(December 11, 2013 at 1:35 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: Poorly written by modern standards, sure. Even if it was considered a masterpiece when first compiled, the main issue here is the theist's claim that it is evidence of anything other than the fact that people liked to write stories about a god they thought existed.
In terms of quality as a book of tales, it has its good and bad moments, but the inclusion of so many pedantic lists (genealogies, laws, etc) makes it drag in places. Where I think it really suffers is in the ambiguity, the way it can be interpreted so many different ways, particularly if you strip away (or add) some or all of the context. This is a problem because the book is considered a work from god. Person A doesn't just disagree with Person B on the specifics: he may be convinced that Person B is hell-bound for having the wrong interpretation.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
