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If I was writing a fanfic sequel to the old testament I would call it the new testament and say that Judas was paid 30 silver.
I could write whatever I want. Most people back then couldn't read, and these stories had been passed down for generations by word of mouth.
All the animals of the earth can't fit on a wooden boat. There isn't enough water to flood the planet. Mankind isn't descended from two people. You can discredit the bible from early on, unless you just "because magic" it.
If I was writing a fanfic sequel to the old testament I would call it the new testament and say that Judas was paid 30 silver.
It makes me think of how Mormons will point to such connections between the Book of Mormon and the Bible as proof. You'd expect such connections both if it was what the faithful narrative claims it to be or if it was a creation pulled from a hat that was attempting to reference what came before.
Mankind isn't descended from two people.
Kinda.
The Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam are a thing. Admittedly, they probably lived about 100,000 years apart, but all mankind is descended from these two people.
That's a big kinda.
But you know what I mean. Mankind didn't start with one man and one woman. Mankind slowly came to be from another species that was similar to mankind, and somewhere in the history we called us humans and our ancestor something else.
You seem like you might actually have quite a detailed knowledge of evolution, especially very early evolution. I don't know a huge amount of detail about the early evolutionary time periods.
My understanding is that for a long time it had to just be the primordial soup. That would need to create a self-replicating molecule, which was a very unlikely random event that advanced life was essentially waiting for.
Some Christians and probably other people could believe life didn't originally come from this process. God could have created life and then let it evolve.
The mitochondria would have probably came in after this, and mitochondria being in cells does actually mean we can say that all eukaryotes had a common ancestor, because that was also a very rare event in the early stages. It could likely have happened to just one cell (at least the final stage of making cells with mitochondria), which is what I think you're describing, but I might be wrong.
If we're not interpreting the story of Adam and Eve literally, that could be the meaning. Adam and Eve were just a very early stage of evolution that created organisms of some kind that could easily spread.
Some more devout Christians might not like that interpretation though, since I think the story could be made at least a little more literal.
That's not wrong at all, but there is a much more recent Adam and Eve - an actual anatomically modern human woman and man that all of us are descended from (although, again, they probably lived about 100,000 years apart - I.e. they weren't a couple)
It should also be stressed that I'm not saying that at one point there was only one woman alive or one man alive.
Mitochondrial DNA isn't like the usual inherited mix of DNA - instead it's passed down directly from mothers to their children. If they have girls, then it'll be passed down to their children too. If they only have boys, though, then that mitochondrial DNA has come to a dead end. Basically it's matrilineal - it passes down the female line.
The same with the Y Chromosome. Fathers pass the Y chromosome to their sons. If they only have daughters, well it's come to a dead end. It's patrilineal - it passes down the male line.
DNA analysis shows that all of our mitochondrial DNA is shockingly similar - especially compared to many other animals. Rolling back the clock (by accounting for the tiny random mutations that occur over time) shows that everyone converges to a single person around 155,000 years ago. Before modern humans, as a species, had expanded out of Africa and spread across the world.
Interestingly, especially so if looking for biblical comparisons, the Y-chromosomal Adam can be traced to around 100,000 years earlier than Mitochondrial Eve - so he did appear first.
So, the next question might be, "if anatomically modern humans existed for at least 100,000 years before the Mitochondrial Eve, what happened to all the other mitochondria variants - why did we end up with only one?"
That is simply a numbers game. Compared to many other animals, humans only have relatively few children in their lifetime. This keeps small populations from exploding suddenly, but it also increases the likelihood of only having boys (and stopping that line of Mitochondrial DNA).
You can map it out on a piece of paper:
Get five different coloured pens and a black pen.
Across the top of the page, draw dot in each coloured pen, with a black one beside it. The coloured dots are female, the black ones male). These are the parents.
Now for the kids. Toss a coin twice - heads for a boy (draw a dot in black pen beneath the parents), tails for a girl (draw a dot the same colour as the mum). Do this for all.
Now pair up the offspring and carry on.
You'll find very quickly, one colour will start to dominate the paper. This represents the Mitochondrial DNA.
The new testament isn't exactly a fanfic sequel though. It (and also the old testament) was written by multiple different people who claimed to witness (or prophesise) certain things and agree on a lot of them. You do make a good point though. If some or all of these people had studied the predictions in the old testament and lied or assumed certain details (all the writers of the new testament could have even conspired to lie to everyone), then some of the prophecies would hold very little weight, especially the 30 silver one.
If you consider the Bible to be a proper historical source that was compiled from books different people wrote about current events, then you probably should take at least some of the Bible seriously.
There are other predictions, like that Jesus would be descended from David, and supposedly the entire line of the family tree from Adam to Jesus has been kept track of. You probably don't believe that's accurate, but it's easier to believe people kept track of the lineage from David. The Jews wanted to keep track of this stuff to see if the prophecies worked out.
