The Bible Thread: Help Fight Redundancy

To be fair, here's a good apologetic article from tektonics.org(Edited for space)



The Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S is published by "Adventures Unlimited," (1999) not exactly Harper and Row, or Yale University Press, but at least they know where to buy ink; and when you are done with this book, you can buy the ones listed in the back on time travel and Atlantis. It is written by one who piles on the professed credentials like they would disappear if not referred to in a hurry: "...archaeologist, historian, mythologist, and linguist." Did they forget con artist, amateur logician, angry and irrational person? We didn't. Achy S is all of these things; The Christ Conspiracy is a tedious, boring compiliation of some of the silliest arguments, some of the broadest and vaguest generalizations, drawn from some of the most outdated and unreliable sources, that I have yet seen composed. If you wonder why I took so long to write something about this person, you need no further reasoning than what I have just stated. Then again, the requests to do something about her have become so insistent that I can't ignore them any longer. The irresistible force has at last met the immovable object, and the former won in this case.

Achy S didn't begin her Christ-myth career with this book: She's had a page on the Web for quite some time, and has been peddling her myth-theory on it. Let's summarize by noting that Achy holds the banner for the thesis that Christ as a human never existed, but goes down the fork of the road that even G. A. Wells abandoned some time ago: That Christ as a figure was derived from pagan mythologies. I would begin here by recommending to the reader Glenn Miller's work in progress on copycat myths. Beyond that, I will take some time to refute some ideas in detail (especially in a new series on pagan comparisons). Between numerous essays, much of what Achy has to say has already been asked and answered on this page, and beyond that lies a world of Biblical scholarship that leaves her and her outdated and irrelevant sources (like the works of G. A. Wells, Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, and Lloyd M. Graham's Deceptions and Myths of the Bible) groaning in the dust. (Readers of this page have told me that Achy gets a lot of respect from certain quarters, and I can believe it: Just look at reviews of her book on Amazon.com. What this shows, of course, is that critical thinking ability has sunk to a new low.)

Added note: An alert reader recently sent notice to me of an anonymous reply to this article by one of Acharya's admirers. I have no objections to the use of anonymity per se, but since this person did not offer even a pseudonym as a referent, I will refer to them as "Old Yeller" throughout the remainder of this article. Should they deign to offer a pseudonym at a later date I will make a replacement of the name. Old Yeller's comments do not begin until our section on Hebrew monotheism and consist mainly of "huh" statements which are of no direct relevance to the arguments at hand (i.e., "This particular Hebrew word occurs 2,570 times, although it should be noted it is not the most frequent word used in describing 'God'.") , but do indicate a personality uneducated enough to have to decorate his material with such non-relevant commentary in order to make himself sound scholarly. I note the use of only eight footnotes in a paper of at least 50 pages, and the lack of attention to detail in that I am referred to constantly as "Mr. Holdings", speaks enough for itself.

The obvious reason for the anamoly of Old Yeller's presentation is that an overwhelming part of it consists of material lifted uncritically from websites carrying the works of non-experts like Joseph Wheless, Oneness Pentecostaler Keith Moreland, and Frank DeAngelis (a professor at a community college who posits a radical thesis concerning the origin of the concept of Satan, which is not recognized as valid by any scholar). As such, and because of the overwhelming irrelevance of the material to the issues here at hand

 

This may work for you now Chris

it may work right up to and including your dying breath.

But I've already died, and returned.

The delusion ends the moment you step out of your shell and are introduced to eternity.

Jesus is Lord.

 

...but also a reminder that men will do what it takes to avoid the truth.

Ironic.

 

For heaven's sake people, please, please summerize. It is becoming very difficult for either side to effectively argue against the enormous masses of data presented here. Try to hit the high points, and provide detail later if asked.

 

I was going to say, maybe this should be the "bible reprint" thread, because it's beginning to rival the King James in length.

 

If you have extremely long articles, please link to them.

