simple explanations
I came across this sentence in a post criticising atheists, and had to concede it’s the most compelling reason I’ve read for the existence of deities. However, I think this is the absolute peak of logic that the theist argument can get to: there’s nowhere to proceed after this statement. And perhaps a few good reasons to not even reach this peak.
Even the most fervent admirers of Occam’s razor would have to agree that the simplest explanation is not always the most convincing. The fact is that every human society has come to very different conclusions about what this god is (if indeed they fix on a god, and not spirits, or multiple deities), and their conclusions tell us more about their society as it evolved than anything supernaturally convincing. If every human was yearning towards the same, or even a similar god notion, we might have pause for thought.
To illustrate how meaningful this method of reaching conclusions is, let’s have a look at a few competing and similarly simple explanations:
- The simplest explanation for the lack of evidence that any supernatural forces exist, is that no supernatural forces exist.
- The simplest explanation for most humans following the belief system of their home society, is that indoctrination works.
- The simplest explanation for Catholicism being the biggest Christian denomination in the world, is that the Pope is right, and contraception is evil.
- The simplest explanation for men controlling human society, is that God created men to be in charge.
- The simplest explanation for Islam being the fastest growing religion in the world, is that it is the one true religion.
- The simplest explanation for the ubiquity and persistence of the human concept of ghosts, is that there are ghosts with whom humans yearn to connect.
It’s simple to conclude that it makes sense to move beyond the simplest explanations.
The simplest explanation for the ubiquity and persistence of the human concept of God is that there is a loving, forgiving, omnipotent ideal of a parent figure to whom the child within all humans yearns to connect.
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Bingo!
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Did I win anything?
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Yes — my approval. 😛
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I thought I always had that —
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LOL
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“The simplest explanation for the ubiquity and persistence of the human concept of God is that there is a loving, forgiving, omnipotent ideal of a parent figure to whom the child within all humans yearns to connect.” Afraid not, there’s no way that’s the ‘simplest’. It’s the most plausible given what we currently know. Bingo goes to the Christian.
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Violet wrote: “Afraid not, there’s no way that’s the ‘simplest’. It’s the most plausible given what we currently know. Bingo goes to the Christian.”
I’ll use the term ‘most basic’. For example, historically, if an infant/child was separated from his/her primary caregiver, the chances of survival were not good. If they did manage to survive, their mental health was compromised. Studies have shown that the more an infant/child smiles to his/her parent, the greater chance the parent will bond with the child.
Same thing can happen (death and/or poor health) when a parent/primary caregiver and child don’t bond. When we look at our turbulent history, wars, famine, natural catastrophes, etc., religion has traditionally provided a surrogate parent — in the case of patriarchal religions — Father God who promises to meet our most basic needs. For the person to feel a bond with this invisible sky daddy, delusion (faith) becomes necessary, and the bonding and reward chemicals (neurotransmitters) activate.
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Neuron, you have to realize that violetwisp’s sense of humor is a bit, – ¿como se dice? – unique. The statement was meant facetiously.
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My bad. Must come from my ‘literal’ indoctrination networks reinforced from the past. I still have a lot of synaptic pruning yet to do. 😉
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And the reason I know, is because I have done exactly the same thing! (I’m suspecting a dopamine rush, everytime someone misconstrues a comment and gets irate)
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LOL
My belief is that dopamine = the devil. 😉 Too much of a good thing causes one to lack empathy for others and poor decision making, plus it can lead to mental illness — hence, Congress.
The irony is that authoritarian religions cause this excess, and then turn around and instill rules to decrease it— all the while those making the rules are ensuring their next fix.
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No es asi. No me entiendes bien.
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Because your Dad’s ”Manuel” and you come from Barcelona, right?
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Oooh, I like that. Religion as a surrogate parent for people whose experience was lacking. I was taken by a comment Raut made a couple of weeks back about finding the longing for sky daddy kind of insane. That’s from someone brought up in a happy, well adjusted atheist family. It hadn’t really occurred to me it wasn’t a natural longing for everyone.
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“a happy, well adjusted atheist family”
Precisely. Puts new meaning to the scripture: “For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
Rich meant (for the most part) that all needs were met. When all your needs are met, no need for a god God. Rulers know that if they keep ’em dumb, and keep ’em poor it’s to their advantage. It also explains why religion thrives in the poorest U.S. states and 3rd world countries. Too many kids for a primary caregiver to take care of (Republican’s strategy to undermine reproductive rights) ensures that religion will continue to thrive. Oh, there’s so much to this tangled web of belief.
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“Oh, there’s so much to this tangled web of belief.” Couldn’t agree more! The dopamine drug addiction factor is a fascinating angle too.
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Violet, your blog has come to be one of my favorites on WP. You open the door to explore at length, allowing your posts to evolve. Several who participate here bring their owe research, expertise and perspective which I find enriching. I also wanted to mention, regarding your comment about a happy, well adjusted atheist family, that ‘happy, well adjusted’ is the key here. This isn’t limited to atheist homes. Even Christian homes can be happy, well adjusted if kids are treated with respect and not threatened with corporal punishment and teachings about hell and damnation.
I’m sure it goes without saying that anyone can be subjected to hostel environments, as was the case with people in Romania under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu.. He made getting a divorce very difficult, banned contraceptives and abortion, contributing to a proliferation of unwanted, abandoned babies and children, leading to over population and starvation. Sounds very RRC and evangelical/fundamental, doesn’t it?
As an aside, he was one of ten children growing up in a poor family; was working in a factory by age 11, and was brutally beaten (causing a brain injury) while spending time in jail for protesting with a revolutionary working-class movement.
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Oops, I meant to write RCC.
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You probably meant to write, “em>hostile” too — 😉
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Chit. I so suck at proofing.
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To which of these would that exclamation refer:
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LOL — smart-ass.
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Apparently the secret’s out, as to where I keep my brains —
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I’m not gonna touch that one.
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Saying please probably wouldn’t do any good, but I think we’ve digressed —
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Indeed.
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Arch, I should note — I appreciate the clarification. Some corrections are petty. This one, I think, was necessary. Ruth should get a kick out of this. Hope you have a great weekend.
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U2!
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Heh!
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Hoping you have a great weekend, too, Ruth.
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You, too! I’ve been slammed today. I’m gonna come back to this post. There are some interesting videos and articles posted. I look forward to reading/watching.
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I think you are going to enjoy the video Ignostic Atheist posted. I watched it several months back and thought it was superb. I’m looking forward to watching the one John recommended.
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Would it be ironic for me to like this post after my most recent post? 😉
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The simplest explanation for humans being in charge of the planet is that the god God put them there? Oh, and the simplest explanation for us mistreating animals is that they deserve it.
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Well, I guess everything coming down to survival is simple in essence, but becomes more complex as you explore it more in-depth, rather than being simple to the point of not being able to explore further by saying “God did it”.
Though I just heard that evidence of the ripples of the Big Bang have been identified which supposedly opens up a possibility for scientists to hone in on a “theory of everything”. Wouldn’t that be simply mind-blowing!
Video that talks about it here:
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Is this the part where I post the Louis CK video again?
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Have I seen it? Maybe I need a refresher!
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Jason, try the “I’m so glad I’m not female” link under “Recent Posts” above – violetwisp has given me so much flack because I MAY have ALLEGEDLY, ACCIDENTALLY posted it more than once, and I’m just giving some of it back.
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Ah, relevant comedy! I like it!
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SEE, Vi – SOMEbody appreciates it!
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The simplest explanation for why religions are dangerous is because they are.
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You’ve got it all wrong. The simplest explanation for why religions are dangerous is because the god God made them dangerous. Keep up! 😉
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LOL
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I find it possible that God designed the human brain with the ability and desire to believe in him and with the freedom to be abused with false gods.
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Did he also design our brains with a gullibility factor that allows us to believe the contradictions and blatant fabrications in the Bible?
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Or did he design our brains to find intended meaning rather than irrelevant detail?
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I think you’ve just answered my question.
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If a questioned question is an answered question, then spot on! 😀
I didn’t mean to be confrontational my friend. Just thinking. . .
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Hoping violetwisp doesn’t mind, let me give you something to think about:
http://jerichobrisance.com/2014/03/20/pontius-our-pilot-part-1/
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You’re welcome to post whatever you want, and as many times as you forgetfully want. 😉
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Ve haf vways off dilling viz pipple like you —
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What do you make of it?
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Thinker, did you ever know anyone who often lies? Most of us have at one time or another. I’m not talking about mean, hurtful lies, just small ones, intended to get themselves out of trouble or seem better at something than they actually are? I have, I’ve known two teenagers like that, sadly both related to me, and one of those was my own son, about whom, at 7, I once defended, saying, “My son would never lie to me.” I was wrong , and from that time forward to the present, though he’s now an adult, mature and responsible, and as far as I know, hasn’t lied to me in years, I can never be entirely sure that what he’s telling me is the truth – “Fool me once, shame on you…”
For me, the Bible is like that. Every time a biblical writer says something happened, and archaeology, after exhaustive research, can find no evidence that it did, or science proves the physical impossibility of the occurrence, I can only conclude that that writer lied to me. It doesn’t take many of those lies, until, like my own son – in whom I am still well pleased – I can never be entirely certain that I’m being told the truth.
The inconsistencies in the Gospels, combined with historical knowledge of how things worked (according to archeological records) in those days, and written testimony about the kind of person Pilate was, assure me that fabrication was going on. When those facts are combined with the additional fact that the identities of none of the Gospel writers (and hence their credibilities), are known, and that none of them ever met Jesus face to face, to which is added the deliberate, obvious contrivances (e.g., “census in Bethlehem“) by the authors, to make the Jesus stories fit the older prophecies, and the fact that many of the parts fit other savior myths of Middle Eastern antiquity, such as the virgin birth (Mithra), the impregnation by a spirit (Isis, with Horus), etc., and there’s not much left to hang a hat on.
But the final straw is the assertion the NT makes – in fact, the very theme of it – that Jesus somehow gave his life for our sins, is ludicrous, at best. A brief study of Jewish law and customs tells us that the “sin offering,” involved the slaughter of a perfect, unblemished lamb, raised, as I said earlier (and which – I believe it was you – questioned), in a Migdol, as a sacrifice to Yahweh, to show him that you are sorry for sinning. What kind of entity is so full of himself, that his ego requires he have his own son killed, as a sacrifice to himself? And if he DID exist, what possible cause would I have, for worshiping and praising such a mentally deranged being – other, of course, than out of fear? Gods and humans are separated by the perceived superiority of the god, but if humans are too humane to kill their own children, where lies that superiority? I’d as soon worship Joe, the plumber, and I’m not overly fond of plumbers.
Asked, and answered.
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Arch — I’m with you regarding the lies. When we comb through the studies it becomes quite apparent that religion/religious leaders took advantage of human vulnerability. As I became more aware of the neurological mechanisms involved in attachment-bonding to other humans, and how organized religion uses this to their advantage, it felt like the ultimate betrayal. To invested your deepest love and loyalty to a lie is not an easy pill to swallow.
It is embarrassing to admit that I went that deep with my faith. I was wired during a time when I was vulnerable and powerless (a child), and studies show that we are more prone to attachment when we are vulnerable and powerless. Nothing pisses me off more than to be lied to.
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Agreed, those who lie to us, tell us, in that lie, in just how low esteem they regard us.
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Yes — and how manipulative they are.
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Arch, wow that was a really in depth reply, I appreciate it. I seem to be antagonizing you, but please believe me, I sympathize with you more than you know. I don’t think I can respond to everything you said due to time constraints, but I’d like to select a few things and respond.
Specifically about the differences in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate, I find this to be irrelevant detail in the story. Of course these stories were authored by humans and they were selective and had an intention. God did not chisel out the New Testament on stone and hand it to the apostles. People experienced something and felt compelled to write it down through the lens of first century culture. Classical scholars think that the gospels are of the genre of Greco-Roman biography. All of ancient biographies were littered with miraculous occurrences. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a grain of truth.
Now, your final straw I really sympathize with. We should clarify though, what you are really criticizing is the penal substitution theory of atonement, not anything scripture says. In Mark Jesus says he will die as a ransom. People try to ask, a ransom paid to whom? To God? To Satan? I think neither. A ransom paid to humanity. The atonement to me is the love of God to set up a beacon in history for us to believe and it to transform our minds, that I might overcome the vices that hold me captive (crucify my sin), and be blessed with a way to connect with God to properly request forgiveness when I fail. God provided this way to properly request forgiveness in Christ as a gift. If I did not have this connection, how would my conscience ever be washed before God? So, I think you rightfully criticize the penal substitution theory as immoral and illogical. I hope I have given you something new to think about.
-Brandon
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Only that you are giving a 21st century spin to a 1st century story that was based on 1st century Hebrew law and customs.
I find such subjective statements lacking in evidentiary credibility.
I would expect no different reaction – I get it all the time from theists who want to gloss over the glaring inconsistencies as “irrelevant,” while searching for that “grain of truth” needle in a haystack of obfuscation.
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With all due respect, can you support the weight of your claim that I am a 21st century revisionist? And, even when I was an atheist most of the inconsistency claims seemed irrelevant. I hope I’m not invalidated your concern. . .
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Well, you do – to my senses at least – appear to exist, and the Gregorian calendar designates it to be the 21st century, and since you seem to be adding things to the gospels that were not originally written there, I would have to define that as revising, so I guess I’d have to say, if the shoe fits —
Translation, please?
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I am not adding, rather as I read I interpret which is inescapable in the human condition. I use different words, but I can derive the meaning from the text. My question is, can you derive penal substitution theory? Or better, should you? Does the text intend to teach it?
Translation: I don’t mean to sound like I’m taking your concern with inconsistencies as “clearly invalid”. Maybe that’s what it sounds like. I am honestly suggesting that this is not how God intended you to read the documents, not with 21st century scrutiny, but as the original audience would have. Both approaches have value, it’s just I can’t see how these kinds of inconsistencies are sufficient to chop the whole story out of existence and say its all rubbish. Even as an atheist, this was less concern to me, so it’s not like I’m just regurgitating soundbytes to win a debate. Is this thinking really that rationally inferior?
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And yet you somehow don’t see that as a revision.
Now you’re purporting to know your god’s intentions? Don’t you find that a bit presumptuous?
Try imagining yourself in a court case, in which all four witnesses gave conflicting testimony.
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“I find it possible that God designed the human brain with the ability and desire to believe in him and with the freedom to be abused with false gods.” That’s the supernatural trump card, but you’re welcome to play it. I’m just not clear how you apply that to the billions of people who have lived with no access to information on your god. What about the Mayans and Aztecs and every other society that’s past with no way to link to anything beyond the religions they developed? Were they all evil people who abused their freedom with false gods? I’m afraid it’s a ridiculous argument.
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No one, in all honesty, can say that violetwisp is not an equal-opportunity offender!
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Not so much a supernatural trump card, but you’re right that we can’t say those civilizations were evil to believe in false gods. Let me rephrase: I find it possible that God designed the human brain with the ability and desire to believe in gods. That’s more palatable, ay? 😀
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Ah, but which god are you calling God? Marduk? Yahweh? Amurru? Ra?
Would the real god please stand up? Funny thing about invisible gods, one can never tell if they’re standing or sitting.
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If I had one wish before I died it would be to see the day when nobody gave a fuck. The day church separated from state, the day “God” didn’t creep into motivation or policy, the day religion retreated behind closed, personal walls where it belonged.
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Oh, I don’t know. If people kept the irrational reasons for their wonky opinions behind religious walls, it would be more difficult to help them see the light. 🙂
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Trouble is – there’s about as much chance of them snapping out of it as me waking up one morning proclaiming Jesus is my saviour.Bat shit will never be anything but – I say, sweep it out of the barn and have a square dance.At some point we all have to suck up, shut up and move on. It’s about understanding God or lack of is humanity’s Achilles heal. Religion had it’s chance – why not kick it to the curb. Zero tolerance for religious poppycock from either side strikes me as an interesting change of pace. Just a thought 🙂
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“Religious poppycock” is underused. I might try and squeeze it in a future post. 🙂
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Actually, Neuronotes can probably shed more light on this than I can, but there is some MRI evidence of our being evolutionarily hardwired toward some form of “spirituality”. Christians have tried to use this to say that the Christian God put that there, that he created in us a need to worship him, but MRI studies suggest that the part of the brain that is ‘active’ while thinking about God is also active while simply meditating or thinking about other gods besides the Christian God. So this hardwiring doesn’t tell us which god to believe in or even any god at all, just what we call spirituality. The simplest explanation is that it is an evolutionary trait developed as a coping mechanism.
