The Bible - Why Trust It

sooda said:

No,, Serious Bible scholars are studying the Ugaritic texts to help them accurately translate from ancient Hebrew.. You seem to be 30 years behind the scholarship.

The Jews were never slaves in Egypt.. They emerged from among the Canaanite tribes of Northern Syria.

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Pardon me. I did not know the Gospel of Modern scholarship was authentic, and reliable.
I don't believe their Gospel though. I see that you not only swallow it gleefully, but you preach it, as well. So you must be a follower. I don't know who your leader is... actually, no, I do, but not sharing that thought.
I'll share this one. If God did not inspire the Gospel of Modern scholarship, i hope you realize where that leaves you. Although that's not a concern of those who don't think God is.
However, if God inspired the Gospel writers, those who believe them, have Jesus Christ as their leader - the one who has God's backing and support... I think that's a good position to be in.

nPeace said:

Pardon me. I did not know the Gospel of Modern scholarship was authentic, and reliable.
I don't believe their Gospel though. I see that you not only swallow it gleefully, but you preach it, as well. So you must be a follower. I don't know who your leader is... actually, no, I do, but not sharing that thought.
I'll share this one. If God did not inspire the Gospel of Modern scholarship, i hope you realize where that leaves you. Although that's not a concern of those who don't think God is.
However, if God inspired the Gospel writers, those who believe them, have Jesus Christ as their leader - the one who has God's backing and support... I think that's a good position to be in.

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You never heard of them, have you?


The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered since 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic language.

Approximately 1,500 texts and fragments have been found to date. The texts were written in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE.

nPeace said:

Part 1 - Historically Accurate

ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE
Skeptics have attacked the Biblical record using the argument from silence. The fact that for many Biblical characters, there is no mention of them outside of the Biblical record in the findings of archeology or ancient inscriptions or manuscripts, calls their historicity into question.

The argument goes that if such people really lived, one would expect to find some trace of them outside of sacred writings.

Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible


Add one more to the list.
Tattenai, also called Sisinnes, (flourished c. 6th–5th century BCE), Persian governor of the province west of the Euphrates River (eber nāri, “beyond the river”) during the reign of Darius I (522–486 BCE).
According to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) Book of Ezra, Tattenai led an investigation into the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem about 519 BCE. He sent a report to Darius, who responded with instructions to allow the work to proceed. Tattenai is one of the few Persian officials mentioned in the Hebrew Bible for whom there is independent attestation; he is mentioned in a cuneiform tablet dated 502 BCE.

Tattenai
Tattenai (or Tatnai or Sisinnes) was a Biblical character and a Persian governor of the province west of the Euphrates River during the time of Zerubbabel and the reign of Darius I.

He is best known for questioning King Darius in regard to the rebuilding of a temple for the Lord, God of Israel. He was generally friendly to the Jews.The rebuilding was being led by Jeshua, son of Jozadak, and Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and had been issued by King Cyrus I. Tattenai wrote a letter to King Darius to ask of these statements were true, and then King Darius wrote a letter confirming that the statements were true. In the letter, Darius asked that the people do everything they can to support this rebuilding financially, and that they do nothing to impede it lest they suffer harsh punishment.

Babylonian Cuneiform inscriptions
A number of cuneiform tablets bearing the name Tattenai have survived as part of what may have been a family archive. The tablet that links one member of this family to the Bible character is a promissory note dated to the 20th year of Darius I, 502 BC. It identifies a witness to the transaction as a servant of “Tattannu, governor of Across-the-River”. The clay tablet can be dated to June 5, 502 B.C. exactly.

Name
The Name Tattenai (ושתני), probably derived from the Persian name Ustanu, a word found in Zoroastrian scriptures to mean "teaching" though to the Hebrews it was indistinguishable from an expression of the verb נתן natan, meaning "to give". In 1 Esdras he is called Sisinnes.

Biblical texts
Ezra 1:1-4; 4:4-16; 5:3-7.

