@ZealotX Great first post (well…not the first one on this forum). You make excellent points in everything you say. Looks like you are going to fit in quite nicely here.
Just a friendly reminder, though…try not to make any claim or assertion on this forum, unless you have the evidence to back it up - and that is, sufficient and valid evidence, because the folks here will rip your apart. Other than that, of course……have fun! Will talk to you later! Namaste! 
I look forward to said “ripping”. Sometimes it is needed. I’m a proud member of the “facts over feelings” club. However, I certainly try my best not to offend others and if I feel like evidence is lacking I’ll usually make some effort to say that it’s my opinion.
@ZealotX Hands ZealotX a stack of papers. Here ya go! LMAO! 
EDIT: My sense of humor is like a vacuum cleaner…it sucks!
My overall opinion is that everything evolves. At the instant of the “big bang” those elementary forms of energy evolved into other forms of energy, and eventualy evolved into matter. That matter evolved into suns and galaxies, and so on. Politics and people evolve in their posiitons and actions. (don’t touch that stove it is hot … OUCH).
Religions evolve. That that do not wither and fade away. Christianity and major religions also evolve. The practices and dogma of the roman catholic church have changed due to political and societal pressures. The church of 500 AD was quite different than the one of 1300, and the current day.
The perception of the Abrahamic god has also evolved, from the barbaric and cruel one of 2,000 BC to the one of jesus’ time, to the present. Even though, in theory it is the same one.
@David_Killens You know…I always wondered what happened to God, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Maybe God finally found the time and motivation to get anger management therapy or something, and became more peaceful and compassionate. HAHAHAHA!!!
The Jewish prophecies show why Yeshua Ha Notzri Could not possibly have been the Messiah (Mashiach) EG The Messiah is most definitely not divine. He is to be a warrior king in the Davidic tradition. The messiah is to usher in a New Order of peace for all mankind. He is not to die young.
The Mashiach/Messiah/Christ is simply an anointed one. Traditionally, monarchs have ben anointed.
Just so.
There is no contemporary evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Just over the last year I’ve been leaning towards the notion that Jesus is a mythical figure, never a real person***
The authors of the myth of the crucifixion were either ignorant of or ignored Roman custom in crucifixions. Also making the fatuous claim that Pontius Pilatus would do them any favours . Or that he would put himself out for Jews in any way.
Jews have not existed as a people for centuries. They survived as a people for at least 1500 years because of “The Law” [of Moses} There 613, not just ten commandments. All may be found in the Torah, Known collectively as the mitzvot , they cover every aspect of Jewish life. Have a glance at some them.
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***See Richard Carrier on the Historicity of Jesus, Bart Ehrman, on how Jesus become god. There’s lots of lectures by both on YouTube
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https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/756399/jewish/The-613-Commandments-Mitzvot.htm
I hear you and I understand the positions of many Atheists who don’t believe Yeshua existed at all. I cannot agree with that though. And yes, I was already somewhat of a fan of Bart Ehrman. He’s a very good researcher.
Aside from Bart’s lectures, for me, the bible is a library of books written by people. The best way to understand the bible is not to imagine that some space alien whispered sweet somethings in their ears but rather to understand the type of people who wrote it and what their motivations were.
I believe that every god has some kind of basis. That basis is simply something the constructors of that god could use their imagination to wrap their heads around that basis without fully understanding it.
So for example. I have said many times and I cannot see it any other way.
YHWH, the Hebrew god, was a volcano.
Once I came to that realization it seemed PAINFULLY obvious. The only “appearance” of this otherwise invisible God has all the symptoms of a volcanic eruption and since there were no future eruptions to base other stories on, he simply never made another appearance. Coincidence? And the Santorini eruption matches what we would expect to see in Exodus. Fire by night… pillar of cloud by day… etc. And Jethro, surely showed Moses where it was safe to walk around the mountain close to where he lived.
But anyway… that is a real life basis for a god. The rest is imagination.
But human imagination is finite; especially when it comes to mass delusion. There are so many problems with the NT story that I cannot in good conscious believe it was all made up. If it was then the story would align more perfectly / consistently with actual prophecy.
