reniaa

but what happens when the evidence leads you to having to be subjective, as in jerusalem's case where you have had 200 years of escavations some done very crudely and private people also digging for saleable actifacts too. all in an area which has been densely populated on hilltops for 1000's of years? surely in this case lack of or minimal evidence could be due to outside factors compromising the site so to draw definate conclusions from lack of evidence would be unwise?

Johnny Skeptic

What are you talking about? Please quote your sources. If you are talking about ordinary, non-supernatural history, all cultures record ordinary, non-supernatural history.

Not necessarily. Some skeptic experts claim that a historical Jesus existed, and some skeptic experts claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. A much higher percentage of skeptic experts claim that a historical Jesus existed. Since most skeptic experts accept many Biblical secular historical claims, obviously your claim that "if we have two archaeologists disagreeing on the evidence it's only natural that an atheist would agree with the atheists archaeologists and the Christian would choose the Biblical one to agree with" if false.

If the Bible had much better evidence than it does, there would be little need to debate Bible history. For instance, if the Old Testament and the New Testament contained many accurate predictions regarding when and where some natural disaters would occur, there would not be any need to debate whether or not there is at least one being who is able to predict the future. Another example is that if there had been 1,000 only begotten Sons of God instead of only one only begotten Son of God, and they had performed many miracles all over the world, and were crucified, and rose from the dead, there would be little need to debate whether or not those beings existed.

Regarding the global flood, the Ten Plagues, and the Exodus, is it your position that God requires all Christians to believe that those events happened? Some evangelical Christians do not believe that a global flood occurred, including some evangelical Christian geologists. In addition, some conservative Christians do not believe that the Bible teaches that a global flood occurred.

Are you aware that it is not encumbent upon skeptics to disprove those claims? If it was, it would also be incumbent upon you to disprove deism. What evidence do you have that those events happened other than "the Bible says so."

A God would not have any need of using written records to communicate with humans. All that he would need to use to communicate with humans would be telepathy. He could give consistent telepathic messages to everyone in the world regarding everything that he wanted people to know. Written records needlessly invite disputes regarding authorship, interpolations, lying, and innocent but inaccurate revelations, sometimes even among Christians.

If a God exists, there are not any doubts whatsoever that he has not nearly done all that he can do to convince people to believe that he exists, to love him, and to accept him. What you lack are reasonable motives for why God does what he does.

In your opinion, what is God trying to accomplish that he is not able to accomplish without killing people and animals with hurricanes, and without forcing animals to kill each other?

Keith&Co.

Creationists have to be careful about who they choose to agree with. A YECer can only accept some information from an OEC expert, not all. And at least once, creationists got 'expert' testimony against evolution from someone that turned out to believe in Panspermia instead of Creation.

But most of the atheists i know don't care about the ideology of the expert. If someone has an idea and they present it, the skeptics charge towards the evidence. Can they support their idea? Does the support stand up to scrutiny?
It would not surprise me to find that someone i agree with or whose evidence i accept turned out to be a christain. I flat don't care. I care about whether they have offered realistic support for their conclusions. Especially if it's something that challenges mainstream religious interpretation of biblical history. It's not sufficient for me that an atheist jimmies up a likely sounding story about events in year 2 CE, if there is no evidence that would force the traditionalists to at least weigh the idea.

In my experience on the boards, no matter how much atheist would like to agree with an idea, they're as likely to challenge the evidence, the evaluation and the conclusion as if it's an idea they would prefer to disagree with.

-Jay-

Hang on. What you've done here is gone from "I watched a documentary that said <something>..." to taking that <something> as a given. This despite several folks explaining why that <something> isn't as damaging as the documentary might have implied. Be careful there - that approach can take you down the wrong path.

It also seems that you're not aware that a vast amount of what we could call Biblical scholarship (in archaeology, textual criticism, even geology, just to name a few subjects) has been undertaken by Jewish and Christian researchers. It's quite incorrect to paint a picture of Atheist scholars out to disprove the Bible. To be sure, there are minimalists and maximalists, and a lot of gradations in between, but the notion of "Atheists v. Christians" is a very misleading oversimplification.

As is so often the case, the situation is much more complex than it might initially appear.

regards,

NinJay

Johnny Skeptic

Your argument is not valid. Some evangelical Christians, including some evangelical Christian geologists, do not believe that a global flood occurred. In addition, some conservative Christians do not believe that the Bible teaches that a global flood occurred. Further, virtually all skeptic experts agree with Christians that King Nebuchadnezzar was a real person.

It all gets down to evidence. What scientific evidence do you have that a global flood occured?

When you conduct research, do you start out by believing that the Bible is true, and then try to force science to agree with the Bible?

Minimalist

I am still getting a hint that you think that bible-thumpers are, as opposed to archaeologists, totally unbiased in their opinions.

If one side has an agenda then those who seek to prop up the status quo also have an agenda. So the agendas cancel out and we are left with the hard evidence. That evidence shows a minimally habited site in a poor and desolate region prior to the late 8th century BC. It simply leaves no room for any sort of "Davidic Empire."