Tattenai meaning

Argument from silence DEBUNKED
CONFIRMED : The Bible - Historically Accurate

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The fact that people living in or immediately after the suppose time of Jesus (or whomever) lived know local geography is not compelling.

Milton Platt said:

The fact that people living in or immediately after the suppose time of Jesus (or whomever) lived know local geography is not compelling.

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I am amazed that some Christians think that because the geography was historically accurate for that time (and @sooda may have issues with this) somehow proves that the Bible is "historically accurate". All it shows is that the writers, at that time, were not complete ignoramuses. Of course one must set the bar that low because when it is higher the Bible tends to fail repeatedly.

nPeace said:

No, I totally understood your allegory, but apparently you don't understand how it's a strawman argument.
So I'll try to explain.
The comic books clearly reveal they are fiction. You don't have to go digging for that, in order to validate any claim.
The Bible however, does not present itself as fiction, so you need to validate its claim.
So throwing out a strawman, that there are some true facts in books of fiction, does not invalidate anything, because there are also true facts in book of facts.
Why ignore the latter, to proclaim the former? What does that do? It's a strawman - an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.

So rather than do that, why not show me that the arguments presented are not valid.
The history part is history - a done deal. We got most of it right. All haven't been confirmed, but that's only one of many proofs.
What about the others?

Why not demonstrate that you are really interested in determining if the arguments are valid, as opposed to creating strawman.

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It's not a strawnman it's a valid way of showing your faulty logic. Because if someone was to find said comic book thousands of years in the future they too could believe it's real because New york is real. You refuses to agree with that, because you would then have to use the same logic and reasoning to the bible and it wouldn't hold up.

Now if you have any more proofs you like would like to put forth I'm more than glad to show those are wrong as well.

nPeace said:

You probably think there is only one situation that is considered a compromising situation.
Think outside the box Nimos.

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There are no reason to think outside the box, because they are clearly reading more into the story than it actually say.

nPeace said:

She associated with the Canaanite girls, finding herself where they hung out... with Canaanite guys.
Compromising situation? Indeed it was.

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This logic is just wrong, because you are implying that it was very common for the Canaanite guys to just rape each other. So because she is an Israelite, she have now put herself in a compromising situation. Looking at the rest of the bible, God, in certain conflicts allow the Israelites to take the wives/girls of those they defeat in combats as their own, which one can only assume is not done with consent. So what makes you think that the israelites were any better?

nPeace said:

Those guys had different standards, and rules of conduct to the Israelite people.
Think of a Christian girl, customarily associating with Atheist girls.
I could just imagine....
Girl you need to get out and enjoy yourself. Let your hair down and just forget about that god thing. Let us fix you up with a real man. SCREECHHHHHHHH
Wait a minute. That's not how it goes. Like in the movie, the approach is subtle.

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You got to be kidding me?

nPeace said:

Deal?
First of all that law was not yet given.
Second, if the situation had occurred after the law was given... Please read Deuteronomy 7:1-6.
(Exodus 34:11-16 ; Genesis 34:8-12)

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But what does it matter if the law had been given or not? Something doesn't suddenly become morally good, just because a law is made.

Deuteronomy 7:3-4
3 You are not to intermarry with them. You are not to give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters for your sons,
4 because they will turn your children from me to serve other gods so that the LORD's anger blazes against you and swiftly destroys you by fire.

And apparently God changed his mind later.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14
10 "If you go to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your control, you may take some prisoners captive.
11 If you see among the prisoners a beautiful woman and you desire her, then you may take her as your wife.
12 Bring her to your house, but shave her head and trim her nails.
13 Remove her prisoner's clothing and let her remain for a month in your house, mourning her parents. After that, you may become her husband and she is to become your wife.
14 If you aren't pleased with her and you send her away, you must not sell her for money or mistreat her, since you have dishonored her."

nPeace said:

Nimos, have you read the Bible really? What is a witch? Is it a person that goes in their closet at night, and says, "Abracadabra" in a whispered tone?

