I don’t think any such default assumption is valid. If the OP intended that for discussion, then fine, but he didn’t.
You use a pretty boring (and not very useful) definition of miracle, then.
I we assume naturalism, then miracles don’t exist, by definition. I don’t see any need to make that assumption for this discussion.
Most of the three dozen or so “miracles” attributed to Jesus are healing, and even today faith healers can duplicate those often enough. And two of other other very common definitions of “miracle” will cover such:
*a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences:
it was a miracle that more people hadn’t been killed or injured
an amazing product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something:
a machine which was a miracle of design*
That reminded me on a book I read a long time ago about atheism, the author pointed out how silly it was when the Apollo 8 crew read that part of Genesis and the firmament while circling the moon…
…All ignored the “insignificant” detail that the craft they were using should already had cracked the firmament on the way to the Moon and the waters above should had poured down to earth.
I still see that the Bible has good moral tales, but many of the good lessons are mostly ignored by the current followers of the book.
That definition of “firmament” comes from 3 Baruch, which is not part of either Jewish or Christian canon.
It still doesn’t clear the fact that ALL men were God’s creations; he could have created a different land or even made the desert into a fertile land and let the other people be. Personally I know of also better lands than what are called the promised land. I sure would not want to live there!
OK well it was still a dome…and a firmament that…does not exist. If you claim it does you need to provide some cites.
The Earth goes around the Sun, but most newspapers and even US govt sources talk about “Sunrise’. Haven’t you ever said ‘there are a lot of stars out tonite” even tho the number is the same despite the weather, and in fact we are just talking about the number of stars we can see? Prove- based solely on Biblical sources- it’s not just a literary allusion.
Oh…wait…prove only with Biblical sources that what the bible says isn’t true?
That is one sweet little bit of logic there.
What, I can’t bring up that it was a common view among the peoples who wrote the bible and the stories nor can I bring forward that even Calvin himself said it was due to their ignorance?
The entirety of the two creation myths have been falsified, if they are just an “literary allusion” is the garden of eden also? If so what happens with the eternal mark on your children to be sinners? is that also just a “literary allusion”?
But for Biblical “proofs” in that same section
Genesis 1:25-27 Humans were created after the other animals.
vs Genesis 2:18-19 (Humans were created before the other animals.)
or
Genesis 1:27 The first man and woman were created simultaneously.
vs. Genesis 2:18-22 The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man’s rib.
The back to the sinning bit…was it Eve’s fault or Adams?
1 Timothy 2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
vs. Romans 5:12 By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.
How about those for your ridiculous and arbitrary “prove my mythology is wrong but only use my mythologies official documents that have been combed and changed for millennia” restriction.
No, I didn’t ask for that. I wanted some evidence that what you were claiming is verifiably false is what the Bible actually sez.
In other words, the Bibles does talk about the Firmament, and yes later Apocrypha added details (which are clearly false). But originally the OT may have been using this metaphorically as a literary allusion, like even today we say “Sunrise’ when of course the Sun doesn’t rise , the Earth rotates.
thus, “The Firmament” is not a good example at all. Yes, clearly there is no actual real Firmament, but is the mention in Genesis a metaphor or literary allusion?
So, what you have to prove false is what the Bible actually sez, not what later interpolators added. *The Bible *doesn’t actually say the earth is 6000 years old.
You can use any sources to do so, of course.
It’s harder than it looks.
And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him;+ male and female he created them Genesis 1:27
God went on to say: “It is not good for the man to continue by himself. I am going to make a helper for him, as a complement* of him.” Genesis 2:18
This does not contradict at all. Many critics act as if what’s in Genesis from the very first verse is written in chronological order, step by step. It is not, so there is nothing shocking about reading 1:27 and then reading chapter 2 to read a bit more about it and in greater detail. It’s not written like the minutes of a board meeting or a police report.
Sorry, but i really don’t understand why one should even bother to make such an argument.
Now for a more serious one:
Genesis 1:6,7
And God went on to say: “Let an expanse come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters and the waters.” 7 Then God proceeded to make the expanse and to make a division between the waters that should be beneath the expanse and the waters that should be above the expanse. And it came to be so. 8 And God began to call the expanse Heaven…
The word firmament is English.(Hebrew: Raqiya) It is a translation that many bibles use but not all and nowhere does the Bible say the raqiya is a solid wall or plate!
But try passing our atmosphere without protection and see what happens! Also, how high or close to the atmosphere can we find clouds or moisture in the sky? Are there not laws of nature and conditions that keep things in certain places?
