Re: What is your strongest disproof of the Bible?

[minstrelofc]

***** Warning *****

The following is a bit long - if you want, just drop your strongest (and simplest) Scientifically provable disproof of the Bible into a reply.

And if you can, add a tl;dr just so I know where you're coming from -- thanks!

***** End Warning *****



So, I'm a Christian. Have been since I was a kid. Raised Baptist, but never really got the whole "denominations" thing (I know, that means someone didn't bring me up to be a "proper" baptist *gasp*shock*horror* (sorry - Christian joke  If you provide an example, I should be able to categorize it.


So. Any questions, comments, suggestions, etc. are greatly appreciated.

[Whitney]

I have a couple questions:

What does tl;dr mean?

Why exactly are "Internal Logical Inconsistencies" unacceptable but "internal contradictions" a maybe?  What's the difference?

[curiosityandthecat]

(Answer to question: See this thread. Take your pick.)

[SSY]

tl:dr means "Too long, didn't read"

Also, you say you don't want to rely on the credientials of others, and conduct research yourself, but even in your first paragraph about acceptable disproofs you are talking about things you heard from others, things that may be true or untrue. You already have a lead with the walled city of jericho stuff, why not follow that up?

Your paragraph about maybe acceptable disproofs is just a massive rationalisation " Ths thing looks wrong, but if we assume this, and this and this, then it still works outkind of OK ". You continue on about "god time" to try and get round the fact that the creation account of gensis is obviously wrong, it says days in the bible, why would you assume anything else? You assume all this other stuff becuase you know it's wrong and you need a way to rationalise it and hang on to your pre-existing beliefs, thats why. Its the same thing with the translation examples, it says the world has corners, why would you assume different? Becuase you know it's wrong, and you need a way to justify hanging onto the bible. Exact same stuff with the in-exact Pi number, if god is all powerful, he should be able to calculate and comunicate piaccuratley and easily.

In summary, I really doubt you have the ability to look at these things objectivley, and therefor, i doubt you will be able to shake your own faith in the bible, you already have shown a massive bias in your thinking

Edit, nice link curio

[curiosityandthecat]

tl:dr means "Too long, didn't read"

Oops, I guess I posted the picture without explaining it.  

[Whitney]

Since you believe the flood actually happened as stated in the bible; let's start with my calculations for animals in Noah's boat.   Obviously, www.talkorigins.com has beat the flood story to death and you are more than welcome to pursue their site for a more in depth look at the science related to how we know the earth was never flooded.  I personally think the Biblical flood myth was talking very poetically about a regional flood, which to most of that time would have been the world.  

I was bored and answering yahoo questions...one came up about Noah's ark so I decided to do a little math:

"Noah's Ark was taller than a 3-story building and had a deck area the size of 36 lawn tennis courts. Its length was 300 cubits (450 feet, or 135 meters); its width was 50 cubits (75 feet, or 22.5 meters); it had three stories and its height was 30 cubits (45 feet, or 13.5 meters)."
http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/arksize.html

Even at that size, it would not be able to hold the diversity of life we see today...even if they were all babies:

"The United Nations Environment Programme's Global Biodiversity Assessment is often cited, which estimates the number of described species at approximately 1.75 million. One study done by prominent biologist E.O. Wilson and others estimate known species at approximately 1.4 million, while another study estimates the number at approximately 1.5 million."
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/58.html

That also doesn't include what these creatures would have eaten (many of which are meat eaters) or where their waste would go and how Noah's family could have possibly kept up with feeding and cleaning. Plus, add in that there were 7 of each 'clean' animal and 7 of each "birds of the air".

Now, someone trying to defend the Noah story could say that Noah didn't have to bring ocean creatures into the ark...but it would have been necessary. As the rain fell it would have quickly changed the salinity (salt content) of all bodies of water. Fresh and Salt water creatures would not be able to survive under such conditions.

Someone could also say that 'kind' isn't the same as species, however that would require accepting evolution. Also, even with just taking 'kinds' of animals, they still wouldn't all fit on the ark and some of them would try to eat the others. http://www.answersingenesis.org/... claims that 16,000 individual animals would be on-board the ark (of coarse, they also think dinosaurs would have been on the ark...lol)

Here's an idea of why they wouldn't fit. We first have to remember that the animals couldn't just be crammed in with each other...they need some space. So, assuming that on average they would need 10sf of space per animal. (this is probably a low estimate..especially if dinosaurs are included). The ark is 450ft by 75ft..that's 33,750 sft per floor. Divide that by 10sf and get 3,370 then take 3,370 and multiply by 3 levels (they can't use the roof because of the weather) and we have room for only about 7,200 individual animals (give or take a thousand since I didn't actually calculate how much average room an animal would take up...it was just an estimate).

