Atheos

mmd344's profile says he hasn't been online since Dec 28th. But that's not that long a time, so hopefully he'll be back soon. I know it has to be difficult to go from the friendly environment of a pulpit in an auditorium filled with sheep-like people baa'ing and aaaaamen'ing everything you say to the hostile environment of a secular discussion group such as this where you actually have to put up the evidence for the assertions you make.

And that's really at the heart of the issue here. It's easy and downright enjoyable to make unchallenged assertions. When I was a preacher I did it all the time. It felt good to be the unchallenged expert of my domain, holding aloft a bible and feeding eager believers a steady diet of just how right they were and how much god favored them for their choice of faith.

You get to the point where you think everyone thinks that way. It seems normal, as if somehow people who don't accept the bible as the WORD OF GOD are freaks of nature to be pitied for their inability to see the obvious.

But here one is surrounded by the freaks. In this place people ask ridiculous questions, such as "Why should I believe the bible?" It's almost inconcievable that anyone would dare question the WORD OF GOD. It's an uncomfortable place.

My point in this seemingly pointless soliloquy is this: The fundie position I used to hold, and which mmd344 is trying even now to defend is that the Judaeo-Christian Bible is the unique WORD OF GOD. It seems like an obvious position when you already believe it because it literally is how you define your reality. But this worldview results in an incredibly difficult position to hold.

On the one hand, you think that people who don't accept that god is real are "without excuse" because Romans 1:20 says so. Of course the problem is that these things are not clearly seen. In fact, they're not seen at all. We live in a world replete with evidence of having evolved through natural processes over billions of years. The world looks much older than the bible would seem to indicate. Life appears to be the result of billions of years of evolutionary change rather than the result of abrupt creation in its current form less than 10,000 years ago. The scientific disciplines of geology, paleontology, archaeology, biology, genetics and others are constantly undermining fundamental things one can infer from the Bible.

What's more, God's interaction with the world is exactly the same as it would be if god did not exist. Praying for a sick person yields no statistically different result from wishing them good health on a lucky horseshoe or praying for evil to the sick person. Believers in god are not happier, healthier, wealthier, smarter, or even more decent to other human beings than non believers. They cannot drink deadly poisons and survive, move mountains by merely telling the mountains to move or survive deadly snake bites, contrary to scriptures claiming otherwise.

If it were true that the Judaeo-Christian bible was objectively different from the Quran, the book of Mormon, the Hindu Vedas or any other scriptures venerated now or in the past by people in various places over the years, then that objective difference would be demonstrable in some way. If bound bibles could neither be burned nor destroyed it would be a good start. But we can quickly demonstrate that that Bibles burn just as easily as Playboy magazines.

So like I say, it's an impossible tightrope. On the one hand the claim is made that "It's obvious that the Bible is the WORD OF GOD. The evidence is clear". On the other hand the claim is made that "God doesn't want to interfere with free will. Faith must be without evidence or it's SIGHT, not FAITH".

Mmd344, I heartily invite you to return and convince us. I was once a christian myself and as I have already stated I once preached the same doctrines you are probably preparing to preach this very morning as I type. I preached my first "professional" sermon in 1979 and my last one in 1997. I've weighed the same evidence you find so convincing and found that once you hit that evidence with a little bit of light it crumbles in your hand like a 2000 year old papyrus. You started this thread with the bold assertion that somehow the evidence would prove conclusively that "The source of the Bible (OT, NT) is the One God of whom it speaks". This compelling evidence has yet to materialize.

Sven

Oh, he was back today, but chose to reply to two other threads.

Anyway, thanks for a nice read! Very thoughtful post!

mdd344

"Against God" (Atheos),

You stated, Evidence? Please. If you merely go and study the Mt. St. Helens eruption, you will find an area surrounding the mountain that by the scientific standards you are citing APPEARED to be really, really old. Tons of sediment were layered, small canyons cut by the volcano, etc. Had the current 'geologic column' been used to determine age it would register very old indeed. But isn't it interesting that trees were found, the same trees btw, resting upright through several of the layers!