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2 Chronicles 33:6
6 He burned his sons as an offering in the Ben-hinnom Valley, practiced fortune-telling, witchcraft, sorcery, and communicated with mediums and separatists. He did a lot of things that the LORD considered to be evil, thus provoking him.

Exodus 7:11-12
11 Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and sorcerers, and they—along with the Egyptian magicians—did the same thing with their secret arts.
12 So each one threw down his staff and it became a serpent, but Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.

Leviticus 20:27
27 "Moreover, a man or a woman who has a ritual spirit or a familiar spirit is certainly to die. They are to be stoned to death with boulders. They will continue to bear responsibility for their guilt."

So as far as I can see, a witch (sorcerer/magician) refer to anything from soothsayers to actual magic, like the Egyptians magicians, to mediums etc. So depending on what you read in the bible, "Abracadabra" might have been used, unless one believes in staffs turning into snakes in some other ways

nPeace said:

Your attempts at grabbing at any natural explanation, is not an investigative approach.
Just because you don't see something doesn't mean it never happened. How many of us here saw the great storm? I didn't. Yet I believe it happened. Why? There were eyewitnesses - firsthand accounts.

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But this is not the same, because first of all, a storm is not considered supernatural, we know they occur. However as also pointed out in the video, it does not only rely on witness accounts, but also scientific data.

Looking at records of barometric pressure from the time, he noted a "deep low pressure system", with London experiencing the "sharpest" pressure changes. His analysis of the source material found the lowest pressure of 950 millibars (mb) over central England.

"Depressions generally form in the mid-Atlantic and are driven across the Atlantic by the famous jet streams, which steer cyclones," says Wheeler. "Sometimes a cyclone is benign, but they are areas of low pressure and they bring cloud and rain."

But do we know why this area of low pressure was so forceful?

One reason could have been that a sharp contrast in temperature caused a particularly deep cyclone, suggests Wheeler.

"When they're as deep as that, they normally result in a big temperature contrast between the polar latitudes and the tropical latitudes," says Wheeler. "So there's a suggestion that, although we don't have air temperature records for the Atlantic, you could have expected a steep temperature gradient north to south. That's the thermal energy inequality that gives rise to these cyclones."

At the time, the country was in the so-called Little Ice Age.

Wheeler looked in depth at nautical vocabulary and found that an unofficial language for describing wind force existed before Beaufort's scale, but it was not Defoe's Table.

The reason why the impact on meteorology was slim was the historical context: meteorology barely existed in 1703.

Before the 18th Century Age Of Enlightenment, most Europeans believed in the divine omnipotence of a Christian God, who could communicate his wrath with the weather. Sermons from the time show that clergy interpreted the storm as a sign of God's anger at a variety of apparent misdemeanours, including the popularity of the theatre and science. Non-clerical accounts also link the storm to divine wrath. "The Winds are a Part of the Works of God by Nature," wrote Defoe.

"You can see some scientists beginning to get an acknowledgement with a rational view of the world, such as Newton," says Wheeler. "They were the tip of an intellectual iceberg, but most people had a deeply religious view of the events that they experienced. As far as a lot of people were concerned, it was literally an act of God."

Compared with other sciences, meteorology took a long time to emerge and advance. As Wheeler points out, the problem with studying weather is that an event like the Great Storm cannot be repeated in a lab.

"It wasn't until well into the 19th Century that scientists began to realise that these winds were circulatory systems, not a linear in-flow," says Wheeler. "That really didn't begin until 1820s and 1830s. Like all branches of science it was a stumbling, groping in the dark for some time."

So reading this, while ignoring all scientific approach or data, but just going by the eyewitness accounts alone, you can see that it was widely believed that the storm was the work of God rather than something with a natural explanation. That is why we have to look at event like these and compare them to what we actually know about these things from a scientific standpoint. Because people jump to wrong conclusions, if they don't know how to explain things.
I doubt, anyone today, including you, would share the view with the people back then, that it was the work of God?