Click to access Is%20God%20in%20Our%20Genes.pdf
An excerpt:
For one thing, God is a concept that appears in human cultures all over the globe, regardless of how
geographically isolated they are.
When tribes living in remote areas come up with
a concept of God as readily as nations living
shoulder to shoulder, it’s a fairly strong indication that the idea is preloaded in the genome rather than
picked up on the fly. If that’s the case, it’s an equally strong indication that there are very good reasons
it’s there.
One of those reasons might be that, as the sole sp
ecies—as far as we know—capable of contemplating
its own death, we needed something larger than ourselves to make that knowledge tolerable.
“Anticipation of our own demise is the price we pay for a highly developed frontal lobe,” says
Persinger. “In many ways, [a God experience is] a brilliant adaptation. It’s a built-in pacifier.”
There may be some brilliant rebuttal to this. I’ve only just begun to read about it.
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It’s not “spirituality,” Ruth, rather agency. Apologists have inserted the words “spirituality” and “god,” but that’s being highly disingenuous to the studies conclusions. It sounds counter-intuitive, but there is an evolutionary benefit to seeing agency in things. The shifting tall grass is the best example. It could be the result of wind, or a lion. Survival dictated that guessing “lion,” was the far better option. It was less expensive, and we (as a species) erred on the side of caution.
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Agency…agency! That’s why I put spirituality in quotes. Because for some reason at 5:30 a.m. I couldn’t come up with a better word. Thank you!
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It’s one of those words i had to physically burn into my head, too 🙂
Here’s a good snippet from Bloom who’s conducted an awful lot of research into this matter:
(Banerjee, K., and P. Bloom. 2013) “Drawing on evidence from developmental psychology, we argue here that the answer is no: children lack spontaneous theistic views and the emergence of religion is crucially dependent on culture.
there is no evidence that children spontaneously come to believe in one or more divine creators. It is one thing, after all, to think about natural entities as intentionally designed artifacts of a sort; it is quite another to generate an enduring belief in invisible agents who have created these artifacts. Indeed, other studies find that young children are not committed creationists; they are equally likely to provide explanations of species origins that involve spontaneous generation [10].
Older children, by contrast, do exclusively endorse creationist explanations. This shift to a robust creation is preference arises in part because older children are more adept at grasping the existential themes invoked by the question of species origins (e.g., existence and final cause) and also because the notion of a divine creator of nature meshes well with their early-emerging teleological biases [10]. However, these older children do not spontaneously propose novel divine creators. Instead, they adopt the particular creationist account that their culture supplies.”
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Did no-one read my five phases of humanity?! I teach, and no-one learns. 😉
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You said it wouldn’t be on the exam!
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“Drawing on evidence from developmental psychology, we argue here that the answer is no: children lack spontaneous theistic views and the emergence of religion is crucially dependent on culture.
there is no evidence that children spontaneously come to believe in one or more divine creators”
Interesting. In the video that Ignostic Atheist posted one of Andy Thompson’s points, if I understand it correctly, was that children will and do spontaneously conjure up a deity – not a far leap from an imaginary friend. It was part of his point about Decoupled Cognition.
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Is Decoupled Cognition the same thing as mind-body dualism?
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I suppose in the way he used it it’s very similar. He used the term Decoupled Cognition to explain why we have a tendency to believe in the mind/thought processes still existing after death. Or how we imagine conversations in our own minds, either past or future with real people. Like when we replay an conversation in our mind and change our responses, or the other persons and the outcome is altered. Or when we ‘role play’ a conversation we want or need to have and imagine how that conversation will play out.
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He talks about it at the 10:29 mark in the video, if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.
He says it allows us to have complex interactions with unseen others.
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Correction: it was what he called Decoupled Cognition combined with Hyperactive Agency Detection.
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Speaking of agency, John, interesting (I think) story – some years ago, I had occasion to do a lot of night driving on backwoods dirt roads. Innumerable times, I noticed rabbits run alongside my car, then for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, suddenly cut across my path and be run over before I could slam on the brakes.
After giving it much thought, I believe I finally deduced the reason for what must appear like a suicide. As the car moved, so did its light, and consequently, so did the shadows of the roadside grass and weeds, which the rabbits, assigning agency, perceived as a threat and sought to escape, to their detriment.
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Nice theory. Certainly makes sense.
Curious: didn’t it cross your mind after the first few suicide runs to perhaps slow down when you saw the next likely candidate?
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I had a schedule to keep and only one in a couple dozen dodged in front of me – if I’d slowed down for every rabbit that ran alongside my car, I might as well have gotten out and walked.
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I’m in a huge (to a rabbit) vehicle, moving fast, and actually roaring (or seeming to), a warning signal that most animals produce as a warning, yet if the rabbit runs TOWARD real danger, as opposed to perceived danger, at what point does the rabbit bear responsibility for its own actions? To me, that’s somewhat analogous to a Christian, in Roman times, going to his death in the arena because he refused to bow to a strange invisible man in the sky, preferring his own invisible man in the sky instead – at what point does responsibility for his death shift, from the Romans, to his own dumb decisions?
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Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?
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That, and how good the rabbit stew was —
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Well, it is poor mans duck, after all! 🙂
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I think you’d enjoy this video:
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That was SO good, Iggy, that I plan to steal it and use it somewhere else – yoink!
(The Simpson’s have SO enriched our lives, haven’t they?)
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And here I am wondering where the Simpsons appeared in the video.
It is a delightful watch. To tie it in with Occam’s Razor, there are few assumptions in his talk. It’s not quite so catchy as goddidit, but has much greater explanatory power.
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I was wondering the same thing about The Simpsons. I must have missed something. And I watched the video looking for the reference. Doh!
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Don’t have time to watch the video ATM, but I think I’ve seen this one. Doesn’t the speaker argue that theism is adaptive and depends on discrete modules of the brain? I think both of these assertions are controversial within the scientific community. If this is the guy I’m thinking of, his confidence exceeds what the results support. Nevertheless, my question for you is, what is the relevance of theism being adaptive? Or, say we go with evolutionary psychology which tells a different story (and seems to garner more scientific support), what is the relevance of theism being an evolutionary glitch?
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“Nevertheless, my question for you is, what is the relevance of theism being adaptive? Or, say we go with evolutionary psychology which tells a different story (and seems to garner more scientific support), what is the relevance of theism being an evolutionary glitch?”
How can it be irrelevant? Wouldn’t that go a long way to proving that, at the very least, any of the gods humans believe in are created in the mind and not outside of it? My point being, while it still would not disprove a god it would tell us that there is no set dogma. Any of our current methodologies of ‘worship’ and ‘belief’ are most likely wrong. The relevance would be that a lot more people would be more likely to drop their dogma. It isn’t that people have imaginary friends that sticks in the craw of the atheist. It is that people do what they believe their imaginary friend is telling them. And in some very specific and harmful ways.
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Hey Ruth, sorry I didn’t mean to imply that these natural explanations are irrelevant, it was more about how we employ them. Last night when I commented I failed to see that you guys had already got to what I was going for, sorry about that I think I was too tired. Screen looked all blurry! 😀
I don’t see a reason for Christian theists to a priori reject these kinds of natural explanations. The idea in Christianity is that nature was designed at the very least to give us the ability to believe in gods, then God sets up beacons throughout history and in our lives to call us somewhere. Obviously if you are a Neanderthal, you will not be called to believe in Jesus. This doesn’t mean as a Neanderthal you won’t have some kind of calling from God.
In your conversation you go into Occam’s razor. Hopefully you will agree with me that it is a principle stating that given a set of valid models, the model with the least assumptions should be adopted. Which model prevails out of atheism and theism? I would say neither one. What is your take?
Suppose, the razor cuts off theism. Why suppose the razor has any relevance to the question? If the razor really is the reason someone rejects theism, it seems like principle worshiping to me. Although that’s a blunt assessment, I say this as someone who was once an atheist.
-Brandon
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The Razor lets you prefer one explanation over another. It doesn’t say to reject anything, but it can lead you to acknowledge that an explanation is inadequate. Also, it is not just requiring the least number of assumptions; it is seeking the greatest explanatory value with the least assumptions.
How is seeing God as the answer to everything not conclusion worshiping?
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Hey Ignostic, do you think the razor cuts off theism? How do you make this assessment? A lot of people would agree with me that by design you have to worship (i.e., highly value) something. That’s the human condition. As a theist I think the Creator properly deserves worship over a created string of words, the razor.
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“As a theist I think the Creator properly deserves worship over a created string of words, the razor.”
Brandon, do you worship your parents, who created you in a moment of neurochemically induced passion? Why do you assume this ‘Creator’ even wants your worship it? If your parents or parent expected you to worship him/her/them, wouldn’t that send of a red flag of a mental disorder?
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I definitely see your concern, Victoria. It seems the human condition does not compel anyone to worship God or anything in particular, so long as something fills the slot that is our highest value. It may be sex, money, power, pleasure, family, success at work, morality, something sentimental, a Star Wars toy collection, or just about anything. Theologically I don’t think God expects worship. However, it may be that God set up reality such that worshiping God is extremely valuable to our minds and transforms us to able to overcome our vices and love humanity where cynicism previously reigned.
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“However, it may be that God set up reality such that worshiping God is extremely valuable to our minds and transforms us to able to overcome our vices and love humanity where cynicism previously reigned.”
Brandon, please watch the doc that John Z recommended when you have the time. I realize it will take up an hour+ of your time, but when you can spare the time, it will offer a lot of fuel for thought. Worshiping god causes of the vices you claim you can overcome, and ‘civilization’ is but a thin veneer. Have you studied anything about death anxiety and/or terror management theory?
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I’ll check into it, I trust your recommendations. I am unfamiliar with death anxiety and terror management theory. As a naïve response I would say theism can cause negative emotions and be involved in evil (i.e., 911). But, I think bad theology is the culprit rather than theism. We are capable of twisting anything good into evil in this reality.
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Thank you for considering my recommendation. I do think it will enrich our discourse. 🙂
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The question you must ask yourself would be, is there any situation in the world for which you would take the explanation for which you have made more assumptions? It’s not worshiping a principle, it is recognizing a principle. On the other hand, do you readily and willingly insert God did it as the answer to any given question? By the way, God worship would not be the same as goddidit worship, which is what I meant by conclusion worship.
Of course I think the razor cuts off theism. What a fundamentalist would consider evidence is much different from a weak moderate though. To quote:
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That’s a good approach. Would I hold the model that is razor-inferior? Probably not. That’s why I’ve hacked off demons, for example. I agree, inserting (asserting, assuming, presuming, holding as axiom) that “God did it” does imply God is an explanation. I don’t see God as an explanation. I just believe God did things like create this reality. You believe that there is no need for God. Neither model seems to be razor-susceptible. Am I missing something? Like am I being sematic? I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
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Ok, so we have the statement, “God created reality.” What is the explanatory value in that? It doesn’t tell us why, or how. Unless you believe that Genesis is an account of these things, of course, but if that is the case then there are much greater issues to consider other than how applicable Occam’s Razor is to your causal beliefs. But you strike me as a bit more introspective than your average thumper. Anyway, generally when we discuss this single issue we end up talking about your typical first cause arguments. These arguments, however, never actually point to the god God. They could indicate something as vague as an eternal natural state with particular properties which “cause” universes. Of course, I don’t even think that a causal relationship is necessary, or even exists, outside of the universe.
So there we go. “God created reality,” does not explain why or how, and does not explain why a god is necessary. It makes the assumption that one was necessary, and the assumption that he either made the universe look as though it is billions of years old and the product of natural processes, or the universe really is billions of years old and he used natural processes, and in either case, why assume a god? To illustrate, I could as easily say the Hindu god Brahma created reality, and it would explain just as much, and make the same assumptions.
On the other hand, we have something like multiverse theory which has great explanatory value and a small assumption or two on top of a plethora of proven facts.
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I find myself pretty well in agreement with you. As a theist I just don’t use God as an assumption for explaining this or that. I just believe. Like I’m not devising a grand model of the universe and need to use assumptions. I guess this believing is more akin to interpretation than explanation. . . Maybe I’m not the average thumper. I’ll thump the thumpers with you. 😀
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“Just believing” makes it even more of an assumption.
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Hi Brandon,
How old were you when you became an atheist? And was your reasoning due to your fascination with dinosaurs? I mean no disrespect when I ask these questions. I really like you. I’d also like to know what life event occurred, if any, that reactivated your belief neural circuitry? You were wired from infancy, given that you were raised in a fundamental environment. Sometimes, often, this circuitry is never pruned if it was established during early childhood.
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Hey Victoria, those are good questions! I think I was maybe 23 when I became an atheist. I was very frustrated with the church at the time. I had just started medical school and was skateboarding with an atheist buddy and he asked, “Isn’t it immoral for God to send people to hell for eternity for finite crimes?” This set off a deeper investigation that lasted for years. I hope to give a more detailed account in my blog. 😀
I think there was a life event that reactivated my theistic neural circuitry. I unexpectedly and very much to my surprise was compelled by an argument to believe that Jesus’ resurrection is what birthed Christianity. But, it wasn’t like everything fell into place all of the sudden, like all my atheist contentions were answered. I struggled with this belief and what to do. God was very deistic for a long time. It’s possible that this was inevitable because it was sort of programmed into me as a child, but I have reason to doubt this. Mostly because I didn’t give the resurrection any particular significance. Actually, I did not particularly like reading the New Testament and never understood it in my upbringing. I always thought, why not cut out all the “this is a letter from Paul” stuff and tell me all the right doctrine (like a good fundamentalist). So, what I experienced at reconversion was a different kind of Christianity, something that had to be sought and learned, exciting and challenging.
I hope to detail my reconversion in blogging as well. If you are interested in a sneak peak, check out the comments under my first blog post “letter to atheists”. It’s a mini-study on my psyche! And, always feel free to ask me anything. I have nothing to hide.
-Brandon
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“It’s possible that this was inevitable because it was sort of programmed into me as a child, but I have reason to doubt this. Mostly because I didn’t give the resurrection any particular significance.”
Brandon, thanks for sharing. I did read your Athiest post shortly after you published it and at the time there were only two comments, so I will check out your comment section. May I ask — since you have nothing to hide *wink* — have you had ‘spiritual’ type experiences or are you basing this on your own logic or both? This is not a trick question and I’m not suggesting that you have any kind of mental disorder. Not what so ever. When the conditions are right, spiritual type experiences happen often to people, and they can be duplicated. I know from personal experience.
The resurrection story is incredibly primitive, involving the limbic system. I find it interesting that you give it significance given your thirst for knowledge. I was a believer for 4 decades, two of which I dedicated to study. I studied every ‘credible’ thing I could get my hands on, including the original languages.
Conclusion — I’d been duped. 😀
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Hahah — I meant to write atheist.
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Hey Victoria, sorry I meant the “letter to Atheists” post. I think there is 15 comments so far. As for spiritual experiences. . . I don’t really know what this means. Like strong emotions that accompany belief? I won’t deny that theism provokes positive emotional experiences. Sometimes these go away though, especially when I am suffering. We reach a crossroads and have to ask ourselves, am I going to risk holding this belief? If God is not deistic and personal, it becomes, am I going to trust God? It can be incredibly difficult. Believers use descriptions like, “God feels distant”.
I think being a Christian is pretty risky and all out radical, it always has been. Jesus’ own family thought he was delusional, and Festus thought Paul had gone insane. Anyway, to answer your question. . . what seemed insurmountable was the intellectual barriers built up by atheism. Can desire be powerful enough to overcome these barriers? Of all people, I think I worshipped rationality, so when this belief formed in me, it was. . . conflicting. This is because it didn’t take long for me to see that the argument that had persuaded me had severe weaknesses. I desperately wanted to construct an argument to match my belief. . . There’s more but I guess I’ll leave it at that for now. These thoughts are expanded in more detail in the comments I referred to earlier.
I totally see how you concluded that you were duped, I think you are being perfectly intellectually honest especially given my own experience. Maybe you were duped. I hope I am not!
-Brandon
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“I think being a Christian is pretty risky and all out radical”
Brandon, thanks for your reply. I’ll respond to your reply in sections. This really stood out. Why is being a Christian risky and all out radical? I don’t want to assume I know what you mean by this, and the obvious will only come to mind, given how dysfunctional Christianity is. But what I find interesting is that so many think that Jesus’ message brought something new to humanity. It didn’t — so why Jesus?
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Victoria, that a great question! It’s risky in a sense that, well, quite frankly sometimes I feel like it’s not true. My intellect says look at the problem of evil. And, I have a choice: do I trust that God has a satisfactory answer even though it’s hidden away, a profound mystery? That God is ultimately faithful? However, I’m not saying that risking is the rationally superior position as in Pascal’s wager.
