Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
I agree with Robin that it is meaningless to quabble about this. Ultimately people believe what they want to believe.

One of the problems with the "research" into Biblical history is that most people working in this field have an agenda with their research. Either they are out to prove that the Bible is nonsense and that they are so clever to be finding proof of that. Or they are out to prove the opposite. I think both sides are guilty of fiddling with the facts. People like Richard Dawkins is a good example.

Clearly this is something you feel strongly about, Robin and I am not going to argue with you because I know that nothing good would come of it. Suffice to say that there are people who see it differently than you and they reckon they have good reasons to.
Yes, that's the easy way out. My father used to be like that for sixty years of his life. Then he took it upon himself to actually read something about what he had believed and found that in fact he had been wrong all along. It's not true that most people have an agenda with their research. Or at least you'd think that Catholic theologians would suppress such thoughts as I quoted from their bible, but they don't. That would be an agenda, but apparently they are interested in looking at the facts, and then modifiying their faith instead of the other way round.

Yes, there are people with an agenda, but there are also historians and theologians presenting theories based on evidence and without jumping to conclusions. Just read them.

All I ask of religious people is that they begin to think rationally about the tenets of their faith. Where do they have it from? What does it really teach? Faith is OK as long as it doesn't make you a bad person. But you can be a good person without it, too, and people with a faith should recognize the fact. The moment faith makes you think badly about or even hate and cause harm to other people, then it becomes a sickness of the mind.