I envy people whose faith doesn’t require that any proof or evidence. Mine doesn’t. I have to do “research” and have to sift through “bullshit” in order to see how well the faith holds up. It holds up pretty well too. You could accuse me of only looking at my side’s arguments but I check both. Not because I want to. I’d rather not have to think about it at all but a voice in my head tells me I have to. “What if they’re wrong, what if they’re wrong!?” it screams. I check right? Then I could be accused of finding fault in the opposing opinion but that’s not true. My own theology is shaped by both side’s arguments. Here are some things that I’ve learned through mostly honest research on both fronts. The main problems with the faith consist of this but they have good reasons:
1) Genesis isn’t literal of course but there’s a good reason. A few months ago, I attempted to rewrite Genesis using scientific facts and theories and it fell apart somewhere around the fourth sentence due to the c0mplexity. I realized “How the hell would people understand this story 3000-4000 years ago, if most people today can’t understand it?” There’s no way to even write it in simple language. I tried that and it turned into me mentioning gravity and the concept of space itself which turned into me having to explain these basic concepts making the book into the equalivent of a college science book. Then Genesis would be filled with “And the LORD said, let there be gravity/inflation/neucleosynthesis of light atomic particles, which you’ll discover in 3000 years so don’t worry about it, just trust Me.” The bottom line is this: YHWH wasn’t Elyon, the most high, God, quite yet. He had to compete with people’s beleif in other gods. He wanted them to know that HE created the universe and everything else in it in language they would understand. If it were written as a science book, people would say “They made all this up!” just as they say it today about it’s simple language. You might say “Why weren’t people just made smarter then?” Then that goes into the problem of why anything which I’m not dealing with.
Anyway, this view doesn’t rule out Adam, Eve and Noah etc. various varaitaions can exist. Maybe Adam and Eve were one of the few humans left after many died out (we almost went extinct tens of thousands of years ago) who ended up repopulating the earth due to the plentiful help of a lush area (garden). While a global flood was impossible, there’s nothing wrong with a local flood around Mesopotamia and Noah just putting all of the animals related to his survial and revelant sacrifical animals on a boat he and his family built. Maybe he didn’t even build a boat. Maybe he just tied a bunch of crap toghether or floated on some island of debris.
2) The Exodus wasn’t quite as grand as the Bible says but lines up very well with history once two concessions are made. By the way I have read both Dever’s and Finkelstein’s book on this so I’ve done my research. First, there’s no way 2 million people crossed the desert. That’s impossible. The second is that you accept that someone fucked up the numbers when they wrote it, complied it, and got the numbers wrong and that it didn’t take place in 1400 BC but instead around 1270/60. When you make those two concessions, and read what the bible says about the events (Critics don’t seem to do that. Kind of like looking for Troy without using the Illiad which they did find after all these years.) everything falls into place. The Hyksos (Semites) invaded Egypt and took over sometime around 1600BC (I don’t remember and I’m not checking) and a large amount of Semites came and moved in too. There’s archaelogical evidence of Semitic settlements there at the time. They got kicked out, leaving the foreign Semites being surrounded by angry Egyptians. Joseph and his family came around at this time and settled and became slaves. There is also proof of this where there is a list of Egyptian slaves with half of the names being semitic. The plagues are all very possible due to a chain of natural events caused by God (a miracle of timing) and also the Egyptians have suffered natural disasters before so while this would be bad, it wouldn’t be all that “significant” to them. Moses then lead a group of slaves, probablly small, in a non-violent fashion (as said in the Bible) out to the desert and then you know the rest. You’d think there would be some mention of this somewhere but I checked all the writings during the time of Ramses II and they all seemed to be about battles or incriptions of how great (a dick) he was. Also, a small non-violent group of people leaving to go out to the desert would have slipped under that radar especially if they got away. Egypt is notorious of trying to erase bad memories *cough* Akhenanten.