And, it’s radical in a sense that I’m deeply cynical, and sometimes despite what I feel, I have to act on the outside as if I love this person. When I obey the command to love, I find that I do end up loving them in the end. People are all unique in their walks of life with unique struggles, and when the temptation to be cynical avails, I have to revert to self-control. But, I can only express self-control with a transformed mind and I can only have a transformed mind if I believe. Belief and trust form faith and faith is a gift from God, one that can be accepted when it is offered. /theologizing
As for Jesus, I would agree that he sources virtually everything from Judaism and John the Baptist. He was particularly effective at teaching by using parables. But, Christianity as a whole seems to have brought to the world stage the value of humility and egalitarian love. I think there are plenty of historians and philosophers who have made effective arguments for this although my memory fails to bring forth any names!
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Brandon, I haven’t eaten today, and it almost 3PM so I’ll refuel and be back. I’m going to worship a burrito. 😀
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¡Ay yi yi! ¡Me gusta mucho los burritos, y las enchiladas, y los chiles relleños, y todo la comida de Mexico – que rico! ¡Ahora tengo hambre!
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LOL — me too, Arch. All of it. When I was a believer, I used to joke that there better be Mexican food in heaven or I’m not interested.
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I lived in a villa overlooking the Pacific, in Baja California del Norte for six years. Don’t get me started.
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Pretty area. I used to live in CA as well. My dad and other family members still live there. Now I live in an area (the South) where they exploit Mexican labor in the fields; don’t get me started. The only advantage is — there are plenty of Mexican restaurants here. However, I prefer to make my own. 🌯 I like my salsa.
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Me gusta salsa verde en mis juevos revueltos —
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huevos
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Spell in haste, repent in leisure —
Unfortunately, this website doesn’t redline misspelled words in Espanish.
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Mmmm.
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I must seriously question that assumption.
Buddhism brought those values to the world stage 500 years before Yeshua was even a twinkle in the Holy Spirit’s eye.
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OK Brandon, I’m back. I just finished reading your “Letter to Atheist” post. I reread to “Why I Became An Atheist”, and the comment section in both posts. I have to say that Daniel was spot on. There was much he said that I concurred with but this stood out:
“I submit to you that much of your obvious inner turmoil is a direct consequence of your addiction to god-belief, which is in turn caused by your desire to believe in a god, which causes you to lower your standards for what counts as “evidence for god”, which in turn causes you to infuse every random coincidence you witness, every incidence of normal human brain-weirdness with cosmic significance, which then hypnotizes you into believing that your own ego is a god.”
Can we say Amen and amen? 😉
I have more to say — I’ll start with your assertion of Jesus promoting “egalitarian love” with emphasis on love. But this is not the first time you’ve mentioned this as to assume it’s Divine. Egalitarians favor strong group unity. Emphasis — ‘group’. Egalitarians have more power over their leaders than the leaders have over them. They will kick their leaders to the curb, and they have, historically, been known to assassinate a leader who got too full of him/herself .
Jesus is said to have been insistent that no one could come to the father god except through him. That’s someone who’s gonna get their ass kicked to the curb. 😀 Hello? But, this love thing only, truly applies to tribalism. “If you follow me you get rewarded with eternal life”. “Love your enemies.” — “Pssst — if you don’t follow me you are going to hell”. Jesus toys — manipulates his followers — using fear tactics — all the while knowing the psychological ramifications of death anxiety and the fear of not belonging. Is that love?
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Victoria, thanks for reading all of it. I have to say that I am really surprised that you agree with Daniel. But, maybe I shouldn’t be.
Regarding Jesus, your quote is from the gospel of John where Jesus is I AM. With that context, if you don’t come to him, you have rejected life itself and don’t even need divine judgment. And, your analysis of Jesus fails to take into account his knowledge. If Jesus knew something about the afterlife it would be immoral for him to not speak of it, whether it makes people uncomfortable or not. As an analogy, it does not matter that it makes a child uncomfortable or anxious, I have a moral obligation to tell the child about the peril of playing near the cliff.
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Brandon, why are you surprised that I would agree with Daniel? I may have not agreed with his bed-side manner at times, but the information he shared complimented the neurological studies I read — as well as my own experiences after a part of my prefrontal cortex came back online — the part dealing with critical social assessment and negative emotions (towards a dearly loved one, i.e., Jesus).
I have a question: Are you in love with Jesus?
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Well, Victoria, the addiction/desire hypothesis is just so simple and does not credit the complexity of the brain and psyche. Even before the age of neurotransmitters and fMRIs, Freud said theism is due to wishing for a parental figure. Theologians do not require magic to overcome natural explanations. We say God created nature including the brain and it would be trivial to include theism in its architecture. Honestly I shouldn’t be surprised for people that disagree to want an explanation as to why and how I am delusional. I should be happy that someone cares enough to be honest like Daniel. He’s helped me think through quite a bit.
You ask if I am in love with Jesus. . . I don’t know what this means. One time I was arguing with my wife and things were bad. You know, one of those unfortunate times. She was crying and frustrated and asked me why I love her. She said she was convinced that I had no reason to love her, that she was a bad wife. . . I told her, “Ever since we met and got acquainted. . . I felt compelled to love you, not because you meet some kind of passionate desire, but because I value your interaction with me and your love for me.” To me, love is multilayered. Is it a rush of endorphins? Yes, at times. Is it frustration? Yes. Is it the sting of the conscience and asking for forgiveness? Yes. Is it humility? You better believe it. 😀 I am highly skeptical that a neurosurgeon would be able to radioablate any brain region leaving me functional and unable to love. So, do I “love” Jesus? Yeah, I guess I do love the character I read about and the person I believe in.
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OK — let me rephrase that. Do you love God with all your being — all your “heart, mind, soul, and body”?
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When I first read this commandment, I mean after I reconverted, I thought, what does this even mean? How can I love God? Johannine Christianity gives an answer: “For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.” (1 John 5:3). The “world” is not political powers, it’s more of the temptations and vices that hold us back. It’s equivalent to Johannine Christianity’s other claim: God is love. It means that to love God is to love love, to truly value others. Also, like how Jesus said, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.”
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“For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments”
What commandments are you talking about — Jesus’ commandments or the OT? I get confused when you go on about Christ and Jesus, and quoting scriptures attributed to him, as though they are the word of God, and then tell John that in your own view Jesus did not know everything. Was Jesus God or not?
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:14 – “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us
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I have to admit, the “commandments” 1 John refers to are ambiguous. I don’t think it refers to the Mosaic Law or the ten commandments. It’s more likely to refer to the Golden Rule and the command to love God. But, I admit its ambiguity.
When I reconverted I was uncertain about who the Christ was (this is called Christology). It actually took time to come to some understanding of what it meant. The Gospel of John was written way after Jesus time, even the early church fathers said it was “not always literally true but spiritually true”. I don’t think Jesus walked around saying he was God. However, I do believe that early Christians concluded that he must have been. The hymn in Philippians 2 says he “was in the form of God”. So, I have concluded that, yes Jesus was divine, that whatever his identity is equals God’s identity.
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Yet despite that, he still didn’t possess the knowledge that Abraham, Isaasc, Jacob/Israel and Moses never existed – amazing.
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Hi Brandon. If I may jump in briefly.
You say: “And, your analysis of Jesus fails to take into account his knowledge.”
Is this the same Jesus who didn’t know Moses wasn’t a historical character?
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John! Always asking the hard questions! 😀
My own view is that Jesus did not know everything. It’s possible that he did not know if Moses was fictional or historical just like its possible that he did not know if demons existed or were simply primitive explanations of neuropsychiatric illness.
In my view what he was privileged to know was particular theological truths like the Kingdom of Heaven, divine judgment, repentance, etc.
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Hi Brandon. With all due respect, that’s a tremendously hard answer to accept. Jesus was Yhwh; albeit exact Christian interpretation of this is a little wonky. As the story goes, the story believed by most if not all 1st Century Jews was that out of every character in the Torah none met and chatted with Yhwh more than Moses. Moses was “The” Man; the cat God (who was Jesus) entered into a Covenant with! This is the dude who negotiated and signed the whole Chosen People contract. Yhwh (Jesus) rescued Moses and his people from slavery, annihilated the Eastern Mediterranean’s only true superpower, parted the sea for him, and even gave Moses not one but TWO sets of commandments! He stuck with Moses for 40 years, chatting about everything from how to build the right alter to what type of fabrics and perfumes he liked best. (Remember, the first five books of the Tanakh are also called the Masoretic Text because Jews believed Moses wrote it all). These guys, Moses and Yhwh (Jesus) were close. Hell, Yhwh (Jesus) gave Moses a supernatural weapon, the Arc of the Covenant, and also ordered Moses to murder 2,000 Hebrews just to prove he was a jealous god. That’s a blood bond. Moses and Yhwh (Jesus) were close, and Jesus clearly states that the Mosaic Law he/Yhwh established with the old guy in the desert would stand until the end of the universe. Jesus (Yhwh) was not a Christian, he was a Jew, and made it perfectly clear he (Yhwh) was there to keep the work he (his dad, himself) started with Moses going.
Are you trying to suggest Jesus, who was Yhwh, had completely forgotten that this entire history (a history he was the LEADING ACTOR in) never happened?
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John, I believe you’re asking the wrong person to think logically.
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“John, I believe you’re asking the wrong person to think logically.”
Arch, did you ever believe in god — and have a deep faith? I’m not talking about cultural belief, but real committed belief. Were you brainwashed by fundamentalism from childhood? I personally don’t think that Brandon is not capable thinking logically. There’s a lot at stake here. Brandon was once an atheist for a brief time, so I don’t know if he would experience a ‘spiritual’ crisis, but it’s possible.
I have been involved on religious forums where people actually became clinically depressed, even suicidal after realizing they’d been duped. I’m not suggesting that Brandon would experience a type of ‘dark night of the soul’, if you will, but I can tell you that deconversion, after a lifetime of deep belief, is not for the faint at heart. Few dare to look into the abyss. I do believe, however, that Brandon may be one who has the courage to do just that. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. 🙂
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Yes, Vicky, I did, as a child – I recall as an early teenager, wondering how, with all of the intricate beauty that surrounds us in the world, could someone NOT believe in god. I grew out of it about the same time as I did pimples, and with about the same sense of relief.
RE: “Brandon was once an atheist for a brief time” – so he says, and so, possibly, he may also believe, and of course I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that equally likely, he may have been undergoing some form of youthful rebellion, rejecting the religious ideologies of his parents – or one parent in particular – and his “return to the fold” involved little more than resolving the genesis of his rebellion.
I get that you are concerned about his psychological well-being, and I admire your compassion, but he’s a big boy, and at least to a degree, in charge of his own fate – all he really needs to do, to avoid such a potential meltdown, is to stay off of atheist websites, avoiding any beliefs other than his own, or at the very least, stop making claims that have been debunked by scientists, archeologist, and historians for years.
I highly respect your intellect, and now equally admire your compassion, but I believe you are identifying with him, whereas, I am not. If I could see that he was struggling with anything, I’m not insensitive, but what I see, is someone who has been taught a unique debating technique, and is using it to his fullest capacity, and I find it hard to give him the benefit of that doubt.
Lo siento mucho, Mija —
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Arch, were you addressing me? My name is not Vicky. 😉 Call me neuron, neuro, neuronotes, Victoria, or dip shit if that floats your boat.
I agree that his short stint with atheism was most likely teenage type rebellion. As far as identifying with him — I’m only asking that you empathize. Yes, he’s a big boy, and I was not suggesting that he wasn’t. I’m just not sure that your ‘tactic’ in this particular discourse is advantageous. JMO
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Wow! Sure glad I’m not that sensitive about being called, “arch”!
I have a hard time calling anyone,”Victoria,” though it’s a beautiful name, simply because everytime I write it, I keep getting an image of “The Virgin Queen,” (and I would certainly hope you’re not that, as virtue is its own punishment), whose era began all of the sexual repression the Republicans are still promoting today.
And shouldn’t that be “dip chit”?
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Oh come on Arch — surely you can associate Victoria with me, no? 😀 I’m simply not fond of the name Vicky (no offense to anyone named Vicky), and I don’t consider that being overly sensitive. Are you cool with that? Is there a name you prefer besides Arch?
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How the hell was I supposed to know? I was trying to soften the tone, by reducing the formality. And no, arch is fine, I’m not picky (like SOME people I know!).
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I appreciate your attempt to soften the tone. And as far as being accused of being picky? Well, I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. You got a problem with that? 😀 If so, that’s not my problem.
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Oh, did someone accuse you of being picky? Where is he? Lemme at ‘im!
(Did you notice, we’re digressing again –)
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“Did you notice, we’re digressing again”
As usual, lol. (sorry Violet)
Let’s split a burrito with green sauce. A kind of peace offering. Just know that I rarely, if ever share my burrito. Or better yet — I have a ‘special’ peace pipe. We might need more than one burrito, though. 😛
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Don’t worry, I’ve given up all hope of ever following the conversation here. You two having a spat about names is at least something I can keep up with! 😀
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LOL
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Sounds fair, Ms N☮☂℮ṧ.
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Cool — you bring the Victoria beer.
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If we’re going to stick with the authentic, shouldn’t that be Tecate, with a slice of lime, maybe a dash of sal? I’d suggest Corona, but though “Hecho en Mexico,” it’s actually a German beer, brewed by Germans who moved to Mexico over a hundred years ago, and bringing their recipes with them, opened a brewery.
I’ve never tried Victoria – either the beer or the queen – as for European beers (originally), I’m rather fond of Blue Moon (now owned by Coors, just down 9th street from my former home).
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I’ve never been a big beer drinker, but on my birthday, my friends bought Victoria beer and limes, and it was my first Mexican beer. I liked it. Much better than the piss water they sell here in the U.S.
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RE: “I’ve never been a big beer drinker.”
Me either – I don’t always drink beer, but when I do….
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When you do…you make sure there are shots of tequila to wash ’em down?
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NO! Tequila hits me faster than anything, and I wind up in strange bathrooms I don’t remember ever entering! Tequila is not my friend.
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Hahahah — not good. I’m not much of a drinker, period. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a drink every once in a while. Here’s a ‘fun’ fact, however you want to look at it. My sister was told that she could never get pregnant. Female issues. Well, she has two kids now — both conceived (five years apart) after she had shots of Tequila, which she rarely drinks.
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So there’s yet another good reason for me to stay away from tequila – a pregnant man past menopause could quickly become a laughing stock!
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LOL Actually, the LMAO to your Hmmmm comment was that I thought you were thinking “how many women have I knock up and don’t know it” 😉
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I’ll have you know I’ve been extremely careful in my dalliances, the “Dead-beat Dad” laws are too strict to be otherwise.
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I was just joshing with you.
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Me too, I josh a lot, as you may have noticed.
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*knocked
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“And shouldn’t that be “dip chit”?”
Hahaha, touché`
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This doesn’t even require logic, just a simple comparison of the story (as presented) to the facts (as they are).
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John, from my perspective there are some things I would change in your story. The main one is the relationship between Yahweh and Jesus. I think Jesus was fully, entirely human – he really was cold, hungry, tempted, suffered while being mocked and tortured, etc. He did not claim omniscience and even states there are things the Father knows that he does not. As a human with a human brain he would have a finite memory, and I certainly don’t think it would include any “supernatural” memories. Actually, I reject the category of supernatural, it’s not found in scripture and is not helpful theologically.
So, I can’t imagine how, from my perspective, Jesus would know anything about Moses that wasn’t simply written down on scrolls. And, Jesus might not have been able to read them, so it came from hearing priests at the synagogue.
I do however believe Jesus had the identity of God. You and I (John and Brandon) share identity as human creatures, but we are also individuals. But, Jesus did not have the identity of a human creature, rather that of God. It’s not as if Jesus had divine amnesia, rather that the property of identity is not necessarily tethered to knowledge and memory.
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So, just so i’m clear on this: you don’t think Jesus performed any miracles then?
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I don’t think Jesus walked around with arbitrary magic powers. I think that Jesus had a great faith and was given the authority to perform miracles for very specific purposes. For example, when Jesus went to his hometown, he was unable to perform miracles! (Mark 6)
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“I think Jesus had a great faith and was given the authority to perform miracles,” but not given the authority to know a rather HUGE part of Jewish history?
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Again, this presumes that the patriarchs were all myth. I am not willing to bow down to any intellectual tyrant giving out claims of certitude that the patriarchs were myth. If that is really what scholars are saying, they are academic dogmatists. But, I don’t think that’s what they are saying. I think they are saying, “We have good arguments and evidence that the patriarchs were myth even though we are not certain.” They are probably intellectually humble about it.