 

Chris, I'd like to hear your opinion but could you please summarize? Thanks

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Well, I'd like to believe, but before I commit my life to something, I try to carefully analyze it first--and with things like the Babylonian influence and the "Godman saviours" floating around in Hellenistic times, that leaves room for doubt IMO.

 

We're talking about your tendency to copy huge amounts of text into your post. Please link to them in the future.

 

Room to doubt is a huge understatement, but i agree nevertheless.

 

Concerning the similarites between Christianity and other religions, it is a logical fallacy to conclude that

Because there are similarities

Christianity MUST have copied from the others.

Where is the solid evidence that Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, or the other writers of the bible ever consulted other works or even knew about them?

It's like saying that there's a guy in China who likes sweet and sour chicken, movies, and football. Well, I like sweet and sour chicken, movies and football. Therefore, we must be brothers. It's an unwarranted leap.

I could just as easily come on here and say that all those other religions who supposedly have so many similarities to Christianity copied their ideas from the bible. You might say, "But they came first!" I could just say that people went back later and added and changed stuff. Those are the same charges leveled against the bible, charges which have no merit.

 

To say Christianity is like other religions is a great falsity. Christianity is actually the only religion that teaches that salvation is a free gift of grace, not something you work toward. And I'm pretty sure it's the only one with a God that loves everyone personally. So at it's most fundamental levels even, it's different.

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Exactly, solojones. The most important elements of the Christian faith are radically different from any other world view. We are saved by faith in God's loving work, not in our own works of any kind.

We live day by day in the power of his spirit living in us, and the power of the crucified Christ working through us. We are called to love even our enemies.

The number of disciples or other details like that are peripheral facts that, while we believe they are historical, are not the core of the faith. They could easily coincide with facts of other religions.

Concerning the worldwide flood, there is an explanation that I am amazed I haven't seen on all these threads I've read:

It really happened, just as the bible describes. Later on, every culture on earth recorded the event from their own perspectives. Remember, the bible says that after the flood all peoples of the earth descended from Noah and his three sons. Therefore it makes absolute perfect sense that each and every culture would record their take on such a cataclysmic event.

Noah's sons told their sons. Their sons told their sons, etc. etc. Eventually some of their descendents wrote the Gilgamesh epic and other similar accounts.

Many people look at the similar flood accounts backwards and conclude that the bible must have copied or that since every culture had a story like that then it must have just been the hip thing to write about in those days. Everybody was doing it. Well, there's a reason that everybody did it. Because it happened.

 

Allow me to repost my earlier take on the flood (to which no believer has yet responded):

"Any biologist will tell you that the number of species of land animals exceeds one million, and that's not counting the even greater numbers of plants and sea creatures (all of which would have drowned under the flood or suffocated when the world's saltwater and freshwater mingled).

Now for argument's sake, let's say that only a tenth of these creatures had evolved at the time (an extremely conservative estimate--and of course, such an argument requires concessions toward evolution). Let's say that out of the 1.4 million land species here today, Noah only needed to gather 140,000 pairs. That's a total of 280,000 animals, all of which he needed to gather, keep organized, and care for while the rest were on their way--and by the way, let's completely disregard the Bible passage that maintains that the animals came by sevens rather than twos.

Then he gets to cram them all into the ark. Now, the Bible lists the ark's dimensions (converted from the "cubit" unit of measurement) to be approximately 450x75x45, or 1,518,750 cubic feet. That's just over five cubic feet per animal and human. A tight squeeze, especially if one happens to be an elephant or a rhino, but manageable.

Of course, these animals can't go for forty days and nights on an empty stomach, and so it falls to Noah to provide their food. He gathers bamboo from China, fish from the Arctic Ocean, insects from South America, and so on. Following this epic journey, during which not one of his flock takes ill or starves, he crams these several metric tons of perfectly preserved food into the nooks and crannies (thus eliminating all space to breathe from the ark's lower levels), waits for the rain and sets sail. (There is, of course, the question of how he adjusted each section of the ark to its passengers' required climate--remember, if the Hebrews had fridges, they wouldn't have banned pork.)

