Why the bible is wrong...

[Zylark]

back in a thread regarding palestine, cottons made the ubelievable statement that everything (yes ladies and gentlemen, everything) in it (bible) is true. absolutely no part of it was wrong. in order not to swamp that thread with totally off-topic discussions, i said there that i'd start this. a few days went by where i was not on the city due to work and partying i got back, and somone was gloating over that i had not started this thread yet i'm not one to back out of a challenge. so here goes :


-- why the bible is wrong --
------------ part I ----------

i'll do something big and easy first. noah's ark...

Q: Genesis 6:15 states that noah's ark was 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits in size. we know that a cubit was approximately 18 inches, yielding a volume (if perfectly rectangular, the most voluminous possible shape of three unequal dimensions) of 1,518,750 cubic feet. into this, you must fit two of each of the 30,000,000 species on earth, plus the food to keep all of them alive for a month.

if this were true, it would not be physically possible to put two of each animal species on earth, plus months' worth of food for them, in a volume of that size?

A: its highly questionable if the animals were simply piled in that volume, with no room for bedding or even room to stand, whether there would be adequate room, even without the food.

the author of the flood myth simply didn't understand the extent of faunal diversity in the world. as for the volumetric problem, you can simply calculate that it wouldn't fit by adding the volume of the average sized animal's body, multiplied by the number of species. excluding bacteria, but including all insects, there are more than 30,000,000 species of land animals on earth. multiply that volume by two, and add in the volume of food required to keep both of each species alive for as much as twenty years, and its pretty obvious that this isn't going to work. then there's the time it would take to gather up the 30 million species.

if you gathered a male and a female of one species every ten seconds, it would take about ten years to gather up 30 million of them. And mind you, you've got to go to Antarctica to get penguins, the Arctic to get polar bears, Asia to get tigers, Australia to get kangaroos, Africa to get gorillas, South America to get tapirs and agoutis, etc., and you have got to get them back with an adequate supply of their required food and put them in the ark within ten seconds. then when the flood's over, you've got to take another ten years to put them all back at the rate of a species every ten seconds.

then there are all kinds of ecological questions; how are many delicate marine species going to survive when the salinity of the oceans is reduced by two thirds, as it would have been if a worldwide flood of nearly five miles in depth had occurred? How are species going to survive that require mature ecosystems which themselves require centuries to mature?

obviously, this story isn't just impossible, it’s ludicrous.

[IGotTheCottons]

sigh... this is going to be too easy LOL... this might get lengthy... but here goes

if this were true, it would not be physically possible to put two of each animal species on earth, plus months' worth of food for them, in a volume of that size?

this is the first point that you're wrong about. it wasn't 2 of every species... it was two of every type of animal. most of the different species today are derived from a common animal (ie: all the different species of dogs, cats, horses, etc.). people did a study which proved it was possible to fit 2 of every animal in the ark, and enough provisions to last for 2 years not a month.

then there's the time it would take to gather up the 30 million species.

if you gathered a male and a female of one species every ten seconds, it would take about ten years to gather up 30 million of them. And mind you, you've got to go to Antarctica to get penguins, the Arctic to get polar bears, Asia to get tigers, Australia to get kangaroos, Africa to get gorillas, South America to get tapirs and agoutis, etc., and you have got to get them back with an adequate supply of their required food and put them in the ark within ten seconds. then when the flood's over, you've got to take another ten years to put them all back at the rate of a species every ten seconds.

ok. the pentagon! has a theory of how this happened. it even goes along with plate tectonics. it's believed that before this all happened, there was a large quantity of water under the crust of the earth (about half of what's in the oceans today) separated into chambers. the land was all one continent (pangea -- sp?). building pressure on this water eventually tore a crack in the crust that went around the world (this would explain the mid-oceanic ridge that circles the globe) and released all this water. the pressure caused massive erosians in the crust that covered the oceans with mud, which would explain the fossil record. the pressure also sent the water high into the atmosphere which froze the water into ice, explaining the ice age and the wooly mammoth fossils. the sudden release of pressure caused the softer rock under the divide in the crust to rise up. this 'caused the plates to shift very quickly down the ridge. when they ran into eachother they buckled which would explain why every oceanic gorge is parallel to a major mountain ridge. now... as i said... before all this happened the land was all one continent (as most scientists will agree on), and there were relatively few foothills.

