Originally posted by scottishinnzI will have to study this and get back to you. Setting your current objection aside, however, do you not think it to be a remarkable text for when it was written and by whom it was written?
Okay, magical light aside, the order of the colonisation of land is wrong. The earliest things to not live in water were insects. Insects can be found on the land 30 million years before any have been found which could fly. The bible states that things were flying about before the colonisation of land.
Why does God inspiring a myth make him/her/it a liar? Didn't Christ speak in parables after all?
If one determains that the Bible is then myth or written soley by man, then one can pick and choose what he likes from scripture and reject the rest as falsehood.
All xians do this anyway. I don't see the problem. I think you are limiting God.
When this happens you more or less develope your own theology based on choosing a rejecting certain aspects of scripture. This theology would then inherently be flawed due to the fact that an imperfect being such as yourself created it.
Again this is exactly what every xian does. Of course, they don't think they are the ones doing it (all the other xians do though), but it's still the same.
You may embrace the teachings of Christ but then completely miss the purpose of his life and purpose of God's overall message to mankind.
This is the "overall" message to you. I can lay you five that this is because you have converted into an evangelical sect of xianity. To them Resurrection and Salvation is the message.
I think you've just repeated the slippery slope. There is no reason to limit God this way. If he is so incredibly super-duper (as to make the Red Sea part or the whole earth flood) and hide the evidence, then surely he can use the simple to do great things?
Edit: It saddens me that you lost your faith. May I ask why?
Long story. Not totally developed and packaged. Maybe another time. Thanks for your interest though.
Originally posted by whodeyNot really, there are only really a limited number of ways that things could have happenned. It would be silly to make animals before, say, the land. If I were writing a mythology of the creation of the planet then you go for the big stuff first. It makes sense actually that the "big stuff" comes first in the biblical account. The planet / earth / soil is way more tangible to the people who wrote the bible than the sun. The land is big, animals and plants are small, they come later. Man is the supreme achievement (if you're really that narcasistic), and comes last (well second last if you could the "inferior" woman).
I will have to study this and get back to you. Setting your current objection aside, however, do you not think it to be a remarkable text for when it was written and by whom it was written?
Originally posted by whodeyThat depends upon to whom you are referring. If you are going along with what I was saying earlier and think that the authors were Bronze Age semi-nomadic tribesmen, then sure they got a few things right (though they got plenty enough wrong that it seems pretty normal).
I will have to study this and get back to you. Setting your current objection aside, however, do you not think it to be a remarkable text for when it was written and by whom it was written?
If you are writing from that slippery slope viewpoint, then the author is the creator of the universe. I would say that its a pretty disappointingly inconsistent for some one of such a high pedigree.
Originally posted by whodeyIf I write a novel describing an attack of one-eyed, flesh-eating zombies who can fly, but base that story in modern day New York...and incorporate current events in my narrative such as the destruction of the WTC, does my novel suddenly become "history"?
their is a wide body of evidence to help support its validiy such as the field of Biblical Archeology and the historical accuracy of the Biblical stories.