I’m writing this post in response to something a fellow blogger has written about why the Bible is trustworthy (though I’ve lost the link to the post). He and I come down on different sides of this issue, and I thought the best way to tackle this would be to respond to each of his points in order.
1) We should treat the Bible like any other historical document.
Yes, we should, but this means different things to different people. When we read ancient historical texts, what do we think about the supernatural events that they relate? Many ancient historians talk about miracles, or attribute certain events to various gods — do we accept those claims? Of course not. We accept the events, like wars, famines, political upheavals, but we chalk up the supernatural claims to superstition.
However, when Christians ask that we treat the Bible the way we would treat other historical sources, they don’t mean it in the way I just described. They’ll say, “if you believe the histories about George Washington, why do you reject the stories of the Bible?” But this isn’t a true comparison. If we had an historical account that claimed George Washington could fly, we would dismiss it, even if everything else it recounted was factual.
There’s another difference as well. What we believe about George Washington has no real impact on the rest of our lives. However, most versions of Christianity say that if we don’t believe Jesus was the actual son of God, we’ll face eternal consequences. What could be more important than making sure we hold the correct view? So if God loves us and wants us all to believe, doesn’t it make sense that the “extraordinary claims” of the Bible would have “extraordinary evidence”? That’s the standard we would expect from any other historical document, and it’s the same thing we should expect from the Bible.
2) Witnesses for the Bible.
It’s often mentioned that the Bible was written over a period of 1500 years by 40+ authors. That timeline is not accepted by all scholars, but even if it were, this has nothing to do with whether or not it is accurate or inspired. In order for later authors to write things that fit with what came before, they only need to be familiar with those earlier writings. In other words, the Bible is much like fan fiction.
Paul says that Jesus appeared to 500 people after his resurrection, so some Christians point to that as evidence too. But who were these 500 people? Where did they see the risen Jesus? Was it all at once, was it 500 separate appearances, or was it something in between? This claim is so vague, there’s no way it could be contested. Even if a critic could have rounded up a multitude of people who all claimed to not have seen Jesus post-resurrection, Paul would only have to say, “It was 500 other people.” No, Paul’s 500 witnesses are completely useless. Instead of actually being 500 separate witnesses for the risen Jesus, this is just one claim — Paul’s. Plus, let’s not forget that Paul is telling this to fellow Christians, not skeptics. No one in his audience would be inclined to call foul anyway.
Sometimes it’s pointed out that the earliest critics of Christianity did not question Jesus’ existence or his miracles, but just claimed that he was one of many people who claimed similar things. But I don’t think we should really expect ancient critics to focus on his existence or miracles anyway. How do you prove that someone didn’t exist? And aside from Christian writings, we have no sources about Jesus anyway, so how could they disprove either his existence or his miracles? And these critics lived in a time in which the existence of miracles were almost universally accepted. So arguing from this point doesn’t seem very convincing to me.
When it comes to historical sources for Jesus, it’s true that Josephus probably mentions him. And there are a couple of other references by other historians within the first 100 years or so after his death. But these references tell us nothing about Jesus other than that he might have existed, and that there were people at that time who were Christians. These points are virtually uncontested — and they say nothing about who Jesus really was. It’s hard to count them as any kind of evidence in Jesus’ favor.
3) Archaeology
Christians will often cite the Bible’s agreement with archaeology as one reason to believe it may be divinely inspired. For instance, most historians used to believe that the Hittites never existed, since the only record of them came from the Old Testament. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, evidence finally came to light that overturned that opinion, exonerating the Bible.
But does this agreement with archaeology really indicate that the Bible was divinely inspired? Many books have been written that seem to record accurate history — does this mean we should assume those authors were inspired by God? Of course not. While agreement with archaeology is a good sign, it’s not necessarily a reason to leap to the conclusion that God had anything to do with writing the Bible.
The story doesn’t end here, though. As it turns out, archaeology does not always agree with the Bible. The Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, for instance, has no archaeological evidence. While that is an example of missing evidence, we also have examples of contradictory evidence: archaeology indicates that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan did not actually happen, the kingdoms of David and Solomon appear to be far smaller than the Bible depicts, and the Book of Daniel contains several anachronisms, including its incorrect labeling of Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar’s son.
Examples like these show that the Bible’s agreement with archaeology is not nearly as strong as some would claim, making it very shaky grounds for staking the claim of inspiration.
In the next post, we’ll talk about other reasons that people give: prophecy and internal consistency.
Finding Truth 
In fact, I looked up “sycophant” in the dictionary, and found Brandon’s picture beside the definition.
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Shoot from the hip.
Let’s be honest, Yahweh may have been a real two faced hypocritical lying Bar Steward, but when he wanted someone split, pitted,raped, sodomised, burned,enslaved, stoned, or annihilated he didn’t begin his ”request’ with, “Wow! that’s a great point, Moses, and I respect your point of view, but…“
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Sorry, Nate, this is just too damn funny. 🙂
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“I think you’ve gone overboard in trying to drag everyone into your own character assessment of Brandon.” – that’s where you’re mistaken, Howie – I couldn’t possibly care less what anyone else thinks of Brandon, their opinions are entirely their own. I was simply addressing comments made about my OWN opinion of Brandon, and that required repeating what those opinions are.