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“I think they are saying, “We have good arguments and evidence that the patriarchs were myth even though we are not certain.”
How do you know that Brandon? You haven’t even looked at the data John was referring to. Pass the crystal ball my way, I wanna look inside, too. 😛
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So now, those respected archaeologists, who have spent up to 35 years researching the Levant, but who happen to disagree with you, are dogmatists? You’re very adept at assigning the burden of proof, how about trotting out some evidence that the Patriarchs and Moses were real?
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The world’s leading biblical archaeologist is Prof. Ze’ev Herzog. This is what he says:
“The patriarchs’ acts are legendary stories… The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people’s emergence are radically different from what that story tells.”
This is Professor Magen Broshi, head Archaeologist at the Israel Museum:
“I think there is no serious scholar in Israel or in the world who does not accept this position. Herzog represents a large group of Israeli scholars, and he stands squarely within the consensus. Twenty years ago even I wrote of the same matters and I was not an innovator. Archaeologists simply do not take the trouble of bringing their discoveries to public attention.”
This is Rabbi Steven Leder of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
“Defending a rabbi in the 21st century for saying the Exodus story isn’t factual is like defending him for saying the Earth isn’t flat. It’s neither new nor shocking to most of us that the Earth is round or that the Torah isn’t a history book dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.”
This is Rabbi David Wolpe:
“The rejection of the Bible as literally true is more or less settled and understood among most Conservative rabbis.”
This is Christianity Today’s Kevin D. Miller:
“The fact is that not one shred of direct archaeological evidence has been found for Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob or the 400-plus years the children of Israel sojourned in Egypt. The same is true for their miraculous exodus from slavery.”
This is from a recent article in Israel’s oldest leading daily Newspaper, Hareetz:
“Currently there is broad agreement among archaeologists and Bible scholars that there is no historical basis for the narratives of the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan, nor any archaeological evidence to make them think otherwise.”
I can fill dozens of pages with similar quotes from archaeologists, scholars, historians, and Rabbis. I can fill dozens more pages with all the evidences that have led them to these conclusions. Can you produce a single reputable archaeologist (preferably an Israeli who holds current tenure and has led digs in Israeli and the Sinai) and a Rabbi who’ll support your position?
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Oh John, haven’t you learned ANYthing? Beliefs always trump facts!
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I was contemplating whether or not it was worth actually replying, but Brandon deserves the benefit of the doubt, and the time. This stuff isn’t well known by Christians, they haven’t been exposed to the truth which is out there, so a chance like this to educate can only be good, even if its initially met with a wall of denial. I don’t blame him for that.
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You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Dinn —
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John, thanks for the references, I should read more about it before I offer an opinion. In what little material I have encountered there are some dissenters out there. Hopefully they aren’t all conservative! Anyone I hope I didn’t come off as too bullheaded in this conversation.
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Using words like “dissenters” doesn’t serve you well.
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Sorry, John, I posted mine before I read yours!
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No problem
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Would that knowledge include Abraham and Moses, about whom there is no historical or archaeological evidence whatsoever? Just curious, as Yeshua speaks of them as though they were real.
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Hey Arch, John Zande just asked me that question somewhere on here.
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Actually, John asked only about Moses (which I acknowledged in a subsequent comment), while I asked about both Moses and Abraham, both of whom Yeshua (if he ever existed) reputedly referenced, yet I couldn’t help noticing that you failed to answer either of us.
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So you know that those Old Testament figures never existed? You really know this? That’s an extraordinary claim and it will require extraordinary evidence to back it. Please tell me!
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If I may field this briefly: Yes, we do know with a great deal of certainty. The Pentateuch is historical fiction. The Patriarchs (Isaac and Jacob) are recognised today to actually be avatars for the northern and southern tribes, with Abraham, the Father, in the middle, Hebron (Judah), uniting them all. It’s poetry. Remember when the work was “actually” written: the 7th and 6th century, after the sacking of Mamlekhet Yisra’el (Kingdom of Israel) by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Judah, and its Yahwehist priests, penned a geopolitical work of fiction to capitalise on the destruction of their more powerful neighbour. They constructed a “history” which explained that they, Judah, were in fact the centre of the Jewish world. How do we know this? There exists a slew of findings, from era specific blunders (like the Philistines said to be around in the time of Abraham and later Moses, yet not actually arriving on the Levant until hundreds upon hundreds of years later than claimed) to hard settlement patterns which do not speak of a great “arrival.” It’s a composite picture composed of a million little things which weighed together flatly contradicts everything in the Pentateuch. It didn’t happen, and the majority of Jewish Rabbis today admit it didn’t happen. The Patriarchs, Egypt, Moses, Conquest: its all myth, and you won’t find a single reputable biblical archaeologist, scholar, or Rabbi today who’ll disagree with that.
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The picture I have gotten from hearing archeologists and historians is one of much less certainty than this. I’ve heard, “We don’t know what to do with this material.” This is mainly because there is good reason to think that ancient people practiced redaction. This means anachronisms like the Philistines showing up where they shouldn’t in history may have simply been a editing via redaction. That’s why I say we cannot make strong claims like “Moses certainly didn’t exist”. At best you can say things like, “It’s possible that these stories are mythological, and until we have definitive proof otherwise, they are as likely to be myth as they are to contain any amount of actual history.”
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Your spin abilities are fascinating, practice much?
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No, it’s not better to say “It’s possible that these stories are mythological”. The worlds leading authorities are quite clear on this matter: it’s myth. Period. There is not a single reputable archaeologist in the world who say the narrative is true. Not one. I hope that’s clear. The evidence is so decisive in fact the majority of Rabbi’s accept it. Think on this. Really think on it. The majority of Jewish Rabbi’s. These are NOT people who’d lightly say “Our book is fiction.” They have more invested in these stories than you could ever have in a hundred lives, so their conclusions bear an awful lot of weight. The Patriarchs, Egypt, Moses, Exodus and Conquest are all myth.
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I don’t doubt this, I think these scholars are doing the best they can with the current academic rules of historiography. I guess I just have an arbitrarily higher standard than them (not that my standard is better or more rational, just more stringent).
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You have “an arbitrarily higher standard” than the heads of Israeli University Archaeological departments?
I really don’t know what to say to that.
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“I guess I just have an arbitrarily higher standard than them (not that my standard is better or more rational, just more stringent).”
Brandon, have you taken the time to read the studies that John was referring too? All of them? Have you also taken into consideration that you have a belief filter that may be obscuring your judgement? If you haven’t read the studies, the findings, why haven’t you requested to at least look at them before determining that you have an arbitrarily higher standard? If you have thoroughly read the findings, point out to us what you disagree with, and why?
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Hey Victoria, I have not read all of those studies and it’s certainly outside of my field of expertise. I have glanced at what is considered the best evidence (archeological, anthropological, historical) and there’s just not enough evidence to meet the burden of proof for saying “This was certainly mythological”. You can say that about Young Earth Creationism, but not the patriarchs.
Everyone has a belief filter, everyone is interpreting. We cannot escape this part of the human condition. That’s why scientific claims are so highly valued. If I say this drug will cure the disease, I can test it and demonstrate it. But, forensic science, archeology, and history look back in time and do not have the ability to come to conclusions with near the certainty of medical science.
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“Everyone has a belief filter, everyone is interpreting. We cannot escape this part of the human condition.”
But Brandon, you are exhibiting signs of high latent inhibition. You made a judgement about data you’ve never read. But most importantly, you don’t seem the least bit curious. If I wanted to ‘know’ what’s ‘truth’ — fact from fiction, I’d leave no rock unturned. You seem to be skipping over rocks.
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Victoria, I see your concern. I need to be careful. I need to qualify my thoughts, I have only dabbled in history. I have seen the difficulties of first century history and of the philosophy of history, historiography. I have also seen what people consider to be the best ancient evidence. I have not seen all ancient evidence or all the ink spilled thinking about it. But, based on what I have seen, I am highly skeptical that a sober claim can be made that the patriarchs are certainly myth. Adam and Eve? Myth. Noah? Myth. But, Abraham and Moses? The jury is out.
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“Abraham and Moses? The jury is out.”
Why did you single out Abraham and Moses? The two that ‘might’ give Jesus any validity? You’ve heard of cherry picking, right ? — or do you prefer Bible buffet? 😀
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How about a Chinese menu – one from column A, 2 from column B –?
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Yeah, and let’s throw in the combo section, too. You get an egg roll. 😛
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No, Brandon, the “jury is not still out.” The jury came in well over two generations ago and delivered their verdict. Myth. The only area of serious biblical archaeology that is still active (meaning there still exists lively debate and excavations are on-going) is whether or not Judah had a developed urban culture in the 9th Century. That’s it. Personally i’m not at all interested in this debate as it only pertains to whether or not there was United Kingdom. That’s not important to me. The subjects of the Patriarchs, Moses, Egypt, Exodus and Conquest are closed.
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John, I appreciate this conversation, it brings up important issues that I have not given enough time to investigate. Archeologist, William Dever said, “Today I think most archaeologists would argue that there is no direct archeological proof that Abraham, for instance, ever lived.” That’s from the PBS website NOVA program about Old Testament and archeology. It’s humbling, no doubt, but I don’t understand why people would think the case is closed (Dever never implies it after all). It’s like saying there are no flies in my house. Have you looked everywhere? What if the flies are not where you expected like under the carpet?
And, Abraham was supposed to be a nomad just outside of prehistory. The fact that there aren’t artifacts from him should not be a surprise at all. Moses is more problematic. The text says something like 600,000 left Egypt but we have not found physical evidence for this kind of mass exodus nor does it seem possible to keep that many people alive in the desert. Some archeologists think the exodus was way smaller than described and the biblical text was just embellished and redacted over time to its present form which does not match the archeological data.
With this kind of hypothesis, I think it’s too early to say case is closed, and I have no stake in this like I mentioned before. If they were legendary, my theology works out just the same.
-Brandon
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You can look in every nook and cranny if you like, for flies, but the more space you cover in your search without finding flies in your house, the smaller the odds become that they’re there.
Everyone who can: watch Cosmos tonight on Fox, hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, for a better view of what the REAL world is like.
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Arch, I agree with NDT as he criticizes God-of-the-gaps here. . . now, Arch, what can I do to improve our interactions short of agreeing? Please let me know if there is anything. And, if you have a question about me like if I really was an atheist or what got me there please ask me. I have nothing to hide from you. I really just want to be here to offer another perspective, and you would be surprised how often mine will line up with yours.
-Brandon
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OK, a new tactic – did you have to consult with anyone, or are your altering your game plan on your own? Never mind, I’ll play.
What can you do? Learn.
Stupidity is inherent, we each inherit varying degrees of intelligence, and as yet, we’ve not learned how to alter that. The one thing we CAN change, is our degree of ignorance.
You seem to know little about the history of the Bible, who wrote it, under what circumstances, when, using what as reference material. You seem to know little about the history of the area, from early Mesopotamia, through the Levant, to Egypt, and of the cultures and gods that flourished there – the Sumerians, for example, had a working society that lasted 4,000 years – what other culture can make that boast?
You appear not to know a lot about the works of the multitude of qualified archaeologists, who have poured over the Levant for nearly the past hundred years – check out Dever, the sources that John Zande offered you, and the work of Israel Finklestein and his associate, Silberman, as well.
Don’t do this in order to better relate to me, as a project of that nature will take years, and this topic, this blog, even I may not be available that far in the future – do it for yourself.
I realize it will be a Herclean effort on your part, but try viewing the evidence with an open mind —
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I can see that archeology is very important to you. I appreciate your advice and I will take it. I have probably said more than I am qualified to say on this thread on the subject, so I hope you and John will have mercy on me. Thanks,
B
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Question, NT: what’s your take on the “virgin birth”?
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I just searched PubMed for cases of human parthenogenesis and found that it’s considered impossible because it does not result in viable embryos due to the requirement of paternally imprinted genes. Also, if I remember correctly virgin births were used in ancient biographies to indicate the importance of the person (?). So, I’m inclined to say the virgin birth never happened, but was added to Matthew’s gospel to give the reader a sense of the importance of Jesus.
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And I’m inclined to agree with you that it never happened, so that’s once in a row.
HOWever, our reasons for Matt adding it, differ significantly.
The King James Bible was copied, for the most part, from a Greek translation of the Hebrew. In the original, the Hebrew version has Isiah 7 predicting that a young woman would have a child. This was translated into the Greek as being a virgin, but the Hebrew word for virgin was never used. Of course, by the time the NT writers began, Hebrew had ceased to be spoken in the Levant – since the Babylonian captivity, in 500 BCE, the language had gradually been replaced by Aramaic. There’s an excellent chance that Matthew (or whoever the anonymous author was, to whose work the name Matthew was finally given), didn’t even read Hebrew. At any rate, in his overzealous attempt to write his gospel to appear that Isiah’s prediction had actually come true, resulting in a genuine Messiah, “Matthew” quoted the Greek version of Isiah, attributing a virgin birth to Yeshua, that Isiah had never even predicted.
All of these things, the average Bible reader never hears, which is why I say that you need to look beyond the Bible, behind the scenes, as it were.
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Nice! I also remember somewhere Paul quotes the Septuagint where is mistranslated the original Hebrew. Very fascinating occurrences.
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Do you understand why I cringe everytime I hear a theist describe the Bible as being the inerrant word of god?
http://jerichobrisance.com/2014/03/23/youtube-isaiah-gate-and-the-virgin-mary-minus-the-virgin/
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“Some archaeologists think the exodus was way smaller than described”
No, no, no, no Brandon… no “archaeologists” say that. Certain evangelical amateurs might suggest it, even Rabbi Wolpe thinks this “might” be the case, but no professional, reputable archaeologist does. You know why? Because there is no evidence for any large movement of people and their encampments. Many of those stations (Etham, Pi-hahiriroth and Baal-zephon to name just three) weren’t even in existence in the 13th or 14th century, but were well-establish (and well-known) in the 7th Century BCE… precisely when it’s now known the story was first knitted together. A city even more out-of-place is Pithom which the Israelites were apparently forced to build (Exodus 1:11), yet this site has been discovered to of in fact been a project of Egyptian King Necho II, placing its date of construction no earlier than 605 BCE; in plain sight to the authors of the tale yet nothing but a barren field when the slaves were said to have been hauling stone. Another reason why: because there is no evidence for any “arrival.” Settlement maps, population data, and digs across the Canaanite hills have revealed nothing happened at the alleged time. Nothing. No people arrived after spending 400 years in Egypt. Meaning, no new Egyptian words suddenly entered the lexicon. No Egyptian styled ceramics and pots suddenly appeared in the layers. Villages did not suddenly expand, let alone expand with Egyptian style housing.
You want to know where the story of Moses comes from? Look no further than the far older Babylonian tale of King Sargon of Agade, which begins: “My humble mother bore me secretly. She put me in a basket of rushes and sealed me in with asphalt. Then she put me into the river…. The river held me up, and carried me to Akki, the irrigator who drew water from the river for the people. As he dipped his jug into the river, Akki carried me out. He raised me as his own son.”
Sound familiar?
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I wonder if placing infants in rivers was a kind of infanticidal practice in the ancient world.
Have you seen the NOVA program on the Bible and Archaeology by any chance? I remember someone on there positing the theory of a relatively small group of slaves leaving Egypt and passing through the city of YHW and adopting YHWH as their deity before making it to Canaan and joining the Canaanites. This would explain the Yahwehist thread (J) in the Pentateuch. Do you know if there is a general view among archeologists/historians on a theory such as this?
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As far as I know there was never a city named YHW, but there was a band of Edomite Desert Bedouins, the Shasu of YHW, whom Amenhotep III made note of in the Temple of Soleb, some 500 years before Yhwh was first mentioned on the Mesha Stele.
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(?!) Does your day-job involve archaeology, or have you just studied that much?
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I find it interesting, particularly the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians. Far more interesting that the Canaanites, who didn’t do anything interesting.
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John, SAY it isn’t SO! A faction of the Caananites broke off to become the sea-faring Phoenicians, who, as traders, spread the alphabet throughout the known world!
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The Canaanites were Phoenicians? I thought the Phoenicians were further up the coast, closer to Ugarits/Syrians.
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I have other research material, which I’m too hung over to look up (it rained vodka last night!), but this, from Wikipedia, was quick and easy – which, coincidentally, was my nickname among some of the girls I’ve known:
“Phoenicians are widely thought to have originated from the earlier Canaanite inhabitants of the region.“
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Oh, fair enough. I’ll take that.
