How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

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How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1

Post by otseng »

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:
nobspeople wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:42 amHow can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?
otseng wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 7:08 am The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.
For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #631

Post by otseng »

Some more ziggurat-like structures found around the world:

Prasat Thom of Koh Ker temple in Cambodia:

Image

"Under the reign of the kings Jayavarman IV and Harshavarman II Koh Ker was briefly the capital of the whole empire (928–944 AD).

Unparalleled is the 36-metre (118 ft)-high seven‑tiered pyramid, which most probably served as state temple[4]: 103  of Jayavarman IV. Really impressive too are the shrines with the two‑meter 6 ft 7 in high lingas."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh_Ker

Monks Mound in Illinois:

Image

"Monks Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas and the largest pyramid north of Mesoamerica. The beginning of its construction dates from 900–955 CE. Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, the mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet (30 m) high, 955 feet (291 m) long including the access ramp at the southern end, and 775 feet (236 m) wide.[1] This makes Monks Mound roughly the same size at its base as the Great Pyramid of Giza (13.1 acres / 5.3 hectares). The perimeter of its base is larger than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. As a platform mound, the earthwork supported a wooden structure on the summit.

Construction of Monks Mound by the Mississippian culture began about 900–950 CE, on a site that had already been occupied by buildings. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monks_Mound


Ziggurat of Monte Accoddi in Sardinia, Italy:

Image

"The original structure was built by the Ozieri culture or earlier c. 4,000–3,650 BC and has a base of 27 m by 27 m and probably reached a height of 5.5 m."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_d%27Accoddi

"The techniques of construction of the temple surmounting the plain are almost identical to those used in the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, which suggests that the idea of creating such a building had come to a man that somehow knew how to got in Sardinia, at the dawn of civilization."
http://www.sandalyon.eu/eng/articles/ar ... __229.html

Igbo pyramids in Nigeria:

Image

"These questions about the fascinating Igbo pyramids located in Nsude on the Udi highlands of Enugu State, South-Eastern Nigeria, will remain mysteries and unanswered for now.
The ten step circular Igbo pyramids have been compared to the Step Pyramid of Saqqara in Egypt."
https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/2 ... veled.html

Possible pyramid in Roberts Island complex in Florida:

"Antiquarians of the nineteenth century referred to the largest monumental constructions in eastern North America as pyramids, but this usage faded among archaeologists by the mid-twentieth century. Pauketat (2007) has reintroduced the term pyramid to describe the larger, Mississippian-period (A.D. 1050 to 1550) mounds of the interior of the continent, recognizing recent studies that demonstrate the complexity of their construction. Such recognition is lacking for earlier mounds and for those constructed of shell. We describe the recent identification of stepped pyramids of shell from the Roberts Island Complex, located on the central Gulf Coast of Florida and dating to the terminal Late Woodland period, A.D. 800 to 1050, thus recognizing the sophistication of monument construction in an earlier time frame, using a different construction material, and taking an alternative form."
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... th_America

Possible pyramid in Visoko, Bosnia:

Image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viso%C4%8Dica_hill

"But Osmanagic, a Bosnian archaeologist who has spent the last 15 years studying the pyramids of Latin America, suspects there is one here in his Balkan homeland.

"We have already dug out stone blocks which I believe are covering the pyramid," he said. "We found a paved entrance plateau and discovered underground tunnels. You don't have to be an expert to realize what this is."
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10335950

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #632

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Those are all very interesting pictures, but you have to consider the alternative hypothesis to these all being ideas derived from the Tower of Babel.

First, as I pointed out with the step Pyramid, that was a transitional one off from mastaba tomb-slabs to a pyramidical tomb, and not temple mounds as with the ziggurats.

It also occurs to me that if the original Mesopotamians speaking Sumerian (presumably the Adunaic that Noah also spoke) had been split up into different languages with the collapse of the tower of Babel, why would they become obsessed with building replicas?

There's also the suggestion that, since the Mesopotamians continues speaking Sumerian (until conquered by Akkad and Sumerian became the Mesopotamian Latin) and they carried on building Ziggurats until Assyria, wouldn't that, rather than Babel, explain any resemblances without proving the Babel event?

Even if one accepted anything but the limits of building tall structures dictating piled up mountains or stepped structures. The existence of ziggurats and pyramids explain the similar structures elsewhere without being any evidence for a tower of Babel. It's the old business of assuming a claim with no evidence and relating everything to that when it doesn't need to.

And there's the chronology too, but with a history of no more than 4,000 B.C I suppose that won't cut any ice with you.

