Answers to athiest's dum disputes

Right and wrong about inerrancy.1) First, let me state a major problem for Irational) inerrancy proponents,... and tgen, the converse in some post to follow.EXAGGERATED NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WANDERING IN THE DESERT FOR FORTY YEARS
According to the Bible the number of people who followed Moses out of Egypt during the Exodus was "about six hundred thousand on foot that were men." (Ex. 12:37) To that number must be added women, children, and a "mixed multitude" of non-Hebrews who followed Moses out of Egypt, raising the total way above the six hundred thousand Hebrew males, and nearer to a grand total of two million men, women and children. That is like the population of New Orleans (or Columbus, Ohio, or San Antonio, Texas), being kept on the move (following "a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night") every day for forty years. The only day of the week they were not moving was the Sabbath day. That's a heap of packing and unpacking -- of setting up "camp" and breaking it down again. Plus we are to believe they also performed necessary sacrificial/sacramental duties for two million people, and the men all walked "outside the camp" (a really huge camp) each time they had to go to the bathroom.The Bible only mentions Aaron and his two sons as being available to conduct all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, thank-offerings for all of the Israelites. (Num. 3:10) Just the number of pigeons to be brought as sin-offerings for newly born children, would have averaged, based on a multitude of nearly two million, more than 250 a day, not counting all the bulls, sheep, lambs, rams, goats, and turtle doves needing to be sacrificed for reasons too numerous to mention -- and their carcasses having to be ceremonially bled, the fat removed meticulously, the organs burned as an offering to God, and the carcass dragged "outside the camp" to be burned (a camp of perhaps 16 miles in diameter).Miraculously, these two million or so Israelites left no traces of their forty-years in the wilderness. No traces of encampments, tent holes, potshards (or other items discarded during their marches), nor traces of their daily sacrifices -- no evidence of large charred ash deposits nor blackened stones nor bones. (Oddly enough archeologists have discovered the remains of a small fire in the Sinai wilderness that was carbon-dated back to about that time. But one small fire could not have warmed the alleged two million who marched nearly every day for 40 years up and down the Sinai.)So staggering are the problems raised by the exaggerated Biblical number of "600,000 males" (an embarrassingly well attested number, repeated three more times in the Bible -- on each occasion each separate tribe being numbered, the sum of the results making up the whole), that even conservative Christian scholars have admitted that "600,000 men," beside children, women, and the mixed multitude, is an exaggeration on par with many others found in ancient Near Eastern lore.Evangelical Christian, W. M. Flinders Petrie, author of Egypt and Israel (London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1911) pointed out, "There are. two wholesale checks upon the total numbers. The land of Goshen recently supported 4,000 Bedouin living like the Israelites, or at present holds 12,000 cultivators. To get "600,000 men" with their families out of that district would be utterly impossible. Also on going south the Israelites had almost a drawn battle with the Amalekites of Sinai. The climate of that desert peninsula has not appreciably changed; it will not now support more than a few thousand people, and the former inhabitants cannot have exceeded this amount. How could the Israelites have had any appreciable resistance from a poor desert folk, if they outnumbered them as a hundred to one? Again, we are compelled to suppose that the Israelites were not more than a few thousand altogether. Thus we see that more cannot be got out of Goshen or into Sinai."

Yes, I will give attention to this seeming plagurism. In the case you refer to, I neglected to copy the suthor's screen name, and I assumed that a screen name was rather a non entity as regards wttribution.I did copy the post and a few others in order to preface my own and original comments which I have not yet made.Below is another statement I can not attribute other than to say it is going ard' the net, found my email...AWESOME
This is almost overwhelming when you think about it.
You MUST read to the end: (smile)Moses and the people were in the desert, but what was he going to do with them?
They had to be fed, and feeding 2 or 3 million people requires a lot of food.
According to the Quartermaster General in the Army, it is reported that Moses
would have to have had 1500 tons of food each day. Do you know that to bring that much food each day, two freight trains, each at least a mile long would be required!
Besides you must remember, they were out in the desert, so they would have to have firewood to use in cooking the food. This would take 4000 tons of
wood and a few more freight trains, each a mile long, just for one day. And just think, they were forty years in transit.
And Oh yes! They would have to have water. If they only had enough to drink and wash a few dishes, it would take 11,000,000 gallons each day and a freight train with tank cars, 1800 miles long, just to bring water! And then another thing! They had to get across the Red Sea at night. Now, if they went on a
narrow path, double file, the line would be 800 miles long and would require 35 days
and nights to get through. So there had to be a space in the Red Sea, 3 miles wide so that they could walk 5000 abreast to get over in one night.
But then, there is another problem...............each time they camped at the end of the day, a campground two-thirds the size of the state of Rhode Island was required, or a total of 750 square miles long........ think of it! This much space for camping.Do you think Moses figured all this out before he left Egypt? I think not!
You see, Moses believed in God. God took care of these things for him.
Now do you think God has any problem taking care of all your needs?
I asked the Lord to bless you As I prayed for you today. To guide you and protect you as you go along your way.......... His love is always with
you, His promises are true, And when we give Him all our cares, You know He
will see us through.Our God is an Awesome God!!So when the road you're traveling on seems difficult at best, just
remember
I'm praying and God will do the rest.

