The Bible is evidence for the existence of god?
Only in the same way that The Complete Works of Shakespeare is evidence of the existence of Prospero.
The Bible provides ample evidence that people can talk meaningfully about a deity; but it doesn't give us a reason to beleive that that deity exists. People can talk meaningfully about Prospero as well.
Nor does the fact that people take the Bible to be true reliable evidence that it is; again, we could imagine someone who thinks that Shakespeare provides accurate historical commentaries, though that person would be wrong, and the accuracy or otherwise of Shakespeare has nothing to do with whether or not he's believed.
Seriously: if you think that the Bible is a reliable guide to actual events or existing entities, you...
Gah. I can't even think of a suitable way to finish that sentence.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 16:42,
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Well I do not. not even a little bit
but if you feel that documented accounts are not evidence then you are a mong.
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LordManley twitter.com/LordManley, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 18:08,
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Documented accounts
need to be judged for reliability, not all evidence is equally valuable.
How reliable is a 2,000 year old document that has been translated, edited, redacted etc?
I'm going to go with "not very". Even if it was hot off the fucking press though, I'd still probably want more than a boring collection of anecdotes to convince me of the one true story of creation. I'm terribly cynical like that.
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chart cat has an itch, Sun 28 Nov 2010, 15:43,
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