@boomer47 I took a a religious history and anthropology course in college, and you have produced almost as much information than they did in that class in the short few days that we have been corresponding.
Would you make a determination about an entire religion from Reading just a little bit of a religious text without any supporting information? How do you understand a full text without reading the whole thing? I don’t even understand that.
It’s not a judgment it’s just an observation. I really want to know.
@Nyarlathotep as I said elsewhere I wasn’t saying that the son had mail or the moon had female ions. I was saying that the sun released positive ions and the moon released negative ions. Which even in the tool world but especially in the mythological world we’re represented by male and female aspects.
You are right I wasn’t super clear about what I was trying to say.
Knowledge is not limited. Mankind currently has so much knowledge a team of a hundred PhD’s could not digest all of it.
Imagination is wonderful, but one must always be aware if they are treading into the land of fantasy. Too many people concoct crazy stories, and somehow people believe these unsupported tales.
But for me, what is far more important is truth and reality. That is why I challenge almost everything, to determine it’s veracity.
Mine was a degree course with a double major in social Anthropology. Much of it was spent studying aspects different religions ,their mythologies, and the cultures in which they arose. I ended up with a broad knowledge of some areas and what was then expert knowledge of a few. BUT, that was in 1985 and is why I describe myself, accurately, as a dilettante.
My choice of the course was at least in part because I was still searching for meaning at that time. However, I was no longer a person of faith. I was not burdened by religious dogma .All of my lecturers and tutors were either atheist or very open minded believers.
Certainly not when presented with new ideas.*** That is so seldom here, that I don’t usually bother reading long posts by believers who post here. Their posts (including yours) seldom contain any new ideas. The tend to make the same claims with the same ignorance of evidence of and reasoned argument. After a dozen or so times it gets a little tedious. You have the saving grace of sincerity and an apparent honesty of intent.
Here you have chosen to form your own opinion of the terms ‘evidence’ and ‘miracle’. That won’t wash This a private internet forum open to the public. Generally speaking ,members know and understand the rules. Choose to break them and you will be called out.
It is not the intention of this atheist to try to destroy your faith nor is it my intention to teach or to try to change the minds of others. This forum is simply a past time for me. I’m here mainly because I enjoy the banter between like minds and because my brain needs the exercise.
***Here I refer to some of the books I have read over the last few years. Am still reading a couple;
Paul; The Mind Of The Apostle, A N Wilson
By Bart Ehrman:
Misquoting Jesus
Lost Christianities
Did Jesus Exist? (I think His weakest book)
Archaeologists:
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts , Israel Finkelstein and Neil Siberman
" Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel" William G Dever
This year; New; so far only lectures by mythicist Dr Richard Carrier on the historicity of Jesus. Although he is thought provoking, I’m not yet convinced by his position.IE that Jesus was/is a mythical figure.
Ongoing for pleasure: Non fiction on areas in which I’m interested. Very interested in ancient Egypt. Still trying to make sense of Egyptian history as it relates to the Torah especially. EG the story of the Exodus is a complete shemozzle, withy no consensus among scholars. They can’t even agree who was pharaoh at the time of Exodus . I’m pretty much convinced that Moses and the Exodus are almost certainly myth.
@David_Killens I agree that we should challenge everything. But the argument you’re having is with the perspective of one of the most referenced scientists of all time. That was his quote not mine.
Carl Sagan is another scientist that talked about imagination being vital:
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.
I’m not saying they imagination should take precedence over facts, quite the contrary.
I don’t think that is what einstein, or Sagan, or a slew of other scientists and great thinkers meant either.
I respect their scientific theories, and I agree with their sentiments on imagination as well.
@boomer47 also I’m sorry posts are so long. I’ll write something and someone will say they want the historical method people places and dates and someone else said they wanted primary sources not opinions. I’m just trying to adhere to the rules not bend them.
For myself this request is for the link. Normally I include links BUT share the information in my own words. A simple “copy and paste” from the address bar.
There is no need to apologise. My post are often far too long. Theoretically, I think “brevity is the soul of wit” . But I don’t often take my own advice, and will wander off the point…
I was doing that at first but then someone said that they wouldn’t do my research for me. I will go back to doing that if it’s not the norm and it prevents people from actually reading what I’m taking the time to write.
Thank you for your advice.
