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To: alexander_busek
"Straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel."

So the Bible should be rejected wholly because it is not up to forensic standards.

And instead you rely on "prehistory" -- something for which there are (by definition) NO written records.

🤣

546 posted on 09/10/2023 7:00:37 PM PDT by grey_whiskers ( The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: grey_whiskers
So the Bible should be rejected wholly because it is not up to forensic standards.

Never said "wholly." Said instead that we should not abandon our rational faculties and accept as the unvarnished truth whatever appears in those documents which happened to be "deemed worthy," e.g., by the Council of Nicaea. Said that we are entitled to be skeptical - whether it be of the "first-hand account" of an alien abduction - replete with "anal probing" - in the 1960s or the Kiplingesque story of a fig tree withering on command in A.D. 29. Said that we are justified in using the same standard of evidence.

And instead you rely on "prehistory" -- something for which there are (by definition) NO written records.

"Written records" are not per se more believable than anything else; everything must be viewed in context, and then subjected to the closest scrutiny. No exceptions!

And why are you willfully ignoring the mountains of hard geological, archeological, and genetic data that we have?

Data that we are free to examine and debate and sort out in a free forum?

We have no written records (unless you want to count the ambiguous depiction on the Egyptian Tempest Stele, and the strange remarks mentioned in the Chinese Bamboo Annals) on the eruption of Thera ca. 1600 B.C., which obliterated the Minoan Civilization - yet the stratigraphic evidence is overwhelming!

I find the geological and paleontological and genetic evidence we have on the evolution of life during, say, the Cambrian Period (525 million years ago) more compelling than the written records (more accurately described as "Just So Stories") we find on fragmentary ancient parchments and relating incredible happenings of a much more recent provenance.

Fossils (for instance) when backed with mountains of corroborating radio-isotope dating, stratigraphic dating, consideration of geomagnetic field reversals, sea floor spreading, etc. - trump skimpy narratives found on incomplete, redacted, conflicting, poorly translated ancient tablets and tattered parchments. In many cases, these "stories" don't even purport to reflect hard historical fact, but rather are quite patently literary works intended to provide semi-literate nomadic tribesmen with some semblance of reassurance in a harsh and - for them - largely incomprehensible world.

Regards,

556 posted on 09/11/2023 12:13:55 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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