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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert E. Hall who wrote (26351)	7/21/1999 5:12:00 PM
From: Sam Ferguson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39621

Fundamentalist Christians claim that the Bible is a historically accurate work in every detail. They delight in showing how "modern archaeology" has verified this little biblical detail or that minor biblical event. But something they don't talk about much is the failure of modern archaeology to confirm some major events in the Bible. Specifically, there are five major miraculous events in the Bible which are completely unconfirmed by modern archaeology. These miracles are: 1.The parting of the sea by Moses (Exodus 14:21-31) 2.The stopping of the sun by Joshua (Joshua 10:12-14) 3.The reversal of the sun's course by Isaiah (Isaiah 38:7-8) 4.The feeding of thousands of people by Jesus using only five loaves of bread and two fishes (Mark 6:34-44; see also the parallel accounts in Matthew 14:14-21, Luke 9:12-17, and John 6:1-14) 5.The resurrection of the saints, and their subsequent appearance to many (Matthew 27:52-53) When skeptics point out that some event in the Bible is unconfirmed by non-biblical records, fundamentalists usually respond by claiming that this is an argument from silence, and that just because nobody else confirms it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Sometimes, this is a legitimate response-- the argument from silence is not always valid. If the event is an ordinary event which attracted little attention, or a private event not witnessed by others, than the argument from silence cannot be used to show the event never happened. But in the case of the above five miracles, the argument from silence is perfectly valid. All five of these miracles were allegedly witnessed by thousands of people-- indeed, two of these miracles would have been visible worldwide. Hence, fundamentalists cannot claim that the events were simply not noticed by others. Furthermore, all five of these events were of an extraordinary nature. They are the most impressive miracles in the Bible, more impressive than even the resurrection of Jesus. It would be absurd to claim that other people could have witnessed a change in the sun's course, or the resurrection of a large number of long dead people, without having been amazed by it. Such events would have attracted widespread attention and generated dozens of documents concerning them. Take the resurrection of the saints, for instance. Other first- century Christians would have used this event as further proof of Jesus' divinity-- Paul and the other gospels would certainly have mentioned it, for instance. Or how about the sun turning backwards? This would have been visible worldwide, and thus other cultures active at the time would have noticed the event and offered their own explanations, in keeping with their own cultural and religious beliefs. And so forth. Hence, the argument from silence is valid in the case of these miracles. If no other evidence can be found to support them, we are justified in concluding that they never happened, and thus that the Bible is wrong in at least five points. Robert how come you cannot find evidence of at least one of these events except in one little tome from Rome?