- Comments Welcome[Myth:] A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth...
Myth, Dictionary.Com
...the whole 'Exodus-Conquest' cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term 'myth': perhaps 'historical fiction,' but tales told primarily to validate religious beliefs."For further authorities, see the following sections of this page:
From a review by Frank E. Smitha of What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? by William G Dever, Professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona
Let's face it. There is so much information out there, that not one person will ever become qualified as an expert in every field of research relevant to Apologetics. A person can spend decades studying only one field alone. For example, someone can spend half their life studying Bible historicity. Therefore, most laypeople will have to rely on experts from time to time to establish a point; even experts in one field of study will appeal to experts in another field.
For this reason, many people specialize in one or another select area of study. We can thus draw from the hard work they have done what we need to defend our arguments. Appealing to an authority to make a point is generally an acceptable way to make a point.
An Appeal to Authority fallacy, however, occurs when one uses a claim from an person not qualified to comment on the area one is making the argument in.
Appeal to Authority, Some Fallacies, Justin, Tektonics.org
A book by George A. Marsden, "Reforming Fundamentalism" quotes a survey of student belief at one of the largest Evangelical seminaries in the US... The poll indicated that 85% of the students "do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture."
This book also lists the results of a poll conducted by Jeffery Hadden in 1987 of 10,000 American clergy... They were asked whether they believed that the Scriptures are the inspired and inerrant Word of God in faith, history, and secular matters:95% of Episcopalians,
Studies by the Christian organisation Barna Research show that support for the belief that "the Bible is totally accurate in all that it teaches" dropped amongst US Christians as a whole between 1996 and 2001. Catholics make up about 1 in 4 of the US Population, and only 26% of them hold that view. (See Barna's Religious Beliefs Vary Widely By Denomination, June 25, 2001)
87% of Methodists,
82% of Presbyterians,
77% of American Lutherans, and
67% of American Baptists said "No."
Biblical Inerrancy And Infallibility, ReligiousTolerance.org
"...it is plain that neither the Bible nor a belief in inerrancy is required to be a Christian. If this were so, then skeptics like Frank Morison or C. S. Lewis, who believed in the historicity of the Resurrection but not in the inerrancy of the Gospel reports of it, would never become Christians."
Inerrancy and Human Ignorance, James Patrick Holding, Tektonics
...it is small leap from [Form Criticism's]... naturalistic, evolutionary application to history, to a denial or a certain downplaying of the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy. Many Evangelical schools are progressively making the move. These biblical institutions do not just suddenly publish a denial of the inspiration and inerrancy doctrines, but the shift is there. The final results will be seen down the road in a younger group of scholars.Of course, these Christians believe that the Bible is "special" or "inspired" in some way. But most Christian Scholars do not believe that it is inerrant.
Inerrancy And The Gospels, Mal Couch, President & Professor Of Theology & Languages, Tyndale Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX
"The Old Testament may be described as the literary expression of the religious life of ancient Israel. ... The Israelites were more history-conscious than any other people in the ancient world. Probably as early as the time of David and Solomon, out of a matrix of myth, legend, and history, there had appeared the earliest written form of the story of the saving acts of God from Creation to the conquest of the Promised Land, an account which later in modified form became a part of Scripture. But it was to be a long time before the idea of Scripture arose and the Old Testament took its present form. ... The process by which the Jews became ‘the people of the Book’ was gradual, and the development is shrouded in the mists of history and tradition. ... The date of the final compilation of the Pentateuch or Law, which was the first corpus or larger body of literature that came to be regarded by the Jews as authoritative Scripture, is uncertain, although some have conservatively dated it at the time of the Exile in the sixth century. ... Before the adoption of the Pentateuch as the Law of Moses, there had been compiled and edited in the spirit and diction of the Deuteronomic ‘school’ the group of books consisting of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, in much their present form. ... Thus the Pentateuch took shape over a long period of time."For further authorities, see the following sections of this page:
Introduction to the Oxford Annotated Bible RSV (1973), Ed. Bruce Metzger & Herbert May, emphasis added, quoted (disparagingly, by extreme fundamentalists) here. (Metzger is described by Tektonics' in their A Review of The Daughter of Babylon as "an excellent scholar" and the author of an "excellent" work on the transmission of the New Testament)
"the overwhelming archaeological evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness. A Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in southern Transjordan in the mid-late13th century B.C., where many scholars think the biblical traditions concerning the god Yahweh arose. But archaeology can do nothing to confirm such a figure as a historical personage, much less prove that he was the founder of later Israelite region."For further authorities, see the following sections of this page:
"Leviticus and Numbers are clearly additions to the 'pre-history' by very late Priestly editorial hands, preoccupied with notions of ritual purity, themes of the 'promised land,' and other literary motifs that most modern readers will scarcely find edifying much less historical.... the whole 'Exodus-Conquest' cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term 'myth': perhaps 'historical fiction,' but tales told primarily to validate religious beliefs."