Before long, Noah runs into a slight logistical problem: Animals pee. Yes, the prospect of running around with his crew of seven, elbowing his way through the nonexistent space in the pitch-black hold, feeding and caring for hundreds of thousands of animals twenty-four hours a day (which, assuming an equal division of labor, left him with 40,000 animals to feed three times a day each, or 83 every minute assuming no sleep whatsoever), he had no time to consider the prospect of cleaning out the refuse of his enormous herd. Not only do these animals not have any space to avoid one another's bathroom breaks, the crew has neither the means nor the manpower to clean up after them. Life in the ark soon becomes a sticky, stinky and unsanitary business, with lethal conditions for many of the herd, and the space in the hold goes well beyond completely full.

Regardless, let's say that millions of miracles pull everyone through fully intact. The ark touches down, Noah emerges, sacrifices many of the animals (and causes several extinctions in the process), and runs into his biggest problem yet--no food.

Forty days of flooding have wiped out the world's plant life, and killed the saltwater and freshwater fish. The animals have nothing to eat but each other; God, obligingly, snaps his fingers, gives them fangs and lets them have at it. As the slaughter begins, Noah looks to the sky and wonders what any of it was for.

Above, God signs off with a rainbow."

Furthermore:

"The flood is said to have "drowned all the mountains of the earth." Mount Ararat was 12,000 feet high at the time, which means that even if the rain fell constantly until the waters receded, it would have had to have covered the entire earth at a minimum rate of 12.5 feet per hour. That's not rain; it's hydraulic mining. It would have pounded the continents into crystal and washed all sediment into the sea. It did not."

And, lest we forget...

"Elephants eat between 220 and 400 pounds of food per day. Multiply this by 40, and you get between 17,600 and 32,000 pounds of food for the two elephants alone

 

See, I don't understand why people try to rationalize the miracles of the Bible. They're MIRACLES, we aren't meant to understand them. No offense to anyone on here, though

-sj loves kevin spacey

 

Actually since Christianity has so much in common with other pagan traditions that preceded it, that doesn't automatically mean Jesus' story is significatntly different from them. There's alot more there than two people who like the same type of food.

 

Answering all the objections about Noah's Ark here will probably get me banned for posting too much. So I'll refer you to the excellent book, Noah's Ark: A Fesability Study.

But I'll try to answer your main objection here anyway. You assume that every species would need to be on the ark. First, you should not count bacteria, protista, plants, or fish, as most species could reasonably be expected to survive a flood.

Not every other animal species need be represented. The concept of "species" is genetically very hazy anyway. There is a great deal of documented interspecies breeding. (Tigers / Lions, ect.) Therefore, the Biblical basic taxonomic category, the "kind", is probably much broader than the concept of species. So there would be vastly fewer animals than your estimate implies. There were probably around 16,000 animals, two from each genera (including extinct animals).

Many of the animals were probably quite young, and therefore smaller than their full size. The vast majority of animals are smaller than cats anyway.

If each animal get a cage 20x20x12 inches, the total volume is a mere 42,000 cubic feet, out of the 1,540,000 cubic feet avaliable.

John Woodmorappe (the writer of the aformentioned book) calculated that the food required would take up only about 15% of the ark's volume. (Deatiled calculations are in the book)

As for the "poop and pee problems", most would be solved by sloping the floors so that the waste can be easily moved into the sea. Even this could be automated if the roof of the ark had a trough system for collecting water and channeling it over the floors and out of the ark.

If you don't want to spend money on the book, much of the same info can be found at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Magazines/docs/cen_v19n2_animals_ark.asp

1Pe 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give an answer to everyone asking you a reason concerning the hope in you...