More about the myth:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/oldearth2.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/6flood.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_proof1.htm
http://www.mystae.com/restricted/stream ... flood.html
http://www.tccsa.tc/articles/wyatt.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_noah.htm

Also one on continental drift (how far can a land animal swim?)
http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/cdmovie.html

originally posted here:  posting.php?mode=quote&f=2&p=899

I'm actually not that familiar with disproving the bible from a fundamentalist standpoint, I never believed it was all literally true.  Btw, what do you think about the fact that none of the books of the bible can be traced back to being authored during the life time of Jesus?  My research has shown the first nonfraudulent written accounts date back to around 50ad.  If you are interested, I have a link about that too.

[minstrelofc]

Yay, replies!

Why exactly are "Internal Logical Inconsistencies" unacceptable but "internal contradictions" a maybe? What's the difference?

A contradiction would be like: Verse X says that Frank was never married. Verse Y says that Frank went home to his wife.
A logical inconsistency would be like: God is loving so why is there badness.


curiosityandthecat:
thanks for the link, I'll do some data mining when I get a chance.


SSY:
I'm not going to take the word of others as to what is true without looking into it myself, but I will listen to others for possibilities. If someone suggests something, then it might be interesting to check on.

I know that if I spend a couple of weeks following up on, say, the walls of Jericho, and I find that there quite possibly were walls in an acceptable date range, then I will consider the Bible "confirmed", and have absolutely no further interest in looking further. Remember, I'm not motivated enough to spend my whole life proving atheists wrong ;-)

Special Relativity "looks wrong" - if I'm going at 90% of the speed of light, and someone else is going at the speed of light in the same direction, why don't I see them going at 10% of the speed of light? -- but "if we assume this, and this and this, then it still works outkind of OK". I've found that attempting to put something into rational terms, and then examining the produced rationalization is a very illuminating part of evaluating a proposition.

It says "days" in the bible, but that word has been translated. Also, days from what frame of reference? There are no people around so it has to be God's frame of reference, God says that a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day - does that have relevance? etc. etc. etc. There's really some fascinating stuff in there. It is also possible that they were inertial earth rotations (and not significantly different than those that we have today).

I want cold hard facts, not mind games. I'm "very good" at mind games, I can play both sides (or more, if they present themselves).

Pi was communicated correctly - In scientific notation it would be 3 x 10^0 --- ie. accurate to one significant digit.

And, just to be clear, no finite creature can look at anything objectively.  


 laetusatheos:
Thanks for the flood data and links! I'll have to peruse those when I get a chance.

My only problem with ark calculations is that it would be way too easy to cry miracle if things don't work out --- after all, there's already the declared miracle of the exact number and types of animals needed coming to Noah.

Geologic proof that the flood didn't happen at all would be good, however. (and I may be wrong, but I believe the Bible requires the flood to be world-wide, not just a local phenomenon)

That is an interesting bit about the time-of-writing of the New Testament books. I've been looking into that myself, actually. Of course, they wouldn't have been written before Christ died (as noone really understood the significance of what was happening), and immediately following his death and resurrection there would be more word-of-mouth communication. I've heard "experts" claim that the 4 gospels were written in the first century, the last one, John, around 90 AD. Of course, I haven't verified any of that, so it's definitely open for research.

[Whitney]

A contradiction would be like: Verse X says that Frank was never married. Verse Y says that Frank went home to his wife.
A logical inconsistency would be like: God is loving so why is there badness.

What about the issue of why God would need to sacrifice himself to himself in order to circumvent a rule he created?

[minstrelofc]

What about the issue of why God would need to sacrifice himself to himself in order to circumvent a rule he created?

That would be in the "logical inconsistency" category. It's very easy to say, for example, that He didn't create the rule, the rule just exists because of who He is.

I went more into that realm of conjecture in this post (and others in that thread).

[minstrelofc]

Obviously, http://www.talkorigins.com has beat the flood story to death

Ah-ha! I was wondering why I could never get to that site: I kept hitting a redirect loop (in FF), and it just never loaded (in IE) --- looks like it's actually http://www.talkorigins.org (if that's the site you're talking about) --- Looks like a good resource, I'll have to explore it further.

[karadan]

Yay, replies!

Why exactly are "Internal Logical Inconsistencies" unacceptable but "internal contradictions" a maybe? What's the difference?

A contradiction would be like: Verse X says that Frank was never married. Verse Y says that Frank went home to his wife.
A logical inconsistency would be like: God is loving so why is there badness.  