Those testifying for Dever's book (on the back cover) are: Paul D. Hanson, Professor of Divinity and Old Testament at Harvard University; David Noel Freedman, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Michigan; Philip M. King, Professor at Boston College and author of Jeremiah; William W. Hallo, Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University; and Bernhard W. Anderson, Professor of Old Testament, Boston University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. Like Dever, these are not a bunch of radical revisionists... Among today's scholar-archaeologists we can say that Dever is a moderate. From a review by Frank E. Smitha of What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? by William G Dever, Professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona
...in the viewpoint of a substantial group of scholars, during the last two or three decades of the twentieth century a virtual "paradigm shift" in the treatment of the Hebrew Bible's relationship to the history of Israel has been occurring, one that involves a far more basic rejection of traditional interpretations than the essentially text-critical approach of commentators such as Morton Smith...For further authorities, see the following sections of this page:
The revisionists (minimalists, etc.) agree in emphasizing the unreliability of the biblical text as evidence for the history of ancient Israel, some of them going so far as to put "ancient Israel" in quotation marks... that imply that it is the creation of the biblical writers, not an entity whose true history can ever be known. Whereas most scholars since Wellhausen have agreed that many biblical books were edited or revised during and/or after the "Babylonian exile," the revisionists tend to see such late periods as the periods of the essential creation of those books, with perhaps very minimal use of pre-existing source materials...
Marcus [summarising modern opinion]...makes a strong point: "In their effort to show that the Bible should not be read as history, [the "minimalists"]... sometimes go too far. But their detractors fail to give them proper credit for what they have achieved. The bottom line is that when it comes to the big picture, they are often right. Many of their ideas, once considered far-fetched, are now solidly mainstream concepts."...
The Hebrew Bible is simply not a reliable source for the history of ancient Israel... If we are content to provide students with mythical, legendary, uncritical histories of ancient Israel, how can we have any legitimate grounds for complaint or criticism when others are willing to provide mythologized, fictionalized histories of other peoples and places?
Jack Cargill, (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey), "Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks," The History Teacher May 2001 (12 Oct. 2003).
"Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation."For further authorities, see the following sections of this page:
"Such startling propositions - the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 years - have gained wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis..."
"The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the United States, has just issued a new Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60 years. Called "Etz Hayim" ("Tree of Life" in Hebrew), it offers an interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archaeology, philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a human rather than divine document."
As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting, Michael Massing, New York Times, March 9, 2002 (quoted here)
Now hear this: I have to warn you of something you don't realize. Top evangelical scholars like Ben Witherington, Craig Blomberg, etc. are all causing a "crisis" that is reducing confidence in the Bible. Also, Glenn Miller and I are heretics. Stop reading this immediately and turn at once to the KJV-Only page... I am being facetious, but not so much as you think I am...
Caveman Beats Chest, Sky Falls, A review of Robert Thomas and David Farnell's The Jesus Crisis, J. P. Holding, Tektonics
...in academia it's an established fact that this whole time period is legendary... there’s a strong anti-Bible bias in the academic journals that publish archaeological findings...In truth, Fundamentalists ignore evidence which contradicts the Bible . This page contains many examples to prove that academia rejects the Bible as accurate history.
A Good News Interview with Bryant Wood, Ph.D., The Bible vs. Modern Scholarship, John Elliott, UCG Canada 2002
According to Newsweek in 1987, "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science..." That would make the support for creation science among those branches of science who deal with the earth and its life forms at about 0.14%.
According to a 1997 Gallup Poll, 95% of all scientists in the USA (a great many of them Christian, and including those not in "Earth and life" disciplines) accept that the Earth is billions of years old and that mankind evolved from earlier forms of life, whether or not God was involved in the process.
Public Beliefs About Evolution And Creationism, ReligiousTolerance.org
A great many major Christian and Jewish organisations accept that Evolutionary science is compatible with their vision of God. These include the American Jewish Congress; the American Scientific Affiliation; the Center For Theology And The Natural Sciences; the Central Conference Of American Rabbis; the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) ; the General Convention Of The Episcopal Church; the Lexington Alliance Of Religious Leaders; the Lutheran World Federation; the Roman Catholic Church; the Unitarian Universalist Association; the United Church Board For Homeland Ministries; the United Methodist Church; and the United Presbyterian Church In The U.S.A.These organisations represent substantially more than half of all Christs and Jews worldwide.
