fivedragons wrote:
I can reconcile them. Where does archeological evidence refute anything in the Bible? I can understand the matter of history being unreliable, but you have to include every historical document that's ever been propagated, plus every single extrapolation of "fact" from archeological evidence, which is another form of guess work.
You are joking sir....right? Riiiiiigghhht!???
You do realize that there is a whole category of religious doctrine which attempts to deal with known scientific facts VS. what is written in scripture?
It's called
apologetics.
But as irrelevant to the facts as that may be, there are literally thousands of points that do not gel with archeological/scientific evidence. Here's just a few:
Let's take the idea of Jesus himself.
Excerpts from Jim Walker "Did Jesus Exist?"
No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts.
Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.
Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.
If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them.
Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.
Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay.
How about the Gospels?
Well, the most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]
Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]
Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.
The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]
The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.
Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.
The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]
* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark instead of 666 but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.
The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.
The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.
John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]
Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.
Regarding Gnostic Gospels:
In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E. Others have put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979]
Since thesetexts could only have its authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay.
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT FLOOD1
Excerpts by
Louis W. Cable
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation. Noah walked with God. Genesis 6:9
In 1853, near the ruins of the biblical Nineveh, clay tablets were discovered containing a story of the flood much older than the one in Genesis. Subsequent investigations have shown the Genesis account of the “Great Flood” and its hero, Noah, to be pure fiction. Much of the biblical story was plagiarized from older cultures such as Sumaria and Babylonia. To accept this story as fact flies in the face of practically all of the archaeological, historical, literary, meteorological, and geological research ever conducted to say nothing of good old common sense. Yet, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary many Christians, both clergy and lay people, do just that. They insist on the historical accuracy of this story. So let us briefly review some of the more obvious reasons to regard the Biblical story of the Great Flood simply as another myth.
As is becoming common in academic and popular writing, instead of the initials B. C. I use B. C. E.( Which stands for “Before the Common Era” or “Before the Christian Era”).
In Sumerian clay tablets dating from the third millennium BCE there is an account of a great flood whose hero is called Ziusudra. There is also a flood story in the second millennium BCE Babylonian legend of Gilgamish. In the Babylonian legend, preserved in much greater detail than that of Sumeria, the hero is named Utnapishtim. It is interesting that elements of these two flood stories appear almost verbatim in the Genesis account of the Noachan flood. In these stories the heroes receive a divine warning of an impending flood. It seems that god was displeased with man and wanted to start afresh. They were told to build an ark and take aboard it living creatures in pairs. In the Sumerian and Babylonian accounts birds were sent out after the rains ceased. In all stories the ark landed in mountainous areas and sacrifices were made to their gods for a safe landing. Fragments of the Babylonian flood story were found in excavations at Megiddo at the fourteenth century BCE level. So the Great Flood legend was already firmly established in the middle east long before there was an Israelite kingdom or a Bible.
Archaeological research has also made other discoveries regarding the origin of the flood myth. For example, there is ample evidence that in the distant past the Tigris and Euphrates rivers periodically overflowed their banks causing great damage. Excavations clearly show silt layers, sometimes as much as seven feet thick, overlying civilization and over all of that, civilization begins again. So devastating, but natural, floods did occur in that region in the past and could have provided the inspiration for the myth. However, this type of natural flooding would never have occurred in Israel because the Jordan, the only river of any consequence in that region, flows for most of its length below sea level. So, here we have a borrowed tale.
As one examines the biblical version of this story, conflicting elements become clear. The most obvious concerns the numbers of creatures Noah is to bring with him. In Gen. 6:19-20 God tells Noah to bring one pair of "every living thing including birds." But in Gen.7:2-3 God gives a different set of instructions. Here he tells Noah to bring with him seven pairs of “clean” animals and only one pair of the unclean. He also tells Noah to bring seven pairs of all birds. In Genesis 6:17 it says that ALL flesh will die. But in Genesis 7:22 we are told that only those creatures living on dry land will die. Why these contradictions? Well, the truth is that the flood story in the Bible is a composite of two separate stories each with different origins2. The earliest account (J) was probably written during the time of King Solomon (10th cent. BCE). The later one (P) is believed to have been written in the sixth century BCE. In J seven pairs of clean animals are taken aboard so there will be some for sacrifices. But P, more concerned with covenants than with sacrifices, specifies that pairs of animals be brought with no exception made for clean animals or birds. The flood story, as we have it in Genesis, is the result of the combining the J and P stories so as to reads as a single continuous tail. The combining of these two separate sources is the result of a clever cut and paste job performed during the Babylonian exile (597 BCE to 538 BCE) under the direction of the high priest, Ezra.