So upshot is that those pictures prove nothing whatsoever.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #633

Post by TRANSPONDER »

otseng wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:04 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 12:54 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 3:52 am Mr. science - denial
otseng wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:08 pm First off, please cease with the labeling, false attribution, and name calling.
Are you talking as a moderator or as a religious apologist who dismisses science as 'ad hoc' when it doesn't suit you?
It's the forum rules that dictates proper behavior here.

Further, saying something is "ad hoc" does not make me a "science denier". Attacking scientific theories does not make me a "science denier". Not accepting consensus view does not make me a "science denier".
Well then, you will have to show that my 'name calling' is not justified. Your denying of science by dismissing it as 'ad hoc' is denial in my book. If you don't deny it, you should accept its' corpus of data as valid.
If you're saying you always need physical evidence to believe in something, then there's a lot that cannot be believed. Many things are posited to exist through indirect evidence, which is what I'm arguing for with the tower of Babel. One example is we don't have any physical evidence of the Colossus of Rhodes. But that doesn't prove it did not exist.
That's what I said with dismissing your demand for photos quotes and the like, because it's about indirect evidence giving the more probable hypothesis. e.g though I can't produce photos or quotes to prove that the predynastic culture spoke Egyptian, the indirect evidence make it a more probable theory that they did before writing shows that it was Egyptian, rather than dispersal of Mesopotamians post Babel arriving and them all suddenly speaking a new language.
OK, so we both then agree that direct, physical evidence is not required in our debates.
No we don't. It IS required, but indirect evidence is also relevant.
I find I'm always having to restate mine, as you habitually ignore them.
Contrary to what you might think, I do not ignore what you state.
But I don't recall you ever addressing the debunk of your 'soft strata' hypothesis as being inadequate to explain the neat rollover of strata, nor that mountain building, IF caused by the pressure of the flood waters when the flood burst through, should put the Rockies in the east not the west, nor that the (mastaba) precursor of the step pyramid long predated any feasible date for Babel as well as predynastic culture being indirect evidence that Egyptian language predated that. As I recall, you ignored that and a good deal else. Of course, silence does imply assent.
So the actual alternatives are; the Babel theory of 'mesopotamian' (which I suppose means 'Sumerian') post- Babel diversified into a lot of different languages or, that didn't happen, which the Egypt - culture evidence indirectly suggests, was the case.
I'm trying to get at if "that didn't happen", then what did happen?

It seems to go back to "I don't know how it happened, but it ain't sure what the Bible says."
I'm explaining what did happen - Languages on indirect evidence predated any feasible Babel -event date, even if written Egyptian doesn't. That rather than explaining the original single source you spoke of is all that's needed. The (b) of a postulated single origin is an irrelevant red herring. That rather than your implied Bible - denial bias is the relevant point.
I recall that you did mention a date of around 3,000-3,500 BC.
Yes, I produced a source that says that. Here's what I presented:

"Some scholars use internal and external evidence to offer 3500–3000 BC as a likely range for the date of the tower,"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_ ... r_of_Babel

My point was according to this wiki source, it is older than this wiki source:

Egyptian - 2690 BC
Sumerian - 2600 BC
Canaanite - 2400 BC
Chinese - 1200 BC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... n_accounts

It could be that all of these dates are wrong, but I'm just presenting what the evidence says.

In your source, it might be conflicting with the dates that I cited above.

Your source says:

" Since the 1990s, the above-mentioned discoveries of glyphs at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, have shed doubt on the classical notion that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. However, Egyptian writing appeared suddenly at that time, while Mesopotamia had a long evolutionary history of sign usage in tokens dating back to circa 8000 BCE."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs

