Bait

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: Ron v. ]</p>

godfry n. glad

Michael Turton noted:

Since then, others have accepted this basic statement without question. I would appreciate someone providing citations of where Tacitus and Pliny mention _Jesus_. I'm of the opinion that neither of these sources mentioned Jesus.

godfry

Bait

Hi Kosh,
I see we are almost on the same wavelength as to how to present evidence, etc. This is going to be fun. :-)

Some reason, this forum (or my computer)isn't letting me go down point by point, but I'll try to get the main elements.

You stated something about the Bible claiming the Genesis account is only 6,000 years old, and DNA evidence traces back 200,000 years (which I'm not sure of that point either). I've heard this 6,000 year thing from many people over the years, but have never been able to truly verify that theory, nor can figure out where they get it from. There's too many gaps in history, and the Bibles historical accounts, IMHO, to honestly state that. There's parts in the Bible (the book of Job for instance) that says that to God "a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day", which I take as time has no meaning to God. Even taking that literally, the Genesis account alone then would cover 7,000 years all by their lonesome. Then you have all of those decending to Noah (and including Noah), each living almost 1,000 (ok, 900+)years. Then you have the problem of are you counting Adam's decendants years as God does (the thousand year thing), or as men do (as the sun goes round the earth). I think the time thing is really a non-argument, since there is no way to prove one way or another. I don't think it proves, or disproves the accuracy of the Bible.

You also stated that the Genesis account (myth) is "stolen" from the Babylonians and Sumerians. By what evidence do you have to support this? Because they are similar? Which is the oldest accounts? Could they be similar because they are verifying each other...none actually "stolen" from another? Could it be they are similar because they are true, historical accounts, written by different peoples, from their perspective? The question becomes "is it possible?" Even in courts (at least here in the USA), you cannot convict if there is reasonable doubt. You do not try to prove a negative, BUT, first a theory is proposed, then you try to prove or disprove that theory. Here we have an ancient written account...a theory from the scientific viewpoint. What EVIDENCE do you have it is NOT true? I have not proven it is, but here you have three different civilizations saying the same thing...evidence for. In addition, there are plausable scientific theories, such as the universe is expanding (different debate), that also points toward the accuracy of the Genesis account. Nothing proven YET. But then, evolution is still considered a theory too. I tend to take a lot of the Bible as historical accounts, and personally choose to believe the God parts. As to the accounts themselves, I try to ask the question (to start with anyway)"is it possible for it to have happened this way?" Then I ask "is there evidence that this event actually occurred?" Then I go from there, usually questioning next as to why it appears in the text at all, and are there other "non-related (secular) texts that seem to confirm this account.

BTW - thanks for the article URL's...I'll check them out.

As to David, et. al...ok, I'll give you that the evidence only leads credence to a possible historical event. And that the event COULD have been totally natural, if one doesn't believe in God. The God part is belief...and there probably is no way to 100% prove Gods existance, other than showing accuracy of his accounts. That in itself does not mean there is no God, it just means I do not have the means to physically show you he exists. My point was to lend credence to the story itself, and I only picked that one because where Diana originally put me, that was one of the ones that got the most derision. I'll tackle Noah or the creation account later, when I've done more homework as to what has already been shot down.

I agree that "the bible says so" is not good evidence, especially since it is the Bible that I'm defending. However, I disagree that it is solely me that has the burden of proof. Here is a document, and I'm the defending this existing document...your the prosecution (using your courtroom scenario). I give evidence as to why I think it is true, but you need to prove why it is not as well. In court, the burden of proof is ALWAYS on the prosecution, not the defense.

In archeology, here is an item, a written historical document that says this and that happened. It is up to the archeologist to prove it incorrect, not the writer of the document. And what is used is usually other written documents or "finds" that lend credence to it...or disproves it. Until then, it is still considered a historical document, with at least some credence. Yes, I accept SOME of the burden of proof...but then so do you. I state that I'm a Christian, and I believe the Bible to be true. You say that you do not believe it is true. My purpose on this forum (which I have stated) is not to necessarily win souls...merely to search out truth, and have fun debating against the "other" team. At this time, I'm only interested in proving the "possibility" that these accounts could be true (historically). But just like I cannot use "because the bible says so" as evidence...neither can you use "because that seems stupid" as one either.


&gt;If nothing else,
this place has taught be to argue better![/QB][/QUOTE]

As I am finding out myself, if anything, it's helping my debating skills. :-)

Bests,
Ron v.

Bait

Hello Issac,

&gt;&gt;[QUOTE]Originally posted by isaac42:
[QB]Hi, Ron. Welcome to the Lion's den!

Thank you Issac, I'm having quite a bit of fun thus far.

&gt;&gt;Personally, I'll gladly concede that David could have slain Goliath pretty much as described.

