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Old 02-27-2007, 04:52 PM   #141
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Originally Posted by DISSIDENT AGGRESSOR View Post
Okay,
Genesis1
Once upon a time...


Genesis 7:1 Then the LORD said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time. 2 "You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female; and of the animals that are not clean two, a male and his female; 3 also of the birds of the sky, by sevens, male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth. 4 "For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made." 5 Noah did according to all that the LORD had commanded him.
That can't be right. He's forgotten to tell Noah to pack any of the plants.
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Old 02-27-2007, 05:47 PM   #142
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Still waiting for you TonyN. This series of questions is not going away. – Notice 3

(PS. It has been observed that you have posted elsewhere on this website within the last 6 hours or so.)


From RED DAVE:

Quote:
Perhaps you could confine yourself to:

(1) documenting a gap in Egyptian history in and around Bishop Ussher's date;

(2) documenting the death of approximately 2 million Egyptians during that gap;

(3) documenting the total collapse of Egyptian culture during that gap;

(4) documenting the slow, painful revival of Egypt from a devastation worse than anything we can imagine: total and complete destruction of population, economy and culture.

And added by Barefoot Bree

(5) documenting just HOW Noah's descendents could have recreated Egyptian culture in such perfect continuity of its past; language, writing, clothing, architecture, religion*, etc, when the entire civilisation (except the buildings) was washed away. What was their source material?

(6) * explaining why Noah's immediate descendents, after having just survived the absolutely clearest demonstration of their God's wrath and power imaginable, if not first hand then through the undoubted bone-chilling stories passed down from their elders who did, decided to turn their backs on said God, risk his wrath again, and revive the Egyptian pantheon instead.
RED DAVE
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Old 03-01-2007, 06:48 AM   #143
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Update: I've been asked to provide some sources for my 14 historical errors, by another poster who would like to use them elsewhere and wants to be prepared for challenges. Rather than give them by PM, I'll put them here, where others can see them (and hopefully add more).


1. No Genesis creation.
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Humans evolved from (other) apes, with our own lineage splitting from the chimpanzee/bonobo lineage a few million years ago. There are numerous experts on this in the Evolution/Creation forum, and www.talkorigins.org is a good place to go for general anti-creationist information. Creationist comebacks can generally be dealt with via their Index of Creationist Claims. Be prepared for claims that the fossil record "doesn't support evolution", based on out-of-context quotes from actual scientists (ref. The Quote Mine Project), probably Stephen Jay Gould or Niles Eldredge, advocates of "punctuated equilibrium" (the notion that evolution typically involves long periods of relative stasis and short bursts of fairly rapid evolution). It's worth quoting Gould on this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen Jay Gould
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.
In other words: it's MICRO-evolution (which creationists claim to accept) which is hard to spot in the fossil record. MACRO-evolution (large-scale evolutionary change above the species level, rejected by creationists) is readily seen in the fossil record.

It's probably worth pointing out that there are far more "transitional fossils" than there are Bibles in the world: because there are billions of therapsid fossils (reptile/mammal transitionals) in the rocks. For confirmation, check out the references for the "Extent of the Fossil Record" section on Wikipedia's Evidence of evolution page.


2. No Noachian Flood.
The survival of Egypt's "Old Kingdom" has already been discussed on this thread. The Biblical dating of Noah's Flood was discussed on the thread Alternative Biblical dates for the Flood? (we came up with an earlier date than Ussher did, but the same problems arise). And the total lack of all the geological evidence we'd expect to see from a recent global flood puts the burden of proof on the creationists: they would somehow have to overturn all of modern geology (and refute varves, ice-cores and other annual layers that go back beyond the Flood, and even beyond the "creation").


3. No Tower of Babel (no change in written records after the "confusion of languages").
Another issue where the apologist has the burden of proof. They need to demonstrate that all records prior to 2100 BC or thereabouts were written in the original "common language", then all the languages changed due to the "Babel effect" (God mixing up the languages after the Tower of Babel incident). Archaeologists and historians know nothing of this...


4. No Exodus.
Another "where is all the evidence?" problem for the apologist. While it's entirely possible that some people left Egypt, it didn't happen as the Bible describes. Here is the start of a series of linked articles by Farrell Till which explains the scale of the problem: three million people should leave a vast amount of evidence of their passage through the region.