The easiest way to convince a reasonably logical person to be a Christian (which I definitely don't think would be reading random well-known Bible stories like the Book of Job), would be to show them undeniable evidence that Jesus died and rose from the dead. The Bible is quite short of doing that as far as I'm aware, but there are lots of other little predictions like that which could contribute evidence towards what the Bible says as a whole.
I think the vast majority of sensible historians looking into that time period agree that there was a person called Jesus that became (at least locally) quite famous for being a moral philosopher and claiming to be God or in touch with God in some way and his ideas spread across the world over time (some religions other than Christianity actually claim that Jesus was a prophet, but some of his teachings were corrupted and Christians shouldn't be worshipping him the same way they do Allah or whatever else).
Also, the stories in the Bible were not passed down by word of mouth. They were copied by scholars and translated into different languages for others to read. This would suggest the original text of the Bible has actually been preserved.
I would argue the easiest way to convince someone to become a Christian (or any religion, seriously) would be if some sort of celestial being would appear and claim to be a deity, or an angel or something.
Something that would prove "magic" or rather, "we are so advanced from you that you don't really have a choice in the matter."
Well yeah, but the Christian belief is generally that the Bible is right, if you study it, you'll realise that, and "magic" will be proved when we reach the time of Revelations. If a god wanted to keep proving they were divine constantly without anyone having to think about it or "accept God into their heart", they'd have to keep appearing and doing random "magic" for no reason except to prove they were divine. That would be a very chaotic world and might not be God's real goal.
We might not have seen anything like that in our lifetimes, but most of the religions believe that there were miracles in the times of their prophets, so that was sort of happening in the old testament.
You could say that these prophets and divine figures were magicians, but they then likely would need technology far in advance of their time. Do you think Jesus had elaborate stage tricks? It would probably be more sensible to say at least some of them were lied about or supposed to be metaphorical.
Just because you've never seen something you don't think is understood by physics or other explainable things, doesn't mean there isn't any kind of god(s) that have divine powers.
If God is the ultimate ruler and creator of the universe, God can do whatever He wants. Any belief system will tell you this basically.
You seem to be an atheist, but if you did believe in God then it would be quite silly of you to deny that such a God could perform miracles. If this is all someone's dream, they could imagine whatever they wanted. If I wrote a computer program and was the "god" of that universe, I could make whatever I wanted happen in the program, at least if I was skilled enough in programming, but God would have to be anyway in that scenario.
Of course, you could call into question the validity of different versions, or say there really should be only one version. If you're a Christian, should you read the KJV, the NIV or something else?
I believe there were a few different lines of scholars. For example, the Bible was copied in the Vatican, but also by other scholars across the world. If you're not gonna read the original (which is written in multiple ancient languages that scholars today don't seem to have a full understanding of), then there are loads of English translations, and a handful of popular ones.
I think scholars actually understand the Latin translation used by the Romans a lot more than the original text. That one was also copied. Of course, translating the Bible seems to be a very dangerous business if you're a Christian.
One of the very last verses in the Bible (Revelation 22:18) (and also 22:19) basically warns you're gonna be cursed and go to hell if you edit the text of the Bible.
Meaning can be lost or added in translation, so you could say that if Christians truly believe the Bible is a holy text that shouldn't be edited, they should all try to read the original.
This was a bit of tangent, but essentially what I'm saying is that cross-references in the Bible are valid evidence for the Bible. They're not necessarily proof but they are evidence. If you were interested in what I'm saying, you could consider looking into the Book of Isaiah. The Christian I know who's always telling me this stuff says it contains loads of predictions and some of them agree with other predictions made elsewhere. There are also some bibles (especially study bibles) that contain tables of these predictions and how they were fulfilled by Jesus (according to the books of the new testament).
Also, obviously if the Christian God is real He can do whatever He wants. Any God can do whatever they want pretty much, unless it's a pantheon where gods fight or something. If you think this is all a dream then whoever's dreaming it can do whatever, at least if they're aware. If you've seen the Haruhi anime, Haruhi can perform whatever miracles she wants. All religions believe God can do whatever they want, and that's just sensible. They're God.
God could obviously spawn as much water as He wanted. He could make pocket dimensions or something in Noah's ark. It doesn't even really matter.
You do raise another good point though, which is essentially that you think Christianity contradicts evolution. Obviously if you're a creationist then that isn't a problem, but most Christians nowadays are not creationists.
What would really need to be proved through evidence of evolution in order to discredit Christianity is exactly what you said. "Mankind isn't descended from two people."
Evolutionists are often discovering "gaps" in their chain, and by that I mean filling them in. I don't think the gaps in the evolutionary lines disprove it. That's just totally stupid. There's a futurama clip where they explain how dumb creationists are to think that, and I totally agree with it.
The problem though is that essentially evolutionists just discover snapshots of evolution. Pretty sure I had evolution explained to me in my biology class as the evidence being like this: take a photo of your dad and one of yourself, then if you have any children tell them to do the same and collect them up in a big photo album. Over the massive timescales of evolution, you should start to see some change or development in these pictures. You should in theory be able to start with very simple microorganisms and create a family line going all the way down to a modern human, but they can't do that in practice.
