(December 23, 2014 at 2:37 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: Even if the numbers were 6000 or 600 there isn't any evidence for that either.I think the point is that it bears all of the hallmarks of classic mythology, up to and including outrageous hyperbole all the way down. They would do the reverse later when telling the story of Gideon, and how his army of only 300 (hey...) defeated a numerically superior force... by shouting at them.
I do think it's funny when you realize that the story is telling us that the Israelites marched out of Egypt with an army that would probably have dwarfed that of the rest of the world combined. And what did they accomplish? Going in circles for 40 years without leaving a trace.
"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
