markd

...claims another loon on another thread. Because of this archaeological evidence:
http://www.souldevice.org/christian_archeology.html

I wanna check some of these out, but if anyone could shed a little light my way, I'd be thankful. I'm trying to increase my brain power.

Obviously, some of these "evidences" are ridiculous, but some of it is probably out there. I want to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

Mageth

Umm, so what? If true (and I'm not saying that the claims made there are true), it would just show that the Bible is archaeologically fairly accurate. And it's not too suprising that some person writing during a period would get his geography relatively straight. What it doesn't prove is the more spectacular claims in the Bible. Talking donkeys, burning bushes, God impregnating a woman, walking on water, raising the dead, and so forth. The important stuff, in other words.

And there's still that rather big incident recorded in the Bible for which there is no evidence, and for which there would be mounds of evidence if it had happened: Noah's Flood.

markd

Yeah, pretty much my contention. Just because the movie "Elf" was filmed in New York doesn't mean the actual story is a lock. I guess I', more interested in verifying these arch. claims. I'm no archaeologist so was hoping to speed up checking these out.

Paul2

I'm not going to bother to refute anythign on the link. However I will say that even if there are some true things in the bible, it does not automatically validate everything else.

TomboyMom

Note that the list does not include the events of Exodus--an entire long book of the bible. That may be because:

-- p. 64

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman . Dr. Finkelstein is director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Dr. Silberman is director of historical interpretation for the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation in Belgium.

And so on.

post tenebras lux

It doesn't really help that they spell Rams(e/a)y both ways in the same paragraph.

There was a chemist called Sir William and there was an archeologist called Sir William, but one of them spelt it with an 'a' and the other used an 'e'.

Given that, why would anyone think that they've bothered to check any of their 'facts' that they list as evidence?

Plus, I love that many of their arguments are along the lines of 'We have found Atlanta - and it was torched - therefore Gone with the Wind is a true and accurate story'.

John A. Broussard

What do you mean, "no evidence?"

There's a Christian tour group of the Grand Canyon which points out in the course of the trip how the great flood carved out the great chasm.

That whole approach is a key to theistic thinking. First you adopt a position (in the case of fundies, it's an inerrant bible) then you make the facts fit the thinking--no matter how far fetched the connection may be.

For example, I've made a collection of fundy explanations for how Joshua made the sun stand still. To my mind, the explanations are hilarious.

To the believer, the explanations are not only "gospel" but are further proof that the bible is literally true--word for word, verse for verse, chapter for chapter.

Diogenes the Cynic

My standard answer to the Ramsay argument is that Schliemann discovered Troy- a city that scholars had heretofore believed to be mythical. Does that prove that The Ilad is "true?"

yalla

John A.B.
"For example, I've made a collection of fundy explanations for how Joshua made the sun stand still. To my mind, the explanations are hilarious."

Please share them.

John A. Broussard

Here are just a few:

Joshua really stopped the earth from rotating. (This is the most usual one.)

Back then the sun did go around the earth.

The sun does move (around the Milky Way) and that's what Joshua did. He stopped the sun from moving for a day or so.

The event was phenomenological. (Which, even after being explained to me still made little sense. Evidently the bible writers were just reporting what they saw, not what happened.)

There was a thermal shield over Canaan at that time, so the events were entirely local. (Don't ask me for a further explanation of this one, since the poster never came back to elaborate.)

It was a miracle. (This was prompted by my question why Babylonian, Egyptian and Chinese astronomers of that day didn't report the sun standing still. The miracle kept them from seeing the miracle.)

The bible was never intended to be a work in astronomy. What happened, just happened--so there!

This passage is metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally. Jehovah simply provided plenty of light that day for the Israelites to win. The sun standing still is merely a symbolic way of saying the day seemed longer.

I have more, along with peripheral commentaries such as, "Why do you hate god so much that you keep challenging the divine word?"