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EXACTLY, John! And YHW evolved into YHWH with a tribe know by various peoples as the Kennites, or the Middianites. It was these, that Moses was reputed to have joined and married into. Since we know Moses didn’t exist, we must assume that a group of Hebrews/Israelites joined with this tribe, and lived, and likely intermarried with them for a time, adopting their god, YHWH.
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It’s possible. It’d certainly explain why Yhwh was a god of Judah (south), not Israel (north). When I first started looking at all this stuff that’s what seemed the most logical to me. For some reason though, the general thesis is that Yhwh had nothing to do with Yhw, but was rather a throw off from the Canaanite pantheon, which itself was an adaptation of the older Ugarit pantheon.
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This is a bit complex to go into on someone else’s blog, though I’ve written extensively on it on my own site, but I believe the first god of the Israelites was Amurru.
Neither you or I believe that there is any evidence that the patriarchs ever existed, but if we view them as the physical embodiment of a people, a tribe, it makes more sense, so when I speak of Abraham, think of a tribe, rather than a person.
I’ve already maintained elsewhere on here, that it is far more logical that Abraham did not originate in Ur, a major city in Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), and traveled with his aged father, Terah, and his entire family, 700 miles up the Mesopotamian valley to Haran, a Small town in Northern Mesopotamia (modern Turkey) – that it made more sense that he came from Urfa, 20 miles to the east of Haran, which as I indicated, continues to this day to celebrate itself as the birthplace of Abraham.
In the times in which Abraham was alleged to have lived, the Akkadians had filtered into Mesopotamia, without the benefit of green cards, and after growing in numbers and strength, had conquered and totally subjugated the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the Sumarians. After a few hundred years of Akkadian rule, which saw trade routes opened up between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean (and consequently, the Levant), the Amorites did exactly the same thing, and in time, overcame the Akkadians and ruled Mesopotamia for 500 years, until finally, they, themselves, were conquered.
The time of Abraham, was the time of Amorite rule. The Amorites were a divided people, that had originally been Semitic nomads, until a large portion of them settled in Syria, in Aleppo. The worshiped a god, Amurru, after whom their tribe was named (Amurrites).
Abe left a nephew, Laban, in Haran, when he, Sarah and Lot moved on to the Levant. Throughout Genesis, Laban is labled, “Laban the Syrian.” Hold that thought.
When the biblical god introduces himself to Abe, he calls himself, “El Shaddai.” That name has been changed to “the Lord” in many translations, but in the original Hebrew, it was definitely, “El Shaddai.”
In Exodus, When “god” introduces himself to Moses, he says (Exodus, 6:3), “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Issac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.” This is from the KJV, the original Hebrew uses, “El Shaddai,” rather than “God Almighty.”
Add to all of these seemingly random pieces of information, the fact that there are biblical references to Asherah, hinting that she may have been god’s wife, as well as to “Asherah poles” being torn down, which were phallic fertility symbols.
Well, guess what, Amurru, the god of the people who earlier inhabited Syria, which produced Abe’s nephew, Laban (and how could Abe’s nephew, Laban, be Syrian, and Abe not?), was also known as “El Shaddai,” and had a wife named Asherah. Hmmmmm.
I believe that there is strong, circumstantial evidence that the Hebrews worshiped Amurru, “El Shaddai,” then went dark for 450 years (meaning nothing newsworthy had been written about them, so hell, let’s just stick ’em in Egypt, that’ll explain the time lapse), then after joining with the Kennites/Midianites, resurfaced with a new god, YHWH, the desert god, whom they melded with the old, for the sake of continuity.
I’m the first I know of to come up with that theory, but it makes sense, it follows the facts as we know them, and I’m sticking with it.
Sorry, didn’t mean to start my own blog here, but John’s question is not easily answered in a sentence or two.
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Impressive!
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That’s what she said —
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Your mother? 🙂
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Why no, yours —
(You make it too easy for me, John! 🙂
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Sorry, forgot to address the last bit. Short answer: No. There isn’t apparently a connection between YHW and YHWH. Well, that’s what people who’re far smarter than me have concluded.
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Thinker (when you are actively searching for the truth, you, in my mind, are no longer “Naive,” but an actual, “Thinker“), it would appear from your references to the “J” Source of the Torah, that you’re actively searching.
Here’s more data for you:
J (Yahwist) Source: composed c. 950 B.C.E. and later incorporated into the Torah, c. 400 B.C.E.
P (Priestly) Source: created after the fall of biblical Israel in 722 B.C.E.
E (Elohist) Source: composed in northern Israel (Ephraim) c. 850 B.C.E.
E and J combined to form “JE” about 750 B.C.E.
Incorporated into the Torah c. 400 B.C.E.
D (Deuteronomic) Source written in the seventh century B.C.E. (year 800+)
THE FINAL REDACTION took place approximately 400 BCE.
(nutshell version)
J describes a Human-like god throughout, and has a special interest in the territory of the Kingdom of Judah and individuals connected with its history. J is said to have an extremely eloquent style, and was composed c. 950 B.C.E. and later incorporated into the Torah, c. 400 B.C.E.
The Priestly Source, thought to have been created after the fall of biblical Israel in c.603-538 B.C.E., essentially takes an Orwellian approach to the Yahwist text and rewrites (or deletes entirely) vast sections that state or imply that man can have a personal relationship with the biblical god without intercession by a priest. Some stories – which we will later explore – were thought to be created entirely from scratch by the authors of the Priestly Source.
It is believed that the Elohist Source was composed in northern Israel (Ephraim) c. 850 B.C.E., combined with the Jahwist Source by an anonymous scribe or scholar, to form “JE” about 750 B.C.E., and finally incorporated into the Torah c. 400 B.C.E. The Elohist Source was so called because throughout, it refers to the Bible’s god as, Elohim, meaning, “god,” as opposed to “Yaweh” or “Jehova.” When J and E each recounted a single story, the redactor included both, sometimes interweaving them.
The Deuteronomic Code is the name given by academics to the law code within the Book of Deuteronomy, except for the portion discussing the Ethical Decalogue, which is usually treated separately. Deuteronomy is not the work of Moses, as was the traditionally held opinion, but that it was, in its main parts, written in the seventh century B.C.E. (year 800+), during the reign of Josiah, by the authors of the Deuteronomic Source.
THE FINAL REDACTION (except for the one where the Hebrew was translated into Greek, and the one where the Hebrew and Greek were translated into Latin, and the one where the Latin was translated into English –) took place approximately 400 B.C.E. After the Babylonian exile, a priest or priests redacted JE with the Deuteronomic Source, plus other material, including the Priestly Source, to complete the Torah.
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Arch, this is really fascinating. I wonder if they have a bible that is color-coded with the proposed source. I need to get out of first century history and into the Bronze Age for a while.
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Thinker, first of all, KNOW that I have no desire to convert you to atheism, my only hope, is that you will view all of the information available, and choose for yourself. Free thought, is my only goal.
When the Northern Kingdom of Israel was jeopardized by the Assyrians, some of the priests moved the “E” source of the Bible, to Jerusalem, which was better fortified (and where it was later joined, to become JE). Bottom line, by 400 BCE, all four of the sources had been joined by the Redactor – some were interwoven, like a patchwork quilt, while others, like the two creation stories, the two Noah stories, and others, were placed side by side, for the viewer to decide the veracity (the Redactor was covering his – help me, Victoria, what’s the word?).
I DO have a particular chapter, on my website, which I posted earlier and don’t want to repeat out of courtesy to Violetwisp, in which I actually DID color-coat each of the four sources, just to show my readers how complex the process actually was.
Should you decide to visit, please subscribe, and feel free to leave any comment you wish, I don’t moderate or censor.
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I do think your intentions are about informing, and that makes you a friend. I scrolled down the 400+ replies here and did not see the link unfortunately! Do you mind emailing it to me? brandon101984 (gmail) or posting it on my blog somewhere?
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Let’s don’t move too quickly – here’s the link: http://in-his-own-image.com/2010/01/24/-in-his-own-image-.aspx
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Nice video. Why don’t you just go on WordPress so interaction is easier?
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RE: “Why don’t you just go on WordPress so interaction is easier?”
I’ve been asked that by all of you WP users, and harrassed in private emails by Ark, who you and I know isn’t happy unless he’s harassing SOMEbody, and the answer is simple, because I don’t find interaction easier.
On my format, the visitor can paste images, upload video, paste their own emoticons, underline, link, do a wide variety of user-friendly actions without having to know any HTML For $3.99 a month, I get the site, plus an accompanying email that I can customize as I choose. I looked into WP first, but MUCH prefer it where I am, with Website Palace.
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Hmmmm —
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LMAO
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Arch — I assumed your “Hmmmm” was related to my last post about Tequila. When I wrote LMAO, I didn’t notice in my reply window what comment of mine you were responding to. Just thought I should clarify.
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No, it was to your previous statement:
One that nearly echoed my own accusation the previous evening – you know, before you so nicely asked me to take it easy on the poor boy – yet here you are, coming to a realization I arrived at yesterday. Makes one wonder how much you’ll find yourself agreeing with me before this topic is finished.
Basically, it was intended as, “Hmmmm, wish I’d said that –” but being full of sweetness and light, as I am, I decided that was a bit sarcastic, and just left the “Hmmmmm,” to allow you to draw your own conclusions.
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“One that nearly echoed my own accusation the previous evening – you know, before you so nicely asked me to take it easy on the poor boy – yet here you are, coming to a realization I arrived at yesterday.”
Arch, I did not come to the “same realization” you arrived at. If you look through this thread, you can clearly see that I’ve countered and/or challenged several of Brandon’s comments, just as I did with the Moses/Abraham comment. However, I didn’t wash my hands of him. He has engaged us respectfully, and I just think he deserves that in return. We can take this to email if you need to hash this out further. It’s posted in my gravatar.
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I’m beginning to question your entire username – you seem neither naive, nor much of a thinker – instead, one of the many, MANY differences between us, is that you appear to follow your feelings, while I require evidence, and there appears to be none for any of those biblical characters.
One man who has spent a lifetime, searching for just such evidence, and who certainly has had the religious background to be a believer, had he uncovered any, was William G. Dever, renowned biblical archaeologist. To follow is an excerpt from a review of his book, What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It – I might suggest you pick up a copy.
And we all know that the entire Noah story is a plagiarism of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which in turn, was a fictional story, based on an actual flood in Mesopotamia, that covered a whopping three – count ’em – three counties, when the Euphrates River overflowed it’s banks in 2900 BCE, to a depth of 22.5 feet (the biblical “15 cubits”), which actual HISTORICAL King Ziusudra, escaped in a trading barge loaded with cotton, cattle and beer (oh, my!).
Try and mix those feelings and intuitions with a little hard research from time to time, maybe you’ll find something to actually think about.
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How rude of me, I nearly forgot to ask, exercises in futility not being my normal pastime, did you have any evidence that they DID exist? That WOULD be truly extraordinary!
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Arch, my whole point is that you need evidence to make either claim. I don’t claim to know that they existed. The burden of proof is assigned to the one making the claim. If you claim to know that they don’t exist, please give me your evidence. Dr. Dever’s journey into critical scholarship is completely irrelevant unless he presents sufficient evidence one way or the other. Now, if you say, “I just don’t believe they existed” fair enough. Or if you find yourself compelled by some evidence and say this or that evidence compels you, fair enough. But, claiming to KNOW is entirely different.
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The evidence is in Dever’s book, which I have no intention of scanning for you – slip it out of the collection plate, god’ll never notice, he’s too busy watching children starve in Africa.
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“When I obey the command to love, I find that I do end up loving them in the end. People are all unique in their walks of life with unique struggles, and when the temptation to be cynical avails, I have to revert to self-control. But, I can only express self-control with a transformed mind and I can only have a transformed mind if I believe.”
Brandon, this is kind of a primitive way to wire/rewire your brain. But if it works for you, that’s cool. You say you can only express self-control with a transformed mind and that you can only have a transformed mind if you believe? You mean, believe in God? Jesus? Ever heard of mindfulness training? Guess what? — no belief necessary. You can wire circuity to specific regions of the brain that would enhance empathy, compassion and emotional intelligence. You don’t have to sit for hours, focusing on the breath, with your chakras aligned to accomplish this. Repetition, my friend, repetition — then voila. A habit is formed.
But you can take a good thing too far, pretty much deactivate your right amygdala, and become too trusting and get yourself killed. As you know, the brain is plastic, malleable. Now we have neurotechnology that expedites this wiring/re-wiring, and studies have also demonstrated that neurotechnology can attenuate death anxiety.
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Victoria, you have taken a different tone on this response, so I am unsure of how to respond. Probably I have poorly explained these ideas, so I will expound. I am not just saying pretend and one will become, not just another self help doctrine. I am saying if one believes in God, then one will take seriously the command to love. Then, amidst the darkness of cynicism, the restructured mind can conquer by acting. The restructuring, the noetic structure that influences executive function, already took place before chanting the command.
I’m not saying I don’t believe in meditation, chanting, mindfulness, biofeedback, and so on. I’m merely explaining the difference here.
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The restructuring, the noetic structure that influences executive function, already took place before chanting the command.
Huh? Have you been hanging out with Ronald Nash? 😀
Also — watch this. It’s 2 minutes. You don’t need Jesus or God to make this happen. It appears to me that you are using them as a tool to rewire your brain. Anybody can do it. Watch this. It’s under 2 minutes.
— http://youtu.be/Nmvk3zlyQ2w —
Brandon, I don’t need to believe in God to love another. That’s where you and I differ. You need someone telling you, commanding you to love before you will love or show compassion or empathy towards other fellow human beings?
But regarding Christian love — how’s that working out for humanity?
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Wow awesome video! I only see neurons on H&E slides, it’s always cool to see real time.
I agree with you on this. All you need is a belief that restructures the mind. If you believe in the Golden Rule and place it as the highest value, it will change you. But, for myself I was powerless to rid myself of certain vices, particularly cynicism (that’s why I always refer to it).
Christian love? Well, if you mean refer to love or hate flowing from Christians. . . Yeah, it doesn’t always work out. We ask for your mercy and forgiveness. We are often terrible representatives of Christ.
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“But, for myself I was powerless to rid myself of certain vices, particularly cynicism (that’s why I always refer to it).”
I respect your honesty, and thank you for taking the heat so graciously. You said you were powerless to rid yourself of certain vices. I can understand that. I once felt that way myself — but years and years of indoctrination told me that I was powerless, when in fact, I wasn’t.
When you were elaborating on your cynicism, I was reminded of myself once. What I assumed was cynicism was actually critical thinking, and an inner knowing that it was magical thinking. Remember, Brandon, you were programmed from very early on to not doubt — to not question and that faith was counted as righteousness. Have you taken any of that into consideration?
Oh, and thank you for watching the vid. 🙂
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My fundamentalism indoctrination gave no value to faith. We had the truth. We were the most rational. We had the right doctrine. Justification by faith was something I don’t even remember a single time growing up. . . it’s a shame to think about!
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“Justification by faith was something I don’t even remember a single time growing up.”
OK — so you are one very trusting guy. God tells you, through a very flawed book, that you just have to have faith. Now that I am an unbeliever, I find this insulting to my intelligence. God would not accept me telling ‘him’ that ‘he’ has to accept that I believe in him and love him by faith. 😀 Nono, I have to show this sky daddy my faith by obeying his commandments, giving him my full loyalty, and loving others. Are you getting the picture here?
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It get’s weirder, Victoria. 😀
Actually, sidebar: it’s difficult to tell exactly what sense of “justification” Paul means. Evangelicals (fundamentalists, Calvinists, etc.) say it is a moral status. Modern scholarship (N.T. Wright) says it is more about how you know you are a child of God. Maybe that’s subtle, but the fundamentalists aren’t too happy about it.
But, the weird part is this: faith is a gift from God. So, wait. . . God requests faith (which transforms, etc.) but this is a gift from him? How is this possible? It seems that it’s only possible if we have the ability somehow to accept or reject this gift. It means that really God is just calling everyone, likely uniquely to their situation, to offer them grace which ultimately leads to faith which leads to transformation which leads to obedience. . . Weird huh?
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“Weird huh?”
Hahaha, I know all about the weirdness. I had to live it for 40 years. But seriously, you go on about Paul, but he had a completely different Gospel and you know it. 😉 Also, there were two writers in Paul’s letters. If I remember correctly, he only wrote 7 of those letters.
Like I said, you are one trusting guy. But the faith/gift thing? — I can tell you, Brandon, that it’s a cop-out. It was a brilliant strategy. Why, because intelligent people like you and me bought into it hook, line and sinker. I was very dedicated. It’s embarrassing to admit that now, but I’ve forgiven myself because now I understand how the brain can very easily get programmed.