@boomer47 I really enjoy your posts. I just want to be clear and for people to understand I’m not just pulling stuff out of the air. I’m sharing with y’all how I came to Faith. I came this way through looking up historical things because I didn’t know any of the places in the Bible or any of the people. I wanted to know what it was that I was reading about because I felt totally disconnected from the idea of Israel and Hebrews and the ancient world.
There are more citations than I even post. Thank you for being understanding, and if you get a chance check out the Stelaes that I wrote to @David_Killens about.
There are more but for times sake I just listed a couple that mention not only Israel but places where Israelites inhabited the territory.
not just talking about places like the bridge in Spider-Man.
These are actual pharaohs commemorating their conquests into stone.
I think it’s really fascinating and hopefully you will too.
Really? When was that? Be fascinated to see that reference. I can’t recall it.
I gather you’re aware that the Israelites were in fact from Canaan and that Canaan was an Egyptian client state around the time of the alleged Exodus?
For three centuries , Egyptians ruled the land of Canaan. Armies of chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers under the pharaoh Thutmose III thundered through Gaza and defeated a coalition of Canaanite chiefdoms at Megiddo, in what is now northern Israel, in 1458 B.C. The Egyptians then built fortresses, mansions, and agricultural estates from Gaza to Galilee, taking Canaan’s finest products—copper from Dead Sea mines, cedar from Lebanon, olive oil and wine from the Mediterranean coast, along with untold numbers of slaves and concubines—and sending them overland and across the Mediterranean and Red Seas to Egypt to please its elites."
PS Have al look at a map to see the distance of Canaan from Egypt. Then perhaps explain how it took Moses et al 40 years to get there?
Finally; Moses is the alleged author of Exodus. How does he get to write of his own death and burial ? Deuteronomy 34: And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. 6 He buried him[a] in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. 7 Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone. 8 The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over." (NIV)
@boomer47 I have a little food for thought for you if you’re interested in ancient Egypt:
If the plagues that happened before The Exodus really happened, it would have been the most terrible thing to have happened in Egyptian history.
The Pharaoh involved would have been hated. In the biblical narrative, pharaohs servants said to him that Egypt was ruined.
How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed? Exodus 10:7
There are only three Pharaoh’s whose names have been scratched off the Kings lists and they are all connected to each other.
To erase a person’s history was a tactic for disgraced people.
For instance in Jewish tradition, if you are not an upright person, but your father was–you are called Bar and then your father’s name. For women it’s bet or bath. Bathsheba is another example of this. She was of the House of Sheba, but because she caused David to sin according to tradition, they do not pronounce her name.
In the narrative of Barabbas being chosen to be released to the Jews instead of Jesus… It’s actually saying more than what it appears to.
Bar Abbas was not the individual’s name, it was a title. It meant that neither his father nor himself righteous. His name in the Bible is literally the son of the father.
According to the scriptures, Jesus was the Son of the Father.
I appreciate you telling me some of the books that you’re reading. I don’t really consider Norman Finkelstein to be legitimate.
He’s not just secular, he’s an anti-semite. In my opinion that means that he has bias. Yes, I am aware that he affiliates publicly as a Jew, but he has venom for Israel. I’ve read other things by him.
So what? Einstein had the good sense to test his hypothesis and utilize independent verification. You don’t actually think every inspiration he ever had amounted to anything do you? Einstein believed the universe was “Static and Unchanging” Flush that bit of intuition down the toilet! Einstein’s derivation for his famous E = mc^2 only worked for a particle at rest. His inspiration and imagination failed him 7 times before Max von Laue showed him the error of his ways. Einstein’s intuition and inspiration drove him to hate quantum mechanics. There is another inspirational flare we can flush down the toilet. Do you not understand that Einstein had hundreds more failures than successes. Imagination and inspiration only replace hard work in fairy tales and stories of magic… Hey!! Like the books you read!
I reference the Mesha Stelae and the Merneptah Stelae. There are pictures and links. I’m sorry right now I don’t have time to repost them. I may add them in later.
I would love to talk Egyptian history with you! it is so vast and often documented by multiple sources in multiple ways.
The death of a person was written this way as a literary technique. I don’t have time to post any links or anything right now but I will add them in later. Usually, the death of a person was written by the successor–such as a son.
For me the fact that Moses’s death was written this way is a verifying factor.
You’d have to be familiar with this style to copy it.