Comparing that to the resurrection or any other miracle people believe in. If people are so easily fooled by a "simple" storm, why would it not be more reasonable to assume that they could also be wrong about other things.

nPeace said:

I'm certain, within my mind - I have no proof - that if all your relatives, friends, hubby, dog, cat claimed they saw a UFO, you would not put it down to them all being schizophrenic.
Even if you said you believed they saw something, but you didn't think it was an alien ship, you would agree that it was indeed some type of UFO... even if it was man made.
The fact of the matter is, you can't explain it. You cannot investigate it.

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It would be really difficult, if not impossible for me to investigate it. And that is why one approach this exactly as one would the storm above. In fact one would approach this more like one would approach a supernatural claim than the storm.

So based on pure logic and reasoning, both in regards to the amount of evidence that is provided, in this case the eyewitness accounts, I would simply require more than just that, again because they might be mistaken, not necessarily lying. But as Carl Sagan put it:

In 1979 astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the aphorism “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

To me that makes a lot of sense, you claim to have seen a UFO or that Jesus was resurrected, you better put forward some good evidence. Whereas you claiming to have seen a red car, running a red light, with a man driving it wearing a red shirt. Is not really extraordinary. And even if you are lying about it, it doesn't really matter as the claim itself is of no importance.

I didn't say that schizophrenic were the explanations for all the cases, it was just an example. To me the much more likely explanation would simply be lying or mistanken.

Continue...

nPeace said:

I explained why the test is good.
Okay, let's put you in it.
You are sharing a room with one of your girlfriends.
She has been telling you about some weird experiences she has been having, but you brush them off as silly imagination
One night, while you both were playing a card / board game, or something, you both hear a door slam, and startled (I don't know what you would do, but this is my script, so...), you both go to investigate. You find the bedroom door closed, and turning the knob, the door seems locked. While trying to open the door, you both hear running water, and on investigation, find the kitchen tap, running - fully opened.
Long story short, you experience some weird stuff like that.
Another friend that was over, witnessed these events.
The police can't help you because they have nothing to go on, and probably think you are pot heads.
Things worsen as time goes by.
Someone recommended your friend join a Bible study program she herself is having.
The conductors are informed of the situation. They make certain recommendations, and over a course of some time your friend no longer experiences these things, and you don't witness them anymore.
Let's hear your verdict.

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But this is just made up nonsense.

...you both go to investigate. You find the bedroom door closed, and turning the knob, the door seems locked. While trying to open the door, you both hear running water, and on investigation, find the kitchen tap, running - fully opened.

If this were the case, I would have no explanation for it, but I don't accept your story in the first place, because I have never heard or seen any reliable data that this have ever happened.

I watched a program about ghost hunters on Danish TV, about some people that think ghosts are real, so they travel to haunted places, to try to find them. spoiler alert, they never find anything. Anyway they go to a house in England known as the Cage and start looking for ghosts and it is just cringe beyond believe, as they have to be their all night together with the owner and they have all these homemade things to measure ghosts, however the owner leaves at some point, because "she" think its to scary or something, but honestly I think she is just bored.

So during the night they hear some noises and one of them gets a bit ill, probably because he haven't slept or eaten anything, or might just be because he want the attention of his co-host, which he seems very interested in.

However, at least in this program they go to a place to investigate, regardless of all of it being really bad.

Whereas in your story, you just made up something, so my verdict on it, is that I consider your story absolutely none sense, which makes your test utterly useless, you have presented nothing to go on, no real story, with a procedure that is not proven to work or even to be testable in a real scenario. So again there is nothing to go on.

nPeace said:

See the video for a clearer understanding... hopefully.

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What do you make of this video, I would be really interested in hearing that?

When I see it, a lot of claims and pre assumptions are put forward.

1. The girl with the baby and the devil haunting her, but she believes its her late grandmother
Nothing but a claim, no way to verify it. But she have put a bracelet on her baby to protect it from the grandmother, which turns out to be satan, but obviously that doesn't work.

2. The guy then establish that it is a real experience.
Based on what? Because he say so and just trust the lady. As a viewer, this is completely nonsense.