EDIT: I know this short post does not answer all your objections. That doesn't mean there aren't answers, though. I will do my best to answer all of your other challenges in more posts, if you (or anyone else) indicate you are interested. While many Christians take their faith for granted, some of us don't. We aren't afraid of the hard questions. So as long as you have them, we'll do our best to give answers.

 

people try to explain away miracles because miracles mean God exists and they will stand before him.

all over the world there exist carvings of an ark full of animals on the sea.

Its kinda neat really, to think Noah built something as long as three football fields, with what shipbuilders say is the perfect shape for large heavy cargos to survive ocean storms (just like the oil tankers of today).

Noah musta had enourmous faith to build that thing in the face of all the=at ridicule, but guess what, he did, or else none of us would be here, remember, no matter how much proof we give, the world counts it all as foolishness, they count us as ignorant children for believing God's account is accurate, or that one man paid for everyone's sins. Not for much longer though.

He died upon a cross of wood
yet He made the hill on which it stood.

 

But who's to say if a miracle really happened? I can understand why scientists would be interested in observing a miracle, since they would be forced to accept Christ.

 

"all over the world there exist carvings of an ark full of animals on the sea."

Post proof or retract.

Thanks for replying, phantom, and having clicked the link, let me reply:

First of all, even if you take Woodmorappe's estimate of the number of animals to be perfectly accurate (which I don't), that still means that each crew member has to feed 1.4 animals every second (assuming no rest, sleep, meals or bathroom breaks).

Second, fish and land plants can most certainly not survive when flooded (in the case of plants) or introduced to water that's incompatible with their gills.

Third, Woodmorappe disregards the volume of food required for the elephants--to say nothing of the dinosaurs, which he seems to maintain were on board.

Fourth, consider the birds. They're not gonna fly for forty days and forty nights straight, let alone a hundred and fifty.

Next, many animals are quite particular about what they eat. Where is the Bible's record of Noah's epic journey to China to gather bamboo?

Again, how did Noah keep the ark warm enough for the desert creatures and cold enough for the polar bears?

What happens when the ark lands and the Earth has been stripped of all vegetation?

What about the twelve and a half feet of rain per hour--for forty days? There would have been no soil left whatsoever.

As for the argument that "every" culture has a flood story: First, it's far from every culture; those that do have one tend to come from areas that, appropriately enough, flood. If residents of California and Mississippi each have flood stories, does that mean that one flood covered them both?

If anything, the flood is a parable.

 

I believe our flood-defending friend of whom you demanded PPOR of is just slightly off. What he probably means is that flood legends are practically universal. Cultures from the Near East to the American Indians and the Austrailian Aboriginies have very similar flood legends.

?... there are many descriptions of the remarkable event [the Genesis Flood]. Some of these have come from Greek historians, some from the Babylonian records; others from the cuneiform tablets, and still others from the mythology and traditions of different nations, so that we may say that no event has occurred either in ancient or modern times about which there is better evidence or more numerous records, than this very one which is so beautifully but briefly described in the sacred Scriptures. It is one of the events which seems to be familiar to the most distant nations?in Australia, in India, in China, in Scandinavia, and in the various parts of America. It is true that many look upon the story as it is repeated in these distant regions, as either referring to local floods, or as the result of contact with civilized people, who have brought it from historic countries, and yet the similarity of the story is such as to make even this explanation unsatisfactory.?

-Stephen D. Peet, ?The Story of the Deluge,? American Antiquarian, Vol. 27, No. 4, July?August 1905, p. 203.

That's a general reference. I complained earlier about the length of some of the posts in here, so I'm trying to set a good example by keeping my own posts (relitively) short. But if you want specific legends, I'll post them.

EDIT: I appreciate your interest in my last post. I hope to answer most of your questions in my next post.

 

Well, here we go!

First of all, even if you take Woodmorappe's estimate of the number of animals to be perfectly accurate (which I don't), that still means that each crew member has to feed 1.4 animals every second (assuming no rest, sleep, meals or bathroom breaks).