Thank You!!! Finally someone who is willing to concede that a "Christian" MAY have some valid evidence or points on SOMETHING. :-)(tongue in cheek)

(Ron said)Why not put it into the Bible + column

&gt;&gt;Because "could have" is quite different from "did". Even if it did happen, what would it mean? The a boy, presumable younger than 13, the age at which modern Jews "become a man", killed a big guy that everyone else was afraid of. So what? He did it from a distance. Had he missed, he could easily have run away. Not so terribly brave in my estimation,and quite unworthy of the adulation heaped upon the legendary David. Was it a miracle ("When David slew Goliath, yes! That was a miracle!" Fiddler on the Roof)? I don't see how.

Ok, lets start this again, only with a little different bent. I think I got way off on the wrong foot with my first post to Diana. First off, I'm of the opinion that "the bible" meaning the Torah of the Jews in particular (old testament), and the new testament, are historical accounts of historical events....with or without the references to God. My judgement is out as to the accuracy, etc. of the books of the bible that are included in the Catholic bible, but not the protestant...I think they COULD be viable historical artifacts, but I'm not near experienced enough in them to even comment. My agenda here, on this forum is not necessarily to convert anyone, merely to debate and defend my position (stated above). I stated what I personally consider a miracle...so to me, it was, but to you I'll concede perhaps it wasn't.
MY point though, is that I think that this particular story is a true historical account, and there is no doubt as to the antiquity of the story (making that a historical document in itself). I stated a reason why I think that this story may have been a historical account...because there is NO evidence that it could not have happened, and a lot of evidence that suggests (but not proves)it probably did (even leaving God out of it).

&gt;&gt;You ask, why throw out all of it if some is shown to be unreliable? Easy. First, from the inerrantist POV. The inerrantist considers the Bible to be inerrant. It follows that, if any single bit is shown to be false, it cannot be inerrant. Personally, I find the inerrantist position to be completely untenable, but it is intellectually honest on its face.

Ok, then lets say then I'm not an inerrant as far as this list, or these debates are concerned, (at least as far as translations go anyway). However, I also do not hold that improbable also means impossible. Nor do I hold that there really is such a thing as impossible...I've seen with my own eyes too many things that are "impossible" happen. What I wish to do here is to debate the probabilities of the events as described in the Bible. If one goes on the premise that translations are written by humans, then it is entirely probable that one or two words here and there may have been mis- transcribed, or mis-translated...without missing the essence of the message as a whole (the inspired part?). And I'll grant that perhaps some translation even miss the message (I do not agree with making everything in the Bible gender neutral as an example). But assuming the Bible is a historical accounting...how accurate is it?
If it's found fairly accurate, could not then it be considered as a message that is at least as accurate? (In other words, if you find the accounts to be, say 80% accurate...would it not be reasonable to assume that the spiritual "God" part may also be at least as accurate?) WAIT! I see a mispelled word here in this translation...the whole document is therefore bogus!!! Is this a reasonable mindset?

&gt;&gt;For a more liberal Christian, it's only slightly more complicated. If any can be shown to be false or otherwise in error, it calls the whole thing into question.

Why? Humans error all the time. God inspired this book, but did necessarily not pen it himself. He (God)told the authors to write what they saw, so we could have a life lesson, answers to problems, evidence of things not seen. Job was swallowed by a whale, no, make that a big fish, a shark, no, make that a behemouth, or a dinosaur...oh shoot...something big that swims. The point is, that he got swallowed by something and survived. Translators make mistakes...quite often. Some of the "original" documents no longer exist...but the next oldest translations are probably pretty close, close enough to decern the general message it is conveying.

&gt;&gt;Not that the rest of it is necessarily wrong, but it cannot be assumed to be correct.

Your the first one I've seen here that concedes that ANY of it could be correct. That means we have a chance of honest debate.

&gt;&gt;&gt; So, each story, each prophecy, each proverb and parable must be evaluated on its own merits. IMO, most of it fails.

And that is where I disagree...I think most do not fail...and all of it tells us a wonderful story of humankind, and instructions on how to live, etc. (notice I'm leaving the God stuff out at the moment). I do agree they should be evaluated, each on their own merits, as long as you evaluate them honestly...as in "could this have happened?". I think some of it may seem improbable...I think some translations have mistranslated certain words...but I also think the message is consistant, and to me...true. As to the historical nature, no way to absolutely prove historical event that far back, but you can have evidence of it's probability.

Bests,
Ron v.

lpetrich

About 6 rather than 1 mitochondrial Eves...

Sorry, jess, I didn't mean to pick on you.

