Hector Avalos: How Archaeology Killed Biblical History - Part 1 of 2

Atheist Talk cable program by Minnesota Atheists.

"Hector Avalos: How Archaeology Killed Biblical History" recorded 10/23/2007

Part 1 of 2

Hector Avalos is professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and the author or editor of six books on Biblical studies and religion, including his recently published work, The End of Biblical Studies. Join us for a fascinating presentation detailing how the more we discover about the ancient world, the less reliable we find the Bible.

From the dust jacket of The End of Biblical Studies: Hector Avalos calls for an end to biblical studies as we know them. He outlines two main arguments for this surprising conclusion.

First, academic biblical scholarship has clearly succeeded in showing that the ancient civilization that produced the Bible held beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity that are fundamentally opposed to the views of modern society. The Bible is thus largely irrelevant to the needs and concerns of contemporary human beings.

Second, Avalos criticizes his colleagues for applying a variety of flawed and specious techniques aimed at maintaining the illusion that the Bible is still relevant in today's world. In effect, he accuses his profession of being more concerned about its self-preservation than about giving an honest account of its own findings to the general public and faith communities.

Minnesota Atheists practices positive, inclusive, active, friendly neighborhood atheism in order to:

- Provide a community for atheists
- Educate the public about atheism
- Promote separation of state and church

http://www.mnatheists.org/

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[Syr Mata]

Here, since I felt bad for trouncing you I did your homework. It's so ridiculously easy to crush these old creationist canards and claims. +1 for alliteration. Try using Google, parent company of youtube. Search this - "genetic information evolution" without quotes. First result @ talkorigins will direct you to peer reviewed sources, and an explanation of why you are misinformed.

I wonder how long you've been parroting this tripe when in 3 seconds I can find out if you're wrong.

Done and done.

[niginit]

Yeah, except for everyone else around and living at that time didn't see it that way and didn't notice a lot of things the bible claims happened.

The sky looked different pre-flood? How? How so and how can it be possible? Because, speaking from actual knowledge, it cannot and has not been different in any real sense in billions of years and even then it wasn't drastic.

The view has remained pretty much the same and a flood wouldn't change it at all, anyway. It's silly. Silly believer nonsense.

[gamesbok]

The information is the sequence, and you've just show new information.

[gamesbok]

We know that some areas of the geneome are strongly preserved, like hox genes, and other areas less strongly preserved, and it's easy to work out why this would be a trait selected for. DNA doesn't mutate,, the arrangement of DNA does. What you have shown is that you haven't given evolution enought thought.

[gamesbok]

The Evolutionary Fate and Consequences of Duplicate Genes, Michael Lynch1,*, John S. Conery2,Science 10 November 2000:

Vol. 290 no. 5494 pp. 1151-1155

Schneider TD. 2000. Evolution of biological information. Nucleic Acids Research 28: 2794–9.

Here's just a little something for you so you can be less ignorant.

[NeedsEvidence]

The speaker breathes funnily. Is it asthma? He needs an oxygen tent.

[hamneggwich]

Honestly, creationists could benefit from reading ALL of talk.origins. It's an awesome resource for evidence for those who are genuinely interested in reality. If anything, those who wish to cling to their creationism no matter what can then disagree with what science actually says, instead of ridiculously twisted, misconstrued versions that make no sense to anyone(as demonstrated by aekleful and co).

[sundiver137]

Isaac Asimov. I think.

[John Doe]

The bible will not stand under the bright light of logic and reason.

[alanthedrum]

I go with the bible making me an atheist idea. It worked for me as well.

[TieXiongJi]

Don't forget, Google returns results with respect to your browsing history and interests. Maybe when he performs the search, he gets all of the anti-science sites.

[Perkin Warbeck]

Who was it who said "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived" ?