5. No Conquest of Caanan.
Biblical battle accounts were ludicrously exaggerated: Those Amazing Biblical Numbers: Taking Stock of the Armies of Ancient Israel. And we know from archaeology that the Hebrews were Caananites. Their language evolved from Caananite (after the supposed Exodus), and their religion evolved from Caananite polytheism. We know this from Caananite records (notably the Ugaritic texts). Wikipedia has some stuff on this. From Hebrew:
Quote:
As a language, Hebrew refers to one of several dialects of the Canaanite language. Hebrew (Israel) and Moabite (Jordan) can be called Southern Canaanite dialects while Phoenician (Lebanon) can be called a Northern Canaanite dialect. Canaanite is closely related to Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic. Whereas other Canaanite dialects have become extinct, Hebrew survived. Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in Israel from the 10th century BCE until just before the Byzantine Period in the 3rd or 4th century CE. (See below, Aramaic displacing Hebrew as a spoken language.) Afterward Hebrew continued as a literary language until the Modern Era when it was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century.[1]

...The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the 10th century BCE...
That's about half a millennium "after the Exodus".

The Caananite Ugarit civilization provides writings which shed light on the origins of the Hebrew religion: El (god) or Elyon was the head of a polytheistic pantheon, and is one of the names of the Biblical "God". Deuteronomy 32:8-9 is particularly interesting in this regard, as it apparently describes the high God Elyon dividing up humanity among the gods, with YHWH (the later "God of the Bible") receiving the people of Jacob (the Hebrews) as his share. This is obscured by later versions which substitute phrases such as "sons of Israel" for "sons of God" (the lesser gods of the pantheon). Though some say that the cult of YHWH arose separately, was later incorporated into the Caananite pantheon, and then "took it over", being eventually regarded by the Hebrews as "the" God. This article might also be useful.


6. No "Golden Age" of Solomon.
This "great empire" was never mentioned in the records of other surrounding civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Assyrians, who barely noticed the existence of Israel and Judah. So this is another "where's the evidence?" problem for the apologist.


7. Failure of Ezekiel's "Tyre Prophecy".
Ezekiel falsely predicted that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would take and permanently destroy Tyre. But Tyre survived Nebby's 13-year siege. The details of this prophecy-failure are summarized on ErrancyWiki here, which also describes the various desperate and doomed attempts by apologists to get around the problem.


8. Failure of Ezekiel's "Egypt Prophecy".
After the failure of the Tyre prophecy, Ezekiel promised Egypt to Nebby as compensation. Nebby was to ransack Egypt so thoroughly that it would be uninhabited for 40 years. Historical records show that this did not happen. Here's what Wikipedia says about Amasis II, the Pharaoh of Egypt at this time:
Quote:
Herodotus relates that under his prudent administration Egypt reached the highest pitch of prosperity...

...At the beginning of his long reign, before the death of Apries, he appears to have sustained an attack by Nebuchadrezzar II (568 BC).
So, Egypt's prosperity didn't suffer from being "uninhabited", and Amasis wasn't at all inconvenienced by being "dead".


9. Failure of the "Babylon Prophecy" (Isaiah and Jeremiah).
Both of these prophesied that the Medes would take and permanently destroy Babylon. But the Medes were conquered by the Persians, who then went on to peacefully take (and not destroy) Babylon. The failure of the "Babylon prophecy" is described here (including a lame excuse by an apologist: the prophecy is not described as conditional).


10. Numerous historical inaccuracies in Daniel.
While Daniel was supposedly written in the 6th century BC, it was actually written four centuries later and gets many details wrong. This is quite a large topic in itself: the II Library has articles such as Daniel in the Historians' Den and Bad History in the Book of Daniel. It was written to inspire those engaged in the 2nd-century-BC Maccabean Rebellion, as explained here.


11. Herod/Quirinius issue (Luke's Jesus born a decade after Matthew's Jesus).
Matthew's Jesus was born in Herod's time: Luke's Jesus was born at least a decade later, when Quirinius was governor of the region (as confirmed by various historical sources). The problem is explained by Richard Carrier here, and in more detail here.


12. No "Massacre of the Innocents".
We have accounts from Herod's enemies (notably Josephus), describing his various "crimes", and the Massacre is not among them: so, again, this poses a burden-of-proof problem for the apologist. It was apparently invented by Matthew to draw a parallel between Jesus and Moses (who also supposedly survived an infant massacre, by Pharaoh).


13. No "zombie invasion of Jerusalem" or "supernatural darkness" (easily-noticed large-scale miracles).
Again, pretty self-explanatory. The dead supposedly rose from their graves and wandered about in Jerusalem, and there was supposedly a supernatural darkness for several hours: numerous historians in the vicinity failed to notice these, as did all the gospel authors except one: obviously invented. The walking dead are mentioned in Matthew 27:51-53, the darkness in Matthew 27:45. Some apologists claim that the "supernatural darkness" was recorded by "Thallus" (see Carrier's Thallus: an Analysis for a rebuttal), but we should have genuine first-hand accounts from other historians (like Josephus) regarding such a widespread phenomenon.