Ironically, the scripture that told me to study to show myself approved unto God — well it backfired. 😀 I studied and studied and well — here I am. And dare I say, I’ve never felt more alive, though I get pissed at times that I wasted so much of my youth on a myth. I made a lot of sacrifices.
But I must also tell you that as I studied, I began to realize that I was involved in a very immoral belief system. When parts of my prefrontal cortex finally came online, I was flabbergasted that I didn’t see this. This is why I asked you about the extent of loving your god. I was literally blinded by my love for god. With all due respect, I suspect you are too, and there’s plenty of neurological evidence that shows how easily this can happen.
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“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
— Mohandas Gandhi —
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“Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Or maybe not. 😉 Jesus the Christ thought he was special. Jesus the Christ also told people they would be condemned if they didn’t believe in him. Jesus the Christ is coming back to wage war and destroy the Earth. The birds will eat the flesh of the dead. Well, that’s what a 2000+ year old authoritarian religion says. I wouldn’t say there’s much difference. History speaks for itself.
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“I trust God speaks through me.”
— George W. Bush —
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LOL — “This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while”. G.W. Bush
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Ooops, sorry for repeating ‘watch this’; etc. I was responding in the little reply box, and didn’t catch the repeat.
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Hey Brandon,
Wow, this conversation has really progressed. I had to catch up. I know this has been pretty much between you and Victoria, but if I might:
You say:
“And, your analysis of Jesus fails to take into account his knowledge.
Then later your say:
“In my view Jesus did not know everything”….with regards to Moses/Abraham.
May I ask what your method is for divining out which parts he did know and which parts he didn’t?
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Thanks a good question, Ruth. I’m not sure I have a cut and dry method. I have to integrate all sorts of data to give a reasonable answer out of my own perspective. I freely admit this is my perspective. I don’t know what Jesus knew.
I am a Christian theist, so my data integration will take this into account. I conclude that Jesus was not omniscient because he plainly admits that only the Father knows certain things (i.e., the eschatological timeframe) and because he was fully human having a finite brain.
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Okay. Well, that’s certainly a frank admission. It’s not a very satisfying answer, however. Surely you can see the problems inherent in saying that perhaps Jesus didn’t know his own history, but that he knew divine truths. How would you determine which portion of those truths(i.e. Kingdom of heaven, divine judgment, repentance). What makes you think those are any more literal and not simply allegory than any of the rest of the words that were attributed to Jesus? How have you come to that conclusion?
I think you can see how a skeptic, let alone an atheist, could construe that as wishful thinking on the part of someone who wants to believe moreso than an actual basis for belief.
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Ruth, I can see how it’s not satisfying, on many different levels. For one I was an atheist. I will say that your wishful thinking argument cuts both ways. Maybe the skeptic has arbitrarily reconstructed history to meet their wishful endpoint. The sobering truth is that we don’t know what Jesus knew and our starting points will give us different answers. This is why the most important questions are, how did we get our starting points?
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I think that was my main question? How did you come to that conclusion? I didn’t intend for the wishful thinking comment to come across as condescending or rude at all. I was an ardent fundamentalist, made a pit stop in progressive Christianity, and now am completely agnostic with regards to a deity.
I don’t feel anything discussed to this point rules out a deity, I just haven’t seen any convincing argument for a particular deity.
Some of your arguments simply come across as revisionist. I am truly interested in what your method is for revising. You answered that honestly and I can appreciate that. How did you get your starting point that a)there is a God and b)that God is the Christian God?
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Ruth, that’s a great question. Ultimately it was the birth of Christianity. I asked the question, what started this whole thing? I found myself believing that the resurrection had initiated Christianity. Then I found that the argument that convinced me was flawed and had weaknesses, then I was in a very uncomfortable state. . . it’s a really complicated story involving my huge ego, being humiliated, and unexpectedly discovering that this belief had transformed my mind and destroyed many of the vices I was powerless to rid myself of especially a profound cynicism. If you are interested for more details, please check out on my blog “letter to atheists” and all of the comments. I feel like I should not just copy and paste it all here, it would take up too much space.
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Sure. I have perused your blog a bit. I’ll be sure to check that out.
Ultimately, though, would you say that what has convinced you regarding Christianity is experiential?
That is not to dismiss your experiences. I find it offensive when people do that to me. It’s just that I find an experiential faith is hard to describe to other people and ultimately unconvincing to another simply because of their own experiences.
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Ruth, I’m not sure if it was experiential. Did I experience something on the inside like a positive feeling or emotion? After I believed, yes. But, before I believed I can’t say I had any sort of experience of transcendentalism or positive emotions or anything. What happened was I simply found myself compelled. It was like the gears in my head were moving in that direction. I was surprised by the whole thing and I didn’t know what to think of God. God was sort of far removed, deistic. And, all my atheist arguments were just hanging out waiting to pounce. It was uncomfortable and felt risky.
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I suppose it depends on your definition of compelled. Some people describe that as a feeling. Some people are compelled by evidence. What evidence of the thing that started off Christianity[I presume you mean the resurrection] did you find suddenly compelling?
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The pre-Pauline creed, the life of Paul, Paul’s letters, the early church history. Those come to mind.
I guess “compelled” is multilayered. I am a creature of intellect, conscience, desire, experience, knowledge, memory, values, etc. I could describe it as an integration of these. Although, that’s just me retrospectively analyzing what was simply compelling. . .
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Frankly, Ruth, I see a concerted effort to move the discussion out of the realm of the concrete, and into the ethereal, unprovable realm of belief.
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I’d agree with that. I also see a concerted effort to accept that which makes such belief palatable while rejecting those ideas which make it distasteful[with the exception of the heaven/hell business].
It is certainly up to each person what he/she believes. I’m not trying to deconvert Brandon. I’m trying to wrap my mind around what it is he actually believes.
Does he believe Jesus is divine? Does he believe in the virgin birth? Does he believe in the resurrection and the ascension?
To be perfectly honest I’m quite confused. And the fact of the matter is, if he does have a belief that is in the ethereal, unprovable realm and he says as much then he’s being true to what it actually means to be a Christian. He is accepting by “faith” that Jesus is the only way to God.
I don’t believe that, you don’t believe that. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Brandon is attempting to convert anyone with his replies. He came here and offered his perspective. Perhaps he’s debating, but that’s not even the way I’d categorize what is happening here. We’re all so intrigued by his thinking and how he came to those conclusions that we’re firing off questions to him and he seems to be answering them honestly, even when he knows the answers are… dodgy. They’re his beliefs.
The difficulty comes when the history of that particular religion is rife with such contentiousness, strife, misogyny, slavery, war, etc. In order to hold onto belief he has to find a way to edit those out. He can’t edit them out for everyone though. Truth be told, if he went to fundamentalist Christian blogs and said these same things, he’d be told he isn’t really a Christian.
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” Truth be told, if he went to fundamentalist Christian blogs and said these same things, he’d be told he isn’t really a Christian.”
Exactly right. I’ve been a member of several denominations through the 40 years I believed — conservative, moderate and liberal. Bradon has his own set of rules. It helps to explain why there are over 41,000 Christian denominations. My opinion is that he has a psychological and neurological investment. A genuine need to believe, that it’s helped him with his vices. In other words, it’s a lifeline for him. That what I’ve gathered, based on spending a good bit of time reading his posts and dialog with Daniel on his ‘To Atheists post. It put things into perspective.
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I plan to spend some time over there reading more of his posts, but just based on what Brandon has shared here I’d say we all have a consensus. Though I think he might find that demeaning and dismissive – it’s certainly a way that I have felt on both sides of the coin.
But, yes, I think Brandon has carved out a Christianity of his own for reasons that are not [immediately] obvious to us.
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I plan to engage him in discourse in the “Letter To Atheist” blog — because he’s had ‘experiences’ and I believe I’ve got some explanations for him to consider. These experiences, and the results appear to be clouding his judgement, which I can understand. But that’s not to say that the clouds won’t part some. At least he’s a believer we can have civil discourse with, and I find that refreshing.
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Well, I can say that he is refreshing to talk to. As to whether the clouds might part remains to be seen. He seems completely comfortable with a belief that isn’t based on anything particularly evidential – what to us seems irrational – but rational to him for whatever reasons he needs/wants to believe. As he said, he simply felt compelled. A lot of people might say that is the work of the Holy Spirit, but he rejects the supernatural with regards to the Holy Spirit so I’m not sure what to make of that.
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Ruth, taking everything into considerations, I think he’s in transition. It’s conjecture on my part, but I see a process that is familiar with a lot of believers. I do think the clouds will part, but he will need to be confident enough that his ‘vices’ will remain in remission, so to speak. Right now he’s nursing his left amygdala (IMO), and that’s not such a bad thing.
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Agreed. I also think that he’s holding on to the notion of hell. While that may not be preeminent in his thinking that fear may have a hold of him for some time to come.
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Good point, although, based on some past conversations, I don’t think he believes in Satan or demons. But if he’s dealing with death anxiety, his trepidations are understandable.
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Yes, he says he rejects the supernatural, yet holds onto the notion of the Kingdom of Heaven, the resurrection. My question is what is God if not supernatural? There’s a lot of incongruity there. Which makes me wonder if he’s given up the notion of hell. I could be mistaken – so much has been said- but I thought I read him reference hell somewhere in all this. I’ll have to go back and re-read.
Didn’t he say something about [paraphrasing] not worrying about it being traumatizing to kids if it’s the truth, like telling them not to play near the cliff? I could be mistaken.
On a side not: is it just me or do these new smilies suck?
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“On a side not: is it just me or do these new smilies suck?”
Yes, some of them do suck, but there are some cool ones too. http://jannekevandorpe.com/2014/03/19/secret-new-wordpress-smileys/
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Here ya go: 🌯
Have a snack. LOL
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*bows to Ruth*
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lol – Is there a popcorn emoticon? For when I’m just watching…
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This was the best I could do.
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Ha!
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I just “yoinked” that – I have a great collection of emoticons, but regrettably, they won’t work on WP sites.
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You’re not, he did.
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I thought I read that somewhere. I was just too lazy to go find it.
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Me 2
Vi’s viewer stats have to be through the roof for the past two days, and I’m not about to go back through all those comments, it’s like looking for a needle in a needle stack.
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I also wonder how insulting it is for him that we are talking about him like he’s a piece of furniture or like he isn’t in the room. 🙂
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I expect he’s flattered and slightly amused. While feeling sorry for us all that the devil is masking the god God’s glory from our presence?
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Hahahah! You’re probably right, Violet.
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Except he doesn’t believe in the devil. Hahahahahaha!
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I know — I thought about that myself, and I sincerely don’t mean to seem insulting or devaluing. He knows he’s welcome to jump in anytime. But I do believe we have a unique perspective as the 3 of us have similar backgrounds and you and I have experienced these transitions. Like Daniel mentioned to Brandon in his Letter to Atheist post — he’s not alone — and there are people who will support him through these transitions.
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Absolutely. The transition has been quite difficult for a lot of us.
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Well, I know what to make of it, but I’ve decided to swallow my opinions – which aren’t nearly as tasty as the chili I had for lunch – and let you ladies tap dance with him and reach your own conclusions.
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Oh Arch, tap dance my ass. You reached your own conclusions. Stop projecting. 😛
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Ah, parlez françes! Très bien!
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How macho of you to ‘let us tap dance’. You need to let out some gas. Just don’t be stinking up Violet’s place.
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I agree that it’s nice to be able to have civil, at least somewhat coherent, discussion. Not at all like that of SOM – I’ve very nearly called him SOB on more than one occasion. 😀
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Hahahah — well he’s tried on several occasion to push my buttons. Has called me neurotic and a feminazi. I knew I’d ruffled a few feathers. But all I actually did was present research, LOL. Mak said that I should consider it a compliment. 😉
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I think you should, too. That’s high praise coming from him.
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😀
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I call him SillinessOfMind – he doesn’t seem to like it very much.
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He seems easily offended. I don’t think I’d lose any sleep over it.
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Oh, I don’t – in fact, thinking of it gives me very pleasant dreams.
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” I think Brandon has carved out a Christianity of his own for reasons that are not [immediately] obvious to us.”
“I was listening to a debate about the resurrection of Jesus and was somehow convinced Jesus really did rise from the dead and this event led to the rise of Christianity” (Brandon’s Letter)
This reminds of PeW, another young fundie deconvert who couldn’t shake off Christianity. I think it’s something to do with deep neural pathways to belief (don’t like making statements like this with Victoria around), and it takes years for the paths to grow over even in the face of overwhelming evidence. It’s not a quick process for most people, and a regression to a more thoughtful and less harmful version of Christianity isn’t too surprising.
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“(don’t like making statements like this with Victoria around)”
Hahah, why not? That was perfectly logical and scientifically sound.
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I’d agree with that. Having been on the receiving end of a quite traumatic deconversion process I can certainly understand. My circumstances dictated that I quickly come to terms with my doubts and disbelief. Had I had the luxury of a slower process maybe I would be where he is. I did make a brief stop in progressive Christianity. The ideas that Brandon is presenting here are just, well, to disconnected and disjointed in my mind to make any sense. It’s just a matter of our brains being wired differently.
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I’d also add that (though I haven’t extensively read his blog) based on statements he’s made here that his deconversion wasn’t necessarily to atheism but more in the realm of agnostic and largely emotive as a response to finding out something had believed might be erroneous. I have no idea how far he dug into that error to see how far it went. So I get the impression his faith/belief wasn’t so much deconstructed as traumatized. It appears now he’s trying to reconcile his empathy with belief thereby carving out a Christianity he can, personally, live with. Many people do it.
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So, Brandon, do you reject the notion that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine? The God-Man? Do you reject the idea that he performed supernatural miracles? Do you reject that Jesus was “the word made flesh” in John 1?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:1-5
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Ruth, I don’t know what “fully human and fully divine” quite means. I affirm that Jesus shares identity with God (i.e., Philippians 2). For example, you and I have the identity of being created, but Jesus has the identity of Creator. Having this identity does not mean in any state you can do anything. Jesus “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped” so he manifested on the earth with a human body and human brain and human memory. He was cold, hungry, faced tempted, ate food, wept when his friend Lazarus died, suffered greatly while being mocked and tortured, and so on. Jesus as a human was compelled to pray and had faith. He was granted certain authorities like to perform miracles for specific purposes. He did not walk around willy nilly blasting out magic. For example, Jesus could not perform miracles in his home town of Nazareth (Mark 6). One last thing, I reject the category of supernatural because I find it to be very unhelpful and it cannot be found in scripture.
-Brandon
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I’m trying to understand what you mean by :
” I reject the category of supernatural because I find it to be very unhelpful and it cannot be found in scripture.”
Are not miracles supernatural? And you say that Jesus didn’t walk around blasting out magic willy nilly, but he cursed a fig tree because it wasn’t producing figs – out of season.
On what do you base that Jesus knew things prophetically, but not historically? Does that not fall into the category of supernatural?
Again, this is simply for understanding’s sake. I truly do not understand what you mean by this or what method you use to come to this understanding?
I realize that Jesus was human, with the ability to be tempted, suffer, etc. Are you of the opinion that he didn’t have a choice in that? Was he not part of the Godhead before he took human form? Was he not still part of the Godhead even as a human? Did he not resume his place in the Godhead upon his death and resurrection? Did he take a pause in between before he was born and after he died where he wasn’t one of the three persons of the Godhead?
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Ruth, I think the supernatural category is an artificial construction. We impose it on these things. The greatest problem is that it gives people a sense of some weird magical place that is inaccessible. Supernatural now includes vampires and all sorts of mythological creatures. I think the ancient perspective is a little better. Heaven and earth are interlocked, although not perfectly through an undetectable agency of God. And, when we redeem our new bodies at the resurrection, heaven and earth will fully interlock and we will be part of the New Heaven and New Earth. /theology
So what, then, is prophecy and miracles? I don’t really know. I would say God sends beacons out, signs for us. He will not reveal himself directly, but through signs. The resurrection of Jesus is not evidence for God, it is a sign that points towards God.
I think Jesus had as much freedom as any human. He was not required to be faithful to his mission, but chose to.
The whole Godhead thing I find confusing. I have different views of the Holy Spirit because of my rejection of the supernatural category than probably most people. That does not mean I condemn their thinking, rather it’s more like an equally valid way of thinking.
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Do these beacons defy the natural laws of physics.
I do not believe in ghosts, vampires, unicorns, spirits, or other mythological creatures. It seems to me that this new heaven/new earth, resurrected bodies, interlocking that you speak of defies the natural laws of physics we see at work today as do miracles and the resurrection of Jesus. That would place them squarely in the supernatural realm which you reject.
