Explanation Please?

[Allison]

This is somewhat of an update...if you don't remember my last post, you can find it here: http://ravingatheist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1202

Well, since I posted last, I have taken the advice given to me from several Raving Atheist members and started to read the bible, along with other literature. I've only read Genesis, but I must say, after what I read I can firmly call myself agnostic at this point. I'm sure another chapter or two, and it will be atheist. I'm reading an annotated bible, along with the skeptics annotated bible, so I can compare the two. There are so many contradictions, inconsistencies, and outright impossibilities just in Genesis...I can only imagine what rest is like. I shared the knowledge I gained with my brother, and I think I just might have converted him as well :)

I would love to say that the bible is exaggerated, or even fabricated...but I've been researching the other side as well, and I come across things like this:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/04/news/david.php

And I just can't explain it...I've researched the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other 'biblical' findings. How would you guys explain this stuff? Some of it directly correlates to the bible, and I can't think of any other explanation for it...if the bible is so false, then how does stuff like this surface? I would really like a pertinent, intelligent answer.

Thanks a lot, I've been browsing the forum regularly, and you guys are great. There's a lot of intelligent people here. :P

[GodlessHeathen]

Suggested reading: The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman

[James]

Trace it back from the actual discovery.

'Some of it directly correlates to the bible, and I can't think of any other explanation for it...if the bible is so false, then how does stuff like this surface? I would really like a pertinent, intelligent answer.'

Does it suprise you that people who wish to discover such 'evidence' do so? It will correlate directly to it indeed, but no thinking person thinks of the Dead Sea Scrolls as anything other than another Turin shroud, or one of the trillions of statues that cry milk or blood.

Think about it logically. Assume that such scrolls were written. What are the chances of them being discovered? It is like finding a post-it note on a street in Berlin saying 'invade Poland - Hitler,' and then saying that new evidence, that directly correlates to actual historical events, has been discovered.

It is just bible-basher propaganda, and it is quite pathetic.

'"When the Philistines came to fight, the Bible said that David went down from his house to the fortress," she said, her eyes bright. "Maybe it meant something, maybe not. But I wondered, down from where? Presumably from where he lived, his palace. So I said, maybe there's something here," and in 1997 wrote a paper proposing a new excavation in the spot, which is in east Jerusalem.'

This surely demonstrates their motives. Using a piece of ill-conceived text such as the bible as the grounds for research. Will they find anything? Of course. They might find some bits of pot, which will no doubt be the dining plates of David himself. And that is barely cynical, when it comes to the logic of these people.

Well, right wing politics always seeks a moral or historical basis. :rolleyes:

[ocmpoma]

The Bible Unearthed is definately appropriate in this case - I would also make the following observation.
Although it is safe to assume, given the evidence of archaeology, etc. that most of the OT is incorrect, we must keep in mind two things:
1) It had to have sufficient verisimilitude to allow a contemporary reader to accept its veracity
2) The people who wrote would obviously have had a very sound knowledge of Jerusalem

These two things make it much more likely, in my mind, that a Biblical location of something like David's palace would actually be correct.

[vheltrite]

eveything is possible..........
am intelegent enough to believe that there is nos such thing..........
our ancestors ancestors created GOD.......
human created GOD......