If you haven't read How a rumor and a song brought down a dynasty at Secular Blasphemy; you must. If you haven't read Another Mass Murderer in the Guardian's Pantheon by Simply Jews; you must. If you haven't read Outside the Beltway's Scientists a...

I don't think questioning the translations is the best argument. The reality is that the translations from the original language seem to be pretty consistent between the oldest known copies and the current ones.

I think where there is more room to wonder is more when the stories were still passed down as oral tradition. Even the Bible when taken "literally" has thousands of years from "The Beginning" and when Genesis was actually written.

I think much of what is in the Bible is true, although not neccessarily literally true. I think when we realize that much of what is written is written from the observation of man, it makes sense. Today the concept of a world wide flood doesn't make sense, because CNN would be there to cover it, but to a neolithic human a massive local flood could feel and look like the whole world was under water and utterly destroyed.

We tend to be very smug in our own understanding of anything. Often we are wrong or at least not entirely enlighten. Most look for evidence that support their own believes and disregard all else. Many use the example of the bible saying the World was created in seven days as proof that the bible is wrong. Assuming for a minute that it is wrong in that case doesn’t mean the rest of the bible is incorrect. Second, the understanding of “time” " when the bible was written isn’t the same as it is today. Third there are many different types of day that we know of such as a solar day, a galaxy day and a universal day. Some of which can take millions of earth solar years to accomplish. Many will dismiss that argument since the consensus is the bible meant one earth solar day or it doesn’t fit their believe. However, consensus does not make something true or wishing it false doesn’t make it so. Also god could have set up these facts just to test people’s faith. Perhaps there is an explanation no one has thought of. No one knows for sure.

People will believe whatever they believe in. Some believe solely in science while others solely believe in religions and others believe in both. That is fine believe in what you want. However, to think that there is no other possibility but your own is truly being ignorant.

Virtually all biblical scholars (even including those of the "fundamentalist" Christian persuasion) would agree that only a few words of the King James Version of the Bible are the "literal" words of the received texts written from 500 to over 1,000 years before the Church of England even began, by men who wrote in, among others, the Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek languages.

How, in all that welter of languages, the phrase "in the beginning" came to be defined as a time 20,000 (or, say 25,000) years ago is lost to the mists of time.

Via Jane Galt, I saw this quote from a post by Robin Hanson:If all we know about a view was that professors held it more, and elite professors even more so, we would be inclined to favor that view.I'm 48...

What then remains but faith?

So, sure, their views are likely more well-thought-out than that of some random guy plucked off the street. It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that their opinions on things outside their field of expertise are particularly valuable.

James, the entire field of punditocracy just declared jihad upon you.

Plenty of people are spiritual. Plenty of people go to church for the social aspects. But my definition of religious is someone who believes in the fundamental tenets of his / her chosen religion. And last I checked, none of the major Christian sects were actually to the point of admitting that the Bible is a neat collection of very old stories badly translated.

so you can either believe in the Bible and ignore the evidence, or trust the evidence, including the evidence that the King James Bible is not the unerring word of God.

First, the report says PROFESSORS, not even "science professors". Then you go on to equate "science professors" and "scientists". But many (most!) scientists are NOT professors, and the study, at least makes no mention of what those folks think. In fact, there have been numerous surveys of scientists that have found that a good percentage of scientists involved in "hard science" ARE religious. In addition, those involved in the social sciences tend to be LESS religious... and very likely a large percentage of those who are the least religious in the report you cite are teachers of "social science", if "scientists" at all.

Even if the numbers of the religious among the science professors turns out to be high, this would simply suggest that it is NON-religious scientists who are more likely to be hired as professors, esp. at elite schools.

Given the bias of much of academia, and esp. of elite schools, this would not surprise me.