From: dsoconne@quads.uchicago.edu (Daniel S OConnell)
Subject: Re: Proofs of the Bible (Long, but filled with information)
Reply-To: dsoconne@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 02:31:21 GMT

Note: sometimes I like to deconstruct posts like the following
as an intellectual exercise. . .

barnejd@wkuvx1.bitnet writes:

>treating the Bible as we would any
>other historical document, let's look at it.

>  Comparison to other documents:
>
>ANCIENT LITERATURE             # MANUSCRIPTS           PROXIMITY TO
>                                                       ORIGINAL COPY
>-----------------------------  ----------------------  -------------
>Livy's History of Rome                 20                500 yrs
>Caesar's Gallic Wars                   10                900 yrs
>Tacitus' Annals                         2                800 yrs
>History of Thucydides                   8              1300+ yrs
>History of Heroditus                    1               1000 yrs
>Writings of Aristotle                   5              1400+ yrs
>
>  Now remember - all of these are universally regarded as accurate.  Let's

Note that they are all histories of politics, *NOT* religious movements;
any comptent historian knows that much of the bible's "history" is
suspect - certainly events from the hebrew testament and events from
the greek testament have not been considered "historically" accurate
for some time.

The men who wrote the bibles (unless there was a "J" and she was
female), had a specific agenda: to promulgate the revealed word
of G-d to the Hebrews of approx 2,000 years ago. 

The sources you cite above had no such agenda; therefore the two
testaments are not in the same class and do not offer a useful
comparison.

>  You asserted God is inconsistent because he had an old law and a new one. 
...
>the end of time).  The laws of each led into the other.  The Patriarchical

This is opinion on which millions disagree, not scholarly research. Okay,
so much for the preliminaries, now:

>  Proof for the Bible being the Word of God:
>1) It claims to be - as I said, every man is allowed to testify on his own
>    behalf, so the Bible's claim must be counted as evidence, even if that
>    evidence is taken a little more lightly than some of the exterior evi-
>    dence.  I trust we can agree that the Bible claims to be the sole rev-
>    elation of God to man; no Apocrypha, no additions, etc.

True, yet there are other texts which claim to be *the* revealed word 
of G-d; so this isn't much.

>2) The unity of the Bible - A unity of facts, purpose, and teaching.  Its
>    theme is that of the salvation from sin.  It begins with the creation,
>    sin marring it, and God conceiving a great plan to redeem man from his
>    sins, and goes from there.

It could be and has been argued there is more disunity than unity
among the texts, even about simple matters. Consider the wide
variation in the 4 gospels for example.

>3) The great moral teachings of the Bible - No other book has ever
>    condemned immorality so severely or demanded as high a standard of
>    righteousness.  It is virtually unique among religious documents.

Wrong. Check the Qu'ran, for one.

>4) Its Unparallelled Impartiality - "Human books extol the virtues and

The testaments were written by cultists to pass on the revealed
word of G-d to a formerly obscure jewish sect. A unilateral
claim to be the sole word of G-d is hardly an advertisement
for impartiality.

>5) The Brevity of the Bible - So much, virtually a history of the world, is
>    packed into so few pages.  It tells the 33-year life of the most
>    important man ever to walk the earth in four short books.

And eliminates significant parts of his life. A history of the world?
No. The important bits of history for believers? Perhaps.

>6) The Life of Jesus - That Jesus existed is virtually indisputable.  The

Sez you.

>    testimony of those closest to him indicated His sinless perfection.

And they are hardly impartial.

>    Such a perfect person could never have been so perfectly created by any
>    man.

Which calls into doubt the deeds he is claimed to have performed.

>7) The Fulfillment of Prophecy - Modern self-proclaimed "prophets" usually
>    get about 10-20% right; the Bible's all come true in exactly the way
>    predicted.  The odds of Jesus fulfilling (whether accidentally and/or
>    by design) the prophecies applying to Him are beyond calculation.

Note that some of these "prophecies" were written after the fact. Note
also that some prophecies tend to be self-fulfilling.

>8) The Bible's Scientific Foreknowledge - One of the areas I personally

This is perhaps the most laughable.

>    find fascinating.  Being pre-scientific, it should attribute the
>    workings of nature to colorful myths and be woefully inaccurate - if it
>    was written by man. In the 19th century, Herbert Spencer first
>    announced the 5 fundamental facts of science; yet the Bible covered all
>    5 in the first 2 verses: "In the beginning [time - jdb] God created the
>    heavens [space] and the earth [matter].  And the spirit of God moved 
>    [force] upon the face of the waters [motion]."

This is called looking to the text to find a way to force a theory
which the text does not appear to support.

Note that the vacuum bottle, sea currents, star charts, etc were
all known about to some degree by scholars in Roman days.

>9) The Bible's Undeniable Influence for Good - When taken in its purity

Let's see. . .More people have been killed in the name of religion
than for any other reason. The bibles and relgions have been used
to kill, rape, steal, rob, plunder, ad nauseum. I question the
word "undeniable".

>  These are the main reasons.  Next letter I'll examine creationism vs.
>evolutionism - why if the supernaturalistic viewpoint is refused that

Hoo boy.

Dano