on to the explaination about how the animals got there. we already established the number of animals is way below 30,000,000 because that's a species count. there's often high amounts of species for each animal category, so the actual number is much lower, and they woulda had sufficient room for all. it is also widely believed that animals have a natural sense of impending natural disasters. now. these animals new disaster was coming, so (now you gotta assume there's a God for argument's sake) God gives the animals the instinct to gather at the ark (which is what the Bible says happened... Noah didn't go out gathering animals... they came to him).

then there are all kinds of ecological questions; how are many delicate marine species going to survive when the salinity of the oceans is reduced by two thirds, as it would have been if a worldwide flood of nearly five miles in depth had occurred? How are species going to survive that require mature ecosystems which themselves require centuries to mature?

umm... yeah... you once again have to assume there's a God (for argument's sake). He's God! if he can create the universe out of nothing, people out of dust, and miraculously heal terminally ill people, don't you think he can keep a few fish alive?

also, i have this documentary on Noah's ark. they have several first hand reports of people who claim to have seen it on mount ararat. they have satellite photos of what very closely resembles the ark.

if the story is impossible, than how come every major religion and culture has some form of it? don't you think they wrote down what happened? and wouldn't that imply that as cultures spread over the world afterwards, word of the event was passed down with them?

also, on the tape they talked about how some scientists at a marine labratory built a scale model of the ark, and tested it in a wave tank. the waves they put it through were equivelent of 200 foot waves (like what would be found if such an event as the global flood did occur), and not only did it do well... it was virtually unsinkable. it could survive being tipped up to a 90 degree angle and still right itself.

so you see... Noah's ark did happen. it also explains a lot of what science fails to. many scientists will now agree that it was very well possible.

EDIT: the people who gave first hand accounts have never met eachother before... but they all gave the same description. there's also several written accounts of people seeing the ark centuries ago. and the descriptions also just so happen to match up with the descriptions given in the Bible.

round one goes to Cottons

[cmbr66]

GG. how can ppl think someone or a group of ppl just made up all the stuff in the bible. the bible isnt some simple book.

[Zylark]

no, round won won be me. you can't have your cake and eat it too. you claim it was not all the species, merely all kinds of animals, and they (the survivors of the ark) then evolved into all the animals we have today. wrong. the time-scale of the bible is a mere 8000 years. beginning with the creation. is creation true? you claim so. according to the bible, at the end of seven days the world and the universe was created in perfect mint condition, with all the species (yes species, all 30 million of them) intact. noah's ark came long after these events.

in any case, evolution does not take thousands of years to create new species, or divertions of old ones. it takes millions.

second, there is no, absolutely no proof whatsoever, of the ark. there is a lot of (convincing) arguments that UFO's are visiting the earth. backed by pseudo-science. none of it has been irrefutably proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. likewize with any "proof" regarding the ark. natural formations that may look like a boat on a radar-picture does not prove anything.

and how did polar bears get to the ark withoud dying of thirst and heat firs, after trekking all the way from the arctic to the middle-east?

and fresh-water fish that are local to the americas, did the "fly" to the middle east or swim and salt-water, and thus die on the way?

the theory of pangea is a sound one, so is plate-tectonics. only one problem here, back when all the continents were one huge one, there was no humans. no noah. dino's roamed the earth, and mammals like us looked more like little rodents.

there is no good proof of the noah myth. stating that many religous traditions got this myth (among them hindu and arab tradition) does not make it true. it only goes to show that the bible is a hodge-podge of stolen ideas from other mythologies. revised and altered and revised again.

do not make the mistake of contradicting yourself, if you want to use the argument of evolution, then you must also see that creationism as portrayed in genesis is wrong. what will it be? fact or fiction.

[Zylark]

why the bible is wrong, part 2

this will be a short and sweet one, regarding the inconsistency of the gospels. if everything in the bible is true, then at least three of the gospels are lying. and thus are not correct and the bible is still wrong. a brief example, who was at the tomb when they [mary et. al.] arrived?

