http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/apologetics.html
You mention, for example, the uniformity of the Bible. This is what Tobin has to say about the issue:
“Q1. Doesn't the fact the Bible shows such an impressive uniformity, although the period of composition spans many centuries, point to the idea that it had a single (divine) author?
“The idea of 'uniformity' is very vague. On the one hand, this claim is trivially true. One would expect some kind of uniformity in the Bible just on the basis of three contingent facts:
“1. The Old Testament is a collection of books from one specific people in the middle east. Thus we would expect cultural continuity (such as the same language [Hebrew or its derivative Aramaic], the same adherence to holy books, i.e. The Torah etc) to be contained within the books since most cultures persist for some time through history.
“2. Similarly the New Testament is a collection of books taken from a group (although not homogeneous as we have seen above) of people who lived in the first and second centuries CE who believed that Jesus's coming was a fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. Finding some 'continuity' in its message with the Old Testament is therefore not surprising.
“3. Finally, and this must not be forgotten, the books of the Bible were collected at (more or less) singular moments in history. The Old Testament for instance was collected by a Rabbinic 'council' during the years following the Jewish revolt in 70 CE. Books that did not correspond to the theological views of the rabbis were explicitly excluded from the canon of the Old Testament. [We give a more detailed description of this process elsewhere in this website.] Thus much of this 'uniformity' is not something which occurs naturally but arose out of an active selection process by Jewish Rabbis within a given period in history. Similarly many books were excluded from the New Testament because they did not conform to the views of the Church Fathers that eventually won control over nascent Christianity. [We give a more detailed description of this process elsewhere in this website.]
“On the other hand, this claim is wrong. When we look at the details, we do not find a uniformity of theologies within the covers of the Bible. There are actually many differing (in some cases diametrically opposite) theologies which can be found in the Bible. In the Old Testament, for instance we find diametrically opposite views on life in Proverbs and in Ecclesiastes. Similarly in the New Testament we find completely opposing views on the value of good works between the epistles of James and Paul.
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