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“Can we all get along?” ~ Rodney King
😀
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“Take no notice of Arch, he’s just a bloody old fossil” – says the Great Stone Face! Go look at http://www.thinkatheist.com – now THERE’S a format! PLUS you get 15 minutes to make corrections!!! Put THAT in your sarcophagus and – do whatever with it people in sarcophaguses do —
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@Howie: Thanks!
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Point taken. But even there, it looks a bit confusing.
I struggle with IT stuff, being only an ‘it’.
Time for a new post, methinks.
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Nate,
In general, I’m a fan of nested comments. However, non-nested has at least one advantage: it’s easier to follow a conversation in “real time”, i.e. to see what’s new, just by scrolling to (near) the bottom of the page. Otherwise, you have to rely on notifications…
For your blog, the additional complication of switching as you mentioned is screwing with past threads. If you could find a way to draw “a line in the sand”, to make old threads stay non-nested, and new ones be nested, then it might be worth considering. (That does of course seem like a lot of trouble.) Otherwise, I think staying with non-nested is the better choice for your blog.
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Actually, I’d love to be able to set it post by post, but nesting is a site-wide setting, unfortunately. I think we’ll just have to keep the current format. Sorry for the limitations, Arch!
But thanks again to everyone for weighing in.
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“I lived in CA for 10 years, and was living close to a fault line, and yes — I had ‘spiritual’ type experiences.” – so did I (both – Venice Beach), but they usually involved a girl.
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Then again, arch makes a good point, contra my suggestion:
…IDK.
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“@Arch: Yeah, Job probably did have a Brooklyn accent.” – not Brooklyn, Howie, Yiddish!
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OK, so as an “observer” (for the most part), I personally think there’s been more than enough comments about certain individuals. Besides, that’s not the purpose of Nate’s blog. As Ark says, “Time for a new post.”
Re: nesting — on the blogs that I’ve visited that use it, I’ve noticed the “reply” comments keep getting pushed farther and farther to the right side of the screen and the margin for these comments gets narrower and narrower. For that reason, I prefer the style of Nate’s blog. What I tend to do is leave the page active and then “refresh” when I haven’t been able to follow along with each post. Then I scroll down to the last post I remember reading. Yes, it’s somewhat of a pain, but as Nate says, leaving it “as is” works best for him. And after all, it is his blog. 😉
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hahah — well, altered states of consciences can be induced in a number of ways. Religion and sex (for males) are two biggies. Both release huge surges of dopamine that light up the brain in the same way as someone on heron or cocaine. The more religious a person is the more dopamine (dope) they get.
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“If I don’t want value what someone is saying or don’t like their personality, I can always just not talk to them.” – check the record, Ruth! I tried that! Although I posted material regarding the veracity of The Acts, I didn’t say a disparaging word until he began verbal attacks on Ark and me! I mean, who cares about Ark, but ME!
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@Arch – yeah, I know – my mom speaks some Yiddish as well as Brooklynese so I link the 2 sometimes. 😉 The “f’get it” covers everyone in Brooklyn pretty much – maybe that’s what I keyed off of.
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@ARK – (happy now?) – RE: “Wow! that’s a great point, Moses, and I respect your point of view, but…“
I have an emoticon, of a little guy, rolling on the floor, laughing his ass off, that I would love to paste here instead of this long-winded reply, but this is WordPress, so I can’t. But cleverly done!
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Victoria,
Not for females?
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Nooo, I totally get that. I wish I hadn’t engaged Mike first. It appeared he was attacking, in a very personal way, comments on this post that weren’t even relevant to the OP. I shouldn’t have called him out, but I don’t like bullying tactics. And I had already seen the Tyre post that Howie mentioned.
People are different. As for me, I just stop communicating, no matter how childish the other person gets. I shut down on them. Just because they address me doesn’t mean I have to respond.
Other people need to defend their honor and I get that, too.
I just feel…yucky…when I participate very much in mud slinging. And hell, it’s not like I’m gonna go home and cry in my pillow because some guy on the internet, who goes by Mike Anthony, thinks I’m unlearned.
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RE: this:
Nooo, I totally get that. I wish I hadn’t engaged Mike first. It appeared he was attacking, in a very personal way, comments on this post that weren’t even relevant to the OP.
It was meant for a certain really old bird. lol
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Actually, Nate, it is I who should be apologizing to you, as you had no way of knowing that the majority of my comments were surreptitiously directed at Neuro, with whom I have had a running feud regarding WordPress, from an discussion way over on VW’s blog, when both ladies advised me to “get with the program.” Neuro and I are frequently known for taking good-natured jabs at each other (she’s crazy about me –).
HOWEVER – that said, I don’t remember your format being this way – has it always been, but it’s been so long between Topics that I’ve forgotten, having been on many other WP sites that were different in the interim?
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“Re: nesting — on the blogs that I’ve visited that use it, I’ve noticed the “reply” comments keep getting pushed farther and farther to the right side of the screen and the margin for these comments gets narrower and narrower. For that reason, I prefer the style of Nate’s blog.”
@Nan, it depends on the template. I don’t have that issue. Plus, if you do have a template that does that, then limit the number of nesting comments. but at least the person gets notified. Otherwise, if there is a lot of activity, comments can get missed. When I started my second blog, I specifically looked for a template that was discourse friendly. Many templates are not.
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@ratamacue0
Sheesh!, of course females! She’s trying to be sexist. If your missus hasn’t ever called out to a deity then you’re probably doing it wrong.
😉
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I just dismissed 5 zingers in rapid succession – I’m not touchin’ THIS one –!
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