Matthew: One angel (28:2-7)

Mark: One young man (16:5)

Luke: Two men (24:4)

John: Two angels (20:12)

this is not a single inconsistency, i have hundreds of these. infact the gospels diverge so much with regards to the "easter-story" that a side by side comparison is virtually impossible. they differ so much.

[TheHempress]

No offense Cottons, but Zylark sounds more convincing....I'm still on the fence tho...keep it up!

[IGotTheCottons]

lol, i don't have time to explain right now... but i will later. be sure of it.

no offence taken hempress. btw... round one still goes to me (i'll explain later of course), and round 2... well, lets just say i'm quite confident.

you have hundreds? lol, i got this thing from a friend a while back that listed about 50 different "errors" in the Bible. including the ones you've used thus far. and every single one of them was explainable as to why it wasn't an error.

just FYI. there has NEVER been a LEGITIMATE error found in the Bible since it's been completed... if it had been... it'd be the most publicised event in world history.

[Zylark]

...a small followup on the erroneous gospel...

Was the tomb open when they arrived?

Matthew: No (28:2)

Mark: Yes (16:4)

Luke: Yes (24:2)

John: Yes (20:1)

is matthew lying?

Where were these messengers situated?

Matthew: Angel sitting on the stone (28:2)

Mark: Young man sitting inside, on the right (16:5)

Luke: Two men standing inside (24:4)

John: Two angels sitting on each end of the bed (20:12)

somebody is confused...

Where did Jesus first appear to the disciples (after the resurrection)?

Matthew: On a mountain in Galilee (60-100 miles away) (28:16-17)

Mark: To two in the country, to eleven "as they sat at meat" (16:12,14)

Luke: In Emmaus (about seven miles away) at evening, to the rest in a room in Jerusalem later that night. (24:31, 36)

John: In a room, at evening (20:19)

hmm, incosistencies piling up here. if all in the bible is true, then god is absolutely flat out confused. or somebody is lying. just for sports, i'll throw in another one...

Did Jesus stay on earth for a while?

Mark: No (16:19) Compare 16:14 with John 20:19 to show that this was all done on Sunday

Luke: No (24:50-52) It all happened on Sunday

John: Yes, at least eight days (20:26, 21:1-22)

Acts: Yes, at least forty days (1:3)

had enough cottons?

infact i'll throw a challenge at you. the conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. in each of the four gospels, begin at easter morning and read to the end of the book: matthew 28, mark 16, luke 24, and john 20-21. also read acts 1:3-12 and paul's tiny version of the story in I corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened. the important condition to the challenge, however, is that not one single biblical detail be omitted. fair enough?

by the way, many people have tried, most famous of which were Thomas Paine some 200 years ago. he is one of the most respected biblical scholars of all time. he failed.

[MrSmokebigbuds]

first i have to say this, sorry but iam to lazy to read all that. so sorry if this has been over already but hear we go..


the bible to me..is not about right or wong..its about what u bleaf, if u dont think its right then its not right is "wrong" to say. but if u do think that it is real, then its real for u...it all depends on the person....thanks....peaces.....MrSbb.

[clonemeister]

most scholars and theologins agree that much of the bible is pure symbolism used to express the views of the authors. To take it all in and consider it fact goes against the whole purpose of the work.

As for the flood myth, there have been recent discoverys in the black sea? that suggest there was a major flood in that region, but logisticly, the noah myth is just that, a myth.

And if you (cottons) are going to use evolution in a biblical argument, how do you expalin away dinosaurs and the fact that the first known living thing on the planet was algea.

You have every right to believe what you want, and I would fight to defend your right to do so, but to represent the bible as fact is in my opinion an exercise in futility. I for one know several "good" christians who would disagree with the idea that it is all fact or that everything in it really happened.

I also feel that me or anyone else trying to make you change your belief is an exercise in futility. At the same time I love a good debate, and the chance to at least provide some thought provoking discussion.

