contradictions

Errors of the Bible?

Question:: 
hi i have a weird question that maybe you can help solve i've been researching this for some time. i have heard and found contradictions and outright scientific errors in the bible and i am trying to find a way to prove that errors and or contradictions are there let me give you a few examples, the one that talks about four legged insects is claimed to be false because there is no such thing as a four footed insect but butterflies do have four legs so is their something i'm missing here or what. and the whole bats aren't birds their mammals well my mom asked me what exactly is the classification of mammal and i really don't know, these are only a few and i'm trying to research them all so any help on this would be appreciated. also my mom told me that the errors in the bible can easily be explained using cross referencing and a good bible dictionary and concordance but those weren't written until years after so any errors that you know about either through science.historical etc in the bible any information on said thing would help a lot in my research.
Atheist Answer: 

You're really going at this. Good on you.

Butterflies are all in fact six-legged. The two front legs are sometimes non-functional (an evolutionary hold-over, like the remnants of our ancestors' tails) and are tucked up against the body where they're difficult to see.

Mammals are uniquely identified by the presence of sweat glands, and the related glands which produce milk. All female mammals nurse their young (except in the mammal species that was clever enough to invent "baby formula", although we do still have the option of course). Bats have both.

Birds, on the other hand, are defined most reliably by the presence of feathers, which bats definitely do not have. The only non-bird creatures which ever had feathers were specific late-age species of dinosaur identified as the ancestors of birds.

Internal errors in the Bible (that is, the Bible disagreeing with itself) can be explained, sure, but not always easily or satisfyingly. The Skeptics' Annotated Bible is the best-known repository of Biblical contradictions. Just look for the Contradictions section.

In the interests of fairness, Christian responses to each contradiction are linked in at the bottom of each comparison in the SAB. This doesn't always help the Bible's case, because the explanations given are often quite long and elaborate and not always convincing. But you can decide that for yourself. You've already realised that people have believed the whole book, and some continue to do so, without bothering to reconcile the apparent contradictions.

More difficult to reconcile with the Bible, of course, is scientific reality. The six-day creation story set six thousand years ago contradicts most of biology, geology and cosmology (which is like astronomy but more theory-based and less observational). Just looking at the earth, we have billions of years' worth of sediment under us and just as much evolutionary progress around us and within us. The response by those who still think Genesis is literally true nowadays is to argue that Noah's Flood (not an accepted historical event either) created some of the apparent signs of an old Earth in under a year, and God did the rest via intelligent design and various miracles. This view has yet to gain mainstream scientific support.

On a smaller scale, some of the individual stories contradict ordinary historical evidence. Take Moses, for example. There's no indication that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, let alone working as slaves, wandering in the desert for forty years or forcibly taking any land for the "12 tribes". The Egyptians would have written about some of this, had it happened. The Tenth Plague, which supposedly killed the first-born in most families in the capital including the Pharaoh's, would also have rated a mention. So there's really no place in real-world history for Moses.

Good luck with your own research.

- SmartLX

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