Let’s say you are a normally educated person in any one of the nominally Christian nations, but who was totally ignorant of the Christian religion and the Bible. This is just a thought experiment. Now say without having any prior knowledge or bias you now read the Bible cover-to-cover as you would any other book. What would you think of it? Would you think it was a work of historical fiction or historical fact? Based on your average knowledge of the workings of the world, might you conclude that many of the events therein were so absurd as to be hysterical fiction? I think that’s what I’d conclude.
The Bible, as evidence for God, is just historical fiction and utter nonsense for the following reasons:
# The major players and major events have no independent historical documentation or archaeological verification.
# The Bible is full of logical contradictions or contradictory statements.
# All Biblical ‘someone said’ quotations are highly suspect since there is no record of who was actually writing these sayings or conversations down in real (on the spot) time.
# If you eliminated all of the duplications in the Old and New Testaments, you’d reduce the Bible’s bulk by hundreds of pages. Can you imagine any published novel or non-fiction tome that has duplicated passages like the Bible has? I bet you can’t.
# The Bible is full of not nearly improbable events, but scientifically impossible events (i.e. all of those alleged Biblical ‘miracles’) like: A talking snake; fruit with magical properties; human lifespans that are multi-hundreds of years in duration; Eve created from a human rib; Jesus walking on water; turning water into wine; the multiplication of loaves and fishes out of less than thin air; unicorns; using pure hocus-pocus to have the Sun and Moon standing still in the sky; pure noise blowing down the walls of Jericho; Jonah’s adventures inside the ‘whale’ – a real whale of a tale; a virgin birth; and a resurrection to top things off. But then again we don’t want facts or the truth to get in the way of a good Biblical tall tale now, do we?
# There is no rhyme or reason why some parts were excluded then included, or included than excluded.
# The Old Testament absolutely fails as a morality document.
Biblical Truths:
# When it comes to the Bible, the left hand most certainly did not know what the right hand was doing. You get multi-variations on multi-theological themes. So when it come to the Bible you can just about ‘prove’ or theologically back up or even ‘disprove’ any claim you wish to make or refute. But since theists are pontificating over an overall work of fiction I’m not always such what the overriding point is in doing so.
# So just like we know what Rhett and Scarlett said and too those other conversational couples like Romeo & Juliet; Hansel & Gretel; Siegfried & Brunnhilde; Siegmunde & Sieglinde; Tristan & Isolde; [Shakespeare’s] Antony & Cleopatra; Calaf & Turandot; we of course can transplant those fictional chin-wags and compare them to those Biblical conversations between couples like Adam & Eve; Joseph & Mary; Abraham & Sarah, etc. That’s all because human authors were writing pure fiction or historical fiction and put those words and those conversations into their characters’ mouths.
# I find it amazing that true believers spend hours and hours debating Biblical historical events that more likely as not have no actual historical reality. Theists keep going on and on and on about these Biblical events as if they were carved in stone. They’re not. As an accurate historical text, as literal evidence for God, the Bible has just as much credibility as “Gone with the Wind”, “The Caine Mutiny”, “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn” or “The Last of the Mohicans”. True believers are presenting all of this Biblical stuff as though it was all verified historical fact, and that’s not the case, so they are being more than just slightly dishonest with their reading audience!
# Were any true believers or theists there to verify any of those Biblical tall tales? Has any historian verified any of those Biblical tall tales? Is there any archaeological evidence for these events? There’s nothing wrong with debating theoretical philosophical points as presented in a work of historical fiction (i.e. – the Bible) as long as theists realize or acknowledge the likelihood that the Bible is a work of historical fiction and they then present their points of view as such. I’m sure average readers could present and debate the author’s philosophy in such works as “Gone with the Wind”, “The Caine Mutiny”, “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn” or “The Last of the Mohicans”, so why not theists debate philosophical points raised in the Bible instead of insisting that the Bible is a historically accurate document which it clearly can’t be.
In conclusion here, that’s why belief in God, belief in Jesus, belief in the Bible and Biblical texts are all a matter of pure “faith”, not a matter of “evidence” because there is no actual “evidence” far less actual proof.