You reject the Holy Spirit, yet accept the resurrection of Jesus? That seems a contradiction in terms to me. Was Jesus resurrection bodily? What are signs if not supernatural?
I think you might be able to understand my utter confusion.
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Ruth, I do not know if miracles break natural laws. We don’t even know if we know all the natural laws and that’s assuming there is a finite set of natural laws. “Miracle” is a descriptive label of an event that was completely unexpected by the current knowledge of nature, usually that has some kind of religious significance. So, it’s descriptive for an event, just like blue is descriptive for the sky. It does not imply breaking natural laws.
I just can’t say one way or the other if a miracle actually breaks a natural law. Is it God’s agency? Can God introduce physical forces to move quarks around and make the atoms of water into the atoms of wine? It’s possible by my perspective. Does God need a supernature or magic to accomplish this? No!
And, I don’t reject the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is also a description (but also a beacon in itself). Spirit, or pneuma, means a sort of compelling force like the wind. That’s why pneuma carried both meanings in ancient Greek. Paul said in one of his letters that he was absent in body but that he was present in spirit to judge their wickedness. That does not mean Paul was floating out of his body to judge! It means that he had visited this assembly and left with them a sense of conscience while he was there. I have told one my atheist friends that he has the spirit of Hitchens. Does that mean Hitchens’ supernatural soul possesses my friend? No! It means that his thoughts and feelings align with the late writer, Hitchens.
From my own life I had a completely unexpected thing happen when I believed in Jesus. I noticed that my cynicism began dying and love began to reign. Retrospectively, I think the belief transformed my mind making me destroy my vices. With the data I had, from my state before and after, I interpret this to be the Holy Spirit. This does not mean a supernatural spirit. It’s how the beacons operate on the mind to transform it.
-Brandon
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How does changing the word from supernatural to beacon change it’s nature?
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I haven’t changed supernatural to beacon. I use beacon because miracles were called signs and if it is recorded it seems well to call it a beacon. Do you mean to ask a different question? Are you saying that what you think of as supernatural categorizes something that I believe?
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I am saying that something I think of as supernatural categorizes something that you believe. The resurrection would be a supernatural event. Thought the word supernatural does not appear in the Bible anywhere, I believe that to be a supernatural event. I’ve never heard anyone who didn’t believe that to be the case except those who don’t believe in a literal resurrection.
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In the Gospels after the resurrection Jesus has a body that can do very odd things like go into a locked room and the disciples don’t really recognize him. Then, Paul describes the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15 using various terms. It certainly was not a revivification by their description. Jesus’ new body was also described as a new creation of God. The first fruit of the new creation of the future. One can label it supernatural, but I still reject the label.
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I’m not sure what to say to that. One can reject a host of things, but until the physical law is discovered which explains how that is naturally possible most, including scientists, would classify that as supernatural, I think. Are you doing research into this? Are you onto to some new theory we’re not privy to?
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I can’t help wondering, Ruth, if he ever sees the incongruity that JC “has a body that can do very odd things like go into a locked room,” yet he can’t beam out of a tomb, without having the stone rolled away. Maybe stone was his Kryptonite.
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I do find it puzzling that he rejects the label supernatural for the resurrection and the “odd things like go into a locked room”, yet denies the virgin birth because he’s searched and it’s physically impossible. If there are physical laws which we haven’t yet discovered and he’s applying that theory to the resurrection, why not the virgin birth too?
I’m guessing in his mind all of this is congruent but to the outsider, who he’s attempting to explain it to, it’s pretty radical and wholly incompatible.
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Oh it’s possible, a virgin birth, but Jesus would then be an identical clone of Mary… and I don’t recall any gospels mentioning that part 😉
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Lol! Maybe he was really a woman who dressed as a man. Or maybe Mary came equipped for outdoor plumbing and it wasn’t an “important detail” so they left it out. 😀
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Another question in my mind, or what I find puzzling, what is this god if not a supernatural entity? I’m not sure how one rejects the supernatural and still believes in deities. Am I just being pedantic? Am I being obtuse? Or just ignorant?
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Ooops, I messed up a tag. Didn’t mean for all that to be italicized.
Correction:
wealthy very wealthyLikeLike
Hmmm, it messed up again, and I doubled checked to make sure it was correct. Should not have scratched out ‘very wealthy’. The first time was my bad, the second time was a glitch. You get the gist.
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Not at all. This is what the modern UFO religions believe. Wise aliens have replaced supernal father figures, which is at least not as absurd, logically speaking, as The Shy Lord of Woo
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None of the above.
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Ruth, I don’t have a new theory. What I think happened was Jesus died, and everyone expected this to be the end since all other Messianic movements ended with the death of their leader. Then, the disciples were utterly shocked by Jesus’ return, it was hard to believe for them. They experienced an anomaly, a phenomenon for which the likes they had never seen or heard. They decided to call this phenomenon ‘resurrection’ since this was a Jewish category available to them at the time. They did not call it supernatural. Another problem with supernatural is that it implies we know all the laws of nature. Now, if we had a really good theory of everything (TOE) that described all the laws of nature, we could identify claims that break the TOE and start labeling these claims as supernatural. Until then, it doesn’t seem to help anything and is even distracting since it goes along with unicorns, elves, pixies, vampires, werewolves, etc.
After the resurrection Jesus sent out all the apostles including Junia, the only explicitly named female apostle in the New Testament, although there were probably far more female apostles. Then, Paul.
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I’m beginning to believe, Ruth, that he doesn’t give a lot of thought to any of those questions, he simply has beliefs from which he prefers not to be separated by logic.
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Well, I don’t want to be condescending because I was once where he is. But I would say that he definitely isn’t using logic in the conventional sense.
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Sadly for you, and I suppose Christianity as well, there is absolutely no evidence that Jesus’ resurrection ever took place. As many inconsistencies abound in the resurrection story, as did in the “trial” story, as well as within the stories about his reappearance, written by authors who never met him, if he ever actually existed.
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Hopefully you will agree with me that it is a principle stating that given a set of valid models, the model with the least assumptions should be adopted. Which model prevails out of atheism and theism? I would say neither one. What is your take?……Why suppose the razor has any relevance to the question? If the razor really is the reason someone rejects theism, it seems like principle worshiping to me.”
I do agree with you that’s the basis of Occam’s Razor. It’s just that what one considers the “least amount of assumptions” is different for another. Most theists wouldn’t classify belief in their god an assumption. Most believers classify that as a fact, though I think you and I agree it is not. I think applying the Razor the way an atheist does simply leaves out that assumption. An atheist wouldn’t claim to know, apart from the Big Bang, how any of this got started. So the atheist, in my view, is leaving out an assumption that a theist is not.
While I don’t think anything in the video precludes deism, I do think it precludes theism – which was my point. I’ll not lump you into the category of fundamentalist, but if it is true that a god[which is unknown to us] did “stand back for millions/billion of years waiting for homo sapiens to emerge” so that he could have us as companions or whatever it is he wanted us for that just seems rather a ridiculous notion. Fundamentalist theists claim special revelation and calling. They also claim to know that they know that they know which god is the right god and, not only hold tightly to the dogma of their religion in their own lives, they also seem rather bent on forcing that dogma onto others. I think that, if looked at through the lense of Occam’s Razor, more people could agree that they might not know all they think they know.
If it is true that the Christian God did wait all that time for humanity to develop enough to acknowledge his presence then either he’s not very good at creating or he’s awfully patient, which I’ll acknowledge that the Bible claims, but it just seems to me that if a god were smart enough to put that ‘gene’ there he could have done it a lot more efficiently and with a lot less death and destruction to accomplish it.
That is my take on it.
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Thanks for the reply. I pretty well agree with you on the Razor. If the universe was created with us in mind, I will admit, we cannot detect this intention. It’s absurd to think we can, and I know many theists assert this. On the other hand. . . like you said, maybe God is just that patient.
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I did enjoy the video. Still, I think it will all come down to what a person’s presuppositions are. If a god is presupposed then goddidit will fit quite nicely. ‘Oh, see, my God put that there so I would want to worship’. If no god is presupposed it’s quite easy to see how all those pieces fit together and make us susceptible to religious belief.
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Yes, it is still perfectly legit to presuppose whatever you please, but applying Occam’s Razor really makes you feel bad about yourself if you do. Why didn’t god give us a more comprehensive natural understanding instead of a weak-ass feeling? Because god is mysterious (assumption; we haven’t got a clue why). Where did god come from? He’s always existed (assumption; it’s necessary to define him this way, but ya don’t know it to be true). Why does god allow so many to persist in wrong belief? Because he loves us and respects our free will to unknowingly choose to burn in hell for eternity (wtf?)
As opposed to Andy Thompson: god belief results from a bunch of known psychological processes working together in an unexpected manner.
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Agreed. I wasn’t arguing for the ‘God Gene’ theory. Not at all. But my guess is that the average believer doesn’t know what Occam’s Razor is much less are they applying it. If they are buying a sky daddy in the first place that would be their default position. IOW, this is only evidence for the people who don’t presuppose a god.
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I think most people have a built in capacity to measure things according to the Razor. The difference between believers and us though, is a believer doesn’t consider his feelings on the subject to be assumptions. It is evidence for those who are questioning, but admittedly, not those who are firm in their belief.
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Exactly. When I say I don’t think they’re applying the Razor I don’t mean it doesn’t exist in their thinking. For the TrueBeliever the simplest explanation is goddidit. That god is isn’t a question in their minds. So to them, we’re taking the long way around when we offer any other explanation.
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Interesting observation, Ruth – I would like to see a comparison EEG, indicating which part of the brain is ‘active’ while thinking about a favorite parent, or possibly, the qualities one would choose for an ideal parent. (Despite Vi’s protestations)
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Ruth, I agree with both you and John. In his terror management theory, psychologist Tom Pyszcynski advocates that people need to delude themselves to survive — that delusion is adaptive. In her book, “A Mind of its Own: How Your Mind Distorts and Deceives”, psychologist Cardella Fine states that magical thinking is a necessary delusion.
The reason, I think that delusion, as in religion/god, is adaptive is because people get rewarded with dopamine from this placebo effect. I think its worth noting that neuropharmacological studies and fMRI scans show dopaminergic activation as the leading neurochemical feature associated with religious activity. The studies also show that “hyperreligiosity is a major feature of mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, temporal-lobe epilepsy and related disorders, in which the ventromedial dopaminergic systems are highly activated and exaggerated…]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16439158
As an aside, religion is a way for males to become alphas. Get ordained, and bam — instant alpha status. The more a religion promotes dominance over others (3:16 — God telling Eve) “and he (husband) shall have the rule over you”), the more they (men) get rewarded with dopamine. Christopher Hitchens once said, and I’m paraphrasing, that men don’t want to let go of their dominance over women because in their mind, there’s no “reward” in it.
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Terror Management Theory is my new favourite gem. Have you seen Flight From Death, the film/documentary about it all?
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I have not — just Googled. Is this it? http://www.hulu.com/watch/173530 If so, I’ll be watching it this weekend. If not, I’m still going to watch it. Looks yummy. 😉
When looking at the bigger picture, TMT and DA explains a lot.
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D’oh. Says I can’t see that video here in Brazil. It’s probably it, though. It looks at Becker’s work then the present day experimentation to prove it. Utterly fascinating. The tests they run on actual judges is an eye-opener, to say the least.
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Excellent! Too bad you can’t watch it in Brazil. It is available for rent on YT for 3 bucks.
— http://youtu.be/RH7686gJgj8 —
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John, just finished the doc. An enthusiastic thumbs up — it was exceptional. Nice sound track as well. Thank you!
@Violet — I hope you can get this in your country. If you can — I highly recommend it. It not only compliments your OP and comments posted in this thread, but it addresses some of the questions you’ve posed in recent posts, especially regarding the nature of violence.
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Ah..I was watching and didn’t see this post. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It does address much about violence and not only violence but the vehement protection of our treasured beliefs about life after death and immortality. Fantastic find!
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I don’t know if this is the documentary JZ was recommending or not but it is fantastic. If you haven’t watched it already, Victoria, I think you’re really going to enjoy it.
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Ruth, I watched it last night. I agree, it was fantastic. I hope Violet can get the doc in her country. It will address her questions about violence. There’s so much information I need to shift through, but I plan to do a post on this in the near future. Many people don’t have time or don’t want to make time to watch this. Their lose. I wish this research was mandatory education on a global scale. It needs to be.
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Yes, I just got done watching. There’s a lot going on in this noodle here.
My first observation is about a recent interaction with a woman on another blog threatening us all with not listening to her and heeding her words to ‘our peril’. She was so smug and condescending. A light bulb moment happened watching this video. It’s not that I haven’t had the thought before, it’s just that this documentary solidified, confirmed, and put so concisely what I couldn’t form into one coherent thought:
Atheists or anyone who doesn’t believe in her ‘flavor’ of immortality are a threat to her ideology. She’s hanging on tooth and nail to it, thus lashing out at us because she’s not going down without a fight.
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“Atheists or anyone who doesn’t believe in her ‘flavor’ of immortality are a threat to her ideology.”
Yes — indeed. A threat to her very ‘immortal’ existence. We both know what it’s like to live in hostile religious territory, and this doc eloquently explains why.
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If it’s the woman I’m thinking of (whose name escapes me at the moment), she moderates, and will hold comments in limbo for days, or not post them at all, if they disagree with her viewpoints. What kind of discussion is that?
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Actually, I don’t know if she does that or not. I encountered her on a fellow de-convert’s blog. She came looking for the ‘fight’ so-to-speak, telling the blog host that she was never a Christian to begin with, among other things. Just very dismissive.
I’ve not tried to comment on her blog because when I went to see what kinds of posts she had my brain died a little bit.
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Well, please don’t give me a link, Ruth, as I know I’ll go there and ruin what has begun as a really nice day. I won’t be able to resist.
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Well, arch, if you want to ruin a perfectly good day, be my guest. She has two blogs so I’ll just give you her user profile and you can pick your poison:
https://www.blogger.com/profile/00498627087140234765
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What part of, “please don’t give me a link, Ruth” did you not quite understand?! NOW you’ve gone and done it, I told you I wouldn’t be able to resist!
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LOL – I thought that was your clever way of begging for the link! 🙂
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I was begging you NOT to give it to me – now I’m ruined! Must…go…to…website…and…harass…theist….
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Good luck! I just hope your brain doesn’t melt. Reason isn’t going to be her strong suit. She’s a conspiracy theorist who says things like, “I don’t believe we’ve ever put a man on the moon” and “The Free Masons and Illuminati are going to give rise to the Anti-Christ”.
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I can’t do it. There’s nothing to be said, to one who knows it all —
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That’s why I didn’t provide the link straight away. What can you say to a person like that?
There’s this little gem as well:
“Whether they sneer or not, if they say things against God even using “nice” words, it is blasphemy…and when confronted on it the “nice” disappears quickly to show their true colors soon enough. Sorry to see it happen, but Jesus told us it would, so I’m thankful that He warns us of all things both good and bad.”
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Makes me want to bolt from the room with my fingers in my ears to the second knuckle, singing, “La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!”
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I did try to warn you….
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And this:
“Something I have yet to grow into (Lord help me) is when a person, or persons, gets hostile, and thereby do the things which reveals to me they are my enemy(ies). I would hazard to say that most people today are God’s enemies and therefore because I abide in Him they are by extension also my enemies.
*facepalm*
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I’d love to see a scan of her right amygdala. I bet it’s a whopper. 😀
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Lit up like the 4th of July. And the thing is, there’s nothing anyone could say that would make her change her mind about it. Unless something personally, within her or her circumstances, causes her to have pause and really question they’ll be prying the Bible from her cold, dead, clammy hands.
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Yep — you’re so right. Based on what you shared, she does not exhibit any emotional intelligence.
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Yikes, I think it’s going to take me a week to catch up with the conversation and videos here. Thanks for pointing it out that one of them addresses the violence discussion we were having, I’ll get there eventually …
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Forgot to mention — it was the doc John recommended as it addressed Earnest Becker’s research. I’m going to read Becker’s book “Escape From Evil”. Paraphrasing — ‘We create the greatest evils to escape from it.’
Humans are effing weird to say the least. Our biology is mismatched to the world that surrounds us.
➡ To God — I’m not impressed with your engineering. Go back to school.
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Paraphrasing — ‘We create the greatest evils to escape from it.’
That was a poignant quote to me as well.
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It was also poignant to me that one of the conclusions drawn was the religious do all manner of abhorrent things to preserve their ideology of immortality trying to create a utopia[heaven] on earth since that is precisely what we a-religious are so often accused of.