14. No return of Jesus within "this generation".
There are numerous NT references to the imminent Second Coming: within one generation (Mark 13:30, Matthew 10:23, 16:28, 24:34, Luke 21:32, etc.). This was still expected to be imminent in Paul's time (1 Corinthians 7:29-31). The usual excuses are that Jesus was referring to a metaphorical "coming" of Christianity: but it is quite obvious that his followers had other ideas, and many Christians still expect him to make a physical return at some time.
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Old 03-02-2007, 02:47 AM   #144
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeremyp View Post
That can't be right. He's forgotten to tell Noah to pack any of the plants.
There's two explanations for this...

#1
Genesis 6:21
And take thou unto thee
of all food that is eaten,
and thou shalt gather [it] to
thee; and it shall be for
food for thee, and for them.


This means plants! Noah saved all the seeds from these plants, and then when he got off the ark, he used them to re-kick start the botanical civilization.

#2
While the historical facts show that the entire earth was flooded, this does not mean that the garden of Eden was included. Japheth, one of Noah's sons, and his wife, Adataneses, were allowed to re-enter the garden to get plants, seeds, and other miscellaneous items that wouldn't fit on the ark, as well as the animals, birds and insects that ended up at the garden of Eden, through a miscommunication, instead of Noah's Ark. [also all the freshwater fish]

The garden was likely protected by a dome, which was lifted after the flood waters were sucked up by the wind, along with all the carcasses of everything that was drowned, formed into a sphere and then hurled into space to become the planet formerly known as Pluto.
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Old 03-02-2007, 04:55 AM   #145
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It's clear that TonyN has cut and run from this thread. (Maybe he's trying to be an example for Bush in Iraq.)

I request that some other Bible believer take up the discussion of the survival of Egyptian civilization during the Noachian flood.

This is a challenge to those believers who hang here. Failure to respond will be interpreted, by me at least, as not having any arguments that can hold water, just as TonyN's couldn't.

(By the way, TonyN continues to post elsewhere on this board. Just search for his name.)

Waiting with anticipation.

RED DAVE
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Old 03-02-2007, 08:05 AM   #146
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyN View Post
How do you expect me to take you Atheists seriously? If this were a court of law and a man was on trial because someone just said he murdered someone and in court the accusor was asked: ''What proof do you have that my client killed so and so?" And the accusor said: Well I heard it from someone who was told it from someone who was told it from someone.

And the judge said: Well that's all we need for proof! Hang him high!

I'm sure you atheists would say that's O.K. especially if it were you who were wrongly accused!
Lol. Trials have expert witnesses involved, all the time. An archeaologist, could be considered an expert witness.

I think you're refering to the Theist argument..."I heard from my priest, who heard from Mark, who heard from Peter, who heard from Jesus, who heard from God, that....."


Peace
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Old 03-02-2007, 07:49 PM   #147
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack the Bodiless View Post
[b]13. No "zombie invasion of Jerusalem" or "supernatural darkness" (easily-noticed large-scale miracles
Dang! I really like the zombie invasion part.
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Old 03-02-2007, 10:12 PM   #148
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From TonyN:
Quote:
Well I heard it from someone who was told it from someone who was told it from someone.
Sounds like the Bible version of the historical method.

RED DAVE
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Old 03-02-2007, 11:38 PM   #149
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack the Bodiless View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyN
What need we say more? There has to be a gap because they were all destroyed in the flood.
There was no "Flood". So why does there have to be a gap? And where is it?
Nono, don't you geddit? The "gap" was destroyed in teh flood. :banghead:
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Old 03-04-2007, 05:17 PM   #150
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RED DAVE View Post
Still waiting for you TonyN. This series of questions is not going away. – Notice 3 4

(PS. It has been observed that you have posted elsewhere on this website within the last 6 hours or so.)


From RED DAVE:
Quote:
Perhaps you could confine yourself to:

(1) documenting a gap in Egyptian history in and around Bishop Ussher's date;

(2) documenting the death of approximately 2 million Egyptians during that gap;

(3) documenting the total collapse of Egyptian culture during that gap;

(4) documenting the slow, painful revival of Egypt from a devastation worse than anything we can imagine: total and complete destruction of population, economy and culture.

And added by Barefoot Bree

(5) documenting just HOW Noah's descendents could have recreated Egyptian culture in such perfect continuity of its past; language, writing, clothing, architecture, religion*, etc, when the entire civilisation (except the buildings) was washed away. What was their source material?

(6) * explaining why Noah's immediate descendents, after having just survived the absolutely clearest demonstration of their God's wrath and power imaginable, if not first hand then through the undoubted bone-chilling stories passed down from their elders who did, decided to turn their backs on said God, risk his wrath again, and revive the Egyptian pantheon instead.
RED DAVE
Not that I think there's a snowball's chance in the Flood of TonyN's coming back to answer this, I'm just rather proud of my little contribution.

I think this should be published elsewhere as Red Dave's Challenge to Biblical Literalists.
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