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[Audify]

What evidence is there that the claims of the Bible are true? Just pick your best one.

[jimwalton]

The Bible has consistent and verifiable documentary and artifactual confirmation and corroboration of its historical, geographical, political, cultural, and cultic references. There has never been a discovery that has proved anything in the Bible to be false.

[Andrew Jackson]

> The Bible has consistent and verifiable documentary and artifactual confirmation and corroboration of its historical, geographical, political, cultural, and cultic references.

The same is true, and even to a greater degree, for the Spider Man comics.

The existence of New York City and the people and culture thereof does not substantiate the existence of Spider Man, and certainly not his extraordinary powers. Ditto for Jesus.
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> There has never been a discovery that has proved anything in the Bible to be false.

I'm gonna re-use a list I made for another thread elsewhere...

If nothing in the bible has ever been proved false, can you explain to me how the following things from the bible actually aren't factual errors?

1. The flood of Genesis should be the most evident and painfully obvious event in the geological and anthropological records, and possibly also in the written histories of literate cultures -- but it is completely absent from all these records, just as if it had never happened...

2. The creation narrative in Genesis does not accurately explain Earth biodiversity

3. Genesis describes the creation of the Universe in the wrong order. For example, it says the Earth was created before the Sun, which is false

4. In Ezekiel 26:14 the christian deity says of Tyre "And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God." Well, here's Tyre, still alive and kicking today. Either it was never made "like the top of a rock", or it was rebuilt -- either way Tyre exists today as a thriving city, contrary to biblical prophesy.

5. Genesis describes a firmament which separates the waters of the heavens from those of the Earth, but this firmament does not exist

6. Genesis says the moon is a "light" -- it is not

7. The Tower of Babel fable does not accurately explain the diversity of languages

8. Contrary to the bible, looking at striped or bark-stripped sticks while mating doesn't cause cattle to have striped calves -- their coat pigment patterns are governed by genetics

I know this is way too much to cover at once, so please start with #1 and we can work down the list from there.

Also, this list is not meant to be exhaustive. I'm sure others know of more things that should be on this list.

[jimwalton]

> The same is true, and even to a greater degree, for the Spider Man comics.

I apologize, I thought you wanted to have a serious conversation.

The Biblical narrative is NOTHING like Spiderman. All that has is a NYC setting. No historical reference points. No historical people. No attempt to be historical. No pretense to be historical. Purely fiction from start to finish with the NYC setting. Like Harry Potter and a London setting.

This type of fictional genre was unheard of in biblical times. It could not possibly be what the Bible is like. The Bible has historical reference points, historical places, people, cultural settings, cultic settings, written to be a theological interpretation of history. It has NOTHING in common with Spiderman or Harry Potter.

> Ditto for Jesus.

Ridiculous. No similarities.

> The flood of Genesis

The Flood was large and local, not global. Just briefly, Akkadian texts estimate the land surface of the "whole earth" to be equivalent to a diameter of about 3,000 miles: southern Turkey to southeast Iran, deep in Egypt, and west into the Mediterranean. That's what they considered to be "the whole earth" and "all life under the heavens."

But I don't think the biblical record requires one. Let's talk about the "every" and "all" stuff. In Deuteronomy 2.25 (traditionally written by the same author), the Lord says, "I will put the terror and fear of you on al the nations under heaven." Few, if anyone, would argue that this refers to anything other than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. I don't think the Native Americans were trembling. That's not what it means, nor what was expressed by it. In Genesis 41.57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt, and "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain... because the famine was severe in all the world." I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included. We need to understand words the way they intended them, not what seem to us on a shallow reading.

> Genesis 1 and biodiversity

If you read Gn. 1 literally, you'll see it's about functionality, not manufacture. A period of light functions to give us day; a period of darkness, night; their alternating sequence, evening and morning, therefore time. The Earth functions to bring forth vegetation. The heavenly bodies function to give us seasons. Humans function to rule the Earth and subdue it. There's no contradiction with biodiversity. It is true that species reproduce after their kind, though always with genetic modification (mutation). This has always been true. It's how reproduction functions, and the Bible is accurate.

> Genesis - wrong order.

See above. It's not about chronology or manufacture, but about functionality.

> In Ezekiel 26:14

Nebuchadnezzar didn't devastate Tyre as Ezekiel said in 26.7, which he acknowledged in 29.17-18. This, as is a biblical teaching (Jer. 18.1-12) is based on the idea that biblical prophecy is contingent from the speaking of it (see also Jonah 3.10). Circumstances developed in such a way that God altered his stated intention. In many prophesies there is room for a different outcome, especially if the conditions that had provoked the prophecy in the first place should change.

But what is also true is that Tyre was located on the seacoast when Neb destroyed it. It was later rebuilt on a shoal Jeff about a mile offshore. That iteration was destroyed by Alexander (predicted by Zech. 9.4). The ruined city and the causeway Alexander built have collected silt through the millennia, and is now a peninsula. It was later rebuilt on the second site, not the one of Ezekiel's prophecy, which is where it is today, thriving. Ezekiel had it right: the Tyre of his prophecy was never rebuilt on the same site. A future city was built on a different nearby site and also called by the same name. Technically, Ezekiel was right.

> Gn. firmament

The "expanse" of Gn. 1.6-8 was perceived as the functioning to regulate climate. That's what the text is talking about. Genesis is not claiming to give scientific information to the ancient audience. It shouldn't surprise us that God communicated with them in the context of their ancient beliefs; likewise, we would expect Him to talk to us in language we could understand. Genesis isn't telling us about scientific reality, but about functional reality.

> Gn . - the moon is not a light.

The Hebrew term (me’oroth) describes all sources of light, whether direct or indirect, though it's no surprise that they perceived the Moon as a direct source of light. That's not where the authority of the text lies, however (in their scientific perceptions). The point of the text is to describe their function: separate day and night, serve as signs of the passage of time, to illuminate the Earth (which the Moon does).

> Tower of Babel

The text describes the dispersal of the Sumerians by the Babylonians (a historical fact) in the latter half of the 3rd c. BC. They were dispersed and exiled into different language groups, as described by Gn. 11. This was the collapse of the Sumerian culture. Genesis 10 has already admitted there were different languages around. We take Genesis 11 in context.

We can talk more about any of it you wish. I was brief, but just trying to show you that there is nothing in the Bible that has proved to be false. I hope my explanations help you begin to see that there are better explanations for these texts than superficial readings and shallow understandings.