RE: The Bible is the claim, not the evidence
February 10, 2014 at 10:07 am
(This post was last modified: February 10, 2014 at 10:07 am by Tonus.)
(February 10, 2014 at 9:57 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: The revelation developed over time and was assembled at a much later date in the first few centuries BC into a book, or a collection of scrolls at any rate. You'll find the general story and theological concepts flows together as one narrative though almost like it was one person writing it.Only if you read it with that bias. You can find differences in style and substance from the first three chapters in Genesis, to say nothing of the many contradictions throughout the texts, which helps some scholars to learn the motivations behind the stories and how the mythology was constructed.
And that's to say nothing of the complete change in the figure of god from the OT (where he is the "god of armies" and a strict and violent disciplinarian) to the NT (where he masks his expansion of "thoughtcrime" behind a benevolent and peaceful facade). There is no question that the Bible was "developed over time" and "assembled at a much later date." But that works to undermine the idea that it's the word of a divine creature who is intensely concerned with our fate and well-being.
"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