The Bible Qualifies as a Collection of Fairy Tales - E

My opponent begins by offering more definitions that he did previously. We could go all day quoting different definitions with different meanings. For example, his third definition is that a fairy tale is a story about fairies. My opponent did not mention any fairies in the Bible, does that mean that he loses? In debate, you begin with one definition. You can not provide multiple definitions later in the round to prove that no definition is correct. My opponent must either stay with the definitions he provided, or concede that there is no clear definition of a fairy tale. Furthermore, he tries to reiterate later on that a fairy tale may just be a story with incredible content. Is a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. a fairy tale because it has incredible content? Or one about Lance Armstrong? Obviously a fairy tale can not simply be a story with incredible content, but one with false content. 1. Giants How tall is a giant? Goliath was "anywhere between 6 ft. 6 in. and 11 ft. 4ï¿½ in. tall." The Bible measured Goliath in cubits. "A cubit is the distance from a man's elbow to the tip of his ringers and a span is the span of the hand or approximately one half of a cubit. These units of measurement are of course variable as the size of the person doing the measuring. " http://www.time.com... A giant in the Bible may simply have been a rather tall man. 2. Dragons Again, I reiterate my argument from before. What the English word "dragon" means could very well not correspond with the Hebrew translation 3. Cockatrices The Cockatrice in the Bible is also called an adder or viper. This is just an example of multiple translations http://bible.cc... 4. Unicorns Again a case of mis-translation. Unicorn refereed to either a wild ox or rhinoceros. The word unicorn literally means one-horn, not a horse with one horn. 5. Chledean's Horses What about them are mythical? 6. Sorcerers/Witches The word witch and sorcerer have different definitions now then they did when the Bible was written. Witch meant nature worshiper, or pagan. Sorcerer meant one who worshiped the devil. Not magical creatures in either account. 7. Other Gods The people believed in other gods. The Bible never says the gods were real. In fact, the Bible says the gods were false gods, not true gods. So again, you are at a point with no Bible that is about magical creatures. You have multiple words that are translated in a way that given them magical meaning in the English language. 8. The Creation of Earth and Man I deeply apologize, I accidentally pasted the wrong link. Here is the correct one: http://www.mineralwellsindex.com... My opponent discredits fossils by saying God could have created them. If God could have created them, then he could also have created the universe. So again, you have failed to prove why it is impossible for God to create the Earth. Onto the debate over the creation of man. If we assume that God created the fossil, or the Earth, he could have created Adam however he wanted. 9. The Temptation You never dispute why God could not have given Adam/Eve their own volition. Why are 2 people not a genetically viable population? They procreate, have multiple children. The children grew old, procreate, and have more children. It expands from there. Now diversity arises from adaptation to the different environments around the world. Again, you provide no evidence why it is not plausible. 10. Life Spans By subjective I mean what one time period believes is old may not be the same for another. If you look at the Wikipedia link my opponent provides, it never provides evidence to why man could not have lived for hundreds of years. Also, the chart begins with a negative slope (life rate going down). It is safe to assume, therefore, the by going back in time, the life rate would go upwards. And finally, the chart says Upper Paleolithic, so it assumes that there is millenniums of uncharted time. 11. Plagues of Egypt I already addressed why the incredible content of a story does not alone merit a fairy tale. Now to schistosomiasis. The disease takes two days for symptoms to begin occurring, so the everyone in the town would have had time to drink before the urinating of blood begins. Furthermore, the disease is most prominent in Egypt. http://en.wikipedia.org.... The plagues are still possible 12. Parting of the Red Sea My opponent misunderstands me, I was not claiming that a split would be discovered, but that these splits do occur and it is possible that one did occur during that time. Now the split could easily have held the waters long enough before Moses crossed. Is there any evidence that says a split can not hold back water before it breaks? 13. Jonah and the Great Fish If you or I ate food without looking at what the food was, could we simply feel what was in our stomachs to tell it was something not normally on our diet? No. Sperm Whales eat many things, including giant squid. So the whale may not have known it ate a human. And who knows what the whale would have done. Are you a whale? After debating all my opponents references of impossible events, he has yet to provide any evidence that one of them is impossible. Onto his responses: "PRO has the burden of showing that these stories are one of the following: 1. About or containing references to magical creatures. 2. Containing incredible content. 3. Misleading by effect or design." I will concede that he can also win by proving the creatures are magical, but the 2nd reason is not valid. I have shown earlier that a fairy tale can not simply be a fairy tale because of incredible content. So I will rephrase my previous statement and say my opponent has the burden to prove that the stories are not possible or about magical creatures. Here is the line from Judges "And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." Here are some responses. (Joshua 17: 15-16) "If you are so numerous," Joshua answered, "and if the hill country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of the Perizzites and Rephaites." The people of Joseph replied, "The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have iron chariots, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel." This verse tells us that God did not ordain the land of the Canaanites to be taken, so God did not want Judah to capture it. Or, we can conclude that Judah had God with him (was in faith), but he lost faith when he saw the superior technology of the iron chariots. Either way, this verse does not dispute God's power. Onto Hebrews 6:18, my opponent does not understand the meaning behind the words. By the words "impossible to lie" it means that God IS all powerful and can do anything. So when he promises that he will do it, he can do it. He will not fall short of his word. It does not mean to say God is incapable of lying, but he has the power to ensure someone's salvation, and his promise will be kept. And finally Mark 6:5. This is the weakest verse quoted to disprove God's divinity because it shows the most ignorance of the Bible. When God sent Jesus to Earth, he stripped him of some of his powers. That's why he was able to "die" on the cross. My opponent still does not prove that two or more of the stories are about magical creatures or false. Until he does, he still loses. I have gone creature by creature and should why they are not magical creatures in the original language. I have also showed why the events COULD have occurred. And finally, I have upheld the divinity of God his power. Unless my opponent proves God is not omnipotent, he can n