That sounds a lot like something Messenger would have said...

I'll keep it brief.

It is impossible to levitate with the power of your mind (walking on water).
It is impossible to move large bodies of water with the power of the mind.
It is impossible to instantly transmute one form of matter or liquid to another with the power of the mind.

These things may be achievable with various technological advancements within a thousand years but that still wouldn't come under the heading of 'power of the mind' which is essentially what the bible would like us to believe. Unless of course these devices could be made small enough to fit in the brain but then i guess we'd just be squabbling over semantics at that point.

[minstrelofc]

It is impossible to levitate with the power of your mind (walking on water).
It is impossible to move large bodies of water with the power of the mind.
It is impossible to instantly transmute one form of matter or liquid to another with the power of the mind.

Neither do people rise from the dead, people turn into pillars of salt, leprosy is cured, people speak in languages that they haven't learned, and so forth. Those are "simply" miracles - God acting upon the world as an outside source.

We can't repeat and test them now, because they were done by God - we'd have to convince Him to do them a few times under "laboratory conditions" so we could study them.

Now, if there's evidence now that those things didn't happen in the past, that's a potential disproof.


I'm in a tough situation, really - if I ask Christians, they'll say that there aren't any disproofs of the Bible.

Atheists, however, tend to have very low standards for what constitutes a "Disproof" of the Bible. Much like asking Christians to disprove Evolution - very few have studied it enough to provide more than "look how complex a tree is! That couldn't have come from random chance!"

I don't mean any disrespect - I honestly can not expect you[1] to have extensive knowledge of every bit of hokum that the crazies dream up.



[1] Collective noun

[karadan]

Well, in that  case, trying to find a disproof for anything which happened in the bible is ultimately futile because all and any miracle that happened can just be attributed to god and his divine power, which obviously cannot be verifiably disproven.

In that case, what is the point of this thread?

[curiosityandthecat]

Don't forget, when looking at the Bible, you have two different lenses through which to view it: a history book with factual accounts and therefore open to empirical analysis, or a book of spirituality, faith, miracles, the supernatural and loads of magical thinking. Atheists like to find these inconsistencies in the Bible as a way to show that, if it is the word of a god, and that god is infallible, then either that god is not infallible or the Bible is not the word of that god. However, any omnipotent being can, ultimately, do whatever it damn well pleases, which falls directly into the realm of the supernatural. It's silly that we even try, sometimes. How would some logical inconsistencies even ruffle the feathers of a mystical, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing daddy-o?

In short, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either the Bible is a history textbook with some morals thrown in, or it's in a completely different realm and the text therein cannot be taken literally.

I'll point to (Fooce, C. & Warnick, B. (2007). Does teaching creationism facilitate student autonomy? Theory and Research in Education. 5(3), 357-378.) in which they concluded the Bible cannot be used as a science text (and, by extension, a history text, as both are based on empirical facts; i.e., water boils at 100degC or Napoleon was at the Battle of Waterloo) in any modernist sense, as it was originally compiled as premodern. That is, not to be used as a guidebook on how one should live, but rather a description of one's life at the time of writing, thus placing the "reader" (and I use the term loosely, as literacy was something of a rarity at that time) in the world via the text.

[SSY]

Special Relativity "looks wrong" - if I'm going at 90% of the speed of light, and someone else is going at the speed of light in the same direction, why don't I see them going at 10% of the speed of light? -- but "if we assume this, and this and this, then it still works outkind of OK". I've found that attempting to put something into rational terms, and then examining the produced rationalization is a very illuminating part of evaluating a proposition.

Specaial relativity does not look wrong, it in-fact agrees perfectly with observed results. We know a universe without special relativity does not work, The postulates made in special relativity ( Constant c, invarient laws of physics in inertial frames ) are in no way contradictory to the way in which we observe the universe around us, and they still explain the effects of special relativity. Your rationalisations are different, they assume things inconsistant with the universe around us in order to explain things in the bible.
Just calling something a miracle is the weakest of the weak, you could call anything a miracle, thereby making any disproof vulnrable to this argument.

Your translationa argument is also pretty weak. How do you know that some other major part of the bible should be interepted differently? Maybe honour they father and mother, is just honour thy mother? It seems these tranlation errors only turn up when something would disprove the bible, otherwise the bible is perfect.


No, pi being accurate to one significant figure does not make it accurate, its like saying pi is four, plus or minus one. He could have at least added the .142 on the end.

Mind games? what are you talking about?
Like I said before, you don't have the right frame of mind for this type of exercise.