How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

[KanadaHye]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

Astrophysics and astronomy are not real sciences since they are not called math I guess all the religious people are math wizzes and we will never be able to understand them and their math based religionFor those who speak of judgment day you should know that everyday you live you are judged by those around you and not by some invisible ghost who loves you but is just itching to watch you burn in hell for all of eternity.

Astrophysics involves some rather complicated math. Astronomy is mostly observatory but uses statistics, error analysis, noise modeling, signal processing, and optics. So, yea... quite a bit more advanced than digging bone shaped rocks out of dirt and making imaginary animals out of them.

[Haykakan]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

All that math leads to many versions of a string theory which is on far less sure footing scientifically speaking then paleontology. Carbon dating is a reliable measurement and the fossils are hard evidence. Proving the existence of a xxxone is far harder and much more trivial. You do not need to go as far back as the dinosaurs to prove the stuff in the bible is crackpot story. The existance of mamoth and sabertooth cats is more available and more recent plus the evidence includes things like cave paintings and even actual tissues all of which far predate what the bible says about the begining of the world. Religion has a problem with all sciences becaus they all show what a joke religion is.

Astrophysics involves some rather complicated math. Astronomy is mostly observatory but uses statistics, error analysis, noise modeling, signal processing, and optics. So, yea... quite a bit more advanced than digging bone shaped rocks out of dirt and making imaginary animals out of them.

[KanadaHye]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

All that math leads to many versions of a string theory which is on far less sure footing scientifically speaking then paleontology. Carbon dating is a reliable measurement and the fossils are hard evidence. Proving the existence of a xxxone is far harder and much more trivial. You do not need to go as far back as the dinosaurs to prove the stuff in the bible is crackpot story. The existance of mamoth and sabertooth cats is more available and more recent plus the evidence includes things like cave paintings and even actual tissues all of which far predate what the bible says about the begining of the world. Religion has a problem with all sciences becaus they all show what a joke religion is.

You can't carbon date fossils... fossils contain no isotopes and absolutely zero organic matter. They are merely rocks which resemble large bones. In some cases, they find a single fossil that resembles a bone and literally "make up" what the rest of the body might have looked like and put their "creation" in a museum as fact. If that's not a joke, I don't know what is. The beginning of man is the beginning of the world but not the beginning of the earth.

[Haykakan]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

"The beginning of man is the beginning of the world but not the beginning of the earth." huh?

[Siggie]

You can't carbon date fossils... fossils contain no isotopes and absolutely zero organic matter. They are merely rocks which resemble large bones. In some cases, they find a single fossil that resembles a bone and literally "make up" what the rest of the body might have looked like and put their "creation" in a museum as fact. If that's not a joke, I don't know what is. The beginning of man is the beginning of the world but not the beginning of the earth.

Did you do an archeology minor when you were studying engineering? I don't think you met those learning objectives...
The decay of carbon (which is the most abundant element -pretty much in everything) is very well understood and predicted and therefore it is the carbon that is dated to determine the age. Furthermore, there have indeed been fossils which have been discovered that not only contain organic matter (which means what? leaves contain organic matter too), but SOFT TISSUE.

Here's just a few scholarly peer-reviewed research publications describing just a few of the more recent soft-tissue containing fossil discoveries. So yeah, I see your claim that fossils contain "absolutely zero organic matter" and raise you a bunch of scientific studies demonstrating exactly the opposite. It's amazing what you can find if you just look...

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1722/3209.short

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/14/5138.short

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v392/n6674/abs/392383a0.html

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018210001471

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013334

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1672/3429.short

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-earth-040610-133502

Astrophysics involves some rather complicated math. Astronomy is mostly observatory but uses statistics, error analysis, noise modeling, signal processing, and optics. So, yea... quite a bit more advanced than digging bone shaped rocks out of dirt and making imaginary animals out of them.

OMG. Psychology uses those things too! I've learned and used signal detection analysis, mixed-modeling, latent trait analysis, structural equation modeling, (latent) path analysis, doubly multivariate analysis of variance, etc. I guess that does mean I've studied a science after all. Woohoo!

This is why religion is anti-intellectual at its core - It claims to have the truth of the universe already.

This! THIS! THIS!!!

[KanadaHye]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

Did you do an archeology minor when you were studying engineering? I don't think you met those learning objectives...
The decay of carbon (which is the most abundant element -pretty much in everything) is very well understood and predicted and therefore it is the carbon that is dated to determine the age. Furthermore, there have indeed been fossils which have been discovered that not only contain organic matter (which means what? leaves contain organic matter too), but SOFT TISSUE.

Give me one source where carbon dating was used ON THE FOSSILS OF DINOSAURS to determine it's age. Fossils are rocks... which are presumably over 60 million years old and carbon dating is useless. They arrive at the age of dinosaur bones by Uranium-235 dating the rocks below and the rocks above that "sandwich" the remains. The problem with this is that not all remains are sandwiched like this so that method can't possibly be used on all the fossils found, especially the ones found prior to the knowledge we have today.

[Siggie]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

Give me one source where carbon dating was used ON THE FOSSILS OF DINOSAURS to determine it's age. Fossils are rocks... which are presumably over 60 million years old and carbon dating is useless. They arrive at the age of dinosaur bones by Uranium-235 dating the rocks below and the rocks above that "sandwich" the remains. The problem with this is that not all remains are sandwiched like this so that method can't possibly be used on all the fossils found, especially the ones found prior to the knowledge we have today.

I did, read through all of the abstracts. They're only a paragraph long... can't be bothered or don't want to see anything other than what you've decided *a priori*?

Why don't you show me something for a change -- Like a scholarly source that says what you're saying about the impossibility of dating by that methodology or any other.

