Science claims evolution, but cannot prove it. Creation has a written record of Noah. Science claims the Big Bang but cannot prove it. Creation has a written record of what was observed by the creator. Science claims when you die you die, but cannot prove it. Creation again has a written record. You may not believe that written record, but that is by YOUR decision.
So - a "written record" is undeniably true, and a "claim" is unreliable. Would your head spin round and explode if we pointed out that claims can be written down, and written records are just claims?
Do you accept George Washington? Napoleon? Chaucer? Voltaire? Shakespeare? Why? All you have is written records of them
I am especially amused by the list of people you ask us to prove existed, and here's why:
"What is history, but a fable agreed upon" - Voltaire.
"History is a myth that men agree to believe." - Napoleon
And we can't ever prove with certainty that they ever lived or whether they were the authors of their respective quotes above, but that isn't important. All that matters now is that the quotes themselves exist, and are useful.
It doesn't matter if history is true or false; what matters is if it's plausible and can be used to decide on a course of actions in the future. To take the most extreme example I could imagine (please read all the way through the following before deciding to flame me, otherwise you might get totally the wrong idea), let's imagine for a moment that the holocaust never happened, that it is a fiction.(Keep reading.) Would that make it excusable for such an event to take place in the future? More importantly, does that mean we don't need to take precautions against it ever happening, that human rights groups need not fight the mindsets described in the historical account? Absolutely not, and the reason why is because, whether or not they are true, the historical accounts we have of the holocaust are plausible; they conform to the known rules of human behaviour, which can be absolutely known as scientific truth from rational analysis of empirical tests, the most relevant here being the Milgram experiments. We therefore know with reasonable certainty that such a scenario could happen in the future under certain conditions that we must obviously work to prevent, whether or not it actually happened before.
As far as I'm concerned, all religious accounts of divine or supernatural events are implausible based on the scientific knowledge we have today, and should be discounted. Their moral codes and laws, on the other hand, (and even some elements of the less fantastic stories) are generally crude but contain some principles that do plausibly fit the laws of human behaviour under at least some conditions. Their valid components should be used, modified and enhanced if possible, their invalid ones stripped out and forgotten.
Call them historical accounts, call them stories; their only use is to determine our future actions, and either way they should be rigorously, scientifically tested for plausibility before we commit ourselves to the actions they indicate we should take.
Much of this is unrefined thinking aloud, but I think it's coherent enough to submit for a message board. I'm working on polishing things up a bit and making a proper essay out of it.
