Sunday, February 7, 2010

Ok... some people say that parts of the Bible have proven to be false. Which parts and what is the evidence?

The easiest is the great flood.





No evidence for it exists, and archaeology points toward a localized flood which covered the world as the people in that area knew it. Many different flood tales. Heck, I could tell you about the floods of Hurricane Katrina, being from New Orleans, and the devastation wrought upon my family, including the death of my father.





But it was not a world flood, just flooded my world.Ok... some people say that parts of the Bible have proven to be false. Which parts and what is the evidence?
So you have heard that parts are true and parts are false, what exactly is your point? It is a collection of dusty myths and legends from ancient Hebrew sheep herders. That is true.Ok... some people say that parts of the Bible have proven to be false. Which parts and what is the evidence?
Creation: wrong order, too short of time, no evidence for it. Evolution proven %26amp; accepted scientific theory, no competing theories, massive amountsof evidence.





Flood: no evidence in the geology column, no evidence in the polar ice caps in fact they go back 160,000 years. Major problems with the story in general, including not enough hydrogen to make the water, pressure of the flood would have crushed all plants and seeds, etc.





Exodus: The only evidence that the 200 to 600 years that Jospeh and his descendants spent there and then left afte a series of plagues is that there was a nomadic people near the border of Egypt with a name similar to Hebrew.





Geneology: Human life expectancy start out to be very long i.e. 10 times or current life expectancy, then slowly drop. No evidence of this has been found in any human remains dating from now back to those around 3 million years.





We could examining the contradictions and other places were god advocates killing innocents and babies to stop infant sacrifice, but those you can easily look up on the web. To date, the only real evidence that the bible is factual is that the civilizations and locations seem to be accurate, but that is true of many fictional books as well.
The bible is a rich document, but confusion comes from people who insist every word in it is literally true. Take for example Genesis. Here God creates the world in six days and takes a break on the seventh day. How can that be literally true, especially in light of massive geological, physical, and biological information that demonstrates that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and that life is almost as old as that!


So is Genesis false? Yes, in the sense that it's factually incorrect. Is Genesis false in the sense that it's a metaphor or an allegory? Well, no. A metaphor cannot be false; only good or poor. So, taken as a poetic document, the bible is indeed interesting, and perhaps even enlightening. But as literal truth, it leaves much to be desired.
I am looking forward to seeing th answers to this one. Hopefully you will get intelligent answers, not answers based just on bigotry against the Christian faith.





I would ask the same question to those who say that the Bible contradicts itself.
oh my gosh, where to start.





Well, the two creations stories are incompatible. Putting aside evolution, both cannot be correct.





No evidence for Noah's flood, either version (the 40 days one, and the 150 days one).





No evidence for the Exodus, although it may be based on a small scale event, certianly the numbers of people cited in the Bible is radically wrong.





Then theres Jericho, uninhabited at the time of the biblical conquest.





It just goes on and on. The parts with historical evidence in some fashion tend to be the later historical parts of the OT - stuff in the books of Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah.





NT is replete with errors and inaccuracies. No census under Quirinus at the time of Tiberius' reign. The bizarre and impractical notion that everyone had to return to the city of their birth for this non-existant census. Two geneologies for Jesus, incompatible. Etc etc etc.
Look at the article ';Who Built the Pyramids; Not slaves'; in the Harvard Magazine. This is a simple but important starting point. There are hundreds of others.

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