User talk:SouthWriter/sandbox/An atheist's objections/@comment-257949-20100811094531

Okay, I'll admit that my arguments aren't the best. I'm simply applying what I know of science into the debate - and I hardly know enough to create a proper counter. However, that doesn't mean science has failed - just one of its 'messengers'. If a proper scientist were here we would easily destroy my arguments and, in all due respect, yours, too. At least in terms of creating the universe. Like I said earlier, why would God create the universe in such a way that it can be explained without His intervention? (You said that there are holes in our theories over the creation of the universe; I don't deny this, but all scientists will agree that these holes are on the verge of being bridged.)

Yank does have a point, though. One part of the life of Mary - her Assumption, where she is physically carried up into Heaven upon her bodily death - did not emerge as a story until centuries after the death of Christ, yet in 1950 was confirmed as religious canon by the Pope even though it did not happen. If this part of the Bible did not happen, yet was confirmed as part of it, how many others were? Granted, only this part required an official statement by the Pope, but take the situation during the time of Christ. How could he have fed the 5,000 people with, what was it, a single fish? Far more likely that, at first, it was fifty people - that's a miracle in itself, to feed them all from a single fish - and it was passed by word of mouth around until it became something huge. By then, when the Gospels were being written, the authors either: a) increased the number of make Jesus even better, or b) stuck with the exaggerated version that everyone knew, making it effectively 'truth'.

And South, I don't think you should be saying who should and shouldn't read the Philip Pullman book, as it would shake their faith. Like it was pointed out in reference to Dan Brown, is anyone's faith really that vulnerable that it can be shaken by a work of fiction (which the book professes to be: the blurb simply says 'This is a story'). That book has encouraged me to think of how metaphorical the Bible might be. It doesn't say what happened didn't happen, it just makes you think of its roots in truth. Noah couldn't have taken two of every single animal in an Ark the size described, but if it were only his farm animals, then that's much more achievable.