[JaE_70]

Why argue, what is IS.... Is the mere fact it is unexplainable going to rule your lives and cause rebuttles over and over...

If you beleive in somethign you have faith in it, me I just watch... Im not someone to argue things, seeing no one has the right to turn anothers opinion or beliefs down... ( moral point of view ) No point in argueing, because this is just the ultimate ultimatum, Live life, have fun, do what you want to do otherwise it doesn't matter who was right or who was wrong...

Im sorry but, this arguement/debate you haev goign is senseless! Why not just sit back togetehr and make it sinsimeliass!

[IGotTheCottons]

Originally posted by Zylark
no, round won won be me. you can't have your cake and eat it too. you claim it was not all the species, merely all kinds of animals, and they (the survivors of the ark) then evolved into all the animals we have today. wrong. the time-scale of the bible is a mere 8000 years. beginning with the creation. is creation true? you claim so. according to the bible, at the end of seven days the world and the universe was created in perfect mint condition, with all the species (yes species, all 30 million of them) intact. noah's ark came long after these events.

you must have misinterpreted that. i never once said that they evolved. this is what i meant by what i said... instead of having 2985739874 kinds of dogs (not the actual number obviously... just to make a point), they had just 2 dogs. then through cross breeding afterwards is how you have the different variations today. if you think this takes millions of years, you are wrong. don't believe me? look at the cannabis plant, and how many different variations there are today (do to selective crossbreeding), compared to how many different variations there were a century ago... or even a few decades ago for that matter. i'm sorry if how i described it came off as evolution, and can see how it would be interpreted as such. but rest assured, i do not believe at all in evolution.

second, there is no, absolutely no proof whatsoever, of the ark. there is a lot of (convincing) arguments that UFO's are visiting the earth. backed by pseudo-science. none of it has been irrefutably proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. likewize with any "proof" regarding the ark. natural formations that may look like a boat on a radar-picture does not prove anything.

ok... so first hand accounts of people who actually saw this HUGE wooden, bardge-like (sp?), obviously man-made object (that just so happens to go along with the dimensions given for Noah's Ark in the Bible) on top of a mountain mean nothing to you? not to mention that, but satellite photographs (not radar images) taken by OUR government that show a very well defined wooden object also means nothing i guess. if it's not the ark, what is it? and how did it get on-top of a mountain in an un-inhabited area? oh, and i guess all the scientific evidence of a global flood also doesn't convince you either.

the point i'm trying to make is that there's pleanty of evidence that it did happen. it hasn't been prooven, but yet neither has the evolution theory, or the big bang theory... and people believe those, most of the time without a second thought.

and how did polar bears get to the ark withoud dying of thirst and heat firs, after trekking all the way from the arctic to the middle-east?

see above reply on crossbreeding

and fresh-water fish that are local to the americas, did the "fly" to the middle east or swim and salt-water, and thus die on the way?

um... pangea. what if there were rivers that attached the two before the flood? the fish were located in both regions at the time of it happening, and this could explain why you find fossils of american fish over in the mid-east. a global flood would explain fossils of giant clams 6,000ft above sea-level in the apalachian mountains. how does science explain that one? also... how do you explain massive salt water lakes and salt-flats that are land-locked? (ie the dead sea, and the salt-flats out in the west -- i forget which state). things that could only have come from a massive oceanic, flood.

the theory of pangea is a sound one, so is plate-tectonics. only one problem here, back when all the continents were one huge one, there was no humans. no noah. dino's roamed the earth, and mammals like us looked more like little rodents.

this, of course, assuming you believe in evolution and the scientific time-line. you can't really use this in your argument because there's too many unexplainable and legitimate flaws in the theory of evolution.

there is no good proof of the noah myth. stating that many religous traditions got this myth (among them hindu and arab tradition) does not make it true. it only goes to show that the bible is a hodge-podge of stolen ideas from other mythologies. revised and altered and revised again.

there's pleanty of good proof that the flood happened (see above replies). i never said that just because other cultures has it that it makes it true. it makes it more believable... especially when some of these cultures were totally isolated from the others that have similar stories. this combined with the other evidence that the flood did occure makes it quite believable. at least in my opinion.

