(October 7, 2021 at 10:01 am)ayost Wrote: I believe the Bible because it's true and I am convinced that the evidence supports it's truth.
I want to address this single comment from your long post and I'm not taking it out of context. Most of your argument seems to be based on this one precept, that the Bible is true and you believe it, so your philosophy stems from that point of perceived truth. But here's the problem, there is an avalanche of evidence that you are ignoring. This "Bible" that you hold to be so truthful is not a "book", not written by the people who it is said to have written it and is nothing but a collection of disparate religious manifestos authored over decades if not centuries. Large swaths of Biblical stories and anecdotes are borrowed from previous religions, such as Zoroastrianism and previous cultures, such as Kemet (ancient Egyptians). There are documented studies that assert this. There's the dead sea scrolls which contain contradictory religious stories. These writings and possibly thousands more were buried and/or destroyed by the early Christians in an attempt to curate a religion of their liking. There is the trajectory that Paul sent Christianity on that simply did not exist before. There are many borrowed concepts from older religions that were clearly adapted for Christian purposes. And there is the obvious political contamination by the Romans that so shaped Christianity. My question is how in the world can you be so confident about a text with all of these clearly defined problems?
Why is it so?
~Julius Sumner Miller
~Julius Sumner Miller