What constitutes evidence?

Post Reply New Topic

That would be a kind of special pleading that would strain credibility and not be very convincing. It would be like people 3,000 years from now saying that their savior heals the sick, uses a Bat Copter and fights the Joker. Future comic book scholars could point out the older sources for some of that material and believers would say, "no, not that corrupted mythology. I'm talking about the real Joker and Bat Copter which predated all of the comics". It's not very convincing.

Are you saying that Yahweh really did wrestle with sea dragons, like Baal and Marduk did, and that Yaweh's sea dragon wresting was the real sea dragon combat? Yahweh fights the seven headed Leviathan, tannin, Rahab, and battles a demythologized sea (Yam). While Baal and Anat fight the seven headed Lotan, Yam, Tannin and some sort of monstrous water calf that sounds very much like Behemoth. Yahweh brags about it and uses that language to describe the enemies of Israel and how he will crush them as well. He's like Odin with the frost giants. These are classic near eastern water monsters. These people didn't like the sea.

If you are selling a god you involve him in local traditions. Sometimes you modify the stories to show how he is different than the older version. While Baal struggles with these combats, Yahweh does not. Marduk and Yahweh do similar things with the deep, but Yahweh has an easier time. These are polemics to say Yahweh is better. If someone is copying an older myth it's unlikely they will make their deity seem weaker than the older legend. It makes much more sense as a later polemic to stress power. And that jibes with what the archeological record says about which myths are older.



In that sense Tom Clancy is 100% accurate. His work accurately reflects what a techno-thriller should be. By accurate I meant historically accurate obviously, not true to the genre. Tom Clancy uses elements found in the real world but he's not writing history. One day someone might mistake it for history but that would be missing the point of his efforts. Sure, if you enjoy a good techno-thriller and think he has a deeper message about x, y or z, there is nothing wrong with liking the material.

Why would it be a special pleading, though? Is it really not possible at all that they could actually be telling the truth?



What I meant was Tom Clancy would be 100% accurate in terms of being a fiction. One useful advantage of the Bible is its tendency towards self-interpretation. "Answer a fool according to his folly"/"Do not answer a fool according to his folly," is a contradiction on the surface, and its paradoxical nature defies literal interpretation. If you understand that it's a riddle intended to provoke the reader to ponder the underlying wisdom it intends to convey, it isn't really a problem at all in terms of textual criticism. If it were meant to be taken 100% literally, it wouldn't have been in the book of Proverbs.

If something is a prophecy, the Bible says its a prophecy. If it is a sign that something comes straight from God, the sign is given and the fulfillment of that sign is noted as per the Torah. If it came straight from the mouth of God, it is indicated as such. If it is poetry, it's in the book of Psalms. Visionary images are literally visionary images, and the symbolism associated with those images would have been familiar to people of the day--a wheel covered with eyes, for instance, refers to the all-seeing God. If someone literally saw something in a dream, I take it literally that person saw something in a dream. The vision itself isn't quite as important as is how we take it. So, the "accuracy" of the Bible really is a non-issue.

And I think we've already explored the issues with evidence. I think it's unreasonable to demand believers or potential believers wait beyond their own lifetime to answer questions they need answered NOW. If the Bible is understood as a record of direct experiences with God, it is plenty sufficient as evidence for them to draw their own conclusions. If you simply don't want to believe it, you don't need evidence for that.

No matter what the evidence shows regarding historicity or borrowing you say, "but couldn't that not be true"? Again and again. I gave some arguments for why it's not likely to be true in the case of Genesis or the Sea Dragon tales but you didn't respond. I'm not interested in typing it again.



Two issues are under discussion and you've conflated them here. The historicity of the biblical history (Exodus, Canaan), and the second issue is it's use of older material. You don't seem to be addressing either issue here.



That reads as, "the bible is historically true and the evidence will be found, but we shouldn't wait for the evidence to accept it as true". Which is some kind of circular reasoning with a prophetic twist.

So you wouldn't even consider that what was written in Genesis might actually be true?