However, even if we accept these dates and statements as true, it does not refer to a "written language" (as in sentences), but is referring to glyphs, symbols, and tokens.
Yes I recall that. And while one might argue about when Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing appeared and which was a proper writing -system rather than three dots and a picture of a corn -bale (which might or might not have a linguistic value) the point I made was that these did predate the ziggurats but not the (postulated) date of Babel that you referred to, even if you don't claim that as a firm date. However the point of my chronology was that putting it earlier than the Ziggurats still doesn't put it earlier than the Egyptian culture that produced tomb slabs (that led to the step pyramid) or (eventually) written Egyptian and thus the indirect evidence is that Egypt as a pyramid builder culture and Egyptian - speaking culture looks to have been in place long before any feasible 'Babel Tower' event.
That together with no real evidence for any such Tower of Babel makes for a better hypothesis than Babel which has nothing as evidence but Genesis. You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day. Believe it if you like, it is still - nothing, right now. Nothing, that is, but Faith in the Bible without decent evidence and indeed in denial of what the evidence Actually points to. Same old inverted logic of where the burden of proof lies.
You may not be concerned about putting the theory into the generally - accepted ancient Chronology, but I was and it does show that the predynastic Egyptian culture undermines the Babel -theory for how various languages originated.
As for generally accepted theories and dates for origins of written languages, there is none. As I've mentioned, there's two camps - a single origin of all languages and multiple independent origin of languages.
As I said, that's irrelevant and a red herring. Whether there was a single original source or different languages arose after humans split up (and nobody knows which it is) the point is that Egyptian predating any feasible Babel event undermines the Babel hypothesis for diversification of human languages.
Writing was long thought to have been invented in a single civilization, a theory named "monogenesis".[3] Scholars believed that all writing originated in ancient Sumer (in Mesopotamia) and spread over the world from there via a process of cultural diffusion.[3] According to this theory, the concept of representing language by written marks, though not necessarily the specifics of how such a system worked, was passed on by traders or merchants traveling between geographical regions.[4][5]

However, the discovery of the scripts of ancient Mesoamerica, far away from Middle Eastern sources, proved that writing had been invented more than once. Scholars now recognize that writing may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (around 3250 BCE),[6][7][3] China (1200 BCE),[8] and lowland areas of Southern Mexico and Guatemala (by 500 BCE).[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
I'd certainly go with that. Writing and indeed language as with art, music, costume, morals and religion are all things that humans do and do not need to have come from one source other than that innate instinct. That is, that the Chinese invented their writing and the Sumerians invented theirs does no more imply a cultural derivation than their speaking different languages. Of course the Babel story also implies different languages coming into being, though it implies some magical thing where the same language suddenly became different because God was miffed that they'd built a ziggurat. Can you blame anyone who doesn't believe that?

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #634

Post by otseng »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:27 pm First, as I pointed out with the step Pyramid, that was a transitional one off from mastaba tomb-slabs to a pyramidical tomb, and not temple mounds as with the ziggurats.
It would be quite strange that Egyptians, who is one of the closest neighbors of the ziggurat builders of Mesopotamia, would not know about ziggurats, whereas other civilizations would. I believe at a minimum, the Egyptians were influenced by ziggurats. ("That's a pretty impressive monument you got there, but we are going to build a bigger and badder one than that.")

It also occurs to me that if the original Mesopotamians speaking Sumerian (presumably the Adunaic that Noah also spoke) had been split up into different languages with the collapse of the tower of Babel, why would they become obsessed with building replicas?
Why do we even now build replicas of ziggurats?

Image
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Sacr ... California
There's also the suggestion that, since the Mesopotamians continues speaking Sumerian (until conquered by Akkad and Sumerian became the Mesopotamian Latin) and they carried on building Ziggurats until Assyria, wouldn't that, rather than Babel, explain any resemblances without proving the Babel event?
Sumer is most likely the land of Shinar in Gen 10:10, which is where the tower of Babel was located. So, the tower of Babel and the Sumerians had a close relationship.

Gen 10:10 (ESV)
The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
The discovery of Sumer was, more or less, an accident. The archaeologists and scholars Kramer refers to were drawn to Mesopotamia in search of biblical correlations. The Bible made cities like Babylon and Nineveh infamous, and so the Babylonians and Assyrians were well known to 19th century scholars. They began their excavations in Mesopotamia in an attempt to confirm the historicity of biblical stories such as The Great Flood or the Tower of Babel. The only reference to Sumer in the Bible is to `the Land of Shinar' (Genesis 10:10 and elsewhere), which people interpreted to most likely mean the land surrounding Babylon, until the Assyriologist Jules Oppert (1825-1905 CE) identified the biblical reference with the region of southern Mesopotamia known as Sumer and, further, asserted that cuneiform writing was Sumerian in origin.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/71 ... he-future/

Sumerians likewise had a global flood myth.
Thus it was established that long before Genesis was committed to writing, the ancient Mesopotamians had themselves told the story of a universal flood sent by divine decree to destroy humanity. Soon other texts were discovered that gave similar accounts in several different languages – Sumerian, Old Akkadian, Babylonian – and in several different versions. In the oldest, found on a tablet from the city of Nippur, dated to around 1800 BCE and written in Sumerian, Noah's role is taken by a King of Shuruppak called Ziudsura or Ziusudra, meaning `he Saw Life”, because he was awarded immortality by the gods. In another, written in the 1600s BCE in the Akkadian language, the protagonist is called Atrahasis, meaning `Extremely Wise'. (69)
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/71 ... he-future/

"There has also been speculation that the ziggurats were used by ruling class during flooding as a safe high point."
https://tylerleavitt.wordpress.com/2011 ... -pyramids/
Even if one accepted anything but the limits of building tall structures dictating piled up mountains or stepped structures. The existence of ziggurats and pyramids explain the similar structures elsewhere without being any evidence for a tower of Babel.
I'm not claiming ziggurat-like structures all over the world is conclusive evidence that they all share the same origin. But, it is an interesting coincidence that we see these structures all over the world and one of the earliest, if not the earliest, is described in the Bible.

