Circular logic - “People in the bible believe that part of the bible is real” - this is not proof or evidence.
Actually, to be accepted as history, events must have independent sources of support. And historians know full well that ancient writers often made stuff up for various reasons.
Where is evidence of the Exodus, for one? Tens of thousands of people, or more, camped in the desert for 40 years and left not a trace. Yeah, right.
The existence of Troy has been archeologically demonstrated. Do you accept the Iliad as history, including the gods? The later parts of the Bible, which occurred after the Torah was “found” is more accurate - and less fantastic - than the earlier parts.
Don’t know much about Jews, do you? In any case, there are theories that the Bible was an effort to cement the centralized power of the priesthood in Jerusalem. One way of doing that was to create stories in which the prophets (like Nathan) were superior to the secular authority - like David. Check out Who Wrote the Bible for more. It will broaden your horizons.
BTW, when I went to Hebrew School none of my teachers was dumb enough to try to pawn the flood off as something that actually happened. “History” started with Abram.
Where is your proof that the Epic is without a doubt older than Genesis? How do I know that the Epic wasn’t copied from Genesis? And every major detail is not copied. Gilgamesh has many gods, and the reason for the flood is completely different. I call that a major detail.
If you are going to take the route that Genesis is a myth, at the very least, it is a pretty elaborate myth spanning thousands of years. Somehow the Genesis author decided to predict the coming of Jesus Christ way back in the garden of Eden. I find that pretty remarkable.
Every bit of evidence we have points to Gilgamesh being older. No evidence whatsoever points to it being younger.
You want to believe it’s younger, because you want to believe the stupid stories in the bible are factual. But what you want to believe is of no import. The facts are the facts and you pretending they don’t exist does nothing to change them.
Protip: If every single fact points to the conclusion that what a bronze-age book says is wrong, you might want to consider the possibility that the book is nothing more than the stories of a primitive people in a shitty desert.
The author most certainly did not. That is simply not true. Please cite for me that the Genesis author predicted Jesus in particular.
I don’t think there is much dispute about that.
It’s a myth. It describes events that are impossible and contradicted by genetic and historical evidence. I notice you’ve failed to acknowledge this point.
I’m not sure what element you are talking about, but a better explanation is revisionism by later Christian authors.
Which the Bible has.
Nomads don’t build cities and leave ruins. But let’s assume that Exodus was a work of fiction. How did the author gain so much internal knowledge about Egypt? The political and social structure of Egypt is detailed going way back to the story of Joseph. Did an Israelite sneak into Pharoh’s court to gain material for his fiction?
But of course, the atheist will ignore the vast historical details that the Bible gets right on the money as the Israelites intersected with cultures from Babylon to Rome.
If you discount Troy, then you have to discount the entire field of archeology as a source of evidence. That’s hardly being fair. My point is that it is impossible to prove the Bible because atheists make it impossible to prove. For example, given your Troy comparison, we can’t use archaelogy that proves names of cities in the Bible as evidence. Fine, then you can’t use that for other accepted histories as well. This is their game atheists play and I see right through it.
They probably didn’t believe in Jesus Christ either, and completely missed the countless references to Christ in the OT and detailed fullfilled prophecies. Hardly a trustworthy source.
Fucking unbelieving Jews. They’re almost as bad as atheists. :rolleyes:
They do leave evidence when large numbers of them wander around a relatively small area for 40 years.
…wait for it …
And there you go.
Your arguments would be a lot stronger if you spent more time supporting them and less time complaining about how unfair atheists are being. Where’s the geological evidence for the flood? Where’s the evidence of a population bottleneck, since there were only a couple of people left in the entire world only a few thousand years ago?
Ya think?
My God, this guy is a caricature of the irrationla believer, isn’t he?
Where to start?
So according to you getting a few elements of Egyptian society correct proves the inerracy of the bible? Nevermind that Egypt controlled that area of the world several times. Nevermind that the two regions freely intermingled in terms of politics, markets, and military power. And of course let’s not forget that the people likely involved in writing down the old testament probably had dealings or knew of important people in Egypt. Theyw ere neighbors for christ sake! Nooo, these things aren’t the reasons they get some thigs right.
