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> PaulKeeble appears to be making the weaker argument "the bible have been proved scientifically wrong", not the stronger claim of "truly disproved the Bible".

by augb 10y ago

> PaulKeeble appears to be making the weaker argument "the bible have been proved scientifically wrong", not the stronger claim of "truly disproved the Bible". That is a straw man argument. It either is proved wrong or it is not. > Only the parts which overlap with science can be proved or disproved by science. I am speaking to all of the above. I am not an archaeologist, so I will have to defer to someone else for supporting evidence. I can say, though, that a lack of corroboration does not mean something did not happen.

dalke 10y ago
"It either is proved wrong or it is not." I do not understand what you mean by that. Consider an 800 page physics textbook, where on page 234 it says that glass is super-cooled liquid. This is wrong. Does that one wrong statement prove the entire book to be incorrect? Certainly not. So why would showing one thing to be incorrect in the Bible "prove" that the entire book is wrong? After all, the 'Wicked Bible' from the 1600s, which says "Thou shalt commit adultery", is obviously wrong, but that doesn't somehow prove wrong the rest of that copy of the Bible. > lack of corroboration does not mean something did not happen That is the non-scientific view held be many Christian apologists. Is there anything besides the Bible where you use that argument, even when all physical and historical evidence strongly points just the opposite? Do you also believe the ancient continent of Mu exists? Or that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were members of some of the Lost Tribes of Israel? Or that it's possible to communicate with the spirits of dead people during a seance? If not, why not?
- augb 10y ago
  > "It either is proved wrong or it is not." > I do not understand what you mean by that. > Consider an 800 page physics textbook, where on page 234 it says that glass is super-cooled liquid. This is wrong. Does that one wrong statement prove the entire book to be incorrect? Certainly not. The Bible is not merely a physics textbook or work of fiction, it is the very Word of God. It is on a different level. It is reasonable to expect it to be held to a higher standard. Having said that, I do not claim to be a scientist. Still, with the Bible being in English since at least the late 1300's, not to mention the dates of the original text ~1,300 years before that, there has been plenty of time to demolish the Biblical accounts. This is well before the Scientific Revolution [1]. One example is the account of the worldwide flood in Genesis 6-9 [2]. I have yet to come across anything that definitively proves this to be false. There are plenty of theories to explain things that could also be explained by a worldwide flood, such as the layers of sediment; however, these remain theories. PaulKeeble stated: "Almost everybody believed the world was flat, then they were proved wrong. So many of the objective "facts" in the bible have been proved scientifically wrong and no such inaccuracy should exist given divine input. If god exists and was on Earth then he is very vindictive desperate for destruction and violence, humanities aim should be to destroy him. Thankfully there is no evidence to say he does beyond a book with obvious flaws." He is making a positive statement that the Bible has been proven scientifically wrong without providing any supporting evidence. The flat earth argument does not hold water, in my opinion. The following article provides a modern Christian viewpoint on the flat earth vs. round earth as found in the Bible: [3]. It is not until your answer, dalke, that the whole Exodus account is brought up. In it your "proof" is that there seems to be no evidence of millions of Jewish people wandering the the desert for forty years. To which I responded: >> lack of corroboration does not mean something did not happen And your responded with: > That is the non-scientific view held be many Christian apologists. Is there anything besides the Bible where you use that argument, even when all physical and historical evidence strongly points just the opposite? This is not a "non-scientific view", it is just the truth. (One could even say it is a scientific view, since science should be objective, not making leaps of logic where it cannot be supported. Lack of evidence is not evidence, even if it is surprising.) I am just pointing out that