Originally posted by: PowerEngineer
Originally posted by: RapidSnail
Originally posted by: RapidSnail
...Basically, I want anyone to try to give me solid, undeniable evidence that the Bible has fallacies, and I, in turn, will try to give you evidence of the contrary.
<sigh>
This is a disingenuous invitation.
People hold religious beliefs on the basis of faith; these beliefs are not arrived at on the basis of any evidence and therefore can not be undone by any evidence.
We could try to dispassionately look at the evidence and decide which of the two possibilites (i.e. fallacies or no fallacies) is more likely (which is essentially the scientific method to arriving at an answer). But whatever possibility we choose, we can never be absolutely certain it is completely correct.
No one can "prove" that the Bible is incorrect. But it's equally true that no one can prove that hobbits don't exist, that those kidnappings by bug-eyed aliens haven't happen, or that the sun will rise tomorrow.
What we can individually decide is how much evidence we need to have before we treat something as true (by basing our actions on the assumption that it is true). Based on my pedestrian understanding of astrophysics and years of experience, I do believe the sun will rise tomorrow (or at least I'm going to bed thinking that I need to set the alarm clock).
Based on my equally pedestrian understanding of biology, geology, and chemistry, I find that evolution is a more believable explanation of how we got here than Biblical creation. Now I know that you're just waiting to spring some voodoo-science on me in support of creationism using carefully culled "facts". But I'm betting that you didn't decide to believe creationism on the basis of these facts. Instead, most of the "faithful" start with a belief in the Bible (possibly requiring no evidence at all) and then select those theories and "facts" that bolster their beliefs.
The bottom line here is that you can not disprove something to a person who believes it as a matter of faith (and I'm not going to try). There are few things that you can prove to be absolutely impossible, so in that sense chances are good that no one can prove the Bible contains fallacies. Of course, it's almost as hard to prove the converse -- that the Bible doesn't contain fallacies. While I can't prove either conjecture, I think that there is much more evidence supporting the latter conclusion. So that's what I'm basing my actions on.
(That and hobbits...)
😉