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An excellent point. That really stood out for me, as well. Becker stated:
“Man humanized the heavens and spiritualized the earth and so melted sky and earth together in an inextricable unity. By opposing culture to nature in this way, man allotted to himself a special spiritual destiny, one that enabled him to transcend his animal condition and assume a special status in nature.”
“The point I want to make is very simple and direct: that by means of the techniques of ritual men imagined that they took firm control of the material world, and at the same time transcended that world by fashioning their own invisible projects which made them supernatural, raised them above material decay and death” Source
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”
You have to consider that we’ve pretty much remade the world that once surrounded us – did it better fit that world, and we have only ourselves to blame for the current mismatch?
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Yeah, I think it’s rather obvious that we remade the world and did so in our own arrogant, narcissistic image. Nature, however, will have the last laugh. Hope you will watch the doc that John recommended.
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I have it already pulled up in its own tab, just awaiting a free hour, which should come shortly.
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It won’t disappoint.
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I should also note that the doc elaborated on the effects of culture — a double-edged sword. I came across this article a couple of years back. Thought you might find it interesting. It certainly compliments some of the studies noted in the Death Anxiety doc. The article is part of a series “This Is Your Brain On Culture”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/is-your-brain-culture/200906/we-humans-have-fatal-biology
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It’s really rather depressing to note – and you were the one who first drew my attention to it, Neuron – but dopamine really rules the world. Most, if not all, of those brilliant decisions we like to think we make, are just made for another dopamine fix.
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Which is why we need to be aware that we are organic beings. Being aware of our motives. Dopamine made us smart in many ways, and kept our species going — but it also affected our ability to reason. It would seem that delusion is more rewarding, neurochemically, than reason. People don’t like to hear this because it causes them to question their motives for any action they take, including belief. No dopamine — no belief. It’s a hard pill to swallow for many, so they don’t.
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No, it’s not the simplest explanation.
The “simplest” explanation is that humans have a disposition to see agency in all things; a skill (and curse) which enabled us to react faster to danger, real or imagined.
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The simplest answer is the god, God is very real and has been taking the piss from the word ‘go’.
He told me.
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Is that why you’ve stopped getting involved in religious discussions? Ooops, you did it again! He’ll be well displeased with you.
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I am possessed by the Devil I tell you. God help me…LOL!
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Now I just believe a god exists. I am finally convinced
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Congratulations! You’re my first convert.
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Do I get to receive some presents?
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Mak, you at work? Hope you have a spectacular day. It’s not Monday here yet. Did you have a great weekend?
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Am at work but leaving shortly to some site. It’s quite early here.
I had a superb weekend and hope you did too
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Yes, No complaints on my end. Beautiful spring weather. A beaver is hell bent on gnawing a tree that could fall on the house. I live near the water’s edge. So some chicken wire has been wrapped around the trunk. He’s pissed and has been slamming his tail in the water. Has been sounding like shotguns going off all day today. 😀
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That beaver is really pissed I can see!
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Yeah, ya really don’t wanta piss off them beavers, ‘specially if ya got a wooden laig!
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I’m noticing an interesting trend, Thinker – each of your counterarguments seems to begin with a compliment. Is that what you were trained to do?
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And again —
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My point being, was that THIS was one of Christianity’s gifts to America!
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So now that parts of the Bible have been discredited, we’re going to cherry-pick what Yeshua did and didn’t know —
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I know, me too – you may have noticed, I josh a lot. Actually, the number of women I’ve knocked up has been very minimal.
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Violet, I just wanted to thank you for letting us hi-jack your blog post. I’m sure this evolved way past anything you might have imagined when you wrote it. Your posts are always insightful and many times I learn even much more from the comments. There’s a lot of good information and reference material in there.
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Any time. I view my blog as a jumping board for ideas and discussion, nothing else … well, apart from picture praise elicitation 😉 So, I’m more than happy when people find something interesting to discuss. I do usually join in, but this one required way too much prior knowledge and YouTube viewing time for me to catch up. I’m surprised Brandon was so keen to continue the conversation, given the snippy tone Arch was taking at times. I think Brandon may be another candidate for researching a ‘how to argue with atheists’ book – surely no-one can be that well-mannered and patient!
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I agree. We were all peppering him with questions at a pretty fast pace. While his answers didn’t seem very congruent, he was/is being very patient and kind. He seems like a genuinely nice fellow.
P.S. your photos always rock! Those are reason enough to come here.
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“snippy tone“? Moi? Surely you jest —
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Sorry, slip of fingers. I meant Vicky, not you. *double duck*
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Who’s Vicky? ❓
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OK, Violet, NOW you went and done it! Slowly she turned….
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What did you think the double duck was for?? 🙄
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Sorry, slip of the fingers, meant Ruru. 😀
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Who? 😀
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“You can call me neuron. You can call me neuro. You can call me neuronotes. You can call me Victoria. You can call me dip chit. But you doesn’t has to call me Vicky!”
(parody of R J Johnson’s bit – the little guy with the mustache, from the Ace Trucking Company)
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“I’m guessing in his mind all of this is congruent” – and it could equally easily be a hodge-podge of pieces of information picked up from innumerable sources. This is why I advised him to learn – not just read the Bible, but learn who the writers were, not just from theistic sources, but from secular sources who have no agenda – learn about the times, the customs, the various nationalities that make up the thousand-year parade that is the Bible.
Just a really brief example: Genesis tells us that Abraham came from “Ur of the Chaldees.” The average person would read this, and say, “OK, Abe came from Ur, wherever that is.” While the REAL biblical student would learn that the word, “Ur” was an ancient Sumerian word, and simply meant “city” – Abram came from “the city,” but which city? Quite coincidentally, there IS a city in Mesopotamia, named, “City,” well, actually, “Ur,” and it lies in the far Southern part of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), but what the diligent biblical scholar will learn, is that according to Genesis, Abe went from UR to Haran, the entire length of Mesopotamia, nearly 700 miles, whereas only 20 miles to the east of Haran, is a tiny village in Turkey, called, “Ur-fa” – did you know that Ur-fa celebrates itself (in fact has a monument to that effect), as the birthplace of Abraham? Further, the diligent student will look up the “Chaldees,” and learn that they were a race of people who didn’t even move into the area until around 700 BCE, so one must know, from this, that this particular part of the story of Abe is not only likely untrue, but certainly wasn’t written by Moses, 750 years earlier.
From this, the conclusion is easily drawn that the writer of this tale did not have the facts before him, which means his words were not inspired by any particular omniscient deity, unless it was Loki, the Trickster, just joshing.
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Studying sources outside the Bible was literally my salvation — and believe it or not, even the Strong’s concordance and lexicons played a role in my deconversion. At the time I started seeing contradictions one after the other, I wasn’t using the Internet as a source. To my knowledge there wasn’t much on the Internet (regarding this subject) to glean from at the time. One of the hardest things to break through as a believer is the indoctrination to not doubt the ‘word of God’. I consider my deconversion a miracle. 😛
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What blew my mind was the preface at the beginning of each book of the Bible in my copy. It made me start researching who really wrote the books and when. Not at all what I’d been “taught” or believed. Just one among many questions that didn’t seem to have ready or easy answers, though my church wanted me to believe the convenient ones.
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“though my church wanted me to believe the convenient ones.”
Yes, exactly. Had it only been once church and denomination I encountered this with — I may have not gotten red flags. But several churches? When I met with pastors to ask questions — they didn’t have the answers. Only pat answers from scriptures like “lean not on your own understanding” and “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are higher than our ways”, blah, blah, blah
So I prayed earnestly — sometimes on my face. “God” answered my prayers and here I am today — a happy heathen — hallelujah 😀
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“So I prayed earnestly — sometimes on my face. “God” answered my prayers and here I am today — a happy heathen — hallelujah :D”
Did you pray in a closet, with the door closed, with your head covered, silently(for fear the bad, bad debbil might hear)?
Yes, those were the same answers I got when I started asking questions. And strange, blank, blank stares. And messages from the pulpit about slippery slopes.
Heathens, the lot of us!
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Ruth — my final departure from church was interesting. This was a church I’d been a member of for over 7 years, sat on the board of directors, was music director, etc. In other words, I was quite visible and people knew that I loved to study. In my frustration, I wrote a letter to my pastor with these questions I had. I did this because the questions were extensive, and I also shared my findings. I shared a copy with one person, a close friend of mine. She was my confidant. Her husband got a hold of the letter and duplicated it without his wife’s awareness. Let’s just say that a 3rd of the church members left. It got so bad that they had to call in the regional director. All I did was ask questions. It was not my intent to “cause discord among the brethern.” The fur was flying — and I was the scapegoat.
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Let me see if I understand – and be patient with me, it has been said I’m a little slow – so you’ve pretty much ALWAYS been a troublemaker —
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Pretty much.
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” ~Albert Camus
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And as Eldridge Clever once said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
My contribution.
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Did you live in Alabama at the time?
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Oh, no – nobody actually “lives” in Alabama – we drove down, a group of friends and I. They went back, but I stayed with an African-American family, in a tarpaper shack, for two weeks, waiting for the march to start. They lived next to the Alabama river, and next door to folks who raised chickens, so we had fried fish or fried chicken every other night. Incredible people – they risked their very lives to house me.
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I
livedendured Alabama for 7 years. Had no idea what I was getting myself into when I moved there. It was a culture shock to say the least. But anyway — that’s awesome what you did, and what they did.@ Ruth — Alabama’s the state where I was first introduced to the Southern Baptist culture. That’s where I learned that “Bless your heart” did NOT mean what one might think. 😕
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RE: ““Bless your heart”
I think there are several translations of that, one of which begins with an “F.” I like it best when Dana “the Church Lady” Carvey says it.
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@Ruth — is it any wonder why Eve and all women were commanded to be ruled over? Having a curiosity and hunger for knowledge is a threat to the BU$INE$$.
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“@Ruth — is it any wonder why Eve and all women were commanded to be ruled over? Having a curiosity and hunger for knowledge is a threat to the BU$INE$$.”
It was even my idea, at the time, to tithe. 😦 My deacon husband didn’t want to so I just tithed on my salary – the full 10%.
But aw, hell, I’ve busted out now! No more, yessir master, for me!
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Amen, sister. I could have easily paid for my daughters college tuition at least twice with the tithes and offerings I gave to the church. Sigh.
I’d be a wealthy very wealthy woman today had I’d been paid for the free labor that was devalued.
I do, however, feel like we hit jackpot — won the lottery. We both beat the odds considering.
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RE: “Amen, sister.”
Cliff Klaven here – It’s a little known ( and quite ironic) fact, that when Christians say, “Amen,” they are actually acknowledging the great Egyptian god, Amen, aka, Aman, aka, Amun (as in Tutankamun – ancient Egyptians used compound names).
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That’s very cool to know.
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“the bad, bad debbil”
LOL! Priceless 🙂
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True story. Was very sad at the time, but now it’s freakin’ hilarious!
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Oh I know you did it, you mentioned it once before somewhere, but i’m chuckling at the “bad, bad debbil.” Fair warning: I’m stealing that for future mischief.
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LOL! Have at it. I’m ripping off The Shy Lord of Woo.
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He’s all yours!
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Ruth, I was raised Catholic. Although my parents rarely went to church, they sent me and my siblings to church, CCD, etc. Basically, the church became the baby sitter and that’s where I got most of my indoctrination from early on. At the time I was attending church, Mass was in Latin. As a kid, I didn’t know what the hell Latin was. But I asked the nun who was teaching CCD classes why the priests spoke in a language I didn’t understand. Well, I’m sure by now you know the answer. It had a big effect on my little mind at the time. I started learning pig Latin. True story. 😉
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Hahaha! 🙂
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Ix nay on the atin Lay!
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LMAO —
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Did it help any? LOL
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Obviously not. 😈
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😀
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“Omni est Gallia divide en tres partes –”
Two years of Latin, High School (I also speak Pig Latin!)
From 600 CE, until 1600 CE, the Big C declared, upon penalty of death, that no Bibles would ever be printed in any language but Latin, leaving the Church in complete control of interpretations, as most of the time couldn’t read at all, and of those who could, most couldn’t read Latin.
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aHay! oseThay astardsbay atThay oesnday’tay urprisesay emay. Iyay ancay ememberray eadingray inyay ethay atechismcay atthay onlyyay ethay iestpray ereway allowedyay otay interpretyay ipturesscray. Ofyay oursecay, atthay ademay emay uspiciouslysay uriouscay.
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Your igPay atinLay needs work, but I was still – despite being slow – able to muddle through.
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Well here’s a translator for ya. http://www.wordplays.com/pig-latin
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Much appreciated, but despite accusations of being, “slow,” I hold my own translator between my ears, and your igpay atinLay needs work.
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Funny, the PL translator had no problems translating exactly what I wrote, word for word. 😉
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Jeesh — *know by now
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Am I mistaken, Ruth, or did you mention that you were originally raised Catholic? Not important, except to say that despite the fact that the Vatican is far from forthcoming when it comes to playing Musical Priests, their book, The New American Bible is amazingly honest, when it comes to pointing out flaws in the OT.
Check out the chapter where Abraham goes to Egypt, and encounters yet another unnamed Pharaoh, and utters that famous line that Henny Youngman stole and turned into his own trademark: “Take my wife — please!”
Genesis assures us that Pharaoh loaded Abe down with all kinds of livestock in payment for his lend-lease, including camels. The New American Bible, in a footnote to that chapter, informs the reader that the camel wasn’t even domesticated until after 1000 BCE, and Abe is placed anywhere from 1750 to 2350 BCE (who can say, exactly, when a fictional character was born?).
See, here’s the problem with a lot of the Bible writers – they had no history books in those days, if something existed in their time, such as camels, they simply assumed they had always existed, and so, wrote them into the tall tale they were fabricating about Abraham, in an effort to establish Jewish right to the Levant.
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“Am I mistaken, Ruth, or did you mention that you were originally raised Catholic?”
I think maybe it was Victoria that mentioned being raised Catholic. I was raised Southern Baptist. Though in my studies, I’m given to understand that Catholics believe in divine inspiration and don’t necessarily hold to the inerrant, literal interpretation that the SB does(I could be wrong).
At any rate, thank you for the information. I’m slowly pouring through a lot of different areas of study and it can seem pretty overwhelming at times.
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Furthermore (how often do we ever get a chance to use that word, really?), in the introductory section of The New American Bible, it provides a good discussion of the Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis, and throughout, constantly footnotes which verses were written by which of the four recognized sources of the first five books. Literally a wealth of information, and highly recommended to anyone interested in knowing more about how the Bible came to be.
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I don’t have the in-depth knowledge that certainly you and JZ and many others here have, but I’m working on it. There are so many of these…inconsistencies…between actual places/events and how it is reported in the Bible. I’m working my way through all of this slowly. But, yes, I agree with you study and educating ourselves really does shine a light on the errors, if you want to call it that, in believing any of the Bible literally.
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Want a quick course, Ruth? Then check this out – http://contradictionsinthebible.com/ – you can sign up, and get an emailed contradiction every day, or you can browse through his archives, or both.
I’m not one to promote my own website on another’s blog, it’s simply bad form, but since you really want to learn, and since I’m in the process of setting down what I’ve learned in print, I don’t think Vi would mind if I posted the URL – read it like a book: http://in-his-own-image.com/2010/01/24/-in-his-own-image-.aspx
I have a theory, that I discuss there, that the Hebrews switched gods in the middle of the stream!
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I’ll have to check that out. I’m reading The Human Faces of God at the moment and the author presents some pretty fascinating theories.
I’ll bookmark both of those and pop over and have read when I get a chance.
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Sorry to load you up so heavily, but hey, what’re friends for? If anyone ever broke into my place and saw the towers of religious material (including a few “Watchtowers”) defying gravity on my desk, they’d leave thinking I must be the most religious man in the world.
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No worries. I moved recently and the books. Good grief! I only wish they were as scholarly as the ones that I’m getting into now. I’ve got stacks and stacks of Beth Moore, Charles Stanley, Kay Arthur, etc. Then I’ve got stacks of Bible Study Course Training workbooks – Experiencing God, Daniel, every Beth Moore Study….you get the picture.
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Oh, step back when you call her Vicky – I did that once, emphasis on the once —
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Some people are slow. In your case, you may have spared your life.
PS — Someday (maybe) I’ll share why I prefer not to be called Vicky. You sinned in ignorance. You are forgiven, sorta. Your punishment? Violet shall have the rule over you. Her punishment for having a slip of the finger? She has to put up with you.
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But —
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Hah, hah, Vi! See what you get? Heeey, wait a minute – D’oh!
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