I think the 16,000 animal estimate is good, but I think we'll probably hit the reason (involving specialization within species) why a couple of paragraphs down. Ok, assuming feeding once per day, 16,000 animals divided by 112 working hours (14 hrs * 8 people)per day, leaves 142 animals per hour. That's about 25s per animal. Not bad, considering most animals are very small. Also, most animals don't need to be fed daily. If you've ever owned a hamster, you know that one feeding can last a week.


Second, fish and land plants can most certainly not survive when flooded (in the case of plants) or introduced to water that's incompatible with their gills.

Plants couldn't have survived underwater very well. But seeds can. We don't really know what the salinity of the flood waters were. At any rate, the differences between freshwater and saltwater fish are less than many suppose. Here's some good quotes:

Hybrids of wild trout (freshwater) and farmed salmon (migratory species) have been discovered in Scotland (New Scientist 146:22, May 27, 1995), suggesting that the differences between freshwater and marine types may be quite minor. Many marine creatures would have been killed in the Flood because of the turbidity of the water, changes in temperature, etc.

The fossil record testifies to the massive destruction of marine life with 95% of the fossil record accounted for by marine creatures. This is consistent with the Bible's account of the Flood beginning with the breaking up of the 'fountains of the great deep' (i.e. beginning in the sea?).

There is a possibility that stable fresh and saltwater layers developed and persisted in some parts of the earth. Freshwater can sit on top of saltwater for extended periods of time. Turbulence may have been sufficiently low at high latitudes for such layering to persist and allow the survival of both freshwater and saltwater species in those areas.

Third, Woodmorappe disregards the volume of food required for the elephants--to say nothing of the dinosaurs, which he seems to maintain were on board.

He doesn't discount, he just takes the average. The amount of food for the elephants is offset by the huge volume avaliable to store food, and the fact that most other animals didn't eat much. Dinosaurs are reptiles, so they hatch from eggs. After hatching, they are still very small. You could hold a baby Apatosaurus in your hands.

Fourth, consider the birds. They're not gonna fly for forty days and forty nights straight, let alone a hundred and fifty.

You are right on this one. If I said they didn't have to be in the ark, I was mistaken. Birds would have to be in the ark. But (most) birds are small and don't eat much anyway.

Next, many animals are quite particular about what they eat. Where is the Bible's record of Noah's epic journey to China to gather bamboo?

Woodmorappe has a chapter in his book on this. Many animals that need a special diet can survive with less, if necessary. The koala, which usually needs eucalyptus leaves, can live on a number of other plants. See also the next paragraph, as it is pertinant too.

Again, how did Noah keep the ark warm enough for the desert creatures and cold enough for the polar bears?

From the trueorigin.org site:

As for polar bears, the article Bears across the world ? (Creation 20(4):28?3) points out that polar bears are descendants of an original bear kind. This is not evolution, since polar bears contain no new information?rather, they have lost pigmentation information, resulting in white hair, good for camouflage. Another mutation prevented the toes from dividing properly during its embryonic development, resulting in webbed feet ? one of

 

My take on the similarities between the various flood stories is that, given the subject matter, such stories often write themselves.

Say I'm an ancient-world storyteller. My stories are bigger than life; I like gods, monsters, heroes, cataclysms, that kind of thing.

I sit down to write a new story; I'll make this one a disaster. Not just any disaster; this'll be the biggest one there ever was. Hmm... I could write about earthquakes, volcanoes, wars... eh, plenty of those already; I'll make it a flood.

A huge flood. Big enough to cover the world--yeah. Now, what's the cause? Well, it's not gonna happen without the gods, so yeah, they did it. How come? Well, obviously, they'd have to be angry. Humanity's pissed 'em off.

Okay, so the gods flood the earth to wipe out the humans. Hmm, someone's gotta survive, or we couldn't still be here. Ah! So we've got a hero; one guy the gods favor above everyone else, so they spare him. Of course, afterwards, humanity's still gonna die with him--ah, unless he's married!

