Most of the atheist comments against G-d are lack of evidence. Does the bible count as a source of verifying the presence of G-d?
Posted: September 29th 2009
Dave Hitt www
The Bible proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a bunch of people wrote a lot of stuff down a long time ago.
It doesn’t prove anything else.
Posted: October 1st 2009
brian thomson www
The way I would put it, the Bible (like other such texts) is best described as testimony rather than evidence, since it has came down to us as words alone. It’s possible that a Bible could point to actual evidence to back up its supernatural claims – but it doesn’t actually achieve that, as far as I know.
Or you might say that it could serve as evidence of what people said, rather than what they did. If you say something happened, that is not evidence that it happened: it’s a report, or testimony, but not a piece of evidence for the event in question.
I’ve used the analogy of a court of law before, and I think it’s still apt. If a judge convicts someone solely on the word of another person, we rightly regard that as a possible miscarriage of justice. People have shown, time and time again, that they will say anything to get the result they want, even if the result is something as trivial as looking good or avoiding embarrassment. In even the most low-level disputes, such as those shown on “Judge Judy”, the verdict typically hinges on a piece of evidence such as a bill or a contract, and not on the word of one person versus another.
Posted: September 30th 2009
SmartLX www
It claims a lot, but doesn’t verify a thing.
As a collection of texts ostensibly written as non-fiction, the Bible counts as a set of historical sources. As evidence, however, it is circumstantial at best and simply not at worst. It’s difficult to impossible to verify the realistic-sounding events, let alone the supernatural ones.
Look at it this way: if you said outright that God exists because the Bible says what it says, non-believers who’ve read the whole thing would ask you why. Unless you could support that statement using only the Bible itself (people have tried, unsuccessfully, using the supposed predictions therein), you would need more material than only the Bible to say that you have evidence for God.
Posted: September 30th 2009