Statements from Religious Organizations, National Center for Science Education
"We the undersigned [3,500+] Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."
An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science, 2005
"Popes from Pius XII to John Paul II have reaffirmed that the process of evolution in no way violates the teachings of the church. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, presided over the church's International Theological Commission, which stated that "since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism."See also:
Lawrence M. Krauss, School Boards Want to 'Teach the Controversy.' What Controversy?, May 17 2005, New York Times
We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.... We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article XII
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.
Answers In Genesis, Statement of Faith. (D).6
...the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, and the only authoritative Word of God.
ChristianAnswers.net, Statement Of Faith
The Bible, consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely-inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings, as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological.
Institute for Creation Research, Tenets of Biblical Creationism
All of the Scriptures (the Bible consisting of Old and New Testaments) to be the final authoritative source for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.
Theologyweb, Mission Statement
We believe the Bible (the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments) is the Word of God, written. As a "God-breathed" revelation, it is thus verbally inspired and completely without error (historically, scientifically, morally, and spiritually) in its original writings. While God the Holy Spirit supernaturally superintended the writing of the Bible, that writing nevertheless reflects the words and literary styles of its individual human authors. Scripture reveals the being, nature, and character of God, the nature of God's creation, and especially His will for the salvation of human beings through Jesus Christ. The Bible is therefore our supreme and final authority in all matters that it addresses.
Reasons To Believe, Mission Statement
THE WORD OF GOD - We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God’s will for salvation, and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
Denver Seminary, Doctrinal Statement, Part I
...in academia it's an established fact that this whole time period is legendary... there’s a strong anti-Bible bias in the academic journals that publish archaeological findings...Allegations of bias in academia against the Bible are common from Fundamentalists, but demonstrably false:
A Good News Interview with Bryant Wood, Ph.D., The Bible vs. Modern Scholarship, John Elliott, UCG Canada 2002
In a 1996 study of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists, 60.7% expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God.In a 1998 study of 517 "leading" US scientists (members of the National Academy of Science), over 90% expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God or personal immortality:
Leading Scientists Still Reject God, Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, p. 313 (1998)
By any measure, the United States remains a highly religious nation, compared to other developed countries. And its citizens tend to hold more conservative beliefs. For example, the percentage of adults who believe that "the Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word" is 5 times higher in the U.S. than in Britain. Church attendance is about 4 times higher in the U.S. than it is in Britain. Similarly, according to one opinion poll, belief that "Human beings developed from earlier species of animals..." is much smaller in the United States (35%) than in other countries (as high as 82%).See also:
Public Beliefs About Evolution And Creationism, ReligiousTolerance.org
In comparison to the [ID-supporting] Discovery Institute’s forty-eight (48) scientist signatories, the Science Organizations Amicus Brief is signed by fifty-six (56) science organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In comparison to the eight (8) biologists who signed the DI brief, the Science Organizations Amicus Brief is signed by about twenty-one (21) biology organizations. Altogether, hundreds of thousands of scientists are represented by this collection of organizations.
Nick Matzke, NCSE files amicus brief on the history of evolution "warning labels", The Panda's Thumb, June 10 2005
In a 2002 poll of 460 science professors in Ohio, "Most (90%) believed there was no scientific evidence at all for the idea of 'intelligent design'. And 3% were 'not sure'. Furthermore, when asked if they ever used the ID concept in their research, virtually all of them (97%) said 'no.'"
Ohio Scientists' Intelligent Design Poll, UC & CWRU, quoted by the National Center for Science Education
In July, the [New Mexico] state chapter of the Intelligent Design Network released results from a Zogby online poll that purportedly showed support for the teaching of Intelligent Design theory among scientists at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. But it quickly became clear that the Zogby poll didn't play by standard scientific rules: Numerous problems infected the poll design. For instance, of 16,000 people at Sandia, Los Alamos, and various New Mexico universities supposedly invited to respond to the survey, only 248 did so, a ridiculously small response rate. In a statement, Sandia National Laboratory president C. Paul Robinson even termed the poll a "bogus mini-survey." The Intelligent Design Network has now [reportedly] taken a curious stance: The group stands by the poll but says it won't cite it any more...
