The title of this article is the same as a website that deals with what the owners of that site deem to be ‘bad archaeology’. I am planning on going through their website and draw out some misconceptions and information that needs to be addressed.
Believers really need to be educated in as many areas as possible as ignorance is not an excuse. We need to know what we are talking about if we are going to 1. refute the lies of the unbelievers and 2. teach our children with the truth and provide the right answers to their questions.
We cannot leave this duty to the Pastor or other church leader as the task is just too great and overwhelming for them. They have other duties they need to focus on as well. As I discuss the information taken from that website I will place a link to the page where it is located so you can see the context for yourselves.
One of the great cultural achievements of the Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century was the recognition that the christian Bible was just another piece of ancient literature like any other, full of myths and legends that should not be treated as scientific truths. Liberating science from the shackles of a religious world view, with its creation myths, its ridiculously short chronology and its distortions of ancient history was to have a profoundly positive effect on just about every aspect of life. (http://www.badarchaeology.com/?page_id=114)
At the top of the page we have it told to us that the authors are not objective and very biased against the Bible. Believers are constantly bombarded with demands from the unbelieving world to be objective yet they refuse to be objective when it comes to the Bible and its record.
I have quoted William Dever a lot on this website and on this topic but it so aptly demonstrates the double standard unbelievers apply to biblical stories and believers. Twice in his book, Did God Have A Wife?’, Dr. Dever says that ‘objectivity is impossible and no wanted but turns around and condemns the biblical writers for not being objective.
The unbeliever cannot have it both ways. Either they start being objective or they need to stop demanding that believers use objectivity. The conclusions stated in that quote about the Bible being full of myths, etc., only come from conjecture based upon an argument of silence and an unwillingness to accept the real explanation for missing evidence.
I should add that those conclusions are also based upon the rejection of evidence presented. We have numerous pieces of evidence for Noah’s flood but they get dismissed because the unbeliever seems to think they have found another explanation even though their alternative has no viable evidence to support it.
As European intellectuals moved away from the medieval belief system, in which the Bible remained the ultimate source of knowledge for any question, new systems of learning began to develop. (same link as above)
This is a very big misconception as the Bible was a source of information but it was not the ultimate source those authors imply. Yes people got their ideas from biblical passages but they also went out and investigated for themselves. We know from history that Ptolemy did not use the Bible to determine the circumference of the earth, he used the methods available to him at the time. The same for all astronomers and other researchers.
The Bible may have sparked something but it hardly could be considered the ultimate source. That is because the Bible doesn’t touch on all aspects of each scientific or historical field within its pages. That is not its purpose and if it did, the Bible would be so thick no one would want to pick it up let alone read it.
Now there were misguided and unbelieving religious leaders of those times who tried to thwart investigation by invoking biblical passages but that doesn’t mean that the Bible was the ultimate source for information. To judge the whole ancient or medieval world by those few recorded voices is unjust and very inaccurate and an excuse to omit the Bible from being part of the archaeological work taking place.
The development of astronomy following the invention of the telescope was rapid (same link as above)
I am not focusing on the words ‘developement’ or ‘telescope’ rather on the word ‘astronomy’. The fact that men and women can see deep into space, figure out precession and other fine details of how the solar system works has nothing to do with the age of the earth or creation.
Astronomers can no more say the Bible is wrong than they can say an uninhabited planet is in the middle of an evolutionary process. There is nothing in the universe that points to its actual age. The evidence they claim for an actual age is merely misappropriated and attributed to a ‘Big Bang’ idea and not applied to God’s creative work.
God knew that His creation would be looking at the stars so He did leave evidence for them to find. Sadly, the unbelievers have rejected the truth and placed that evidence on an alternative source. Once again, one that they cannot prove actually took place.
Knowledge against dogma (same source)
Unbelievers like to call biblical truths dogma as it helps them avoid the truth of this world. They like the idea of ‘the truth’ changing because it gives them something to do. If creation isn’t true, then a lot of scientists now have a job in exploring origins. But knowledge doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the truth.
With knowledge alone we have many descriptive categories to divide it into. There is theory, hypothesis, assumption, conjecture, wishful thinking, false knowledge and truth. The unbeliever doesn’t like the latter two for it means they have to make changes to their thinking, their life’s work and their lives so they avoid it at all costs.
For the believer we have the truth and false knowledge with most of the above list falling into this category. The Bible is very clear that there is such a thing as false information, false teaching and false knowledge. They are generally called lies (to be blunt). we do not need to research origins because we have the truth.
