(April 10, 2016 at 1:32 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: It's amazing to me that their leaders repeat that "archaeology and history back up the Bible" stuff, when almost every scholar out there (except the hardcore fundamentalist ones, of course, who start with the premise "the Bible MUST be true"), religious and nonreligious, acknowledges that a huge number of the major claims made in the Bible simply cannot be true.
Archaeology has demonstrated, for instance, that Jericho didn't even exist as more than a collection of village huts during the time when the Exodus and subsequent invasion of Canaan is alleged to have happened. In order to get it to agree, you'd have to move back the timeline more than 1000 years, which makes the Pharaohs mentioned in the story not-yet-born by... oh, 1000 years, as those attempting to resolve the issues presented by actual archaeology have proposed. (See the dissection of Bryant Wood's proposed Jericho "solution" at: http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answ...ntwood.php )
That's not even to mention that, during the time the Hebrews supposedly fled from Egypt to their "promised land", Egypt literally owned all of that region. Egypt was fighting a war north of there (with the Hittite Empire) to maintain control of the region. That means the story is claiming, essentially, "They fled from the United States and went to Alaska."
These are things we know now because we have access to Egyptian and Hittite writings of the time, which the people who wrote the Bible stories simply didn't have. It's why the Bible describes events in cities that weren't even established until centuries after the stories claim they occurred (but centuries before the stories were actually written, such that they didn't know that Philistine town they mentioned wasn't always there). History and archaeology barely support a single story in the OT.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the Hebrews (or any other specific ethnicity) were in large-scale slavery in Egypt. They're mentioned in Egyptian carvings, but as already existing in Canaan. I'm sorry, lady, but the people who are telling you that the Bible is well-supported are lying to you. I wonder what motivation they could have for those lies?
In my first novel, I put my characters in Los Angeles. I'd hate to think that 2000 years from now people will be standing in the administration building at Cal State thinking, "Oh wow, we're standing right where Chloe met Ted. And there really is a King Hall here. There really is a Greyhound station on Los Angeles Street, so Rhonda's book MUST be true."
That's not what fiction writers mean when they say suspend disbelief.
The god who allows children to be raped out of respect for the free will choice of the rapist, but punishes gay men for engaging in mutually consensual sex couldn't possibly be responsible for an intelligently designed universe.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.