A human being, knowing prophecy, would be able to use that knowledge as a roadmap and Yeshua doesn’t even pretend not to do this. In the case of the donkey he told his disciples to get it for him so that he could fulfill prophecy. That’s pre-meditated. If I was creating a mythical figure it wouldn’t occur to me to write in things that work against him being the figure he claims to be.
It is a common (slimy) tactic to ask atheists question #1 (and of course they answer no). Then (with sleight of hand) accuse them of answering no to question #2.
I hadn’t heard that. Your source?
. I’d read that YHWH began as an ancient Israelite storm god. From there he became a war god . He had a wife called Asherath who was part of the Canaanite pantheon. There is evidence that Ancient Israelites/ Jews were still worshipping a female deity as late as 300 bce.
Sources: ( I recommend both books.)
As for gods being based on fact. Ah, the old “most myths are based on fact” claim. I’m afraid that’s not demonstrably true. It’s true enough that some myths are based on fact, but most are not***
As a general principle, religions reflect the culture which invents them and the people who practice them. It’s unsurprising that religions tend to evolve as societies evolve. EG over time, the monster YHWH of the Torah, who was one god of many, became the stern but loving father and single creator god of the universe.
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***I learned that whilst studying at Adelaide university for my degree in social anthropology. I finished my degree in 1985, which is getting on to 40 years. New knowledge has almost certainly been found. I’ll be thrilled to learn about the sources for your cl;aims.
For future reference, I suggest avoid claims based on what seems reasonable or common sense to you. If you have evidence quote it. Otherwise, unfounded claims may be challenged.
I’m not saying all myths are based on “fact”. I’m saying there’s a basis. That basis could be ignorance of a particular thing, element, force, or superstition in general that is still based on these same elements. But a lot of gods do rise out of the “elements” so to speak. Storm gods, for example, I believe, are often tied to mountains. Think about Zeus. He’s a thunder god but also their entire pantheon was tied to mount Olympus. While this could represent the distance between humans and the gods, placing them in “heaven” because early translations of heaven were simply the sky, I believe it also has something to do with weather activity sometimes seen around mountains and the fact that humans back then couldn’t go up but so high because of the lack of oxygen; therefore creating a place of “reverence” that was “holy” or “set apart”. “Holy Mountains,” I think can also be conflated with volcanoes and the idea of sacrifice in order to pacify them.
Mostly the bible itself. But I believe there was also a not-so-well-done documentary by a somewhat discredited producer. Regardless of the attacks on Jacobovici’s credibility, mostly by Christians who want a more magical explanation of the 10 plagues, I still think Exodus Decoded has a lot of common sense if you have a basic understanding of science.
Now when it comes to what happened… I don’t know. It’s a story first and foremost. Biblical writers exaggerated and took artistic license for the sake of promotion and influence. Even the stories say that the characters lied in order to get what they wanted or protect themselves. It’s interesting that the Torah suggests you need 2-3 witnesses to establish that something happened and yet Moses separates from his entourage as if only he is worthy of going to the top of the holy mountain. And no one else was even allowed to touch the mountain. This gives vibes of something like an Area 51. But there were no witnesses to watch him chisel out the commandments and no one to confirm what he claimed he saw.
But I’m more interested in the description. They said “God” descended upon the mountain in fire. Why? In a volcano the “fire” ascends but from afar, having no knowledge of volcanoes one could easily make that mistake. This fire could be seen from many miles away at night but in daylight the sun would have reflected off the ash particles and they would have only seen cloud.
At no other time does “God” come down from heaven like this. But since the story was based on this, the high priest goes alone into the most holy place of the temple the same way that Moses went alone. This gives the high priest the perfect opportunity to fabricate a religious experience; even create steam or smoke that they can claim is the presence of “God” based on the smoke they saw above the far off mountain; guiding them in that direction like a star.
Going back to Yeshua, Occam’s razor, in this case, in my opinion, sides with the political motivations for why the Jews would want a LIVING king, not a dead one. There’s no real reason to create a dead one who Jews would know could not put forth a substantial argument that he had any claim to prophetic status. A mythical “Christ” works for the Europeans who borrowed this one story from Hebrew culture, but certainly weren’t trying to be Jewish or convert to Judaism. But it doesn’t work for Judaism which you would think would be the target audience of a mythical story.
