An Assertion...

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They didn't all collectively write Leviticus. This blatant error shows that the particular person who wrote this text had no clue (and no special knowledge granted by an all-powerful deity), and never bothered to count the legs of insects.

How many people really count the legs of a fly? I could imagine that most modern people have read somewhere that all insects have six legs. But if you ask people in the streets how many legs a spider has, I bet that at least 4 out of 10 will wrongly answer "six". Most people mistakenly believe that spiders are insects, and never make the effort to count spider limbs. I don't see why the ancient Hebrews would have been less lazy and prejudiced.

If the Bible, particularly the OT, does not contain the word of a god called Yahweh, one has to assume that Yahweh does not exist. In this case, we have to ask Jesus, assuming that he was a real historical person: "Who's your daddy now?"

Christians do not just believe in Jesus as a prophet or philosopher. They believe that Jesus was the son of a god called Yahweh and had the power to forgive their sins through his death. The alleged divine heritage of Jesus stands and falls with the truthfulness of the OT and the existence of the Hebrew god Yahweh. This is the reason that the OT is part of the Christian Bible to begin with.

It is part of the Torah, the Book of Laws. There were scribes involved as they copied these texts. If it was an error, the copyists would've corrected it and we wouldn't be reading "on four" in our current texts.

What does "the word" mean? Parts of the OT are claimed by Jews and Christians to be laws given by God. But what is the method of transmission? Well, it varies. Either it's stuff that God told high priests in visions, or it's stuff that God wrote on a stone tablet, etc. It's not like the Koran, where the whole thing is a document Written by God (TM).

EDIT: After doing some more research, it's actually much more complicated than I thought. There are lots of different types of literature in the OT, and they are variously claimed to be various things by various denominations. So I shouldn't be speaking in such generalities.



That's right. And they claim that Jesus performed miracles, was raised from the dead, and fulfilled prophecies, which is what proves that he was the Messiah and Son of God. They do not claim that the Gospels were written by God, or even inspired by God, only that they are records of events that God caused. The Gospels are called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, not God, God, God and God!

Last edited by Declension on 18 Feb 2012, 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is where I disagree with you.

Many Christians believe the whole Bible was inspired by God.

Sorry, you're right. It is more complicated than I thought. I have been sloppy in my quest to counter sloppiness!

The three passages in question are from the Torah, or the "Law", which is claimed by some groups to have been literally dictated to Moses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

However, I maintain that the Gospels are not claimed by anyone to have been inspired by God, except in an indirect sense.

EDIT: I'm wrong about this, as well! Okay, I give up. What on earth? Why would God do things on Earth, and then dictate to people what they should be thinking about what they are seeing? I will never understand fundies.

That phrase was a reference to the Christian claim "the Bible contains the word of god", which is also the only "proof" for existence of the Christian god (i.e., Yahweh & son). Or, like Paul put it: "all scripture is god-breathed", which is usually interpreted as "all bible authors were under the influence / direction of god". Otherwise the Bible is just a storybook (which happens to be my personal opinion).



The stories about Jesus' miracles only mean that belief in the gospels requires belief in magic powers. Magic powers don't make Jesus the son of any god. He could have lied about that part Even his resurrection doesn't appear to be all that special if you look at Matthew 27:52-53, where a whole bunch of dead saints (who weren't sons of god) rise from their graves and appear to the citizens of Jerusalem. On a side note, this shows that the gospels also require belief in zombies.

Christian scholars establish Jesus divinity and his status as the Messiah based on a number of prophecies in the OT, such as the prophecy of his virgin birth. If these prophecies weren't dictated by Yahweh, or based on visions sent by Yahweh, they don't mean anything at all.

You're knocking on an open door, here. I don't believe that Jesus performed miracles. I'm just trying to clarify what sort of document the Gospels are claiming to be. Are they claiming to be a record of what happened, or are they claiming to be the Word of God dictated by God? I think that it's obviously the former.



