Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”?

Hey Bible thumpers, if you won't listen to me then listen to one of your own:

One of the dodges by some Christian “philosophers”, theologians, fundamentalists, and others, is to suggest that the goal of higher criticism is to “destroy the Bible” or “destroy faith.” Typically, this is a rhetorical device intended to dismiss higher criticism in its entirety. This kind of argumentation is important as it leaves the person suspicious of higher criticism with a feeling of comfort, and much more importantly: they never have to consider any of the procedures or evidence of biblical criticism.

The first assumption of scholars I noted was that historical critics maintain that the texts which comprise the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament have not existed forever. The second presupposition I noted was a belief that all texts, by their very nature, have to be written in a certain literary genre, and that genre identification can inform a reader as to some meaning of the text.

Today I would like to consider a third assumption: If texts did not always exist, and if they are written in a specific genre and human language to aid comprehension, then they must have been written down at some point by a person or group. For each of the books, laments, letters, Psalms, etc. of the Bible there must be a human author, authors, or a redactor that originally penned or edited what has come down to us. Higher criticism merely seeks to posit theories as to the human level of involvement in the creation and promulgation of the different texts.

See Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5. His answer is no. But even though this is true that's exactly what biblical scholars ended up doing.