Who says that a divide or barrier **must **be a solid wall? The Bible doesn’t, but certain critics do.
When you read Genesis further, it becomes clear that raqiya is very likely the atmosphere or a certain divide between areas. Bible critics love to claim that it does mean a solid barrier just because many ancient civilizations believed the sky was a solid barrier.
But we’re not discussing other ancient cultures and their beliefs. We’re discussing the bible.
I would like some solid scientific evidence the Bible is nonsense. I’ll take your arguments and research them. Gladly.
PS From the top of my head, i also recall that according to Genesis it had never rained before the Great Flood. That the only moisture was from dew and not from rain.
Genesis 7:11
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month,* on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the springs of the vast watery deep* were broken open and the floodgates* of the heavens were opened.
Day 3, grass and fruit trees are growing.
Day 4, the sun is created.
Nonsense, even if a day is a thousand years. The first fruit trees grew billions of years after the sun was formed.
Using physical objective evidence - prove this happened.
It’s a bit of a stretch , but the term is " as if a thousand years " and the allusion is that Thousand is to to be taken literally, they could mean billions since they didn’t have numbers that high.
Don’t worry the numbers in Exodus, etc are clearly off by a factors of at least ten. Of course they could have a numerological meaning.
If there was an Exodus it was a few thousand tops.
So is the whole creation myth a…myth?
God placed the sun and the moon the the firmament, nothing in the book makes it look like it is anything but the normal generally accepted view of how the world worked at the time men wrote the book.
It was not until the 4th century BCE was this replaced by a Greek scientific cosmology of a spherical earth surrounded by multiple concentric heavens but it was still a “dome”.
You are the one making the amazing claim, do you have any “proof” that it was not intended as written?
[
](http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4684-cosmogony#2736)
You are resorting to the age old method of protecting your mythology, explain away the icky or “irrelevant” parts as just being a story.
But there is no evidence that any of the actors in the bible knew that the earth was not floating in water and separated from the waters above only due to “god’s work”.
So how about you provide ANY evidence that the creation myth was meant to be taken with a grain of salt…even if I do thank you for taking that view with the entire book.
We have no need for bronze age “literary allusions” to continue to encourage slavery, infanticide and murder.
You miss the point. The Bible says that fruit trees were growing BEFORE the sun was created. Which is nonsense, scientifically, whether it’s one day, or a bazillion years.
If you want to say it was a miracle, fine, but scientifically, it’s nonsense.
And just by the way, this “day is like a thousand years” crap is an insult to divine intelligence. It’s one thing to claim, even metaphorically, that God is so ancient or eternal or whatever that a thousand years is just a small fraction of his awareness, but it’s quite another to say he is so stupid that he doesn’t know the difference between a day and a thousand years when he is reporting a chronological account of events.
It’s like your bank mistakenly charging you a late payment fee of a million dollars, when it’s supposed to be ten dollars. Maybe a million dollars is a smaller fraction of their assets than ten bucks is of yours, but they are still idiots if they get the amounts mixed up when reporting alleged facts.
Yes, of course.
It’s a amazing claim that some parts of the Bible are literary allusions?
Song of Solomon chpr 4
Your eyes behind your veil are doves. Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from the hills of Gilead. (her eyes likely are not medium sized pigeons, and her hair likely has no goats at all)
Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn, coming up from the washing. Each has its twin; not one of them is alone. (Very large teeth!)
Your neck is like the tower of David, built with courses of stone; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. (HUGE Neck!)
Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. (Yes, fawns, with four legs, spots, teeth, eyes, etc)
4:13
Your thighs shelter a paradise of pomegranates with rare spices–henna with nard,
(Man, she has not douched in a while to have pomegranate trees growing down there!)
Honestly you really don’t know *anything at all *about the book you’re debating about, do you?
“My Mythology”? Where did you get that idea? :dubious:
OK, I am going to guess that you accept that the bible’s cosmology is proven false because you are taking the argument way out to left field and providing NOTHING to prove your personal theory that the “firmament” or what ever you call it was viewed as real by the writers.
The tower of Babble story, the great flood myth, trees that can be seen from the entire world fit in with that belief.
All of these are falsifiable claims.
The earth is neither flat nor sitting still in the universe yet “the bible tells me so”
As for the personal attacks…come back with cites and not insults please.
Heck…Elisha summoned two she-bears when some kids joked about his alopecia and had twice that body count.
So this is false too? Joshua didn’t kill everyone in town except for one whore and her family?
They just tooted their horns for a week and killed another bunch of kids under the direction of “God”.
If God is a spirit and invisible, then we are too? Could it be that humans are just that, and evolved from another species?