I agree.

if we reject the bible for faulty science, then we'd have to reject every science text as well... because with scientific advances come changes in our understanding. the bible was written with the best scientific knowledge of the day.

there are easy answers to your points:

a. i have never seen an accurate representation of pi. every single decimal representation is simply an estimate. we have gotten more accurate in our estimates, but we are still not correct.

b. rabbits eat their partially-digested feces called cecotropes to absorb important bacteria and nutrient. this is very similar to a ruminant that chews its cud, with the only difference being which end of the animal the material comes from. under a prior classification system a rabbit could be considered a ruminant, just not according to modern science.

c. see my explanation below:

clerics who were transcribing the word of god would be doing so via the knowledge of the day - they could not presuppose future scientific terms and understandings. if they did so, they'd be writing a book that their contemporaries would not be able to understand. the words of god needed to be expressed in a manner that the people of the day could comprehend and relate to. to explain further:

if god came to me today and said, "-_[__-*_==--==^-__*" i'd be like WTF? therefore the words need to be couched in contemporary language and knowledge.

if god instead said, "beware of the corvids, especially the blue jay," i would understand and be able to communicate this to god's followers.

HOWEVER... science moves on and 200 years later, a cynical member of a forum says, "blue jays aren't corvids according to modern science. they are now considered a separate family, therefore hyperlexian's words cannot be the word of god." 200 years prior, if god had told me to communicate that all corvids AND ALSO the blue jay family should be avoided, people in the 21st century would think i was daft - science wasn't ready for that.

Fnord, frankly you are missing the point.

and i am an atheist.

The verse you mentioned doesn't assert anything about pi, just about some measurements of an artifact that was made. Are you going to tell us that these measurements should have been made to infinite accuracy? If not, then they were rounded off. Also, the only connection with pi is that it is described as 'circular'. Do you have evidence that the ancient Hebrews had such an advanced manufacturing science that it would have been perfectly circular? Do you have evidence that the ancient Hebrews would have understood circular in the exact same sense as the ancient Greeks, who would agree with our modern definition of circle?


Given the modern definition of cud in the English language, that is correct, albeit irrelevant.

Can you give me evidence that the ancient Hebrews meant exactly that by the word that is translated 'cud'? Words in different languages mean different things.


Another linguistic definition "contradiction". You said somewhere that their word for 'bird' must have meant things with feathers. Why could it not have meant things with wings? Do you have evidence for this?

You claim to have hundreds of these, and I believe you, since there are no doubt hundreds of ways to dispute individual word meanings in an ancient language, jump to conclusions, and take things out of context to make them easier to misunderstand. But why should I care? Hundreds of silly things like this is unimpressive.

That's exactly my point The Bible was written by primitive people (by today's standards) who clearly didn't have a better understanding of the world than other cultures of their time. In some regards, they actually had a worse understanding of nature than their contemporary high cultures.

If the creator of the universe had picked out a human population and decided to share his (or her) divine wisdom with them, such as a set of perfect moral laws, I'd expect them to be way ahead of all other human cultures. I'd also expect them to be the most ethical culture in history.

Other - Get over yourself.

By the way, speaking of god's chosen people: How come that Christians don't have any problem with the idea that the alleged one true god picked one ethnic group over all other ethnicities back in the day? It seems very odd and awfully wrong to me that the creator of the universe would have a racial preference.

Why? The whole Christian claim is that we are fallen and we have free will. Even if we know the laws, it doesn't mean that we will keep them.

God is supposed to be omnibenevolent. The Mosaic law was allegedly provided by god, it is not the product of free will. Do you really think a benevolent, loving deity would enact laws such as "if a rape victim didn't call for help while she was violated, or no one was around to hear her, she must be stoned to death"? Or "rape is no big deal if the rapist marries the victim afterwards"?

I'm not saying that the laws were provided by free will, I'm saying that free will might be why the Jews didn't always follow them.



No, I don't think so. And I don't think he did. But you have to remember, an apologist would just say something like "who are we to question God? God by definition knows more about morality than us. He created women, so he gets to make the rape rules."