I will present more "coincidences" later of cultures sharing similarities. As more "coincidences" are presented, the simplest explanation to account for it is a single source, rather than multiple origins.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #635

Post by Diogenes »

otseng wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:25 pm
I'm not claiming ziggurat-like structures all over the world is conclusive evidence that they all share the same origin. But, it is an interesting coincidence that we see these structures all over the world and one of the earliest, if not the earliest, is described in the Bible.

I will present more "coincidences" later of cultures sharing similarities. As more "coincidences" are presented, the simplest explanation to account for it is a single source, rather than multiple origins.
"Not conclusive?" It's not evidence at all, of anything except men like to build stuff and build something taller than their neighbors' achievement. What is strange or illogical that many if not all cultures built tall structures or towers? Indeed it would be odd if the Bible or any culture did not record stories of tower building.
One thing that keeps getting overlooked in this unaccountable effort to single out the Bible as special, is that there are other, similar records, from cultures that predate Genesis. None of this proves anything. These stories chronicle man's effort to build, to achieve, to outperform others. None of this advances claims of the supernatural in any way whatsoever.
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #636

Post by Bust Nak »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:14 pm Well then, you will have to show that my 'name calling' is not justified. Your denying of science by dismissing it as 'ad hoc' is denial in my book. If you don't deny it, you should accept its' corpus of data as valid.
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #637

Post by otseng »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 5:14 pm
If you're saying you always need physical evidence to believe in something, then there's a lot that cannot be believed. Many things are posited to exist through indirect evidence, which is what I'm arguing for with the tower of Babel. One example is we don't have any physical evidence of the Colossus of Rhodes. But that doesn't prove it did not exist.
No we don't. It IS required, but indirect evidence is also relevant.
Do you believe the Colossus of Rhodes did not exist?
But I don't recall you ever addressing the debunk of your 'soft strata' hypothesis as being inadequate to explain the neat rollover of strata, nor that mountain building,
There's nothing to debunk. The soft strata rather explains how it's possible to have "neat" parallel layers in spite of deformations like mountain building.

If all the layers were original solid rock in flat parallel layers, how would it be possible to have "neat" deformations? Think of it this way, suppose we have lasagna noodles stacked up and neatly deformed so it's in the shape of a mountain. Would it be more reasonable the noodles were dry or wet when it was deformed?
IF caused by the pressure of the flood waters when the flood burst through, should put the Rockies in the east not the west
It is not the pressure of the flood waters that caused the deformations (mountains). It is the crust hitting the underlaying basalt layer.
otseng wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:18 am As the hydroplate eventually hit the underlaying basalt layer when all the subterranean water was gone, it stopped the horizontal movement of the hydroplate. But, the sedimentary layers on top of the hydroplate kept moving due to momentum. It is at this point the sedimentary layers buckled and formed the mountains. Think of it as a pile of rocks on a rail car. The rail car is the hydroplate and the pile of rocks is the sedimentary layers. Then the rail car loses its wheels and grinds to a stop on the railroad tracks. But the rocks on top of the rail car would fly off the rail car.
Of course, silence does imply assent.
No, silence does not imply assent. It can mean many other things, including we've already covered this.

And while one might argue about when Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing appeared and which was a proper writing -system rather than three dots and a picture of a corn -bale (which might or might not have a linguistic value) the point I made was that these did predate the ziggurats but not the (postulated) date of Babel that you referred to
Sure, I can accept symbols existed prior to the tower of Babel. I'm not arguing symbols came after the tower of Babel, but only written languages.
However the point of my chronology was that putting it earlier than the Ziggurats still doesn't put it earlier than the Egyptian culture that produced tomb slabs (that led to the step pyramid) or (eventually) written Egyptian and thus the indirect evidence is that Egypt as a pyramid builder culture and Egyptian - speaking culture looks to have been in place long before any feasible 'Babel Tower' event.
Could be. Egyptian culture could have existed along side the tower of Babel. And symbols used in Egypt could have also co-existed. But as for a written language, the earliest evidence of Egyptian language is 2800 BC.

