Question:

You have stated a number of times that "If" it is unproven and unjustified ...

but then go on to talk about it as it already has been proven false and unjustified.

Your statement "if" means that you don't know. You don't know that it is true or false. You just don't know.

So, what if it is actually true? What if the Bible actually is an accurate historical document?

I don't want to get tied up in details about how illogical it is to be true. That has been debated thousands of times here in the short time I have been a member on this site.

The question simply is: What if your assumption that it is false is incorrect? Would you be willing to let go of your feelings about this and accept the Bible as the Truth if it "COULD" be proven to you.

I put that in quotes because like others I have talked to on other issues, there is nothing you will accept as proof of this. No matter what I could present, you won't accept what is presented. You will argue something on it until you can discard the whole.

I made this analogy before. Everyone has faith and everyone holds on stubbornly to their faith. You can present something to someone that is the Truth. The whole of it is like a beach. All the grains of sand on the beach are part of the truth and support each other. Someone that does not want to accept this truth no matter how factual it is will find something to argue. Rather than taking the whole and accepting it as a whole, they will find one piece that doesn't look right. They will take this tiny grain of sand and argue about it until they can satisfy themselves that it isn't proof but just something that is coincidental that appears to be proof. Since they can discard that one grain of sand - the entire beach is discarded.

This happens when I talk with my liberal brother a lot. If I misstate one factual piece of information, everything that I have said including my opinions on the topic as a whole are now invalid. What he says is, "If I know you got this wrong, you have just demonstrated that you are unreliable and can't be trusted. There is no reason to listen to you anymore." But, I am not allowed to hold him to the same standard. If I catch him in an error, he says I am making a big deal out of nothing and discarding the truth.

If everyone lived by that standard all the time, no one would believe or listen to anyone ever. Because everyone makes mistakes.

this is just it, my beliefs are not 'unsupported'

my beliefs are supported by sources that not everyone agrees to ACCEPT as dependable

I could , you could, anyone could put 'evidence of the bible' in their favorite search engine and come up with PAGES of references outside the bible which seem to corraborate what was written in the bible

but that can either be taken as corroboration, or as 'repetition' of what was already stated

so , no, there is no proof to those who dont accept the integrity of the sources,, but that doesnt mean that the information is FALSE,,,

I am sorry you find it "disturbing."
There is no "or else" involved with this thread.

(Where I see a lot of "or else" is Christians claiming that they need to be saved "or else.")

First you claim to be disturbed that I seem to be "blaming" all religions for the problems of the world and then you complain that in world war two the Jews were the only ones blamed.

Yes, I blame them all, but mostly I blame the dissemination of false information (The Bible and the Catholic Church) and the creation of countless false religions that has separated the people of the world.

And I hold the people totally responsible who refuse to insist upon credible evidence about the information, before they place their life and belief in the hands of an authority and follow orders without question and are lead into war and conflict in the name of a mythical God.

msharmony,

Yes I know how to use google.
But "evidence of the bible" will not provide proof that the narrative stories of the persons of Abraham actually existed.

If this history could be proven to that extent, it would be in the history books and taught in schools. But it is not. It is faith alone that causes people to accept it as truth.

If you think you can provide specific evidence that will pass the test and scrutiny of an unbiased historian that Jesus, Abraham and Mary actually did exist I would certainly look at it.

But the only "evidence" is Biblical evidence.

IF I write a biography. How will there be proof of my biography other than my biography? I dont know how to fulfill a request to find proof of whats written in the bible, as part of religious doctrine, from somewhere other than the doctrine it was written as a part of.

I haven't been following the discussion about the Jews in this thread, and so I'm not going to speak directly to that particular issue.

However, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the 9/ll attack on the WTC was indeed religiously motivated. And the constant "terrorist" attacks using suicide bombers are also driven by religious beliefs.

This is not to necessarily "blame" the religions specifically. I'm sure that whoever authored the original religious stories had no clue how they were going to be collected, canonized, and made into such organized religions. That was just a matter of how things unfolded.

However, the one fact that cannot be denied is that people are indeed inspired by these religions to take outrageous stances in the name of "God".

In the case of Hitler, I agree that he was no doubt a mentally ill person. But that doesn't change the fact that he was indeed able to use the biblical stories to incite antisemitism in the name of the "Christ".

Before that there were the witch burnings, and before that the crusades. And even today we have religious zealots trying to use religion to renounce scientific knowledge such as evolution, stem cell research, and other things. Plus using the religion to incite bigotry against same gender couples.

It's just a never ending thing.

Like I say, I wasn't paying attention to the current conversation about the Jews, but feel certain that there are indeed a lot of religious hostilities associated between Israel and their Muslim neighbors. The fact that they have two drastically different versions of the Abrahamic religion certainly can't be helping matters.

I don't know if the modern day "Jews" still feel like they have the rights to some sort of "Promised Land" that was promised to them by God or not. But if they do, they most certainty need to get over that delusion.

That story took place between the Israelites and Canaanites eons ago. It most certainly wouldn't have anything to do with modern day people.

Um, what wars are you talking about???

I can't think of any war that was fought by the US that was done solely in the name of God.



I don't know what you mean here.

You must have missed my point. This was an extrapolation of the Jews in world war two to your statements on religions in general. The attitude I am reading in your writings here is that religions in general are vile and evil and should be destroyed. That is what is coming across to me in your writing.