Polling for ID, Chris Mooney, CSICOP, September 11, 2003
"Although Davis and Kenyon... claim that intelligent design represents a viable alternative to neodarwinian evolution, the scientific literature does not support that claim. Compared with several thousand papers on evolution, the combined searches produced only 37 citations containing the keyword "intelligent design." A closer look at those 37 references suggests that none reports scientific research using intelligent design as a biological theory..."
George W Gilchrist The Elusive Scientific Basis of Intelligent Design Theory March 16, 2001"Ultimately, whether a scientific issue is controversial or not is determined by the number of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. When the ratio is 1:1, there's a controversy. When it's 3:1, there's a dominant view and a more heterodox but still respectable view. When it's 100:1, it's safe to say that there's no controversy. In the case of evolution vs. creationism, if I had to bet I'd say that the ratio is in the vicinity of 10,000:1 in general and 1:0 in Nature and Science (i.e. no pro-ID papers have been published in either of these journals)."
Alon Levy, commenting on Lisa Peters is a hero!, at Pharyngula, 05/14 at 11:39
"Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory... I don't regard Intelligent Design as a scientific topic."See also:
Quoted by Chris Mooney, Intelligent Denials, American Prospect, 22 February 2005
"Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as ‘irreducible complexity’ and ‘specified complexity’-but, as yet, no general theory of biological design."
Paul A. Nelson, Fellow, Discovery Institute for the (Renewal) of Science and Culture.
(In Touchstone Magazine, July/August 2004, discussed here and here.)
"However, responding to a question after the lecture, [Dr. Paul] Nelson said that he opposed the teaching of intelligent design in public schools... 'It isn't a fully-fledged theory - there isn't yet enough there to actually teach,' Nelson said.' ... In response to another question, Nelson emphasized that intelligent design does not necessarily imply the intervention of a divine being."See also:
'Intelligent design' may underlie life, The Dartmouth, 21 February 2003
"What each evangelist... preserved... is not a photographic reproduction of the words and deeds of Jesus, but an interpretative portrait delineated in accord with the special needs of the early church."
The New Testament, Its Background, Growth, and Content, 1965, p86, by Bruce Metzger (described at Tektonics' page A Review of The Daughter of Babylon as "an excellent scholar" and the author of an "excellent" work on the transmission of the New Testament)
"Interpreters of the NT are faced with a discomforting reality that many of them would like to ignore. In many instances, we don't know what the authors of the NT actually wrote. It often proves difficult enough to establish what the words of the NT mean; the fact that in some instances we don't know what the words actually were does more than a little to exacerbate the problem. I say that many interpreters would like to ignore this reality; but perhaps that isn't strong enough. In point of fact, many interpreters, possibly most, do ignore it, pretending that the textual basis of the Christian Scriptures is secure, when unhappily, it is not... It is difficult to know what the authors of the Greek New Testament wrote, in many instances, because all of these surviving copies differ from one another, sometimes significantly... No one knows for sure how many differences there are among our surviving witnesses, simply because no one has yet been able to count them all. The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT"(quoted here)
Bart Ehrman, Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Text and Tradition, Lecture to Duke Divinity School, 1997
"[the New Testament] text was regularly adjusted in such areas as the birth of Jesus, the agony in the garden, the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus' death, his cry of deriliction, resurrection and ascension... And these adjustments were not made by those who were labelled as heretics, but by the 'proto-orthodox,' to use Ehrman's term... Ehrman vividly shows how scribes have preserved or created within the MSS. they were copying reflections of early Christological debates that helped to shaped mainstream christianity"
From a review of the work of Bart Ehrman, Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Novum Testamentum 36, pp. 405-406 (quoted here)
Born Again Christians, Barna Research Online
- About one out of four (26%) born again Christians believe that it doesn’t matter what faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons; a belief held by 56% of non-Christians. (2000)
- Born again Christians are more likely than non-born again individuals to accept moral absolutes. Specifically, 32% of born agains said they believe in moral absolutes, compared to just half as many (15%) among non-born agains. (2001)
- More born-again Christians believe in channeling, astrology and reincarnation than non born-again Christians (RT)
American Faith is Diverse, Barna Research Online, January 29, 2002In total, around 85% of the US population (but less than 40% of scientists) believe in the Christian God. In contrast, 60% of the population of the United Kingdom believe in God.
Three in five Britons (60%) say they believe in God... a small drop over the past five years (down from 64% in February 1998)... One in five British people (18%) say they are a practising member of an organised religion, with a quarter (25%) a non-practising member. A further quarter (24%) are spiritually inclined but 'do not really belong to an organised religion', whilst 14% are agnostic and 12% are atheist.
Three In Five 'Believe In God', MORI, 9 September 2003
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