing for his post about the Documentary Hypothesis. I’ll concede that many of the beliefs of the pro-God camp sound pretty silly and far-fetched to the no-God camp, if I could just point out the to me, this is the most far-fetched of the other camp’s beliefs. After all, if someone questions the existence of King David merely because archaeologists haven’t found any evidence of him – despite thousands of years of literature – they’ve got a lot of nerve believing the Documentary Hypothesis, which has even less evidence than King David has!