I just don't see how the historicity of Exodus or Canaan is being seriously challenged. You're saying that given what we know about pharaohs that a horribly embarrassing situation involving a pharaoh couldn't possibly have been omitted from the record? Or that when the Israelites drove out the Canaanites and occupied their cities and dwellings, it understandably wouldn't have really left the only kind of evidence you'd find acceptable? Or that this is readily explained since the Bible does say that the Israelites did not complete the task of driving out the Canaanites? Or what about the fact that the Bible even plainly tells us the Israelites adopted Canaanite customs? If a believer time-travelled back to the judges and kingdom periods, it shouldn't come as a surprise if Israelites were indistinguishable from Canaanites. Why is this news?


If you say so. If the Bible happens to be true, there are greater consequences for those who fail to act on it simply because some appeal to authority says we have to wait to be sure. Time is not a luxury that we really have, especially not the kind of time it would take to find the kind of evidence you're demanding.

It's also borderline goalpost-moving. Can you honestly say with certainty that those who wrote the texts were not in possession of the evidence at the time and that the texts themselves were documentation of the evidence? If, say, something catastrophic happened to evidence used to convict a criminal of a crime and it was all destroyed, along with prosecutors, judges, jurors, and other people associated with the prosecution, with nothing left but newspaper reports and court documents, does that now mean that the guy is no longer guilty of a crime and should be set free? Do we now give him a new trial and say, "Oops! No evidence! We have to find not guilty! Send him home. Next case…"?

And it isn't circular reasoning if a reasonable person can examine the Bible for himself and come to the conclusion on his own as to whether he believes it or not.

Believe whatever you like. I could go into more detail but you'd dance around and ignore it anyway.

@thinkinginpictures: And there you have it. Much of the problem is how the evidence is interpreted, all coupled with how defensible a position REALLY is. I deliberately avoided going on the defensive here because I knew good and well it wouldn't hold up against the standard or type of material evidence we're assuming. That doesn't bother me, btw, because it's tied to how appropriate it is to demand one form of evidence or another. You don't, for instance, observe the moon through a microscope or bacteria with an AM radio.

But even if you make observations about the moon and the planets using a proper telescope and you present your evidence, that by no means compels anyone to actually believe it.

Most importantly, however, are the assumptions we bring to the discussion, because those assumptions will supersede any amount of evidence. The only assumption I'm going to bring to a Biblical discussion is that the events as described in the Bible could have happened at all. If I'm operating on the basis of someone else's assumption that those events did NOT happen, I will fail trying to prove it every single time. Likewise will an opponent fail to prove those things never happened if he is arguing from my assumption that they did. BOTH positions are empirically unprovable and equally so.

Which ultimately leaves faith. Simon_says said it best: "Believe whatever you like." I have to hand it to him…he at least takes his own advice!

Don't quote me, make snide comments to someone else and refer to me in the third person. If you just want the last word, fine, I don't care.

Then you are quite obviously not looking, or you have looked and deny the findings of those who have done contemporary research.

What 'question the bible' have you done? What evidence do you have that other accounts are lies? How do you disprove these accounts and material evidence? On the other hands you demand the others to 'disprove' your bible. This show your double standard.

I am just calling a spade a spade. Exactly how can one have a honest examination of 'god' or what is written in the bible if the theist conveniently shift the 'interpretation' and move the goal post? I simply don't have the patient to pretend any theological utterance can be understood at their face meaning.

Utter BS. AR. What you are doing is saying unless you find absolute definitive evidence that the bible is errant then no matter what evidence is produced I will dismiss it. The fact is there is much evidence that points to the bible being a very dubious historical account, there never will be any definitive proof of this but the fact remains the evidence that does exist, goes against the bible. It is exactly your kind of reasoning which prompted Bertrand Russel to come up with his t-pot analogy.

Try this, then:
From http://biblehub.com/joshua/10-13.htm

Ignore all the stuff about the physics. An omnipotent deity can play with physics at will. Just remember that there were enough literate civilisations at the time, an event to extraordinary and utterly unprecedented as that would have been written down everywhere. Is there any other source?

I am sure you can find a way in which this does not disprove the Bible. I just want to see how you do it.

The answer to the question, "what is evidence?" is very simple:

Evidence is what a decision maker accepts as true.

