Vezzellda said:
Re: contradictions in the bible, especially dealing with different accounts in the gospels of the specifics of Jesus' death, rooster crowing, etc.
I think that these slight variations (and they are slight, they do not affect the overall message) support the accuracy of the bible instead of disporve its accuracy. These variations show that the gospel accounts are indeed eye witness accounts from 4 different viewpoints of people who were actually there. Think about it, if it were people making up the story years later wouldn't they carefully collaborate to make sure that their accounts matched up and faults couldn't be found? Instead they are genuine accounts that have not been written with knowledge of the others' but have still come out in the end as remarkably similar and dealing with the same core issues and message.
Claim:
The Bible's internal harmony around a central theme testifies to its divine authorship. It is 66 books written over 16 centuries by some 40 different writers of diverse backgrounds, but every part follows the same theme.
Response:
1. The Bible's harmony can also be attributed to the fact that its contents were selected and edited, by people, to make it harmonious [Friedman 1987].
2. The Bible is not harmonious on some very important points.
- Many people have noticed the difference between the Old Testament God, who is vengeful and bloodthirsty (e.g., Genesis 6-8; Exodus 7-11) and commands and aids the slaughter of one's enemies (e.g., Exodus 32:27-28; Deut. 3:6; Num. 31:1-18), versus the New Testament God, who preaches peace and commands people to love their enemies.
- Much of the Bible emphasizes the unity of God. Genesis 1, for example, stresses that all of creation came from the same God, not different gods as other contemporary religions taught. However, the New Testament, particularly Revelation, introduces a good/evil dualism akin to Zoroastrianism, which has become particularly common in Christian tradition. -
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Vezzellda said:
Re: 7 day Genesis creation account, vs. theory of evolution.
Genesis is not meant to be a scientific account but is written in a poetic form. It aim is to say who: God, what: created everything, and why humans created: to have a relationship with him. It does not aim to say how all this happened. If evolution is proved to be true that's fine with me, i'll believe it because it can explain how God went about creating everything. The word "day" in Genesis in the original language can actually mean just a period of time and so 7 days could have actually meant 7 million years or however many billion years or whatever it is.
As you said it doesn't expain 'how,' ie. it doesn't actually give an explanation.