"The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age, around the 32nd century BC (Naqada III),[2] with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs

But, "Egyptian language" was more likely influenced by the Sumerian region.

"Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter",[23] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs
That together with no real evidence for any such Tower of Babel makes for a better hypothesis than Babel which has nothing as evidence but Genesis.
Before modern archaeology, there was no "real evidence" for many claims of the Bible. Yet, we have constantly been uncovering more things to confirm the historical reliability of the Bible. This is probably what we should go into next after debating the tower of Babel.

And with indirect evidence of the worldwide phenomenon of ziggurats, it's more easily explained by the Biblical account than just a series of coincidences.
You have Nothing but some hopes that evidence might turn up one day.
I agree there's no direct evidence, but there's indirect evidence, which I've provided through worldwide replication of ziggurats since ancient times.
As I said, that's irrelevant and a red herring. Whether there was a single original source or different languages arose after humans split up (and nobody knows which it is) the point is that Egyptian predating any feasible Babel event undermines the Babel hypothesis for diversification of human languages.
See above.
That is, that the Chinese invented their writing and the Sumerians invented theirs
OK, please provide evidence then that the Chinese and Sumerians independently invented their written languages.
Diogenes wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm "Not conclusive?" It's not evidence at all, of anything except men like to build stuff and build something taller than their neighbors' achievement.
You might not believe it's valid evidence or relevant evidence, but it's evidence.
What is strange or illogical that many if not all cultures built tall structures or towers?
I'm not arguing people built tall structure/towers. I'm arguing they all built ziggurats.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #638

Post by Diogenes »

otseng wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:44 am
Diogenes wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 8:45 pm "Not conclusive?" It's not evidence at all, of anything except men like to build stuff and build something taller than their neighbors' achievement.
You might not believe it's valid evidence or relevant evidence, but it's evidence.
What is strange or illogical that many if not all cultures built tall structures or towers?
I'm not arguing people built tall structure/towers. I'm arguing they all built ziggurats.
A ziggurat is merely a type of tower, a rectangular stepped tower with a temple on it sometimes. You are writing as if it is VERY special. It isn't. This type of tower construction is simply a consequence of limited building materials and knowledge. It's like a child playing with blocks. He starts with a broad base, then builds a second level, slightly narrower and so on. No special skills are required.

This has long been a concern of cultural anthropologists. That Mesoamerican pyramids look very similar to Egyptian ones hardly means one copied from the other. All cultures have languages and those tongues have nouns and verbs. Form follows function. Yes, as I said, your examples provided evidence that building these types of towers is common to many cultures. It is NOT evidence one copied from another. You have failed to provide a nexus between the examples you cite and a meaningful relationship that supports your attempt to use ziggurats to somehow prove your larger point that this indicates the Bible proves something supernatural is going on.

We keep getting back to Occam's razor. When we hear thunder here is no need to jump to the absurd conclusion that there must be a god named Thor swinging a celestial hammer when we have a much simpler theory at hand; to wit, that lightning causes a sudden heading of air which explodes outward. Of course, primitive man, understandably, might consider "God did it," but today we do not have that excuse.
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #639

Post by Diogenes »

Throughout history there have been a long list of natural phenomena that were attributed to the gods. It is typical, and hopelessly ethnocentric to say yes that's true FOR EVERYONE ELSE'S RELIGION, BUT MINE IS SPECIAL.

This article from the Smithsonian lists ten examples:

Example #1 is the Biblcial flood and Noah's ark.
"Science: Similar flood tales are told in many cultures, but there never was a global deluge. For one, there’s just not enough water in the Earth system to cover all the land. But, Nunn says, “it may well be that Noah’s flood is a recollection of a large wave that drowned for a few weeks a particular piece of land and on that piece of land there was nowhere dry to live.” Some geologists think that the Noah story may have been influenced by a catastrophic flooding event in the Black Sea around 5,000 B.C."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... 180950347/

Of course there are other reactions from the 'true believers,' including to dispute the science. Hence we have many, fueled by their religious assumptions, who deny the clear truth of evolution and radiometric dating. They jump thru tiny hoops and do mental triple full twisting back flips to find ANY explanation that validates the magical thinking required by religious beliefs.
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #640

Post by Diogenes »

Circa 1989, of an aboriginal North American construction of a ziggurat, possibly by a child, found in an area now known as suburban Chicago. :)

https://m.made-in-china.com/product/Woo ... 37142.html
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