yalla

Back then the sun did go around the earth.


I like that one the best.

paradoxicalpariah

Well, the Bible is true. It's true mythos. Fundamentalism has really wrecked things, hasn't it?

speedy1

The main problem with the Bible is that it is a patchwork of history, myth, ethics, and a primitive attempt at philosophy. It is rife with both fact and fiction. It is very difficult to extricate the true from the false. Remember, the people who wrote the stuff were:

Primitive- They knew little of the workings of the universe.

Politicians- They needed a way to control the hoi polloi. A God who knew everything that you were doing, and would reward or punish you according to what the bigwigs of the day wanted, was a great way to keep people in line.

John A. Broussard

I considered that one rather far-fetched, until I came across a recent study indicating a significant minority of adult Americans believe the sun does go around the earth. An even larger minority didn't know whether or not it did (and presumably didn't care).

John A. Broussard

And they were, like most prehistoric and preliterate peoples, great story tellers.

With no TV, no movies, no Internet--there was not much else to do in the long evenings but sit around campfires and listen to the best raconteurs. The stories eventually were written down when these people picked up writing--hence the Illiad, Odyssey, the Old Testament, etc.

RUmike

From the link:

What is this guy talking about? This is a strawman. We know a lot about Pilate from Josephus. Pilate's existence or procuratorship has never been doubted.

Alf

Wow, New York really exist. Therefore Spiderman must be real!

Alf

Lord Emsworth

This wouldn't happen to be about this spurious (to say the least) microletter stuff?

Oh dear.

Amaleq13

Indeed. This is actually a common apologetic tactic that entirely misses the point that a rational approach requires evidence for a claim before accepting it. It is typically used as a response to an observation by "infidels" that there is no evidence to support a given biblical claim. The True Believer then drags out real or imagined examples of skeptics disbelieving a biblical claim until evidence was discovered to support it and then our True Believer procedes to suggest that the same "could" be true of the example under consideration. Even if the example is legitimate, the flawed reasoning in this "argument" should be apparent.

Berthold

That's not fundy but Roman Catholic.