I haven't had enough coffee yet so I haven't really let this thought congeal too well but...I have a friend who is a very devout christian. Me and him get along great, but when we debate things, one thing I have come to notice is that he gets very condescending and stuck-up with his points, usually getting very derisive of mine without actually managing to really disprove or argue them effectively. One such argument we had was over the burden of proof. He asserts that the burden of proof is upon the critics of the bible because of translation; he basically states that what is translated into modern language means something far different now from what it meant back then, and that it is on the burden of the critics to prove that it does not. I assert, via Occam's Razor, that the burden of proof is on he who is making the claim. He counters by stating that since this is an argument of rationality and plausibility and that from his standpoint the bible could technically be saying things that agree with modern science entirely but are just translated too much to be read as such [IE: taken out of context], the bible is in sync with modern understandings of the universe and that therefore it falls upon the critics to prove that it isn't.
Naturally this ended with him entering circular logic which resulted in the debate part of my brain moving into a fatal feedback logic-error loop that would have killed me if I was a computer, but it DID make me think, at least a little. Who IS the burden of proof on? COULD the bible be mistranslated, or overly translated, resulting in a loss of the understanding and context of the words? Could it have possibly been saying things that we now understand today to be scientific fact or at least extremely likely?
Or am I right in assuming that since the earliest believers in the scripts believed the shit that is in the fitting context of the current translations, it WAS saying what it says to this day even back then? IE the earth is flat; this was the commonly accepted norm and was reinforced by the bible and pentateuch which is why up until Christopher Columbus the earth remained to be thought of as flat. This makes far more sense than his argument [by MY perspective only, however; which is why I'm submitting it to you guys for your opinions, lest I am wrong in my assumptions], which is him saying, basically, that the bible talked about evolution, the earth being round, revolving around the sun, and the sun technically moving through space in its earliest, original language but over time the meaning of the words has become muddled. Whereas mine is basically saying that since the earliest followers, those of its ORIGINAL language, believed the earth was stationary, flat, the sun circled it, and had a physical firmament, and had "foundations," and that this is proven by the fact that throughout history this was commonly accepted as "fact" until science disproved it over the course of the second half of the second millenium ADE, that therefore the bible did NOT ever say anything that current science now shows us to be true.
Thoughts, anyone?
Naturally this ended with him entering circular logic which resulted in the debate part of my brain moving into a fatal feedback logic-error loop that would have killed me if I was a computer, but it DID make me think, at least a little. Who IS the burden of proof on? COULD the bible be mistranslated, or overly translated, resulting in a loss of the understanding and context of the words? Could it have possibly been saying things that we now understand today to be scientific fact or at least extremely likely?
Or am I right in assuming that since the earliest believers in the scripts believed the shit that is in the fitting context of the current translations, it WAS saying what it says to this day even back then? IE the earth is flat; this was the commonly accepted norm and was reinforced by the bible and pentateuch which is why up until Christopher Columbus the earth remained to be thought of as flat. This makes far more sense than his argument [by MY perspective only, however; which is why I'm submitting it to you guys for your opinions, lest I am wrong in my assumptions], which is him saying, basically, that the bible talked about evolution, the earth being round, revolving around the sun, and the sun technically moving through space in its earliest, original language but over time the meaning of the words has become muddled. Whereas mine is basically saying that since the earliest followers, those of its ORIGINAL language, believed the earth was stationary, flat, the sun circled it, and had a physical firmament, and had "foundations," and that this is proven by the fact that throughout history this was commonly accepted as "fact" until science disproved it over the course of the second half of the second millenium ADE, that therefore the bible did NOT ever say anything that current science now shows us to be true.
Thoughts, anyone?