40 years in the desert, dead Moses, and other things. Then we get to Joshua. The cities mentioned being attacked for the most part, all existed at that time and most weren’t destoryed and the ones that have show signs of it. Again, critics seem to think they wiped the map clean but they didn’t because they didn’t check the book of Joshua. I don’t remember the specifics of the accuracy of what was there and what wasn’t but it’s over 85%. Then we get to Jericho. Jericho is the mascot of this all being made up because there’s “no evidence of a settlement there during the early iron age.” That’s ture. In fact, it’s super true. There’s nothing there. It got eroded away. Everything from the middle bronze age on got eroded so yes, there is in fact literally no evidence. 
You might say, “Hey! How’d they attack all those Cannanite states owned by Egypt without Egypt retaliating?” First, the Amrana letters mention cities in Cannan asking for help from the Egyptians while being attacked by nomands but Egypt denied them help. Second, the highland settlements (the ones that the Jews took) aren’t as profitable as the fertile lowlands and Egypt wouldn’t want to waste their time on them. Third, the highlands are a bitch to cross. Fourth the Egyptians did retaliate. The Mernetmpha steele mentions the people of Israel (Not the state. It didn’t exist yet) have been defeated in about 1211BC. It fits well with the archaology since settlements from the area don’t show settlement to around that time. We also know it’s the Jews becuse in the late bronze age, the entire area of Cannan (highlands and lowlands) had evidence of pigbones. Then, at the time of when the Jews settle, pig bones are found in the lowlands, but not in the highlands where the Jews settled, proving that at least some part of the Law had existed at that time.
3) Moses didn’t write all of the first four books. Whenever Jesus mentions something written by Moses, he always mentions the law. The law was obviously at least partly in effect as I’ve just shown in Moses’s time so as long as the law was written by him, then Jesus is still right. Parts of Deuteronomy had to have been written after the Jews had been settled for awhile but it really doesn’t matter. I think what happened was Moses wrote the law and whatever else, and the priests ended up compiling it together and added some of the poetry and other things.
4) Ezekiel’s prophecy about the destruction of Tyre is correct when read correctly though I’m not getting into all of it. The beginning of the prophecy beings with God saying that he’s sending nations against Tyre and what “they” will do and then God’s going to do something bad to them. Then it switches to Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of the city which is backed up historically and while he didn’t destory the city, they did force it to be a vassal. Ezekiel never attributes the destruction of the city to Nebby. The destructions is handed back over to the the “they” nations since it says “they” twice. You could say this is an error or I’m reading too much into this (I thought that too origionally) but the next couple group these verses together referring back to the earlier verses about the multiple nations. So it goes like: God/nations – Nebuchandezzar – God/Nations. This works out fine but if you assume that the prophecy is true in the first place, it works out so much better. In the lines about looting treasure, it has to do with the other nations. Ezekiel writes later that there was no treasure to be found so Nebby had to go attack Egypt. It’s obvious that after a 13 year long siege that the treasures would be evacuated. The historical records of the time show that Tyre was made into a vassal state which makes perfect sense because if Nebby couldn’t find any treausres, destorying the city wouldn’t gain him any profits so he turned it into a vassal in order to suck tribute from it. The real clincher is that in the vereses about the other nations and the looting and the true destruction of the city, it says that the timbers and stones of the old city were thrown into the ocean. This is literally to the word what Alexander the Great did in order to build a causeway to attack the new Tyre that had moved to the island across the shore and he literally destroyed the city.
5) Ruth might have just been a historical novel but it doesn’t have much theological significance anyway.
6) The Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a bright star but a triple conjunction of planets which wouldn’t have been that impressive to look at but would have been to the wise men who were likely astrologers.
7) Mark 16:9-20 seems to have been a later addition to Mark. It’s likely that the origional was lost and someone added a new version. This has little significance on anything actually.
So there you go. I’ve considered the truthiness of Bible and I’ve made some concessions to those who argue against it but all it’s done in the end made my faith stronger since I can back up what I beleive with evidence and rational arguments. While my faith may not be as stable as those who I”ve mentioned before, it’s much more solid.
