The Bible is a work of man, not God.

Firstly I was thrown that scripture in another debate but I refused to take up issue with it. The debate there was that the bible is not infallible and this didn't offer any evidence to support his argument so I skipped refuting it. This debate is whether or not god divinely inspired the bible. In that case this it is a good scripture to support your argument that because it is barbaric it is not inspired by god . Well you mastered the art of tacking a scripture out of context and twisting its meaning, something very important for any anti-Christian. Now I double checked the version that you provided as I always do, and you are using the New Living Translation and in the NLT that is the way it is printed. However because of the translation differences you have to look at the original text sometimes , and upon examination the word ‘another' is not in the original text what we see is ‘ yiqach' means to marry . but ‘low is traditionally used for marriage so the translates wondered why ‘yiqach' was used. Since we are referring to the son of the person who bought the daughter ‘yiqach' had to be used because ‘low' means to take for himself – which is what traditionally was used when explaining a marriage. But because he wasn't taking it for himself ‘yiqach' was used, in the translation difficulty the writers of the injected "another" to smoothen the translation, but many others such as the New International Version (NIV) does not. That was a quite of bit of research and I thank Adam Clark's commentary of the Bible. It reads like this. Ex 21:1-11 "If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. NIV Now It is Jewish custom ( and you can look it up or ask a friend) that you can only sell your children if you are extremely poor. That you have no commodities , food to feed yourself, or clothes to put on your back. In this situation you are allowed to sell your children. And not to help yourself, but because wait a minute….if you can't feed yourself, you cannot feed your children either! And so this is where Jewish law was issued so that the children could be taken care of and the parent would have some money to hopefully use to improve his situation. Now this isn't whites owning blacks here. This is Jew's owning other Jew's so the situation is completely different, there is not superiority status. Now the women are not free to go for another reason. See when a man sells his man child to another Jewish family it is to work. And so after 7 years he must be set free, as you will find it printed in the 10th verse of the same chapter. However when females are sold they are sold to see how they handle domestic life and hopefully that a member of the family can find it suitable to take on as a spouse. So her status is differentiated. Now the technical translated term is slave so many translations are justified in saying this. But because Jews didn't treat Jews as slaved other translations give us a much more fair picture and refer to them as servants. Now if a man buys a woman with intentions of seeing how she handles domestic life for the purpose of marrying her to a son or servant, and he turns around decides he doesn't like her and sells her off to some foreigner who will take her away from the fathers community, and might not even be Jewish? I wouldn't like that , and that is why the ‘barbaric' bible commands that he cannot sell her to a foreigner. Everyone is shocked that even if people are starving that they have the right to sell their children who will starve alongside them. Of course not they rather have them aborted. Yet we give our children away to military academy's and apprenticeships, and especially in apprenticeships the money gets sent back to ?....the parents. And in apprenticeships no one cares if the family is poor or is rich and just wants to get rid of the kid and get money, they'll take them anyways. The ‘barbaric' bible doesn't allow for this. The ‘barbaric' bible say's alright if you cant afford to live you can sell your children, if it is a male he will be free in seven years, if is a female she will marry into a family that can provide for her. The ‘barbaric' bible goes on to say not only can you not turn around and sell your daughter away if you change your mind, but you also cannot treat her like crap if you choose another women as spouse instead. You must provide her with what you would provide a wife because that was the situation that was agreed upon the purchase. And if you cannot grant her these thigns, you have to let her go. What is so barbaric about that? Come on there are better scriptures to preach how the bible is a work of man, this one affirms your ‘guidelines' of "treat others as you would like to be treated yourself" which by the way is more than just a guideline its Jesus' commandment unto Christians. And I'm glad that you toss aside the problems with carbon dating as comical, I on the other hand don't think its comical when an earnest scientist is put into the position of having to decide which data is accurate and which data is extraneous. Having to decide if he will uphold the mainstream or go with what he believes it is or go for a compromise. Many scientist are face with that , some just repeat the trial until they get the majority of the results to match something. The new method is to provide a window of time. But I don't think any of it is funny, or any of the many more controversies of carbon dating to being funny for example the assumption that there is as much radio-active carbon 14 molecules and non radio-active carbon molecules in the air today as there was thousands or "millions" of years ago. This may not be relevant for you but that ratio between air carbon and carbon in the artifacts are used in the calculation. I don't think any of that is funny at all. And no fossil's aren't any liberal scheme. Fossils are found by legitimate scientist called paleontologist and they do they best they can with the system's at disposal, but the bible can explain them and no one has disproven the bibles historical accuracies, they always coincide with available historical text. Now fossils aren't historical that is more scientific. But the bible does talk about a huge flood that covered the earth. This would explain how all the dinosaurs died, and how they're fossils ended up in odd places like for example the Mt. Everst, and other mountains. They frequently find aquatic fossils in the middle of land, the flood explains that. Science provides an alternative that that land was once under water …oh wait that isn't an alternative. Which goes to how science re-affirms the bible in many many circumstances. Now if you go further you will hit the circumstances were science goes against . it Believes that area was under for different reasons. Reason(s) science not only goes against the bible but it goes against science where in unsure area's often theories compete with each other. So because I choose to stick with the bible where science and the bible split and not science doesn't make my argument any less valid. And because you stick with science and not the bible were science and the bible split doesn't make you any less valid. Lets focus on the question , which is that the bible is a work of god and not man, and your support to that statement and my opposition.