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Originally Posted by llama64

To speak to the question more directly, science as a process dismisses a lot of "traditional" wisdom such as that in the Bible mostly because it's unable to be verified through alternative means.

What do you mean? Science doesn't dismiss things such as do unto others as you would have them do unto you, because science mostly doesn't speak to that kind of thing. But it does dismiss things that are within the realm of science, such as historical events or claims about reality, when those events or claims clearly have no basis.

And most religious people don't have a problem with that, they can clearly take something like the flood and see that it is a story to illustrate something because science clearly doesn't support a global flood. So science hasn't dismissed any wisdom in the flood story, just confirmed that it is a story, not a historical account.

That said, there are portions of the Bible that speak of historic events that have been correlated to other ancient historical texts. There is too much in "holy texts" to dismiss them outright, but to accept them on their own intrinsic value alone is folly.

The fact that a historical document gets some historical events correct doesn't give the content of the book any validity other than to indicate the author was aware of the events. The value of a book like the Bible would be as a source of knowledge and wisdom about God and ourselves, historical accuracy doesn't do anything for that. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

I find it interesting the discussion on the historical validity of Jesus of Nazereth. I have to ask, is it really important at this point in history to know if the story in the Bible is accurate? The true story would have no bearing on the current reality of a religion based on the contents of the Bible. I guess my views are tainted since long ago I accepted that the Bible is a man made creation (even if it were divinely inspired). To accept a *translated* bible as the literal word of God speaks to a persons inability to reason properly.

That really gets back to the whole point of this thread.. I don't think a lot of what has been said in this thread would be targeted at someone who holds a more liberal view of scripture. The start of the thread was about Intelligent Design, a device created by a group of religious people who adhere to a literal view of the Bible and would call anyone who would accept a more liberal view isn't just not a Christian, but an agent of the devil sent to corrupt their message.

And these people aren't an insignificant fringe, they hold real power in our society.. and I think that's part of the motivation when others try to combat that dogmatic thinking, trying to educate and help people understand their own beliefs and reasons for them.

For example, out of the 5400 different ancient Greek sources we have for the New Testament, no two agree. The actual # of differences hasn't been calculated, but the # definitely exceeds the # of words in the entire NT itself. I have friends who I can't tell that to though, because if I did they'd either say I was being deceived by the devil, or that whoever said that is lying, or that it doesn't matter because the version we have now is exactly what God wanted because it is 100% literally true. EDIT: Not saying that that fact invalidates the NT or anything, just saying the willingness to ignore facts is what is the problem.