Yet it all happened in a matter of a few days. Appeared old, but was not. And yet you suggest there is all this evidence of natural process evolution over billions of years? Upon what do you base that? The sight of something? You, nor anyone, has observed or recorded evolution of the type of which you speak (macro). So something "looks old." What, you mean like the area around the volcano? Looks can be deceiving, right?

Go check it out.

Toto

mdd344: check out www.talkorigins.org - especially this on St. Helens

Sven

No, it would have not. Geologists are not that dumb as you like them to have. They have no problem in differentiating between igneous and sedimentary rocks - as I already said here:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...96#post4035496

However, real geologists (and even laymen) have no problem in differentiating between layers which can form quickly (Igneous rocks) and layers which form over loooooong times (sedimentary rocks). Add to this that there are marks of rain drops in some layers, dried up river beds, remains of comets, remains of animals not covered quickly, etc. etc. etc.

Since you never answered this post, you apparently missed it. I give you the benefit of the doubt - but if you continue to use this silly Mt. St. Helens argument, I will have to conclude that you're just the typical example of so-called Christian honesty.
Care to address the problem how "marks of rain drops in some layers, dried up river beds, remains of comets, remains of animals not covered quickly" can be found in sediments if they were laid down by one flood?

Toto already provided a reference which shows that there is no problem at all. Anyway, while we're at it: How does one flood explain the up to 50 layers of fossil forest on top of each other?

So what? Geologists have no problem in clearing this question up. As they have no problem elsewhere to show that the Earth is billions of years old.

Umm, upon the evidence perhaps?

We've mountains of indirect evidence (the same type of evidence we have for atoms and heliocentricity - yet you don't doubt these two theories).

Right. That's why geologists don't "look", they check.
Since you are so sure that the Earth is young, you certainly can explain what's wrong with isochron dating of rocks. Or with the fact that five different dating methods can all agree that a specific rock is billions of years old. Just for a start.

Jabu Khan

oh look another set of abandoned tracks

Jack the Bodiless

mdd344:

You seem to be wandering into "Evolution/Creation" territory now. I suggest that a new thread (in that forum) would be a more appropriate place for this.

Here is your underlined paragraph from your original post on this thread, broken up into numbered claims:
This claim is false (as has been pointed out). In particular, you seem to have naively extrapolated from the "preservation" of ONE DSS manuscript, the Great Isaiah Scroll, and assumed that the same applies to the whole Bible. Farrell Till's The Jeremiah Dilemma describes one of many cases where the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has undermined the inerrantist belief in the Bible's "preservation".

We could continue to discuss this here if you like, but this claim appears to be dead in the water.
Another bogus claim: the Bible contains numerous failed prophecies, and a notable lack of verifiably-successful prophecies. This is a legitimate topic for this forum, but maybe for another thread: unless you're prepared to draw a line under claim #1 and devote the next chunk of this thread to claim #2.
What "unity"? Maybe this is part of claim #1, but the Bible (despite being heavily edited over many centuries to improve its "unity") is a very disjointed compilation of books.
The Bible is scientifically inaccurate, even by the standards of the times in which the books were written (e.g. several were written by flat-Earthers at a time when other peoples already knew the Earth was round). It also assumes the Earth is about a millionth of its true age, it gets the Genesis creation-sequence wrong, and so forth. But this is really a topic for the "Evolution/Creation" forum.
As various historical events occurred while the Bible was being written, we should expect it to be reasonably accurate about such events: there is nothing "miraculous" about this. But archaeology and history confirm that the Bible is frequently wrong about events that allegedly occurred in other times.