My guess as to what is going on is that the human mitochondrial family tree has something like 6 deep branches that came well before much of the more recent branching. But I'd have to see the original work to be able to feel sure about what it was saying; repeating something unfamiliar is likely to turn into a game of "telephone", and I don't think that that's a good way to do scholarship.

diana

Originally posted by Ron v.:
Hi Diana,
My, you are good aren't you? :-)

Hi, Ron. And thanks for the paragraph breaks and all. It really is more reader-friendly. I know how it is to get so strung out saying something that you forget to pause for breath, though.

And I don't know how "good," I am, but I'm downright anal about doing my homework.

Before I begin, I thought I'd mention that I've invited devnet, our local native Hebrew speaker, to share his thoughts on the passage under discussion. He's usually quite helpful in pointing out the nuances of the language that are inherent to its structure which you won't find in a concordance.

Ok, taking the verses literally, you got me on that (so far)...I'll have to go to the "original" script to see what it really says.

Here we may tangent wildly into a discussion of "literal" or "figurative," as it's beginning to look like this is the root of our problem. I am obviously a literalist. You clearly prefer a figurative interpretation.

How do you know which parts are figurative and which are literal?

Is there some scripture that I've missed that says we should read the bible figuratively and not literally?

Or more to the point: did you decide the bible was the word of God before or after you read it? If before, you will always read it so that you'll find SOME way to make the pieces fit, because you then won't read it to see what it really says; you'll read it with a determination to make it make some sort of sense, no matter what.

If, however, you're willing to view the bible as a collection of stories compiled by well-meaning but fallible and possibly misguided believers, then...you wouldn't be fetching so much to make the stories make sense.

My suspection is that the same phrase describing "knocking out" and killing are close...

New word alert. I suspect the words aren't that close. The reason I referenced two different translations is to check how different scholars with different agendas interpreted the original. While the words were different, the meanings were identical.

Biblical scholars have a tendency to plug in an alternate translation of a word if at all possible if that meaning will make the passage make more sense and/or avoid apparent contradiction. I find it interesting that that was not done here, with any of the translations I checked (about 10).

So far, the bible still says David slew Goliath twice. Let's see what devnet says.

On face value there appears a conflict, but are we not getting into semantics just a bit? The author may have been just describing how it appeared. Or it could have been a mis-translation.

Of course we're getting into semantics. Surely you aren't suggesting that God is incapable of inspiring people to say exactly what he meant, now are you?

When you start allowing "room for error" because of human fallibility (which undermines the whole "inspired" thing, so let's just toss that "all scripture is inspired of God" thing out the window, shall we?), you undermine the entire storybook. If you're willing to admit it's corrupted, then how can you say in the same breath that it's still trustworthy at least a little bit? Which part can we trust, then? How do you know? And why would God Almighty Creator of the Universe Et Cetera Ad Nauseum allow this to happen to his only will and testament to mankind, our only hope of salvation?

You're standing in quicksand there, Ron.

Your focusing so much on a leaf, your missing the forest.

You're the one giving excuses for why God's infallible word is fallible. If God can't get such a simple story right, how can you even begin to buy the whole omniscient, omnipresent, omni-everything bit?

Again...did you decide before or after reading the Bible that it was the Word of God?

If you decided before, I suggest you read the Koran with the same mindset, just to be certain you have the right religion there (you'll find there's far less "harmonizing" and "apolegetics" to do for the Koran, as well).

The fact remains that an injury from the stone as described could knock someone out or kill him - medical fact.

Scripture says it sank into his forehead. If you think a rock hitting a rabbit's head has any bearing on a rock sinking into the frontal bone of a Giant, I suspect a refresher course in basic anatomy is in order.

Medically (scientifically) the event could have happened.

Nah. Not the way the bible described, anyhow.

For one, the stone may have "obviously" appeared to the witness to have killed him , but he moved (appearing alive, post mortem movements) just before David used the sword, for two, people have revived after being technically dead.

So now the bible is what observers thought they saw--and you base your entire religious system on that. Tell me...do you use 2 Tim 3:16 for toilet paper?

Your saying the whole story is untrue just because of a possible error in a translation(s), or because the author was describing an event as it appeared to him is even sillier, isn't it?

No. If there was an error in translation from the original, do you not think someone at some point would have produced a proper translation? Your clinging to an obviously spurious story no matter what is just sad.

It's obvious that you aren't nearly as interested in what the bible has to say for itself as you are in justifying it's contradictions and tall tales no matter what. Stick around, but you might consider renaming yourself "Bait."

d

Kosh

<a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000500" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000500</a>

This figure comes originally from a (16th century?)
Theologin who simply added up ages of patriarchs.
THe OT is fairly explicit about who begat who
and how long they lived and how old they were
when the begating was done, all the way back to
Adam. If you're going to be a literalist, the
Bible doesn't leave you much room on the age of
the earth from creation. If you're not going to
be a literalist, you've many other problems. ;-)

Sure it does. The science shows, without a doubt,
that the earth is 4 billion+ years old. The bible
says 6000 (some YECs will push that to 10,000).
Hence, the bible is inaccurate on this account.