3. Then they establish that spirits are real and that lots of people believe that.
So what, doesn't proof anything.

4. They decide that they need to bring in the big guns, so they call the elders.
Guess this is because they are new JWs or something. But supposedly it requires experience to get rid of satan.

5. The elders then decide to read a few passages from the bible.
Not really sure, why they just couldn't tell the two new ones which ones to read... but apparently that is not possible.

6. The lady is told that the bracelet on her baby allow satan to keep haunting her.
No clue or explanation to why that is. But fine not like anything else is explained either.

7. Finally they tell her that she have to get rid of superstition and give herself to Jehova
Which made me laugh, so that was a good one.

8. Very symbolic she burns the bracelet and everything is fine.
So the moral is, that only God can really protect you, because he is the real deal.

So all in all, I have no clue what the video were suppose add, or why I should take it seriously? It doesn't explain anything, doesn't approach it in a serious manner, but is just another moral, turn to God kind of video. Without any evidence whatsoever.

nPeace said:

I like you , so I will help you.
"Christians did not emerge before after the death of Jesus", is not a proper statement.
When you write, before after, it confuses the sentence. Not only does it cause confusion, but it causes the reader to work their brain harder, to try and understand what the writer is trying to say.
No need to thank me. It's my pleasure to help you, where I can.

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That is fair enough, I could have written it more clearly. So no issue there.

nPeace said:

I think you are reading the information, but I think you are not connecting it to the point I am making. So my point gets lost and replaced by what you find interesting to mention.
You missed the point.

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So what were the point of the story then?

nPeace said:

No. It was not in regard to "Christians" and true Christians.
It is in regard to your saying that they are doing it in the name of God and Christ. Let's deal with that first, then we can consider "Christians" and true Christians.

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Which eventually turned into you claiming that there are Christians and "true" Christians.

Those people back there, would have seen themself as true Christians doing what they believed were right in the name of Jesus and God. You do not agree, if I understood you correct. So that is your opinion about them. For most other people these were considered Christians.

nPeace said:

What naturalistic explanation is there for the fact that theses pieces were done separately, by different individuals, who did not communicate their thoughts and ideas with each other... in fact did not know each other, and did not follow a reference given to them, but from their own mind produced each piece?
Can you, by the way, explain how you associated a mind that is fooled, with this.

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I have no clue what you are trying to tell with this example, all I see is yet another made up scenario with some image cut up in photoshop and based on the story is somehow crafted indepently. What does that have to do with anything?

Milton Platt said:

The fact that people living in or immediately after the suppose time of Jesus (or whomever) lived know local geography is not compelling.

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Luke certainly didn't know anything about the geography of Palestine and Israel.

sooda said:

You never heard of them, have you?

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Right. I never heard of them before now, but then I never heard about a lot of thing. I never heard about sooda before either.
I'm sure there are millions of other things I haven't heard about... just waiting to be hear about... by me.
Bravo to you if you heard about everything there is to be heard about.

Don't worry though, anything I haven't heard about, is just a click or two of my mouse, away from me getting to "hear" about anything under the sun.
Click Click...
Oh. Information from nearly two decades ago.
Why am I not surprised.

Yes sooda, it's something widely known among my fellow brothers.
Just type in "Ugarit" in the search bar, and BOOM! hundreds of results.
Try this one for example... 2003 - Ugarit—Ancient City in the Shadow of Baal
The last two subheadings - "Comparisons With Bible Texts", and "Biblical Substratum?" - may be of more interested to you, I assume.

sooda said:

The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered since 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic language.

Approximately 1,500 texts and fragments have been found to date. The texts were written in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE.

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Okay. So what do you want me to do with these dried bones... resurrect them? I'm not Elijah. I don't perform miracle.
Maybe put some meat on them, so I have something to chew on.

What more would you like to add to this?

nPeace said:

Right. I never heard of them before now, but then I never heard about a lot of thing. I never heard about sooda before either.
I'm sure there are millions of other things I haven't heard about... just waiting to be hear about... by me.
Bravo to you if you heard about everything there is to be heard about.