Hello mr egg,Thanxz for the reply.I posted the re-print of a argument against the Book of Numbers which has had a lot of comment lately on the net. The reason is that the Christians are right AND wrong on this matter of inerrancy.They must get themselves straight on this issue, or they embarrass themselves and besmirch the real point of Bible Inerrancy. They add this mistake to that of the Flood issue and the matter of Creationism.The comments critical of the Book of Numbers poises a problem which they will, in the final analysis, refute only by saying that: the impossible makes sense to them. This makes it difficult to explain the actual meanings of scripture, to them or others. They are setting road blocks to the most useful and most important meanings of scripture by their actions and intranscience.INERRANCY MEANS: "THE BOSS ISN'T ALWAYS RIGHT BUT HE IS ALWAYS THE BOSS."Applying this old adage to the Christian community, this Bible IS the iron rod that rules THEM. It is imerrant FOR them.It is not, and is not intended, to mean it is inerrant to you, or pagans, or non-believers, or Muslims. Between themselves, (once being the entirity of Western Culture, under Universal Catholicism for 1000 years year riegn of Christ), it is inerrantly FOR them, it is their "Boss."NOTE:Rev. 2:27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, (an undeniable interpretation of scripture); as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, (so the verses, as the individual pieces of a massive puzzle, shall they be separated out from one another): even as I received of my Father, (the Word of the Old Testament).

No.
You, as many others, forget that the scriptures are not about science nor history. A critique from the literary point of view may report that these disciplines find much commentary as regards what the scriptures say, but no.This is a Hebrew Mystery, exposed, presented as the only Mystery, from the many we know of in antiquity. It is the only mystery willing passed on to us, into the future. The other secret societies held to their secrets. Those secrets were lost to us. Check it out, the Eylusian Mysteries, for one. The ancients KNEW something that we still have not discovered.I suspect it pertains to those disciplines in which we admit ignorance: Psychology, Human Behavior, Economics, Sociology, even Education.Do some research on the matter of Mystery Societies in the Ancient World. You will discover that the Jews have given a valuable present to us, but we have been unable to "unwrap it."Rev. 10:7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel( a conscious seventh archetypal awareness in men's mind, Harmony), when he shall begin to sound 9the awakening of Total Consciousness0, the mystery of God, (phylogenetic memory), should be finished, as he hath informed his servants the prophets (as recorded in scripture).This secret book, this Holy book contains, somewhere beneath the surface of the disarming pathos of stories, morality plays, histories, and ritual,.. a "hidden manna."Rev. 2:17 He that hath an ear, (listen to this clear meaning), let him hear what the Spirit, (the Sevenfold Psyche0, saith unto the churches, (the evolving body of christianity); To him that overcometh, ( who sublimates beyond the archaic interpretations of scriptural understandings), will I give to eat of the hidden manna, (the hidden organizational pattern in Genesis), and will give him a white stone, (a marker), and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.That faith has kept it alive and with us for 3500 years suggests the mystery of some knowledge of human behavior, some concept of how to propel this written secret forward,... until that "expected one" opens the seven seals, and we all... even the unbeliever... understand.Is 32:4 Even the hotheads among them will be full of sense and understanding, and those who stammer in uncertainty will speak out plainly.Inplicit in this post is the point I wish to make, that the book of Numbers is NOT wrong, exactly... the numbers it will turn out are TOO small. But I will show why in another post.Rev. 5:3 And no man in heaven (in thought), nor on earth (physically), neither in the sea (of written records), was able to open the book (the Hebrew scriptures), neither to look thereon.Rev. 5:4 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open (and to read the ancient Hebrew mystery), neither to look thereon.(Ref: Scripture from The Freudian Bible Translation and Interpretation/ not on net,... refer to publisher.)