FatherMithras

Interestingly enough, the Bible is NOT extremely accurate in terms of archaeology. One need simply do research on the facts about Israel and Judea having not been united, the lack of evidence for an exodus of any kinds, and the interesting and telling fact that the Hebrews never invaded Canaan. The Jewish civilization developed right where it was, and only later made claims that they'd invaded, claiming their god gave them the land, when they themselves were being invaded by a foreign power.

Jack the Bodiless

Yes, I should have qualified that rather better. Some parts of the Bible were written during, or shortly after, various historical events described therein. Other books purport to be from a specific period that they describe, but were actually written later (e.g. four centuries later, in the case of Daniel): and this is often indicated BY the historical errors contained therein. And other books describe "periods" that were entirely fictional.

spin

So you don't mind separating the scrolls from the site.

In medaieval times, naturally. There's no point in retrojecting your opinions onto a period where those opinions are not shown to be relevant.

No. I used the notion that the small population at Qumran, without having any reason to assume that they are not roughly representative of the demographics, couldn't justify the numbers of texts.

I don't understand what you are insinuating Essenes into this formula at all.

I don't know what "alternative viewpoint" you're referring to, but you'll find a lot of scholars are being more prudent these days and not referring to Essenes, but merely the "sect".

Take the time to look at what the evidence is that puts the Essenes at Qumran. You'll find that it is based on assumptions which ignore numerous facts. It uses selective readings of the scrolls to say that the community matches what Josephus talks about for the Essenes, while forgetting much of the content. It misuses Pliny's description of Judea to use a vague localization of the Essenes to Qumran. Beyond that, nothing. The bravest attempt to justify the Essene connection is in the Flint and VanderKam general introductory book on the scrolls (The Meaning of the DSS (or via: amazon.co.uk)), but it is still simply inconsequential.

The bulk of modern scholarship knows nothing about the archaeology of Qumran. You want to argue Essenes? then you have to do your own footwork rather than rely on others' opinions which are based on nothing. SHow that the Essenes had anything to do with this place.

Look either you stop blabbing about Essenes or you get responsible and show that they have something to do with the issue.

As it is, they were according to Josephus excluded from the temple. That puts them outside hope of relating to the leaders of the scrolls community. BY the fact they they reject family lineage and adopt children, they reject the lineage model so important to the temple hierarchy, ie sons of Zadoq, sons of Aaron, sons of Levi, and so important in the scrolls.

Now, to justify the possibility that the Essenes could have something to do with the scrolls you have to totally divorce them in time from the events of the scrolls. Can't you see that you need to justify the Essene connection rather than rearrange whatever you can to preserve the Essenes?

There is no current archaeological consensus. The archaeological community at the moment is fractured between lip-service to the de Vaux dicta and those who see the vast host of problems that the old school's axioms pose. There was a conference at Brown Uni a few years back of the current archaeological views of Qumran. The results were published in a book: The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates (or via: amazon.co.uk), Galor, Humbert, Zangenberg, Brill, 2006. That will give you an understanding of the state of play. (For example, Magen and Peleg have a 60 page paper in it.) But you won't find the stuff on internet. You should try the local uni.

Understand that a lot of the written stuff that will accompany the exhibition will be utter shite. It will assume all the conclusions that you do, never supply any real reason for its doing so and misrepresent the contents of the scrolls as belonging to a dissident religious sect excluded from the temple, when the leaders of the scrolls community were specifically those people who ruled the temple.

Inkwells are important for keeping accounts. This was a center for the manufacture of pottery. What do you expect them to do, count on their fingers? And writing utensils? What are you referring to? -- the idiotically labeled "writing tables" with the dish in the middle of them?

You don't have scrolls, nor a culture of scrolls, nor much of an understanding of the life of scrolls, so you are retrojecting generic ideas from the present.

Scrolls do not have a long preservation given usage, so one expects scrolls to tend to date closer to the time of their usage. (The scrolls least used last longest.)

No, not really. It doesn't show any understanding of the archaeology at issue.

(Omitted rest of stuff from EB... Who signed the article?)


spin