Relig Booklet - "Are We Alone In The Cosmos"

Quote from Pesek : Those are some really good questions.

They are not questions.

Quote : I'll tackle them one at a time and in quote for the sake of simplicity. I know my sources are a lot of reading, but it's worth the time even to just get the gist of each of them. However, even if you don't read any of these articles, I would highly encourage you to simply read the Bible as it is. Start in Matthew and see what it says for yourself. Read with an open mind and heart.

Quote : http://www.biblegateway.com/passa...ersion=ESV

It's always amusing to see the christians assume that anyone that disagrees with the bible has never read it. I have read it cover to cover, starting at the beginning, multiple times.

Quote : The Bible never says that it is.

30/10=3.

Quote : If it did happen, it would have been about 4,000 years ago, so obviously evidence is going to be hard to find.

You might think that, if you ignored the fact that we actually have *lots* of records from that time period in that area.

Quote : Again, if you said this to literally any reputable historian, they would argue to the contrary.

Any reputable historian would laugh at the word 'magic'. While a historical Jesus figure may have existed, or been created out of several existing people, there is no historical evidence of the biblical Jesus that went around doing magic tricks.

Quote : Some would disagree.

Sure -- those that decide to ignore evidence and history.

Quote : If you read the Bible as if it were a 21st century science textbook, then it would appear that way. Context is important.

Spoken like someone that is not aware of the context. In multiple places the bible claims that if you climb high enough, you can see all of the Earth at once. It also *consistently* uses the Hebrew word for 'flat disk' to describe the shape of the Earth, even though the word for sphere is used nearby to refer to a ball.

Despite that, your claim is fallacious, anyway. Even reading the Bible as a mythological text, you can see the shape is clearly implied.

[quote]

I actually had an entire class on the books of the New Testament (again, public university, nationally acclaimed, second oldest religion department in the nation). While there is some dispute about certain sections (i.e. the ending of Mark), the vast majority of the Gospels are consistent.

[quote]

About that -- they may be consistent with each other, but they are not consistent with older copies of themselves. This is because over time, editors have merged the stories and combined and altered them. You know, like adding that whole 'resurrection' thing left out of the Codex.

Quote : The Bible does not say that it is.

Actually, if you chose to pretend the Bible is accurate, it does. It lists the absurd ages of many OT people, including the age they were when birthing their children, making it possible to obtain a chronology from Adam to Abraham, and then we add that to the time period that a historical Abraham would have lived.

Quote : Many thousands of Christians are evolutionists as well. Your view depends on your interpretation of Genesis.

They may be -- but then they are not biblical literalists, now are they? I never said christians cannot accept reality, just that the bible is not accurate on the topic.

Quote : I will agree with the first statement: http://www.tektonics.org/af/cudchewers.html.

Then we agree the bible is flawed.

Quote : Slightly disagree with the second: http://www.thywordistrue.com/cont..._dirt.html

You have got to be kidding me.

Quote : The Bible doesn't say that the universe is geocentric. It isn't a textbook. Those other two examples are poetic language.

For someone that has claimed to have not just read the bible, but studied it, you sure missed a lot. This is a common theme throughout the bible.

Quote : Earth was quite different back then: http://christianity.stackexchange...-the-earth

No, it was not. No legitimate scientist thinks that the mountains are only a few thousand years old. It might have been different, but it sure was not that flat.

Quote : It could have: http://www.answersingenesis.org/a...he-animals

Try a science website next time, and not the most throughly debunked religious website of all time. Even ignoring the issue with the count of the animals, and the fact that that website assumes only 16,000 animals were on board (that's less than 8 thousand species -- and we discover 18,000 new species *EACH YEAR*), the Ark would have been smaller than the Titanic -- which could not have done the trick.

Quote : See the first "other" answer: http://answers.yahoo.com/question...255AAyas1u

So Luke consistently used one set of names, and Matthew another, for each and every generation from David to Jesus? We are not talking just one person with a slightly different name, we are talking two entirely different genealogies.

"An alternative theory with very little acceptance among theologians and historians alike, proposes that Jacob and Heli are actually one and the same. " --about.com

Quote : They actually don't contradict each other: http://www.answersingenesis.org/a...n-accounts

There you go again, referencing a whack-job site, and not even pretending to use logic or science. They clearly contradict each other, given that the order of creation is completely different in the two stories. Either man was created before animals, or animals were created before humans. If you have two stories, each claiming one but not the other, those stories *contradict*.

Quote : http://www.tektonics.org/print.php4

Blank page. Review Exodus 34 -- the only place the term 'Ten Commandments' is actually used -- even though they are supposedly a copy of the (vastly different) commandments in Exodus 20.

Quote : This is a good read: http://worldinvisible.com/apologet/bible.htm

I disagree. It appears to be the work of an under educated religious buffoon who makes no attempt to be scholarly or accurate, and instead is repeating trite, debunked religious excuses that are a dime a dozen.

Quote : Myself and two billion other people would strongly disagree.

Perfect example of the poor logic I was discussing. Popularity of an idea does not make it true, historical, or accurate. This is a logical mistake so common that it has a term used to describe it -- argumetum ad populum. Even if that was not a fallacy, I would avoid using that argument, anyway -- while 2.1 billion people claim to be christian (and using that fact to represent the number of people that think the bible is inerrant is generous, at best), that still leaves 67% of the world population that thinks the bible is untrue. So if it were up to a popularity contest, christianity might have the most votes, it is *far* from a majority.