And because the story doesn’t work in Judaism you don’t see Jews lining up to become Christians. And so why would a Jewish person make up a story that doesn’t work for his religion? And why would a Roman make up a story that creates a mythical powerhouse out of someone who is not of their culture?
Isn’t it clear from history that there was a political fallout from Christianity? Christians were fed to lions by one Emperor but by the time Constantine got involved, the Christian population had increased to the point that he himself thought it politically wise to convert. And this became as non-hostile takeover/merger where Rome regained control over its own people. They didn’t care about the religion of the Jews because they were simply a vassal state, but Rome itself?? That’s where the threat was.
So there’s all these political agendas going on that, for me, work against the notion of a purely fictitious person. I didn’t even begin to talk about the zealots and how they manipulated their own people to get them to eventually fight back. The motivation for the Hebrews was there. It was enough for them to create “terrorist cells” of which you could say Barabbas was one of those people.
I do understand that there are differences in Roman crucifixion that seem off but surely a writer, making up a story would know if they were looking in hindsight. And it’s not like this execution happened in the Roman capital. It surely didn’t involve a Roman citizen. And that alone was a big issue. You know how America had these families locked at the border and lost track of children’s parent’s, effectively kidnapping them? Would that have happened if those people were Americans? Of course not. If an American gets into trouble overseas and the government finds out about it, the State department will often try to intervene.
The execution of Yeshua went against the whole notion of him being king and he was rather unceremoniously mocked, beaten, stabbed, fed vinegar, etc. I believe the crown of thorns and cape was all the idea of the soldiers who basically had enough authority amongst themselves to carry this whole thing out. And there isn’t a script that they seemed to be forced to abide by. Maybe if Yeshua was like Paul. If you read about Paul in the NT it is clear that he was treated differently because he was a Roman citizen. He would have been killed before if he wasn’t and his death may have been more brutal. But there were rules.
Again, if the execution was carried out by soldiers who were under no special rules because perhaps they viewed Yeshua as we would view Osama Bin Laden. And now that I think about it, it’s not like black people were lynched according to some official way that America executed its criminals; even though sometimes these lynchings were carried out by law enforcement. These were off the record because the people being executed were not thought to be equal. The Roman soldiers might have easily looked at the Jews the same way the Jews looked down on the Samaritans.
Argument from incredulity fallacy. That you see a thing as obvious does not mean it’s necessarily true. It’s a claim not an argument.
It might be, in a place with an active volcano, but isn’t for YHWH as I explained in my last post.
Belief in the spiritual goes back to the Neolithic, before there were even villages. Seems to me spiritual beliefs have always [in part] been based on a Post hoc fallacy***
It is also my position that human beings have an imperative to the divine. That it has a powerful evolutionary base. Such beliefs are virtually universal because they meet important human needs. EG helping to deal with the fear of death, allowing the illusion of purpose and control in life. Perhaps most important, religions prove a sense of community and protection from outsiders. This still the case in some countries, where it remains crucial to survival.
Having said that, I agree that all religious beliefs, along with all other beliefs have a reason. That every religious belief I’ve studied has it’s own internal logic base (even if the logic is flawed)
I think it’ simplistic to write all religions off as simply superstition. They fit into that category when based only on faith, rather than even flawed logic.
Bit of an understatement. The Torah is the base mythology of Judaism. IE they made it up.,
Indeed. However, there are 613 commandments, not just 10. It is claimed that Moses continued to receive commandments from god for many years. A difficult feat, since recent archaeology shows that Moses and the Exodus are probably myth.
This starting to too long, so I’ll stop here for now.
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*** Post hoc ergo propter hoc - Wikipedia
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“The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites, who appear instead to have formed as an entity in the central highlands of Canaan in the late second millennium BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture.[3][4][5] Most modern scholars believe that the story of the Exodus has some historical basis,[6][7] but contains little material that is provable.[”
Maybe best not to refer to their rationale as logic if it’s flawed. Wouldn’t flawed logic be irrational by definition?
Sorry for the pedantry, but as you know all too well, we get a lot of theists and religious apologists who use the word logic as rhetoric to falsely add credence to their reasoning, often ironically when they don’t appear to even know what the word means.