When one person tries to tell me that the date of creation was October 7, 3761 BCE, and another person tries to tell me that the Earth was created 4.6 billion years ago, I am going to decide which of the two is more credible, and I am going to accept that person's reasoning as evidence of the date of creation. But another person, listening to the same two people, might reach a completely different conclusion.

In law, of course, there are rules about how information is presented to decision makers; what they are and are not allowed to hear; what they must disabuse themselves of. But no such rules exist in human interaction. Each of us has the capacity to be a decision maker, and to accept whatever information we read or glean from our environment as evidence to support whatever conclusions we reach.

There is no "evidence" that can conclusively prove the truth or falsity of scripture, because the truth or falsity of scripture is grounded not in fact but in faith, and no matter how specious the evidence for the Biblical creation story, no amount of scientific investigation can dislodge a person's decision to accept scripture as a full and sufficient account.

If the right to freedom of thought, belief and opinion is to be meaningful, we cannot conduct ourselves otherwise.

Right, it's faith. Which is fine. But historical and archeological consensus is based on probabilities drawn from the evidence. Could the pyramids have been built by aliens? Sure, but there is a lot of evidence pointing another way. Alien intervention is assigned a low probability. Can someone choose to ignore that? Sure.

I'm afraid I don't have a stock answer to this one...I've been attempting to plant a garden in next to pure, buckshot clay without the time or resources to prepare it properly. This summer is going to suck...I can feel it already...

Without putting much thought into it, this is what I'd say: Yes, obviously the physics of it is a huge problem (if the earth's rotation suddenly came to a full stop, and what would happen with the oceans, etc.). So how could this go unnoticed elsewhere, if we assume it was NOT recorded elsewhere? Bear in mind that when the Bible was written, it was always from an earthbound perspectives in which, by all appearances, every celestial body does seem to revolve around the earth.

As far as the writer was concerned, the earth virtually stood still (or everything else did). What would make it appear to someone that the Israelites gained about half a day to win a battle?

Could be the glory of the Lord appeared such that there was extended daylight...after all, if the sun completely stopped, how did the writer know the passage of time? It could be that the perception of time experienced by the writer and the soldiers was altered, or they had some kind of "bullet time" experience. I had a similar experience once when I was involved in a catastrophic car wreck. The whole thing was over in a few seconds, but for me it was like the whole thing stretched over a minute or two. I survived by calmly stepping out of an out of control vehicle. I came up with a mouthful of dirt and some bruised muscles and somehow made it to the hospital still holding a pair of drumsticks, and I was back home less than two hours later. So it could very well have been an altered state of consciousness along those lines localized to that particular battlefield.

I dunno...I'll give it a closer look later. My thing is I don't tend to set anything in stone I don't absolutely know for a fact and there's nothing out there that isn't open to open to doubt or questioning. Sometimes the best answer is "I have no idea". I don't freak out over challenges, and I'm always blown away when others who purport to question everything get bent out of shape over their own sacred cows.

So in other words, there is absolutely no point in discussing historical evidence with you, as you will simply state something like 'I don't know why there is no evidence of the calamity caused by the cessation of the earths spin and rotation, most likely god, in all his power, was able to prevent every non anchored thing flying off into space at 67,000 mph'. Discussing anything with you on a rational basis is nigh on pointless, as you see the existence of God as an A Posteriori fact and therefore any evidence against the bible is either wrong or must be moulded and distorted to fit the 'Truth'

However, whilst Dawkins and others refuse to debate the likes of you, as they see it as given your views a level of undeserved respectability, I on the other hand disagree. It is up to every rational thinking person to expose and debunk your nonsensical arguments, again and again and again, lest any person who does not understand the nature of the debate, fall into the same delusion you have.

The only evidence you have that the bible is in anyway an accurate account of historical events, is you unyielding belief in God. The belief in something that cannot in any way be tested is not a rational, nor an intellectual way to approach any debate, on any subject. However though god cannot be attested for nor against, the BIble can. Historical records do not back it up, archeological records do not back it up, scientific discoveries do not back it up, even the history of folklore speaks out against its voracity. Faith is the only reason to believe in the Bible and given the ever mounting evidence against this book of tales, this Faith is ever more irrational and delusional.

edit = spelling corrections

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 04 May 2014, 6:40 am, edited 1 time in total.