Don't worry though, anything I haven't heard about, is just a click or two of my mouse, away from me getting to "hear" about anything under the sun.
Click Click...
Oh. Information from nearly two decades ago.
Why am I not surprised.

Yes sooda, it's something widely known among my fellow brothers.
Just type in "Ugarit" in the search bar, and BOOM! hundreds of results.
Try this one for example... 2003 - Ugarit—Ancient City in the Shadow of Baal
The last two subheadings - "Comparisons With Bible Texts", and "Biblical Substratum?" - may be of more interested to you, I assume.


Okay. So what do you want me to do with these dried bones... resurrect them? I'm not Elijah. I don't perform miracle.
Maybe put some meat on them, so I have something to chew on.

What more would you like to add to this?

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The Ugaritic tablets are a major breakthru for serious Bible scholars.. and Torah scholars.

TheBannerofHomuraAkemi said:

It's not a strawnman it's a valid way of showing your faulty logic. Because if someone was to find said comic book thousands of years in the future they too could believe it's real because New york is real. You refuses to agree with that, because you would then have to use the same logic and reasoning to the bible and it wouldn't hold up.

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Really? Prove it. Would you? Or would you be saying what you are saying now?
You are not saying of course, that people are just gullible, non skeptical, non inquisitive, non investigative individuals, are you?

If someone found a history book centuries into the future, they too would believe it's real, because the places are real. Really?
No. They would be doing what you are doing. Prove me wrong on that.

Do you see it, or are you still not getting it?
We investigate things, in order to find out the truth about them. Isn't that the correct thing to do?
However, is saying it isn't, by using an example like... In the Spiderman Comic Book, Peter Parker aka Spiderman lives in New York. New York is a real place that we can go and visit with loads of documentations and photos of it existing. Does Spiderman exist?
No. That's not investigation, or analyzing. That's a clear strawman argument.

TheBannerofHomuraAkemi said:

Now if you have any more proofs you like would like to put forth I'm more than glad to show those are wrong as well.

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You haven't gotten past the first yet. So let's see you do that first.

sooda said:

The Ugaritic tablets are a major breakthru for serious Bible scholars.. and Torah scholars.

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Thanks. Anything else?

Nimos said:

It would be really difficult, if not impossible for me to investigate it. And that is why one approach this exactly as one would the storm above. In fact one would approach this more like one would approach a supernatural claim than the storm.

So based on pure logic and reasoning, both in regards to the amount of evidence that is provided, in this case the eyewitness accounts, I would simply require more than just that, again because they might be mistaken, not necessarily lying. But as Carl Sagan put it:

In 1979 astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the aphorism “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

To me that makes a lot of sense, you claim to have seen a UFO or that Jesus was resurrected, you better put forward some good evidence. Whereas you claiming to have seen a red car, running a red light, with a man driving it wearing a red shirt. Is not really extraordinary. And even if you are lying about it, it doesn't really matter as the claim itself is of no importance.

I didn't say that schizophrenic were the explanations for all the cases, it was just an example. To me the much more likely explanation would simply be lying or mistanken.

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The misuse of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", to suppress innovation and maintain orthodoxy should be avoided as it must inevitably retard the scientific goal of establishing reliable knowledge.

Nimos said:

But this is just made up nonsense.
.......
I have no clue what you are trying to tell with this example, all I see is yet another made up scenario with some image cut up in photoshop and based on the story is somehow crafted indepently. What does that have to do with anything?

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You don't have to remind me, not to look at any analogies you present.

Science cannot explain everything, and everything cannot be explained by naturalism.
Science has not been able to explain Chi (Qi).

nPeace said:

The misuse of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", to suppress innovation and maintain orthodoxy should be avoided as it must inevitably retard the scientific goal of establishing reliable knowledge.

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I don't think I would agree with this statement.

Obviously what one consider an extraordinary claim is subjective. But that itself can be proven wrong simply by providing evidence.