Here, take a look at this:
I dare you to insult my belief of this being true history. I mean we know lincoln was president of the US at roughly that time period. You can’t tell me he also didn’t go vampire hunting on his spare time!
According to you all something needs to get is a few things right, and that immediately means the rest, no matter how unfounded, no matter the evidence against it, MUST ALSO be true!
Take it to the BBQ Pit.
My apologies-I meant to type [Leroy Jethro Gibbs]Ya think?[/Leroy Jethro Gibbs]
your undying devotion is irrelevant to the truth, the only way to understand the truth is to educate yourself on the topic at hand, holding onto your beliefs in an ignorant state puts you on the same level as creationists who swear up and down that the earth is 6k years old.
Which myths in particular are you thinking of when you say this? I mean, logically speaking, to declare that the Bible is rare, even unique, by the standards of fixture within other points of evidence, you’d need to look at the full myths of everyone else, too.
I’m afraid the problem with your answer here is that not only does not not answer my question, it basically provides more reason to ask it. You’ve declared that the points of congruity with other myths are a point of evidence in favour of the Bible’s correctness. Why isn’t the Bible simply evidence that those other myths with which it matches up are correct? The argument is one that goes both ways. And here, again, you point out the Bible’s place in history as compared to other mythological records. I suppose the grand question is; what’s the context?
Because people wouldn’t believe so readily a narrative in which everyone is perfect and acts perfectly and does everything exactly right? The problem with such a narrative is that while people don’t have ready access to miracles or prophets (or indeed sons of God), they do have access to other people. Great leaders throughout history haven’t all been uniformly magnificient; it’s entirely reasonable, when thinking about the motives of the authors about portraying such leaders with feet of clay, to say “Because they generally do, in some fashion, and by portraying people as, well, people, the story seems all the more realistic and probable.” Another explanation might be that some parts of the Bible are correct - certainly, I don’t dispute the whole thing - while others are not.
As a sidenote, it’s interesting that you specifically single out the OT there. Do you feel that the OT is in some way “more” backed up by evidence in this regard than the NT?
I simply want an atheist to demonstrate that he/she has the ability to consider pro-Christian evidence with an open mind. Nothing that I’ve seen in this forum suggests this. I see blind baseless acceptance of any scientific theory as fact as long as it goes against Christianity. If the Bible warned against global warming, you would have a legion of scientists arguing that global warming is not real.
Given that the majority of the populace of the U.S. is Christian, i’d be very surprised indeed if most American scientists weren’t Christian. Given your statement quite clearly requires that most must not be, do you have the statistics as to religious faith among scientists to hand?
That aside, if you consider your own beliefs to be evidence, I am perfectly willing to accept that you believe what you believe purely and entirely on your say-so. I don’t require any kind of evidence at all, beyond your word, that you believe what you say you believe. Does that demonstrate sufficient open-mindedness?
I suggest you start reading, one per day, one per week, one per month whatever.
the reason you keep seeing people not believing christian evidence is because there is (by the actual definition of evidence) no evidence for the vast majority of the bible. zero. a book that says it is true is not evidence that it is true, seriously get that through your skull. if I take a spiral note book and on the first page write “every word contained in this book is the true word of god” and then write stories about smurfs and the legend of greyskull and gave it to you would you believe it?
that spiral note book has exactly the same amount of evidence going for it that the bible does.
There is no such thing as “pro-Christian” or “anti-Christian” evidence. There is evidence. Once all the evidence that you can find is gathered, you make a tentative conclusion base on that evidence. If you only pick out the evidence that supports your pre-existing theory, you are doing it wrong.
Then post some compelling evidence. Linking to a variety of flood myths and declaring “they must be true because they’re so similar!” isn’t convincing. There are some broad similarities, but they’re not very surprising (your declarations to the contrary).
I think you call it “anti-Christian” any time someone looks at your evidence and doesn’t find it as meaningful as you do. Post better evidence and tone down the sarcasm and maybe you’ll do better.
Fine then, there is archaeological evidence to suggest that the events in the Bible may have occured. You can’t deny that, but I doubt you’ll ever admit it.
Is that conclusive proof? Well no, but combined with other minor evidences, it starts to mount up.