Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?
6) That although there are many other similar mythological stories told in Ancient Near Eastern Literature that pre-date what we read in the Bible, the stories in the Bible are about real events and real people.
9 comments:
This is true.
Many of the OT stories for example, such as Samson and Delilah, Noah and the ark, Moses and Pharoah, and Jesus of the NT, are strikingly similar to stories we find in Greek mythology.
Hercules, Achilles, Perseus, etc.
The bible also holds similar mythological qualities to other myths such as, giants, heavenly beings, mythological creatures, acts of divine intervention, and an afterlife!
As John said, some ancient near eastern literature holds similar stories, and so do the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Norse men.
Why should we reject all these cultures stories as fantasy , but hold the bibles stories as true events?
Why should Jesus son of God be true, when Hercules son of Zues is a myth?
Why should Satan be a real being, when the Titans are but myth?
Why should the stories of Gideon be true, when Jason and the Argonauts retrieving the golden fleece is only myth?
This is a very good topic!
@DM
Get out of your mothers basement and read a bit more before deciding you are the smart one here. You have no idea how out classed you are.
who copied who? What about history being corrupted as it is passed down from generation to generation?
This is such an easy point to trust in orthodoxy and believe (because orthodoxy carries with it the default. The burden of proof is on the new opposing theory.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how a theist can really answer this with anything credible other than "Yes, I know". And then leave that there, with the implication hanging. Anything that follows after the "...know" is just special pleading.
"Anything that follows after the "...know" is just special pleading."
No. It is not special pleading. It is identifying that the opposing argument is using "induction" which is open to error. Many inductions are true..but there are also many inductions which lead to deception.
Asked as a rhetorical question, what is the difference between scripture and many pagan myths, you won't get anywhere. But to look for the differences seriously leads to some profound observations.
The very fact that we distinguish relgions from each other tells us that they all have unique features. It's silly to imply that they are all the same. But of course, what could be argued is that the differences are arbitrary and do not display significant differences. But this too is a regress in understanding religions let alone specifically Christianity.
You look at Genesis on, the fabric of our physical reality on almost all facets is presented as a work on intentionality and artistry from a unified mind, not the result of divine dramas where gods chop each other up, have sex and make war on each other and incidentally, without much intention, the world just falls into place with mortals and creation just springing up in the carnage.
From there on, there is an overarching plan. These stories are going somewhere. They again aren't just the unintended events of gods just living out their ultimately aimless occurances. Christianity is eschatological and the history of the world is going some place, it is progressing. These stories are connected not just because they are of the same people at the same time.
There are some other eschatological pagan religions, The norse religion with it's ragnorok comes to mind, but the intentionality of history is missing from this.
Thomas Cahill in the "gift of the Jews" also points out that so many of the ancient pagan stories wheren't viewed as historical stories anyhow, but where of more or less timeless occurances. So the story of arachne was always occuring, not at any specific moment in time.
I think there is a hard to articulate quality of the stories themselves that seem somehow more saturated with real historical events, people and places than so many of the pagan myths, which do involve those but to a less important extent. But I admit that this is a subjective judgement on my part, but no, I'm not bothered by that.
This is not to say that I'd emphasize a literalistic hermeneutic, which has more to do with language than history.
1). Do you deny that every-thing came from no-thing? (Do you deny the Big Bang?) -- In other words, do you deny that heaven and earth have a beginning?
2). Do you deny that there are 4 states of matter or four classical elements? -- plasma/fire (light); gas/air (waters above/heaven/sky); liquid/water (waters below); and solid/earth (earth/land).
3). Do you deny that there are 4 types of "dwellers", corresponding to the four types of "dwellings"? (stars for light; birds for air; fishes for water; and animals for land).
4). Do you deny that the dwellings pre-existed their 'dwellers'?
5). Do you deny that the "heavens" (stars, Sun) were created before the "earth" (as a planet)? -- Gen. 1:1.
6). Do you deny that when the Earth was created, its primitive atmosphere did not allow a forming of the shapes of the Sun or Moon on the primitve sky, but that only diffuse light, followed by periods of darkness, was observable at that time?
7). Do you deny that this changed after the primordial atmosphere became lighter by its separation from heavier elements which now for the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes, thus allowing for a clearer sky, on which the shapes of the Sun, Moon and stars could actually be formed?
8). Do you deny that the earth emerged from under the primordial waters?
9). Do you deny that although there was primitve life even from the beginning [Genesis 1:2], signifficant life-forms (monsters) developed only MUCH LATER on? (on the fifth day); and that this happened first in the waters, before flying up in the sky (fifth day), or climbing up on the land (sixth day)?
10). Do you deny that humans are the last (on the eve of the sixth day) and most developed (made in the image of God) species to come into existence?
11). Do you deny that we've experienced signifficant growth in knowledge as a species (human evolution) as well as individuals (during our life-time) ? -- Tree of Knowledge.
12). Do you deny that together with that growth in knowledge came also the temptation to misuse it for individualistic or egoistic purposes, to the detriment of others, and that as such evil was born through our own weakness and frailty?
13). Do you deny that living beings are formed out of non-living or anorganic matter? -- the creation of Adam from the ground.
14). Do you deny that, as a direct consequence of that very fact, we tend to naturally decompose back into the elements from which we were formed?
15). Do you deny that since the Universe appeared from nothingness it has the natural tendency or inclination to fall back into the same nothingness from which it came in the first place?
16). Do you deny that man was first a hunter-gatherer (Adam and Eve in the Garden), then later on became an agriculturer, by raising animals (Cain) and cultivating plants (Abel) ?
17). Do you deny that these first shephards and cultivators entered into a bloody dispute due to the fact that the animal-herds raised by the former invaded the land owned and cultivated by the later, and the former didn't understand why the later were so angry about, since there are all sorts of plants constantly growing naturally from the ground, without the help of any human agency.
18). Do you deny that both of these classes sacrificed & offered their first-fruits or first-born as a symbolic gift of gratitude to mother nature or other deities? (humans being capable of abstract reasoning, and all that).
19). Do you deny that a huge flooding of the land happened some 10,000 years ago, during the end of the Last Ice Age?
20). Do you deny that all the languages and cultures of the then-known-world (of the ancestors of the Bible-writers) come from ONE ancient, primordial language and culture, known todya as 'Afro-Asiatic'? [North-Africa & South-West Asia]. -- The Tower of Babel, before whose construction "all earth" was of "one tongue".
21). Do you deny that I've taken too much space already and have to go? :-)
I don't deny that you've rationalized incidental attributes of Biblical stories and harmonized them with what science has ucovered. I don't deny that it is a smug rhetorical exercise that fails to address the topic of the post. I don't deny that it evinces how most christians with a pentient for apologetics have poor impulse management as they seek approval and authority.
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