LittleNipper wrote:Gunnar wrote:I have yet to see any justification that is even the slightest bit persuasive for concluding that The Bible is more likely to be the word of God or any less the work of fallible human beings than anything else that has ever been written. The more I learn about science, religion and history, the more obvious it becomes to me that The Bible contains both history and mythology, both truth and fiction and both sense and nonsense. It is at least as unreasonable and mistaken to insist that every single word of The Bible is necessarily true and inerrant as it is to deny that any truth at all can be found in it. I strongly suspect that even some of the ancient authors of The Bible (the authors of Job, Jonah, Esther and the Song of Solomon, for example) would have been amazed and shocked at how literally some modern fundamentalists insist on taking what they wrote.
Please see
http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-God-Word.html
LittleNipper. It is largely dishonest apologetics like that in the link you provided that have done much to damage the credibility of apologists attempting to defend the inerrancy of
the Bible in my mind. I probably should have said ". . .any justification that is
both honest and persuasive." Take just one of its historical claims--the Exodus, for example. Here's what modern historians and archaeologists have to say about it in the below quote from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_ExodusNumbers and logistics:
According to Exodus 12:37-38, the Israelites numbered "about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children," plus many non-Israelites and livestock.[9] Numbers 1:46 gives a more precise total of 603,550.[10] The 600,000, plus wives, children, the elderly, and the "mixed multitude" of non-Israelites would have numbered some 2 million people,[11] compared with an entire Egyptian population in 1250 BCE of around 3 to 3.5 million.[12] Marching ten abreast, and without accounting for livestock, they would have formed a line 150 miles long.[13]
Secular point of view:
No evidence has been found that indicates Egypt ever suffered such a demographic and economic catastrophe or that the Sinai desert ever hosted (or could have hosted) these millions of people and their herds.[14] Some scholars have rationalised these numbers into smaller figures, for example reading the Hebrew as "600 families" rather than 600,000 men, but all such solutions raise more problems than they solve.[15] The view of mainstream modern biblical scholarship is that the improbability of the Exodus story originates because it was written not as history, but to demonstrate God's purpose and deeds with his Chosen People, Israel.[16] Thus it seems probable that the 603,550 people delivered from Egypt (according to Numbers 1:46) is not simply a number, but a gematria (a code in which numbers represent letters or words) for bnei yisra'el kol rosh, "the children of Israel, every individual;"[17] while the number 600,000 symbolises the total destruction of the generation of Israel which left Egypt, none of whom lived to see the Promised Land.[18]
Archaeology:
A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness,[16] and most archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as "a fruitless pursuit".[5] A number of theories have been put forward to account for the origins of the Israelites, and despite differing details they agree on Israel's Canaanite origins.[19] The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite, and almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.[20]
And this is just one of numerous examples where
The Bible exaggerates, distorts and/or makes up history. They are not hard to find on the internet, public libraries and book stores in publications dealing with modern scholarship and research on ancient Middle Eastern history.
I could also go on and cite numerous examples of failed biblical prophecies if you want me to. Among the most interesting of these can be found in Ezekiel, where Ezekiel himself later admits that the prophecy failed, and then immediately made another prophecy that also failed. You can read about it here:
http://etb-biblical-errancy.blogspot.co ... ailed.html.
I have little doubt that if I had the time and inclination to do a bit of honest and diligent research, I could go through the claims in your link and demolish a goodly percentage of them. In fact, I have already done some of that, and will probably get around to doing more soon.