this does not disprove anything. It may be that our techniques, abilities and approaches just aren't up to the task yet. To suggest that this is somehow "unscientific" is to paint folks in a negative light without any substantive reason to do so; it is uncharitable. > After all, the 'Wicked Bible' from the 1600s, which says "Thou shalt commit adultery", is obviously wrong, but that doesn't somehow prove wrong the rest of that copy of the Bible. I think it is disingenuous to compare the Holy Bible to the "Wicked Bible". If you are interested in continuing this conversation elsewhere, please let me know here. Otherwise, I will discontinue following this thread in the near future. I do appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. Thank you. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution [2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6-9&version=NASB https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6-9&ver... [3] http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html
  - dalke 10y ago
    The majority of Biblical scholars interpret the story of the Flood as an allegory, not as a historical record. If it it the Word of God, why do so many people disagree on which parts are meant to be historical and which are allegorical? There is literally no trace of a worldwide flood, and people have been looking hard for such a trace. The early geologists expected to find such a trace, so it's not like their eyes were closed to that possibility. When do you think this worldwide flood took place? The written history of Egypt goes back some 5,000 years, and while they refer to regular floods, they make no mention of a world-wide flood. The geophysical methods we have are able to detect the tsunami from the Storegga Slide that hit Scotland 6,000 years ago. The methods we have are able to identify tens of Missoula Floods which took place from 15,000 to 13,000 years ago. How can geologist find all of these less powerful events, but not something like a worldwide flood? Perhaps because no world-wide flood occurred? Similarly, with the Exodus story, archeological methods are good enough that if there had been 1+ million people wandering in the desert for 40 years, it would have been noticed. They have been able to find trace of nomadic emplacements in general, so the methods do work. There's been over 100 years of attempts to something which confirms the Exodus story. Those in the early 1900s certainly believed the Biblical narrative was accurate history, only to find it wasn't. After the foundation of Israel, the Jews had even more incentive to show the validity of the events in the Torah, and they too not only found nothing, but are sufficiently confident that they say no such evidence exists. Again, the Egyptians kept records. When do you think Exodus took place, and why is there no record of 1 million Jews working in or leaving Egypt, or of the empire being affected by plagues? At what point do you conclude that we lack evidence not because we haven't been able to find it, but simply because it isn't there? Except for the few which require the Bible to be correct, and view everything through that lens, archeologists of Near East have concluded that the story of Exodus is not historical but was written many of hundreds of years later for religious purposes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Historicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Historicity ), and geologists do not believe there was any global flood (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology or http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_flood http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_flood ). Jumping topics, you wrote: "I think it is disingenuous to compare the Holy Bible to the "Wicked Bible". I don't think you bothered to understand what I was talking about, but instead jumped to a conclusion. The "Wicked Bible" is the tongue-in-cheek name for a reprint of the King James Bible where the publisher omitted the word "not" from Exodus 20:14. It has its own Wikipedia entry, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible . I can absolutely compare them because it is the Holy Bible (for Protestants; other branches of Christianity of course have different Holy Bibles) It was a humorous point meant to show that I do not think that one publication mistake invalidate the rest of that Bible, just like I don't think that centuries of people believing the literature truth of Noah's Flood or of the Exodus invalidates the entire Bible.

