Why do Atheists choose to impugn the Bible for its age when they still use ideas pioneered by Eratosthenes in his books which are much older?

Answer 1

It isn't the age of the two books that makes one useful and the other not. It is the facts they contain.

Eratosthenes was a Greek mathematician who developed a method of identifying Prime number, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He dealt in science and facts which lead to the formalization of geography. Among his accomplishments, he was the first person to accurately calculate the circumference of the earth, the first to calculate the tilt of the Earth on its axis, and the distance from the earth to the sun. Among this other achievements was the first map of the world incorporating parallels and meridians.

The Bible is a poorly merged collection of folk stories of Jewish history without any useful data from a scientific point of view. Notable scientific errors include an imaginative description of the formation of the Universe not supported by observable data, bad data on the number of species of animals on the planet, poor thoughts on genetics (goats can't be influanced to become spotted or striped by putting peeled wands near them) the value of pi (claimed to be 3), the number of legs on locusts (claimed to be 4 not 6), the classification of bats as birds, spurious cures for leprosy, the description of stars as lamps, the ability of iron to float, and others.

As a consequence Eratosthenes works are useful, provable and scientifically sound, the Bible isn't.