If it involves an unsupported belief in anything supernatural then the belief is superstitious by definition. I know many theists balk at that word, but all they have to do is demonstrate sufficient objective evidence for anything supernatural. The Templeton foundation will give them a $million as well.
I agree that faith (in the religious context) as defined in any dictionary, seems incompatible with logic. I’ve yet to encounter any argument or rationale for a religious belief that could be supported by any objective evidence, or offer a rational argument.
Despite the hubris of the claims and assertions many theists open with. It’s telling that theists who make these claims seldom if ever open with the best most compelling evidence or reason they think justifies their belief. On the odd occasion they do, it’s never objective evidence, and usually involves logical fallacies.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies are very often used to erroneously claim prayers have been answered. Then followed up with argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies.
My apologies if my pedantry took us slightly off topic.
Superstition:
a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief.
If you don’t believe in God you Burn in Hell Islam, Christianity,
If bad things happen to you, you deserve it. Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism.
Judiasm: God has the final say in all things. (Can’t demonstrate he is real but he gets the final say.) Disagree and you will get the “Evil eye.”
I believe some form of Moses existed but that, like Jesus, the story is greatly embellished, manufactured, etc. such that you can easily pick out certain aspects and disprove them, and thus many will say that person didn’t exist. However, just because you say you saw a guy with size 20 sneakers before, doesn’t mean size 20 doesn’t exist and it doesn’t mean the guy you saw had feet that big because you likely didn’t physically take his measurements.
But part of the reason I believe he existed is that, again, the story is so bad at certain parts, that it’s hard to believe (for me) that it was completely made up. And so I think Moses was simply a bad guy, like a pre-Hitler or a pre-chairman Kim, who used lies and deception to make the Hebrews believe that the god of their forefathers was the same God that he (alone) was introducing to them. We buy into this just like they did but there’s no reason to believe YHWH is the same God as the original “EL” who was more likely closer to the El, Ol, Al, of several large groups of people whereas perhaps Jethro was the one who influenced Moses that he could do this. And this is where, in my opinion, the mountain storm god that had another name to the Canaanites at large, was influenced by a man who likely lived near a mountain that may or may not have been active at one point in time. There were volcanoes in the middle east region however, I’m not saying this is where the eruption happened that fueled the YHWH mythology, but rather the Santorini eruption was so massive in scale that it was visible in this region; and visible to the extent that it would be weird for no one in that reason to write about it.
And since they were superstitious, which shouldn’t be a bad word, they would have looked to apply some meaning to the event. In other words, they couldn’t resist imagining that their god had something to do with what they saw and they really didn’t understand what they saw because not everyone gets to see a live volcanic eruption. I’ve only seen them in pictures. So imagine what these people were thinking when they saw a light on the horizon without seeing the mountain it was hovering over. And likewise the cloud.
They were far enough away not to recognize it for what it was. Villages who live closer to volcanoes often have a much different, much clearer understanding that it is more natural but, because of superstition, believe they can appease the god so that the volcano doesn’t erupt. Of course, whether it erupts or not has nothing to do with anything they could do but with the right kind of biases in place that wouldn’t matter to their beliefs.
So the Israelites could have been led by a volcano to the direction of a completely different mountain; one that Moses was already familiar with and had traversed with Jethro. And since no one saw anything from Moses going up to the top, Moses could have told a story of seeing something as if he was at the top of an active volcano, seeing that fire as the “hind parts” of God.
There was no way Moses could have survived the air at the top of an active volcano so no, that’s not where he was. But he didn’t need to be there. He already had the story of the burning bush. All of this “fire” elemental narrative simply ends after this period. Why? Because the whole narrative was based on a once-in-a-lifetime event.
When I was a child, and someone said the word terrorist; it typically meant Catholics (Ireland and Nicaragua).
Actually, in reality, the fundies introduce “laws” for all society based on their own god beliefs. THIS is where I personally draw a line. A person’s belief of choice has no authority or basis in law to govern in society.
Since Alabama introduced the first modern anti-abortion legislation in April 2019, five other states have also adopted abortion laws including Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and most recently Louisiana on May 30, 2019.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki
I have little respect for countries that govern via ancient superstition/beliefs.
What the hell is a “third”?