Are you proposing that OLDER rocks and sediment that CAN be dated someone came to magically encase bones which didn't exist at that time?

[Mos]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

This hostility against Christianity has been created in the secular West, with it has come to erosion of family values, national values, modesty, and much more, in favour of this secular-multicultural system of values. xxxs are notably for this. Without Christianity, God knows what kind of human society we would live in. Our system of values would be based on 'an eye of an eye' system of values and so forth. What Jesus did is replace the barbaric notion of 'an eye for an eye' with a system of values based on love and forgiveness. He provides a way of life that we must strive to live by in order to better ourselves and our society. Christianity has also fundamentally defined the Armenian Identity.

Some of my favourite quotes:

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
― C.S. Lewis

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

[KarotheGreat]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

This hostility against Christianity has been created in the secular West, with it has come to erosion of family values,

I would say look at the history of Christianity in the West to see why there is so much hostility against Christianity. I think the people in the West got tired of the religious wars, prosecution etc.
Family values for the most part in the West haven't seen that much of a change except people have gotten the freedom to chose what they think is the best for them. The value is still there the only difference is that people now have the choice what they want and can do with their life.

national values

when Europe was really Christian, national values did not exist I would advise you to go and read some more about how Westerners saw their countries. I would say that the opposite has happened with the withdrawl of Christianity people needed to find something else to identify themselves with, and that was the nation. Look at the French revolution for example.
modesty, and much more,

in favour of this secular-multicultural system of values

Christianity is ùulticultural at its core. Go and look at its begins and when Christianity we know as today was formed then you will see how multicultural it really is. I find it funny to see Armenians rage against multiculturalism, because Armenians have always lived in multicultural societies. Or is it the new cool thing to do on the internet?

xxxs are notably for this.

It's the xxxs again?

Without Christianity, God knows what kind of human society we would live in.

Since the first time these words were used droit des hommes was by a secularist and was adopted by the French revolutianaries I would say a society better than the one today. Monotheistic religions have been used to justify the most horrendous crimes ever committed. How many genocides have been committed in the name of Abrahams god?

Our system of values would be based on 'an eye of an eye' system of values and so forth.

Too bad that our system of values today are not based on the bible but on the teachings of great men during the enlightenment. I would say look at the Middle Ages if you want to see how a society looks like with values based on Christianity.

What Jesus did is replace the barbaric notion of 'an eye for an eye' with a system of values based on love and forgiveness. He provides a way of life that we must strive to live by in order to better ourselves and our society.

Too bad Christians today and in the past didn't follow jesus' teaching. However they did use god to justify slavery, murder, rape, war, plunder throughout history. I guess that is because Christianity was never created by Jesus but by Paul and the other Church fathers and is based on the morality of their time.

Christianity has also fundamentally defined the Armenian Identity.

So did Islam, Zoroastrianism and our own pagan religion. I dare you to look to old pictures from the Caucasus and the Ottoman empire and try to find a difference between an Armenian, Turk, Kurd, Persian etc. The Armenian identity we have today is totally different from the one 100 years ago. Under communism it has changed into something that someone living 100 years ago would never recognise. I would even say that secularism had more influence on the modern Armenian identity than did Christianity. If we would do a survey in Armenia today you would find a very small number of believers and the majority are only Christian in name, because it is a part of their culture.

[Haykakan]

Re: How Much of the Bible Must Be Historical to Believe?

O cmon man religion sounds so much better when it is sugar coated, chocolate covered, strawberry flavored, dipped in fudge, wrapped in cotton candy, dipped in instant amnesia alchohol all this and it has 0 calories!

I would say look at the history of Christianity in the West to see why there is so much hostility against Christianity. I think the people in the West got tired of the religious wars, prosecution etc.
Family values for the most part in the West haven't seen that much of a change except people have gotten the freedom to chose what they think is the best for them. The value is still there the only difference is that people now have the choice what they want and can do with their life.

when Europe was really Christian, national values did not exist I would advise you to go and read some more about how Westerners saw their countries. I would say that the opposite has happened with the withdrawl of Christianity people needed to find something else to identify themselves with, and that was the nation. Look at the French revolution for example.
modesty, and much more,
Christianity is ùulticultural at its core. Go and look at its begins and when Christianity we know as today was formed then you will see how multicultural it really is. I find it funny to see Armenians rage against multiculturalism, because Armenians have always lived in multicultural societies. Or is it the new cool thing to do on the internet?
It's the xxxs again?


Since the first time these words were used droit des hommes was by a secularist and was adopted by the French revolutianaries I would say a society better than the one today. Monotheistic religions have been used to justify the most horrendous crimes ever committed. How many genocides have been committed in the name of Abrahams god?

Too bad that our system of values today are not based on the bible but on the teachings of great men during the enlightenment. I would say look at the Middle Ages if you want to see how a society looks like with values based on Christianity.

Too bad Christians today and in the past didn't follow jesus' teaching. However they did use god to justify slavery, murder, rape, war, plunder throughout history. I guess that is because Christianity was never created by Jesus but by Paul and the other Church fathers and is based on the morality of their time.

So did Islam, Zoroastrianism and our own pagan religion. I dare you to look to old pictures from the Caucasus and the Ottoman empire and try to find a difference between an Armenian, Turk, Kurd, Persian etc. The Armenian identity we have today is totally different from the one 100 years ago. Under communism it has changed into something that someone living 100 years ago would never recognise. I would even say that secularism had more influence on the modern Armenian identity than did Christianity. If we would do a survey in Armenia today you would find a very small number of believers and the majority are only Christian in name, because it is a part of their culture.