Evolutionary biologists have demonstrated humanity did not start with 2 people, we developed out of H. Heidelburgensis over thousands of years.
The myths are similar because they are all found in the same area, the Middle East. They traveled as stories. They don't have them in other parts of...
He goes over the evidence in his book OHJ, which I have read.
OF course he talks about people who don't support his thesis?
He just did a huge written debate with a philosopher. He did one or two with Johnthan Sheffield an apologist who is serious about history as well.
He did a debate with...
We could have as many extra-Greek mythology text as you could hold in a university, doesn't make it true. These are myths, so is the Bible.
Stop saying "my opinion", how many times do Christians respond to "I'm going to investigate the claims" with "YES, definitely, do the work...
That works just as well. Satan is not an enemy at war with God, he's his agent. Until....Persian myths became known and respected. Then suddenly the Jewish writers were like "we too are getting new revelations from Yahweh.......he is also at war with Satan!
Whatever.
The language of the...
There really isn't such a thing. Everyone has beliefs. Not everyone has beliefs that are completely unsupported by evidence.
Because you cannot debate these issues.
Someone could say they believed in Thor and you could respond that he is a fictional character in comic books and fiction from...
The thousands of Priests who assaulted children, were the ones we found out about, but in prior generations it must have been the same.
They are theists.
The Bible itself says to stone children, take plunder of war, women remain silent in church, take slaves.
The Nazis were theists, they wore a...
16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD repented Him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people: 'It is enough; now stay thy hand.' And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. {S}
And David spoke...
Where Carrier said that was actually about the James reference. He put together a paper in 2012 with a summary of the arguments as well as his own.
This James passage was unknown to Origen (despite his explicit search of Josephus for Jesus material in his answer to Celsus). All claims to the...
Every believer says that , Mormon, Muslim, JW,....Heavens Gate all drank poison so their soul could get on a ufo. People will buy into beliefs.
What you need is evidence. If you care about what is actually true.
Doesn't seem he does because there are billions of Muslims, billions of...
Who says that? Science doesn't say that. Apologists using strawmen to make arguments do often use that.
Science does not say the big bang was an explosion. At all. Its' a change of state, nothing exploded.
Science says we do not know why the universe was compact and the fundamental laws may...
I didn't realize how much of an interpretation the Bible is until I listened to Joel Baden, a Professor at Yale talk about the development of the books.
Click-bait-y title but Baden is very smart. Harvard grad, works at Yale.
Joseph Campbell knew this as well:
"
“MOYERS: What about this idea of good and evil in mythology, of life as a conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light?
CAMPBELL: That is a Zoroastrian idea, which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other...
Adam and Eve is an older story, there are many versions. An African version has the serpent telling the woman to eat the forbidden fruit.
The serpent isn't a "devil", it's a being who gives knowledge to creatures. The story is a metaphor in many ways. Heavenly gardens, first man/woman and...
Not really. It's incredibly more likely that they are all works made up by people. From their mind. No supernatural deity involved.
The Bible, Quran and some Hindu Scripture actually say the others are wrong. So in that sense , yes they could all be correct.
So the Israelites "way" is to...
First, where? Please link to this statement so I can see the context. Second, I'm going on the material I linked to, a summary of all the latest scholarship, not one paper? If it was one paper I would not have presented it the same way and I don't care what he may have said about one paper. I'm...
We have the dates for the OT, especially the parts of Isaiah and Daniel where we first see Persian influence.
The Persian myths have been dated around 1700 BCE.
But it's clear NONE of them were in the OT scripture, NONE. Everything was added during the 2nd Temple Period, all of the Persian...
We have the dates for the OT, especially the parts of Isaiah and Daniel where we first see Persian influence.
The Persian myths have been dated around 1700 BCE.
But it's clear NONE of them were in the OT scripture, NONE. Everything was added during the 2nd Temple Period, all of the Persian...
We have the dates for the OT, especially the parts of Isaiah and Daniel where we first see Persian influence.
The Persian myths have been dated around 1700 BCE.
But it's clear NONE of them were in the OT scripture, NONE. Everything was added during the 2nd Temple Period, all of the Persian...