So how does he survive? Hmm, he'd need one hell of a boat to get through that kind of flood; fine, he builds a boat!

Hmm, we've still got animals; how'd they survive? Hmm, I guess he took 'em onto the boat with him. Boat's gonna have to be a little bigger, but hey, why not?

So how does he know to do all this? Hmm... guess the gods tell him to; I know, deux ex machina, but what other choice is there?

All right, so here, first draft:

-----

Many years ago, Man angered the gods with his cruel and sinful ways. "This evil is beyond redemption," said the gods. "We shall punish Man, and begin anew!"

Now in all the world, there lived one who was pure and upright, and favorite of the gods. "This man is righteous," mused the gods, "and so he shall not perish, though all the world drown beneath him!"

And so, as he slept, the gods' messenger entered his dreams, and warned him of the world's end. "You will build a boat," said the messenger, "large enough for yourself, and your wife, and all the creatures of the earth. Make haste!"

So the man labored, day and night, till it was done. And he gathered all the beasts by twos, and brought them aboard. And when the last creature had entered and the door swung shut, the rains began to fall, and cover the world in death.

And so the man drifted upon the waves for days, then weeks, till the waters dried up and all was as it began. With his wife beside him, the man set out from the boat to create a new world.

-----

Depending on the culture, of course, some of the details may change--the Hawaiian version of the story has their ever-capricious gods flood the world by accident--but you see my point.

 

phantom:

It seems we'll have to agree to disagree about the number of animals; all I'll say is that if animals diversified as quickly as you're talking about, why did they suddenly stop doing so?

Hybrids of wild trout (freshwater) and farmed salmon (migratory species) have been discovered in Scotland (New Scientist 146:22, May 27, 1995), suggesting that the differences between freshwater and marine types may be quite minor.

There may be hybrids out there, but that doesn't change what happens when you throw a saltwater animal in a freshwater lake or vice versa.

The fossil record testifies to the massive destruction of marine life with 95% of the fossil record accounted for by marine creatures.

The reigning theory there is that life has existed in the sea for much longer than it has on land, and contains a much larger and more diverse ecosystem.

Now if that statistic were caused by the flood, wouldn't the land animal fossil record match it?

The amount of food for the elephants is offset by the huge volume avaliable to store food, and the fact that most other animals didn't eat much.

I'll get back to you on the volume of 60 tons of grass.

Many animals that need a special diet can survive with less, if necessary.

That sentence seems to contradict itself; Panda need bamboo to live, but don't need bamboo to live?

So "polar bears" were probably not even on the ark, as they degenerated from the bears that were on the ark.

Even if that's your stance, what about penguins, seals, walruses, and all the other arctic/antarctic creatures? None of them could survive in the heat of the Middle East.

We agree that many animals would have died of starvation after landing (why go through the trouble of saving them, then?)

As for the passage from Psalms, we both know how poetic and metaphorical the book of Psalms often is; while there is a remote possibility that the passage means exactly what it says, and that no one saw fit to record such a cataclysmic event until hundreds of years after the fact (and then only in a book known for its metaphors), it's unlikely.

Now here's a puzzle for you: The longest wooden boat on record, at 329 feet long, was the U.S.S. Wyoming. It required diagonal iron strapping, suffered constant, enormous leaks, and was in itself the biggest reason the Navy abandoned wood for metal. Yet the Ark is said to have been over 100 feet longer, and sturdy enough to float for half a year?

Oh, one more thing: Interestingly, in Numbers 13:33, the Israelites encounter the Nephilim, a race of giants (yes, giants--300 feet tall, if the accounts are to be believed) whose origins pre-date the flood. How, if all other life on the world were wiped out, did their people survive?

Back to you.

 

Anyone who says that Christianity has a lot in common with any other religion knows nothing about World Religions, or is confused. I've been studying the basic principles of several world religions in comparison to Christianity, and there is simply no comparison. They are totally different.

-sj loves kevin spacey