The lineages worked out based on fossils by scientists aren't even as clear cut as that. If I discovered the bones of some neanderthal and named them "Alice" or whatever (I don't actually know all the lineages in detail, but schools will often teach a small segment leading up to Homo sapiens, and I used to have that memorised), then someone else found another set of bones and decided to name them "Bob", we could start talking about Alice and Bob.
Alice and Bob were essentially people. They weren't as evolved as modern people but they were both prototypes of a person at some stage in human evolution. Alice and Bob probably weren't close family members. It's exceedingly unlikely Alice was Bob's mother or sister. If they were found in the same region and dated to a similar time period then they should be quite similar, and that's generally what evolutionists find. You can also analyse other things, like most obviously the shape of their bones, which changed over time. There are more advanced things evolutionists check in modern times too, like they compare the genetic codes for cytochrome oxidase, since it's an enzyme found in pretty much all life. That may not have been preserved in some of these fossils though, idk really tbh.
Bare in mind of course that most people didn't end up as fossils, and most of those probably haven't even been found and analysed.
The actual point is that at no point could we say Alice and Bob were in any very easily understandable way related to one another, nor do we know exactly who their ancestors are. Evolutionists (scientists) sketch out big trees that show how creatures at different stages of evolution were related to each other based on various evidence. Their evidence will always be incomplete in that they can never ever trace an exact lineage from a million or so years ago.
There could be an older fossil, Charlie, who they put in as part of their tree because he seemed like an earlier stage and more similar to the stuff/people that came before him. Charlie could have died from some genetic disease and never had children though. He might have been an evolutionary failure. An actual evolutionary scientist would likely be quick to correct you if you said Charlie was "the ancestor/father" of Alice or Bob.
What I'm trying to say is, evolutionary scientists would have no way of knowing "mankind isn't descended from two people". They might say that's not generally how evolution works, but if you use a relatively small sample and evolve antibiotic resistance into bacteria, it would technically be possible. It might even have been happening exactly like that occasionally across the world when hospitals didn't realise there was such a problem with antibiotics and how they should be prescribed.
Essentially, there's a small chance/it is theoretically possible we evolved from two people, especially after a big extinction event.
Every Christian who isn't a creationist should be aware of the fact that the term translated to "day" in most English versions as in "God created the world in 6 days, then rested on the 7th" or whatever doesn't necessarily mean "day". It could just mean any arbitrary time period.
If we're gonna go extra far with how evolution could fit in with the Bible, we could say some of these "days" corresponded to different parts of our huge scientific time period.
Maybe God brought about Adam by perfecting the genetic code miraculously after a major extinction event long in the past, and humans evolved from there, though the lineages in the Bible would disagree with this. I think a more sensible view for a non-creationist Christian would be that Adam was a very late stage in human evolution (probably actually Homo sapiens). God could have created Homo sapiens by making some changes to the previous step, which would be somewhat consistent with being made in "His image". That would be a literal interpretation.
Anyway this was a big ramble. I hope someone somewhere enjoyed reading it. My point really is that some people who seem strongly against religion in general haven't thought much about the claims they make, which you should if you care about having logically informed beliefs. You seem to have thought about it at least a little bit, especially with your point about evolution, but I think that if you want to go around proclaiming your worldview, you should be able to somewhat counter other worldviews, especially one(s) you were taught a fair bit about growing up and are dissing.
There are also the more philosophical/logical arguments for or against there being a God in general. Those are a whole other kettle of fish and I think they're generally quite weak and inconclusive (if they weren't then every logical thinker who checked one would have quite consistent worldviews).
I'm an agnostic who's learned a fair bit about Christianity. I know how Buddhism is supposed to work as well essentially, and a little bit about other religions like Hinduism. I've had someone telling me about Christianity all the time basically, so I know quite a bit about how the Christian worldview is supposed to work, which is somewhat similar to Judaism and Islam.
Anyway, that's it.
TL;DR: God could obviously do any magic they wanted and evolution doesn't exactly disprove Adam and Eve. There are lots of predictions in the Bible and if you want to understand them and their significance you need to know where they came from and who was testing the predictions. Feel free to argue. I'm in bed ill and that's why I made such a long and somewhat confrontational forum post.
Here's the problem with predictions in the Bible. They are all self fulfilling. The old treatment had been around a long time. There were also many many of these "prophets" running around trying to out prophet each other. It's extremely likely many of them knew all the predictions by heart. Add in a little survivorship bias, and bam you have a religion.
An easily studied recent example is Scientology, a book writer created a new religion on a party bet. It's now how big?
There isn't enough water to flood the planet
I think that a being powerful enough to create the entire universe can handle a little water
Yeah, but that falls in the "because magic" category. That water would have to come from somewhere, or the crust of the whole world would have to flatten out so that the existing water would form a thin layer on top.
Either way, it would be "magic."
Well yeah, being the God of all creation probably entails a great deal of magic. But as for explanations, there is reference to a firmament in the sky in Genesis. It's generally believed by Christians that the firmament was dumped onto the earth during the great flood.