Also, there are many instances where scribes are used in the scriptures. Even Muhammad had his family transcribe his words: Jeremiah, Muhammad etc
Ummmm… You do not get to bring up Egyptian History and Moses in the same breath. The Moses myth is little more than a magical fairy tail built on stories that came before it.
Are you unaware of the fact that there were little to no Jewish slaves in Egypt during the time Moses was to have supposedly existed. Did you not know that there was a Second Jewish Temple actually in Egypt. Jews lived and worked in Egypt along side Egyptians. There were even some very prominent Jews, one of them a General in the Egyptian army. There is no evidence for an Jewish exodus from Egypt.
Outside of biblical scripture, there is next to no evidence in the archaeological and historical record of Moses’s existence.
The man’s name is Israel Finkelstein and he is a highly reputed Israeli Archaeologist
There is at present no scholarly consensus for the pharaoh of the exodus because no one can agree exactly when the Exodus occurred.
TRecent archaeology from **Israel Finkelstein ** and Neil Siberman have shown Moses and the Exodus are almost certainly myth.
If you insist on persisting down this road perhaps also consider the plagues described in Exodus could be explained by natural causes. Have a little look around on line if you want evidence.
Indeed. Jesus’ Hebrew name would have been something like Yeshua/Yoshua bar Yusuf. Jesus is a Latin name from the Greek ‘Iesous’. (there is no ‘j’ in written Hebrew and vowels are implied by context)
You make it sound grand. It’s more like saying ‘what’s his name’ or in America; ‘Join Doe’
The gospels are the mythology of christianity nor reliable as history (read only the four accounts of the resurrection side by side)
Imo the gospels were not written by Jews or by anyone familiar with Jewish law and custom, not to mention Roman custom.***
A devout Jew, Jesus would never have referred to himself as the son of god nor permitted others to do so. That was blasphemy for which he would be stoned, possibly by his own disciples.
—Jesus allegedly interfered when a woman was about to be stoned for adultery. He allegedly used the first recorded instance of a Tu quoque fallacy I’ve seen****
Jews at that time especially lived according to the law of Moses, which consists of 613 commandments, not just ten, and covers every aspect of daily life.
To commit adultery was to break the law, the penalty was death by stoning. The woman had been found guilty and was about to be executed, not murdered. Had Jesus have interfered as recorded , he would have been guilty of blasphemy and would himself have been stoned.
*** as far as I can discover, Pontius Pilate was a nasty piece of work and had no love for the Jews and would be unlikely to be concerned with Jewish sensibilities. Such as allowing Jesus’ body to be removed from the cross. Usual custom was to leave the corpse of a crucified person on the cross until it rotted away and was eaten by scavengers—THAT was for a Jew the greatest shame of crucifixion.
As for Barabbas, I think that incident, in context, is pure theatre and an invention of the gospel writers, as are all of the gospels. They’re myth; they made them up
*** Tu quoque/appeal to hypocrisy fallacy. Also known as the Nuremberg defence as it was attempted by several Nazi War criminals at the Nuremberg Tribunal 1946. They were not accepted. Actual examples; “Yes, we bombed Coventry into oblivion, but you fire bombed Dresden, which had no military value------you Americans are so self righteous about how we treated the Jews. Look at how You treat your negroes, at home and as soldiers.” The accusations were perfectly true but irrelevant. The hypocrisy of the allies did not diminish the guilt of those accused of war crimes.
Jesus’ accusations of hypocrisy to those about to stone the woman were probably true because imo hypocrisy is part of the human condition. It was also irrelevant; Jesus’ accusations did not change the guilt of the woman in having committed a capital crime.
Equally, not more, if you’re going to paraphrase Einstein please do take care not to change what he has said entirely.
Correct, as is falsifiability, testing, evidence gathering, peer review, etc etc etc…you can’t cherry pick part of the method, as it loses its robust efficacy.
Btw, Einstein declared himself an atheist on multiple occasions, and rejected belief in the idea a human could survive their own physical death in any meaningful way.
He only ever used the word god as a metaphor, and this is relentlessly misrepresented by theists.
If a text contradicts scientific fact, or outrages reason and without demonstrating any objective evidence, whilst claiming the text formed part of narrative that was inspired by an infallible deity with limitless knowledge and power, then that claim is demonstrated to be false.
However as I’ve stated previously, there are no other books more likely to make me disbelief in deities than the bible and koran, and the more I read them the more that became the case.