Well yes it does...because it give validity to what is written historically. I am sorry but there is just way way to much proof that it is what it is The Bible then not.

All it proves is that real locations where used in a work of Fiction.

There is a reason why Bookstores but the Holy books in the Fiction section. . .

If they are real places then not fiction duh

Well you have fun with what "you" think....



I will believe and always will believe it is truth from Genesis to Revelation.....

How is the historical validity of the bible questionable?
What folklore are you referring to?
Biblical faith is not meant to be a vacuous leap as it were.

Oh but it is a large leap of faith if you do not believe that the bible is true, right? Just like all scientific theories, it has to be true on more than one plane of facts in order to be considered a fact or true so where else does the bible ring true? Is Jesus part of history in any other town histories? How about birth records and such? Are any of these so called prophets documented anywhere? If not then they are part of folk lore. Folk lore like I said before usually has a smidgeon of something real in it be it a real location or maybe a real person but the rest of the story is someone's imagination, in the case of the bible it is many people's imagination, the original writers of the individual stories, the people who edited these stories to fit what they wanted them to say and the people in power who chose what actually made it into the bible and what was not of the "right" mindset to be included.

If you take the TAUGHT reverence out of your thought process and read the bible as a story book, like it should have been done, then you can see the parables and lessons of the writers but you can also see the lack of fact.

Witnesses are the history.....witnesses of Jesus Birth, his resurrection, witnesses of his healings his teachings...not just a few but thousands, and the more the disciples went to all of the places and preached added more people to the church.

And just because you say folklore and imagination also just doesn't make it so. I am sorry but I just don't see it that way. I will also give you another example I took the word love all through the Bible and oh wow yes it made another whole complete story. You take romans and break it down with numerology and it would blow your mind. So my question to you Have you read the Bible? have you studied it? Because if you do and you get all that it is meant to show us..then you could never say it is just written of man. And is a book of fables. There was prophecy that was foretold 400 to 1000 years before it happen.....well I am sorry but when you really study it...there is just no way.

Oh but it is a large leap of faith if you do not believe that the bible is true, right? Just like all scientific theories, it has to be true on more than one plane of facts in order to be considered a fact or true so where else does the bible ring true? Is Jesus part of history in any other town histories? How about birth records and such? Are any of these so called prophets documented anywhere? If not then they are part of folk lore. Folk lore like I said before usually has a smidgeon of something real in it be it a real location or maybe a real person but the rest of the story is someone's imagination, in the case of the bible it is many people's imagination, the original writers of the individual stories, the people who edited these stories to fit what they wanted them to say and the people in power who chose what actually made it into the bible and what was not of the "right" mindset to be included.

If you take the TAUGHT reverence out of your thought process and read the bible as a story book, like it should have been done, then you can see the parables and lessons of the writers but you can also see the lack of fact.

This comes from a debate btw. William Land Craig and Bart Erhman. Craig argues for the affirmative position. Take the time to read. This is why I treat the ressurection as highly probable.







Fact #1: After his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.

Historians have established this fact on the basis of evidence such as the following:

1. Jesus’ burial is multiply attested in early, independent sources.

We have four biographies of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have been
collected into the New Testament, along with various letters of the apostle Paul. Now the burial
account is part of Mark’s source material for the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. This is a
very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony and which the commentator
Rudolf Pesch dates to within seven years of the crucifixion. Moreover, Paul also cites an
extremely early source for Jesus’ burial which most scholars date to within five years of Jesus’
crucifixion. Independent testimony to Jesus’ burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind
Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John, not to mention the extra-biblical Gospel of Peter.
Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus’ burial, some
of which are extraordinarily early.

2. As a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely
to be a Christian invention.

There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish leaders. In Christian
eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. Thus, according to the late New Testament
scholar Raymond Brown, Jesus’ burial by Joseph is “very probable,” since it is “almost
inexplicable” why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is
right by Jesus.

For these and other reasons, most New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried by Joseph
of Arimathea in a tomb. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the
burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”

Fact #2: On the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of
his women followers.

Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:

1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources.

Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to
the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent
sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles
(2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4).
Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.

2. The tomb was discovered empty by women.

In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the
Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a
Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the
discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male
disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than
men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the
chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for
them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact.
I could go on, but I think enough has been said to indicate why, in the words of Jacob Kremer, an
Austrian specialist on the resurrection, “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the
biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”


Fact #3: On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and
groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.

This is a fact which is virtually universally acknowledged by scholars, for the following reasons:

1. Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such
appearances occurred. Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to his chief disciple Peter, then to the inner circle of disciples
known as the Twelve; then he appeared to a group of 500 disciples at once, then to his younger
brother James, who up to that time was apparently not a believer, then to all the apostles.
Finally, Paul adds, “he appeared also to me,” at the time when Paul was still a persecutor of the
early Jesus movement (I Cor. 15.5-8). Given the early date of Paul’s information as well as his
personal acquaintance with the people involved, these appearances cannot be dismissed as mere
legends.

2. The appearance narratives in the Gospels provide multiple, independent attestation of the
appearances.

For example, the appearance to Peter is attested by Luke and Paul; the appearance to the Twelve
is attested by Luke, John, and Paul; and the appearance to the women is attested by Matthew and
John. The appearance narratives span such a breadth of independent sources that it cannot be
reasonably denied that the earliest disciples did have such experiences. Thus, even the skeptical
German New Testament critic Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “It may be taken as historically
certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to
them as the risen Christ.”


Fact #4: The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen
from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.

Think of the situation the disciples faced following Jesus’ crucifixion:

1. Their leader was dead.

And Jewish Messianic expectations had no idea of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over
Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal.

2. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead to glory and
immortality before the general resurrection of the dead at the end of the world.

Nevertheless, the original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised
Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. But then the obvious
question arises: What in the world caused them to believe such an un-Jewish and outlandish
thing? Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University, muses, “Some sort of
powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest
Christianity was.”5 And N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, “That is why, as an historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty
tomb behind him."

This is religious rhetoric nothing concrete there at all.

Sorry but if you really study it, without looking for validation, it will really not stack up.

But hey you have the right to your beliefs, I would never try to take them from you.

I would also never try to make you believe what I believe and I expect the same respect.

Religious belief is a personal thing, each person's should be individual just like they are, there is no consensus unless people are only following with no thought process to it.

This thread was about the comparison of the bible, a fable and scientific evidence of evolution, of which there is no comparison between the two. One is fact the other fable.

Evolution is the unifying field of biology. Never have we had a theory so well supported by so many distinct and independently researched fields of study. EVER.

We know more about the theory of evolution then we do about the theory of gravity.

Intellectual dishonesty is the core of creationist arguments.

Feralcatlady, you say that evolution is "still theory" but all you have is a book of fables, not facts. You have belief, not proof.

Theory beats that hands down. Granted, there are probably holes in the evidence, but at least there is evidence. The Bible has none. Just because a story is written and a few real places and people are tossed in to make it look good, does not validate that the stories are true. Just because someone says its true, does not make it true. There may even be some stories based on events that happened, but I am sure they are not factual in every detail as some people believe.

I don't care what people want to believe or who they worship, but the thing I don't understand is why you and others want to insist that you have the truth and the Bible is history and the word of God and that it is infallible. It is just not a reasonable statement.

Therefore, no matter how smart, intelligent, kind and wonder you are, many people won't take you seriously.