At the end of the story there is a covenant wherein God promises never again to flood the entire earth. Because he tended to be somewhat forgetful, God puts a "bow in the clouds" to remind him of this promise (Gen. 9:16). Is the Bible saying that there were no rainbows before that time? Did the atmospheric laws of refraction, which have operated for millions of years, suddenly change on that day? Not likely.
There are no waters above the earth and none below as stated in Genesis 1:7. This myth stems from the biblical assertion that the earth is a flat disk covered by a rigid hemispherical dome, i.e., the firmament3. All ancient near eastern creation myths are based on this primitive astronomical concept. The flat earth and its dome-shaped covering are said to exist as an enclosed bubble of air suspended in a universe filled with water. So when God feels like it, all he has to do is to open the windows of heaven and/or unplug the fountains of the deep and the water pours into this little saucer-shaped planet. Such assertions can only be construed as more biblical nonsense.
The Ark, so decreed that great naval architect in the sky, was to be built entirely of Gopher wood, and its dimensions were to be 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits height (Gen. 6:14-15.) Although the perceived length of a cubit may vary4, based on an average length of 18 inches, that translates into 450 feet by 75 feet by 45 feet. This presented our farmer-turned-ship-builder with a daunting problem because the Ark would have broken apart with the first wave. According to Robert A. Moore (Creation/Evolution XI, vol 4, no. 1, pages. 4-5) there is an upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of a wooden ship. Beyond this a wooden ship is subjected to great stress and the hull cannot be maintained watertight. This is the major reason why the naval industry turned from wood construction to iron and steel in the 1850s. In that regard, the largest wooden ship ever built, the six-masted schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall length. It required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly that it had to be pumped constantly. It was declared unseaworthy and too long for wood construction. Yet the ark was deemed to be over 100 feet longer.
As far back as the seventeenth century Sir Walter Raleigh realized that even at its great size, the ark could not have held the cargo of animals assigned to it. Also, where did they get the food and fresh water needed to sustain all of those animals? Who cleaned up their mess? These important questions are conveniently ignored in the Genesis accounts.
Another real-world problem for those believing this story is meteorology. Genesis 7:19-20 state that all earth was covered by 15 cubits (between 22 and 23 feet) of water. In order to cover Mt. Everest--over 29,000 feet above sea level--for a span of approximately 5 months (Gen, 8:3)--it would have had to rain an average of 6 inches per minute for the entire time. The record for rainfall for any one-minute at any one location is 1.5 inches. Also, if all that vapor was in the air before the rain started, the air pressure at sea level would be an astounding 13,000 psi instead of the normal 14.5 psi.
In the literature of ancient Egypt, the most powerful and most advanced nation in the world at the alleged time of the Great Flood, there is no mention of a catastrophic flood of world wide proportions. If such a flood had occurred, all of the Egyptians would have been drowned. That obviously didn't happen.
However, the most devastating problem facing believers in the flood myth surfaces in Numbers 13:33. Here the Israelites encounter the sons of Anak. The Anakites came from the Nephilim (giants) who, according to Genesis 6:2-4, originated in pre-flood times as a result of the sexual union of male angels (sons of God) and the daughters of men. Therefore the presence in post-flood Canaan of Anakites, the descendants of the Nephilim, would mean that not all who lived on earth, other than Noah and his immediate family, were killed in the flood. This stands as a direct contradiction of Genesis 6:17 where God vows to, . . . bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; every thing that is in the earth shall die.
The Great Flood
One thing that should be expected, even demanded, of any one in authority, such as the Christian clergy, is intellectual honesty. They must not only strive to overcome bias, they must refrain from deliberately concealing any uncertainties, controversies, conflicts, or other questionable aspects existing in their field of expertise. They must never mislead or deceive those who trust and rely upon them as experts. Those in places of authority who do deliberately deceive their followers are nothing less than unethical frauds and charlatans. To take it upon themselves to decide among complex and conflicting views just exactly where the truth lies is to be paternalistic and patronizing thus violating the first principle of good teaching. The competent teacher, after exposing his or her followers to all views, encourages them to form their own independent conclusions. In that regard, can the clergy be trusted? Quite to the contrary it is impossible to conceive of a profession more in violation of the virtues of intellectual honesty. The story of the Great Flood is a good example.
*******************************************
How about the the age of the Earth?:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
There are literally thousands more examples.
Faith is just that. Belief from the heart,
Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing, belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
It is loyalty to a person or thing; A theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
A set of principles or beliefs.
I would never advocate taking faith away from anyone, as it is thier right, but rather I only take issue when I see faith spilling over to the secular world in an attempt to influence just about every facet of society.
That is by any measure, Mega-wrongage.
There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.
But I'm the same as everyone else. 