by augb 10y ago

dalke 10y ago

"It either is proved wrong or it is not." I do not understand what you mean by that. Consider an 800 page physics textbook, where on page 234 it says that glass is super-cooled liquid. This is wrong. Does that one wrong statement prove the entire book to be incorrect? Certainly not. So why would showing one thing to be incorrect in the Bible "prove" that the entire book is wrong? After all, the 'Wicked Bible' from the 1600s, which says "Thou shalt commit adultery", is obviously wrong, but that doesn't somehow prove wrong the rest of that copy of the Bible. > lack of corroboration does not mean something did not happen That is the non-scientific view held be many Christian apologists. Is there anything besides the Bible where you use that argument, even when all physical and historical evidence strongly points just the opposite? Do you also believe the ancient continent of Mu exists? Or that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were members of some of the Lost Tribes of Israel? Or that it's possible to communicate with the spirits of dead people during a seance? If not, why not?

augb 10y ago
> "It either is proved wrong or it is not." > I do not understand what you mean by that. > Consider an 800 page physics textbook, where on page 234 it says that glass is super-cooled liquid. This is wrong. Does that one wrong statement prove the entire book to be incorrect? Certainly not. The Bible is not merely a physics textbook or work of fiction, it is the very Word of God. It is on a different level. It is reasonable to expect it to be held to a higher standard. Having said that, I do not claim to be a scientist. Still, with the Bible being in English since at least the late 1300's, not to mention the dates of the original text ~1,300 years before that, there has been plenty of time to demolish the Biblical accounts. This is well before the Scientific Revolution [1]. One example is the account of the worldwide flood in Genesis 6-9 [2]. I have yet to come across anything that definitively proves this to be false. There are plenty of theories to explain things that could also be explained by a worldwide flood, such as the layers of sediment; however, these remain theories. PaulKeeble stated: "Almost everybody believed the world was flat, then they were proved wrong. So many of the objective "facts" in the bible have been proved scientifically wrong and no such inaccuracy should exist given divine input. If god exists and was on Earth then he is very vindictive desperate for destruction and violence, humanities aim should be to destroy him. Thankfully there is no evidence to say he does beyond a book with obvious flaws." He is making a positive statement that the Bible has been proven scientifically wrong without providing any supporting evidence. The flat earth argument does not hold water, in my opinion. The following article provides a modern Christian viewpoint on the flat earth vs. round earth as found in the Bible: [3]. It is not until your answer, dalke, that the whole Exodus account is brought up. In it your "proof" is that there seems to be no evidence of millions of Jewish people wandering the the desert for forty years. To which I responded: >> lack of corroboration does not mean something did not happen And your responded with: > That is the non-scientific view held be many Christian apologists. Is there anything besides the Bible where you use that argument, even when all physical and historical evidence strongly points just the opposite? This is not a "non-scientific view", it is just the truth. (One could even say it is a scientific view, since science should be objective, not making leaps of logic where it cannot be supported. Lack of evidence is not evidence, even if it is surprising.) I am just pointing out that this does not disprove anything. It may be that our techniques, abilities and approaches just aren't up to the task yet. To suggest that this is somehow "unscientific" is to paint folks in a negative light without any substantive reason to do so; it is uncharitable. > After all, the 'Wicked Bible' from the 1600s, which says "Thou shalt commit adultery", is obviously wrong, but that doesn't somehow prove wrong the rest of that copy of the Bible. I think it is disingenuous to compare the Holy Bible to the "Wicked Bible". If you are interested in continuing this conversation elsewhere, please let me know here. Otherwise, I will discontinue following this thread in the near future. I do appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. Thank you. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution [2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6-9&version=NASB https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6-9&ver... [3] http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html
- dalke 10y ago
  The majority of Biblical scholars interpret the story of the Flood as an allegory, not as a historical record. If it it the Word of God, why do so many people disagree on which parts are meant to be historical and which are allegorical? There is literally no trace of a worldwide flood, and people have been looking hard for such a trace. The early geologists expected to find such a trace, so it's not like their eyes were closed to that possibility. When do you think this worldwide flood took place? The written history of Egypt goes back some 5,000 years, and while they refer to regular floods, they make no mention of a world-wide flood. The geophysical methods we have are able to detect the tsunami from the Storegga Slide that hit Scotland 6,000 years ago. The methods we have are able to identify tens of Missoula Floods which took place from 15,000 to 13,000 years ago. How can geologist find all of these less powerful events, but not something like a worldwide flood? Perhaps because no world-wide flood occurred? Similarly, with the Exodus story, archeological methods are good enough that if there had been 1+ million people wandering in the desert for 40 years, it would have been noticed. They have been able to find trace of nomadic emplacements in general, so the methods do work. There's been over 100 years of attempts to something which confirms the Exodus story. Those in the early 1900s certainly believed the Biblical narrative was accurate history, only to find it wasn't. After the foundation of Israel, the Jews had even more incentive to show the validity of the events in the Torah, and they too not only found nothing, but are sufficiently confident that they say no such evidence exists. Again, the Egyptians kept records. When do you think Exodus took place, and why is there no record of 1 million Jews working in or leaving Egypt, or of the empire being affected by plagues? At what point do you conclude that we lack evidence not because we haven't been able to find it, but simply because it isn't there? Except for the few which require the Bible to be correct, and view everything through that lens, archeologists of Near East have concluded that the story of Exodus is not historical but was written many of hundreds of years later for religious purposes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Historicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Historicity ), and geologists do not believe there was any global flood (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology or http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_flood http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_flood ). Jumping topics, you wrote: "I think it is disingenuous to compare the Holy Bible to the "Wicked Bible". I don't think you bothered to understand what I was talking about, but instead jumped to a conclusion. The "Wicked Bible" is the tongue-in-cheek name for a reprint of the King James Bible where the publisher omitted the word "not" from Exodus 20:14. It has its own Wikipedia entry, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible . I can absolutely compare them because it is the Holy Bible (for Protestants; other branches of Christianity of course have different Holy Bibles) It was a humorous point meant to show that I do not think that one publication mistake invalidate the rest of that Bible, just like I don't think that centuries of people believing the literature truth of Noah's Flood or of the Exodus invalidates the entire Bible.