do not make the mistake of contradicting yourself, if you want to use the argument of evolution, then you must also see that creationism as portrayed in genesis is wrong. what will it be? fact or fiction.

this i explained earlier. evolution has too many flaws that can't be explained (unlike your "flaws" of the Bible). and also, for future reference, the only text of the Bible that contains no single error is the original greek and hebrew texts. during translations there are some mistakes that happen (due to it being translated by man). the closest possible match would be the King James version (they took each word, and tralslated it to the closest possible matching english word... i say this because of your 'part two'. which version are you using for those verses? if it's KJV good. if not, you need to get a KJV because the other versions were taken from a different text, and they're interpreted versions (meaning the people put their interpretations down instead of what each word translates to in english).

also, regarding part-two. i don't have all the answers, so it might take me a while to find the answers to some of your posts. back when i first received that thing from my friend that was full of supposed Bible contradictions and errors, i remember being able to explain it... but that was like a year ago, so i'm going to have to do a little reading and such in order to find the answers. but don't worry, i will beable to.

i'd also like to point out to some of the other blades who think this debate shouldn't be happening and such... this is a friendly debate that we both agreed on in a different thread...

[Zylark]

indeed cottons, this is a friendly debate. we are not calling eachother names here, we are only arguing wether or not *everyhing* in the bible is correct or not. i say no, cottons says yes.

i do respect cottons view, but i do not agree (obviously) with them.

and also cottons: i think we have beat the noah thing to death. if you still believe 30 million animals, with food fitted into an oversized barge, please do. but a you cannot count species they way you do. cross breeding do not create new species, merely variations of the same. this is examplified by cats, dogs and horses, of which crossbreeding have resulted in animals with different attributes, but still beeing the same species.

a polar bear is radically different from say a panda bear. you cannot produce a polar bear (or panda for that matter) by crossbreeding other kinds of bears.

and how would you crossbreed an aardvark, the funniest animal alive. much less transport it back and forth in biblical times.

and you have still not explained how these animals survived after the assumed flood. many of these species require a higly evolved eco-system around them. all the species living in rain forests for example. these forests use hundreds, if not thousands of years to develop fully.

your representation of pangea and plate-tectonics is wrong. plate tectonics work due to magma centered around the earths core flowing in currents due to the magnetic field. the surface of the earth floats on this magma, moving with it. this process takes thousands of years moving a continent only a few meters.

the salt deserts you mention are perfectly natural occuring, and have been explained long ago using, among others, plate-tectonics. no need for flood theories there. in fact, the entire US east-coast, running nearly up to the rocky's was once seabed before magma pressure forced it higher up and thus it became dry land.

as for part two, and its followup, yes all the quotes are from the king james version. the one you claimed perfect. and there can be no "translation error" when the gospels disagree so much. even the first greek and hebrew versions contain these same discrepancies in their narrative of the gospel.

[Digit]

*Ding Ding!
Round 3(?) and digit enters the ring, opens his collapsable seat and sits in zylarks corner to join the debate.

i dont want to unbalance the debate, so hopefully someone else might join in for the other side of argument. it would be unfair to see cottons have to rebuttle arguments from two people.

Shame i missed so much of this. I'll try to catch up as quickly as possable...

Cottons, you say you do not beleive in evolution and yet you talk about it alot... you've even inadvertantly noted its existance several times in your arguments.

"instead of having 2985739874 kinds of dogs (not the actual number obviously... just to make a point), they had just 2 dogs. then through cross breeding afterwards is how you have the different variations today. if you think this takes millions of years, you are wrong. don't believe me? look at the cannabis plant, and how many different variations there are today (do to selective crossbreeding), compared to how many different variations there were a century ago... or even a few decades ago for that matter. i'm sorry if how i described it came off as evolution, and can see how it would be interpreted as such. but rest assured, i do not believe at all in evolution."


thats evolution. whether you want to beleive it or not... it is. Species changing and creating variations? how can you speak about that and not beleive in evolution... thats what evolution is! you even said that evolution has not been proven... well that is simply wrong. it ha