Evidence for God from Science

Excellent article.

Agreed - good find.

Thanks for sharing.

It's ironic how many of the supposed errors in Luke were alleged based on incomplete knowledge. "There is no mention of ______, therefore he/she/it didn't exist," is poor and dangerous reasoning: our knowledge of ancient history is very fragmentary, and such claims have a tendency to be made ridiculous. For example, a couple of centuries ago people questioned the existence of Nineveh, because it had not been found. Then, beginning in 1845, not only was Nineveh proved to have existed, but it was proved to have been among the oldest known cities. Oopsie! As bizarre as it would seem nowadays, among the older objections to the idea that Moses wrote the Pentateuch was the "fact" that writing didn't exist in the mid second millennium BC; later this was "refined" to the idea that writing existed, but was not in widespread use. These objections verge on hilarious now, but they were taken seriously before we learned better. I guess the admission that our historical knowledge is very incomplete comes hard to some folk - quite a blow to human pride.

PeteSinCA wrote:It's ironic how many of the supposed errors in Luke were alleged based on incomplete knowledge. "There is no mention of ______, therefore he/she/it didn't exist," is poor and dangerous reasoning: our knowledge of ancient history is very fragmentary, and such claims have a tendency to be made ridiculous. For example, a couple of centuries ago people questioned the existence of Nineveh, because it had not been found. Then, beginning in 1845, not only was Nineveh proved to have existed, but it was proved to have been among the oldest known cities. Oopsie! As bizarre as it would seem nowadays, among the older objections to the idea that Moses wrote the Pentateuch was the "fact" that writing didn't exist in the mid second millennium BC; later this was "refined" to the idea that writing existed, but was not in widespread use. These objections verge on hilarious now, but they were taken seriously before we learned better. I guess the admission that our historical knowledge is very incomplete comes hard to some folk - quite a blow to human pride.

It is the consensus of the vast majority of scholars that Moses did NOT write ALL of the Pentateuch.
Reason being that some parts are, quite obviously, written AFTER His death so...
Most believe that He either started the process or commissioned it ( supervising it as far as he could of course).
It may simply be that Moses wrote the ORIGINAL form of the Pentateuch and later editors/copyists added to them the parts AFTER His death.

The Documentary Hypothesis is/was a bit more radical than simply pointing out that Moses wasn't around to write the last chapter or so of Deuteronomy.

I just finished his book "Cold Case Christianity", it is by far the best book I have read on the authority of the Gospels as true witness statements.