World War II the Jews were blamed for all the problems. The Jews were restricted from some societal activities. That wasn't good enough. Next they were taken and placed into encampments where they could be watched and monitored so they couldn't cause problems in society. Well, since we have to feed them now, lets put them to work and get some free labor out of them. Then that wasn't good enough. The Jews could escape. The only real solution is to kill them.

All that started by saying, the Jews are the problem. Here you are saying, all religions are the problem. That is just step one.




You have said a few times now that people are following false information or lies.



But, you have also complained to msharmony when she didn't take the word "if" into account. This statement you had here is a statement of the belief it is wrong and fake almost to the point of saying it is factual. There is no "if" in this statement.

I do have tons of evidence from many different sources that indicates to me that the Bible is not completely true.

Your evidence would have to overwhelm my own, and I do have doubts that it can.



I would never discard the "entire beach." I always look at the whole and I only discard what:

a. does not add up
b. has no evidence
c. does not fit into the whole.

and only if all three of the above apply. Not just one of them.




I know a lot of people do this. People do this to me all the time.
A person who truly seek the truth will never do this.
They will evaluate every scrap of information.

Even in the most notorious lies and propaganda put forth, there is always truth somewhere. I will find that scrap of truth and those scraps of lies and evaluate each one and make a decision on them.

That is the only way to ascertain truth.

That is why I am asking for proof of the existence of Abraham and his descendants. If anyone can actually prove that, or even provide credible evidence, then I will reevaluate all of that information.

I will NOT automatically take it as completely true however. I will still look at every scrap of information to see where it fits.

All good lies are weaved around things that are true. The best and most believable lies have some truth in them or even a foundation of truth.

The secret is to look for how it all fits together, does it make sense, what is the agenda of the information etc.

"So significant is Jesus in man's history that the Encyclopedia Britannica has 20,000 words in describing this person, Jesus. His description took more space than was given to Aristotle, Cicero, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed or Napolean Bonaparte. Why would there be so much material on a man who was never born?

Here is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica concerning the testimony of the many independent secular accounts of Jesus of Nazareth:
These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.

Jesus is recorded as a fact, as is His death, burial and missing body in the Reader's Digest Book of Facts, 1989."


this is from http://www.creatingfutures.net/birth.html

and Im sure there is plenty of INFORMATION like this from many sources out there, but what does it mean as proof if it is all written by 'men' and some men will be automatically assumed to have an agenda behind writing it?

Then you really don't understand the problem at all.

What wars? Pretty much all of them.




I do not know what you are referring to here with the word "If."

Aristotle, Cicero, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed or Napolean Bonaparte.

All of the above are pretty much covered with tons of credible and varied sources that are convincing enough to be recognized as people who lived and died historically.

Unfortunately the Encyclopedia Britannica is not historical evidence.

Jesus does not have the varied sources or evidence of the others you mentioned. That is why I am convinced that he never actually existed. If he was that great, that important, there would be tons of evidence. He would have been mentioned by name in countless references throughout history.

( Reader's Digest Book of Facts, 1989 is not historical evidence or credible documentation either.)

and thats my point. Evidence is subjective. When it comes to things that happened thousands of years ago, MOST of what is going to exist as evidence will be either oral traditions or written words, and much of the written words will not have survived that period.


Historical Evidence

Evidence is the foundation of all history papers. The responsible
historian does not formulate a thesis until the evidence has been studied.

Evidence for history papers is usually found in primary sources (texts written during the period under study), but one may also write a history paper based on secondary sources (texts written after the period).

Which of the two you use will depend on the level of your course and the nature of the assignment.

TEXT WRITTEN BEFORE OR AFTER THE period. That would seem to qualify what supports my beliefs as HISTORICAL EVIDENCE.


but we can agree to disagree and will disagree all night as we obviously have different standards of 'evidence'.

Oh you are wrong. Historical evidence of Egyptian Kings, and people in the time of Jesus does exist in enough places to be accepted as credible. Jesus was either not important enough or known enough to warrant that?

evidence of Jesus exists in enough places to be accepted as credible as well, just not by EVERYONE

its credible enough for me

Yep, what you accept as evidence is different from what i accept. I am still waiting for something I can believe. Meanwhile I am mounting a lot of evidence in the opposite direction.

It exists basically only in the Bible, which is exactly what is in question here.

Mention of some obscure reference by two other alleged "historians" is not enough.

Ok. its a choice I guess. We can believe things are false until proven true, or true until proven false. or somewhere in the middle.

Enough of the bible rings true to me to accept its authenticity.

Here is some of what 'evidence' supports my beliefs

http://www.knowwhatyoubelieve.com/believe/evidence/did_jesus_exist.htm

The evidence that must be found is evidence that comes from actual things (writings, carvings etc.) that existed at the same time as the actual characters. If these characters were so important they must have left some kind of physical documentation or been in something besides just the Biblical texts, which could be comprised of a lot of fiction.

who says they 'must have'? more specifically, who says they 'must have' left documentation which would still have been PRESERVED thousands of years later?


it could be fiction, that doesnt mean it IS fiction, thats all Im saying

and if one cant PROVE its false anymore than one can PROVE its true, than the belief in its validity/accuracy is no more unreasonable than the belief in its invalidity/inaccuracy

I think if you check the actual writings of those historians, there were vague references to "a man," but the actual name "Jesus" was not mentioned. I could be wrong about that, I will check my sources later and get back to you. Josephus himself is a questionable character and could be a pen name for someone else. If he was such an important historian, why did he simply vanish? No one really knows what happened to him I believe.