BTW - here's a brain teaser for you. The bible
is explicit about how long ago the Flood was
supposed to have happened (4300 years ago?).
Egyptian writings (chiseled in stone, mind you)
are just as explicit about the lineage of their
society. Seems the Egyptians sailed (pardon the punn) right through the Flood without noticing
it. Their civilation (with writings to prove it)
both pre and post dates the flood.
How could that be if the bible is accurate about
the flood?

I'm unable to locate any of the articles I've
read right now. Thought for sure there was stuff
in the lib but I can't find it. Anybody got a
reference?

Yes.

The Babylonian ones.

"You'd like to think that, wouldn't you!?"
- Princess Bride

Here's the problem with that line of reasoning.

The Bible is claimed to be the history of the
Jewish people. Agreed? (OT that is)
The Bible is claimed to be true. Agreed?
The Bible contains specific accounts about
specific events about specific people. Agreed?

So we read a story about a Jewish patriarch
named Noah who built a boat. We have the
names of his descendents, who are supposed to
re-populated the earth. The Bible is very specific
that these are specific Jewish people with names,
Agreed?

Now we find a tablet with the Epic of Gilgamesh
on it. This is from another civilzation, one
which, BTW, the Jewish people passed through for
a time. Now this story is basically identical
to the story of Noah. BUT, the characters are
Babylonian (or is it Sumerian? can't remember).
Their names are different. The God is different.
Maybe you claim it was the same god with a
different name. I'll grant you that. But what
about the guy building the boat? The Bible claims
this happened to Noah, a Jew. Not to a Babylonian.

IF you want to claim they are accounts of the same
incident, then somebody is lying about who it
happened to! IF (and that's a big IF), it happened
to the Babylonians first (since the tablets
pre-date the Jewish ones), the Bible is LYING about YHWH talking to this specific person (Noah)
and saving the Jewish race while killing all others.

And there's that Egyptian problem.... maybe they
all climbed up on the pyramids...

Before you do, make sure you do a search on the
forum. Both here and in evolution/creation. You'll
find it (and those who believe in the flood), have
been, er, drowned in the facts...

big d

Ron, When Did the Flood Occur?
I Kings 6:1 says that 480 years passed from the start of the Exodus to the start of construction on the first temple by Solomon. Gal 3:17 says that 430 years passed from the covenant with Abraham to the delivery of the Law to Moses. Yahweh establishes the covenant with Abram about 135 years after he was born (11:32, 26). Abram was born when Terah was 70 (11:26). Terah was born when Nahor was 29 (11:24). Nahor was born when Serug was 30 (11:22). Serug was born when Re'u was 30 (11:20). Re'u was born when Peleg was 30 (11:18). Peleg was born when Eber is 34 (11:16). Eber was born when Shelah was 30 (11:14). Shelah was born from a 35 year-old Arpach'shad (11:12). Arpach'shad was born from Shem 2 years after the flood (11:10).
Since the date of Solomon's reign is agreed to be about 950[+/- 50]BCE, we can calculate the time of the flood using this chronology. Starting with Solomon and working backward, we have:
950BCE +480 +430 +135 +70 +29 +30 +30 +30 +34 +30 +35 +2= 2285BCE.
China and Egypt have unboken civilizations that extend back past 3500 BCE. The Bible is therfore errant. Now there are those who say you can't use the lineage to show time, but was the precise use it was written for!
big d

lpetrich

As to deducing a 6000-year age of the Universe from the Bible, that's done by adding up some of those "begots" in it. Archbishop Ussher had come up with the figure of 4004 BCE for the origin of the Universe back in the 1600's; he was only one of several who have tried to calculate the Universe's age with the Bible. The calculators of the traditional Jewish date arrived at 3762 BCE or thereabouts, and others have come up with other values in the range of 4000-3500 BCE (I don't recall the details).

However, a superabundance of other evidence indicates much greater age; was the Universe only 6000 years old, but created with the appearance of greater age? (Philip Gosse's Omphalos theory)

Also, Genesis 1 and 2 are two separate creation stories that contradict each other on several important details.

Was God happy with what he had done? (G1)

Or did God have to fix as he goes, only to get rather exasperated? (G2)

Was it land animals before both sexes of humanity? (G1)

Or was the first man (male) created, then the animals, then the first woman? (G2)

Does God create by commanding? (G1)

Or does God create by molding some material and then breathing on it? (G2)

Kosh

Ron, some more reading for you.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap2.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/chap2.html</a>

Also, here's the main index for that article:

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/index.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gerald_larue/otll/index.shtml</a>