The many widespread and massive evil acts that god commits in the Bible (the story of Joshua being one) should logically undercut any religious belief in such a god. But the desire to believe is so ingrained in some people that they are willing to abandon the logic and evidence that they use in other …
Category Archive: Bible as history
May 19 2011
The real lessons from the story of Joshua
The lack of historicity of the Bible is rampant. To take just one example, there is no evidence for the triumphalist story of Joshua leading the Israeli soldiers, just returned from their (also fictitious) captivity in Egypt, in one victory to another over the various towns in Canaan. The most famous battle is the one …
May 13 2011
Looking closely at the Bible
In a previous post, I said that two things lead to greater disbelief in god. In it I discussed the one where people start to take a skeptical attitude towards their most cherished beliefs. In this post I want to discuss the other group, which consists of people who develop increased knowledge of what the …
Mar 02 2010
Religious texts as metaphors
(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You …
Mar 01 2010
The Genesis story: Simplification or fabrication?
(My latest book God vs. Darwin: The War Between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom has just been released and is now available through the usual outlets. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publishers Rowman & Littlefield, and also through your local bookstores. For more on the book, see here. You …
Jul 13 2009
Why people believe in god-7: God the moody
For the last post in this series, I want to look at the way god has been characterized through history. It is a popular belief, especially among Christians, that humans have been created in god’s image. Actually, it is the other way around. Humans create god to meet their needs, and as their needs change, …
Dec 01 2006
The Bible as History-5: Why the Bible was invented
(See part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.) If much of the history reportedly recorded in the Bible prior to about 600 BCE is false, why were the stories invented? Why did the ancient scribes make up all this stuff? Daniel Lazare in his March 2002 Harper’s article False Testament points out that …
Nov 30 2006
The Bible as history-4: How science unearths the past
(See part 1, part 2, and part 3.) The two main tools that are available for trying to piece together the real history of Biblical times are those of literary analysis and archeology. In the former, the analysts carefully examine texts for literary clues as to the dates and places where events are reported to …
Nov 29 2006
The Bible as history-3: Enter modern archeology
An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 21, 2000, p. A19) describes the surprising results of recent archeological research into the period covered by the Bible. As the tools of archeology developed and became more refined within the past two decades, and archeologists themselves felt no need to have their findings conform to …
Nov 28 2006
The Bible as history-2: Why people think much of it is true
Until very recently, I had (like most people) the vague idea that the basic Biblical story of a people being in captivity in Egypt, then somehow escaping and settling in the land that is now known as Israel and Palestine was true. Of course, one had to allow for the fact that the stories may …
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