So I might make a claim, which you find extraordinary, so you tell me that, for you to believe it, it would require extraordinary evidence as well. Which in itself have no bearing on whether or not I can provide evidence, if they exists in the first place. The important part, is actually being able to providing some sort of evidence in the first place, the moment one does that, the extraordinary will start to fade.

I don't see why that would suppress innovative thinking or have any impact on science and that of establishing reliable knowledge. So not really sure what the critic is about.

nPeace said:

Pardon me. I did not know the Gospel of Modern scholarship was authentic, and reliable.
I don't believe their Gospel though. I see that you not only swallow it gleefully, but you preach it, as well. So you must be a follower. I don't know who your leader is... actually, no, I do, but not sharing that thought.
I'll share this one. If God did not inspire the Gospel of Modern scholarship, i hope you realize where that leaves you. Although that's not a concern of those who don't think God is.
However, if God inspired the Gospel writers, those who believe them, have Jesus Christ as their leader - the one who has God's backing and support... I think that's a good position to be in.

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Seems there’s a lot you don't know.

nPeace said:

Okay. So what do you want me to do with these dried bones... resurrect them? I'm not Elijah. I don't perform miracle.
Maybe put some meat on them, so I have something to chew on.

What more would you like to add to this

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A millennium ago, doctors used a technique called bloodletting to cure people with viruses of evil spirits. Since, then, we’ve discovered new medical scholarship that has revolutionized medicine. And today doctors are using all kinds of rediscovered naturopathic remedies for illnesses.

But you can keep on going to the barber for bloodletting, I suppose...

sooda said:

Luke certainly didn't know anything about the geography of Palestine and Israel.

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I know...I just didn't feel like opening that can of worms..

nPeace said:

Really? Prove it. Would you? Or would you be saying what you are saying now?
You are not saying of course, that people are just gullible, non skeptical, non inquisitive, non investigative individuals, are you?

If someone found a history book centuries into the future, they too would believe it's real, because the places are real. Really?
No. They would be doing what you are doing. Prove me wrong on that.

Do you see it, or are you still not getting it?
We investigate things, in order to find out the truth about them. Isn't that the correct thing to do?
However, is saying it isn't, by using an example like... In the Spiderman Comic Book, Peter Parker aka Spiderman lives in New York. New York is a real place that we can go and visit with loads of documentations and photos of it existing. Does Spiderman exist?
No. That's not investigation, or analyzing. That's a clear strawman argument.


You haven't gotten past the first yet. So let's see you do that first.

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Your still showing favoritism towards the bible and not applying the same logic you would use to disprove the spiderman analogy. Stop running from the question and answer why you won't apply the same logic to the bible.

You still have yet to show any proof that the bible or the claims in the bible to be true.

Nimos said:

I don't think I would agree with this statement.

Obviously what one consider an extraordinary claim is subjective. But that itself can be proven wrong simply by providing evidence.

So I might make a claim, which you find extraordinary, so you tell me that, for you to believe it, it would require extraordinary evidence as well. Which in itself have no bearing on whether or not I can provide evidence, if they exists in the first place. The important part, is actually being able to providing some sort of evidence in the first place, the moment one does that, the extraordinary will start to fade.

I don't see why that would suppress innovative thinking or have any impact on science and that of establishing reliable knowledge. So not really sure what the critic is about.

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Are the activities associated with Chi, extraordinary claims?
Has there been evidence confirming these claims?
Is that evidence extraordinary? How so?

sojourner said:

A millennium ago, doctors used a technique called bloodletting to cure people with viruses of evil spirits. Since, then, we’ve discovered new medical scholarship that has revolutionized medicine. And today doctors are using all kinds of rediscovered naturopathic remedies for illnesses.

But you can keep on going to the barber for bloodletting, I suppose...

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Doctors still use unorthodox techniques because they consider certain illnesses to be associated with evil spirits.
Some so-called modern medicine is ancient - yes, only now discovered, but not new.