The truth is not dogma because the character quality that comes with it. The truth does not change. If it did then it was never the truth. That is why believers can have peace about where we came from because the Bible does not change, God does not change thus the truth remains the same no matter what era one is living in.
We know that evolution and other alternative theories about origins are not the truth simply because they always change. What evolutionists believed 100 years ago is not exactly the same as what is believed today. They do not have the truth.
We can change from false information to the truth, but that doesn’t mean that the truth changed. It simply means that we discovered our error and made a correction but we do not change the Biblical record for it has not made an error nor has it passed on any false information or knowledge.
Dogma is a dirty word and should not be used by any believer. The Bible is the truth no matter what secular science and scientists claim. believers do not believe dogma, for that content can change, we believe the truth and it becomes our rock to found our faith upon.
Firstly, there was the discovery of two vast continents on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean that were populated by people whose relationships to Adam and Eve were difficult to establish and which were evidently unknown to the supposedly divinely-inspired writers of the Bible (same link)
This and two more point come from the sub-section titled Three strikes and the Bible is out and it is a very large misconception for the Bible is not out. It is declared so by the authors because they reject what the Bible is teaching. You will notice that they think that North and South america provide evidence that the Bible is wrong but the authors of that quote forget about Babel.
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, (Gen. 11:8)
Finding people in North and South America is not a problem in linking them to Adam and Eve when one sees what the Bible teaches. God scattered them over ALL the earth. Finding people in the western hemisphere is proof for this verse and shows that the Bible spoke the truth.
Secondly, as the development a mineral-hungry technology in Europe led to the growth of geology as a scientific discipline, some scholars concluded that the earth had to be much older than the six or seven thousand years that the biblical scholars had calculated (same link)
Geology did nothing to change the truth about the age of the earth. The unbelieving geologist and others are not talking about how the earth was really formed or how long it took God to create it. They are talking about an age of the earth IF the earth was formed according to their alternative idea/theory.
There is nothing in geology that supports an evolutionary/Big Bang model, what claims of evidence they have is merely conjecture, assumption and wishful thinking. The unbelieving geologist cannot verify one thing they say because NO world is forming right now in that manner and NO world has ever been observed as forming in the manner they claim
They have only their on biased unbelieving theories to fall back upon and that is not enough. if secularists followed their own rules they wold have to throw out this alternative because there is no real evidence to support it. This geology did not prove the Bible wrong, nor give it its second strike, it is merely a created tool usurped by unbelievers and used to justify their rejection of God’s word.
Thirdly, the rocks they were quarrying contained the bones of unknown monsters. Some resembled animals alive today, while others were completely different. The way in which these remains were arranged in the ground in layers that always followed the same sequence was worrying for those who confidently explained that these bones must be the remains of unfortunate creatures downed by Noah’s flood. (same link)
First, extinction is not just a post-flood phenomenon. For all we know the pre-flood world practice the same hunting habits, without restriction, on pre-flood animals. genetic information may have been lost for the animal kingdom with the Flood. Then, species reproducing after the flood may not have hit the same combinations as their pre-flood counterparts.
We just do not know but to reject these scenarios mean that the unbeliever is not looking at all the data or not accepting it to support their opposition to the Bible. Unbelievers are rarely honest in their work when it comes to biblical matters.
As for the layering as evidence against the flood, those people who accept that notion basically reject the other evidence we have that supports the flood. That evidence is found in the caves where humans and animals rushed to avoid the flood waters or were deposited there by the water’s actions. See the following link for a better discussion of evidence for Noah’s flood:
http://www.dakotascba.com/Evidence-for-Noah%27s-Flood.php
Layering doesn’t disprove the Bible nor the flood since we only have had one (1) global flood we do not have other information with which to compare. To say it isn’t evidence is misguided and that contradictory point can be turned against the evolutionist. Since they claim there has been only 1 evolutionary process on earth, they have no evidence that layering is evidence for their process. They have nothing to compare their claims with.
In other words, they have no evidence for their process either and merely assume that is how their process would work and leave evidence. Layering by water is not an exact science or a predictable action given that we do not know the volume of water involved or how it retreated from the earth. Layering is just another excuse by unbelievers to reject God’s word.
This should do it for part 1 of this series and it is easy to see that to call using the Bible in the field of archaeology ‘bad archaeology’ is misguided especially considering ll the evidence we have for the Bible which have been discovered and verified by both Christian and unbelieving researchers.
A short list, to give you an idea, includes: Civilizations in their right time and location, thousands of cities in their right time and location; different people and their names in the right time and when the names were in use. there is more but these three should show you that the Bible belongs in archaeology and it is not wrong.
theologyarchaeology 