Why do other nations have to posses it. If we were at sinai, and we were walking through the split-sea, would you phone china to find out if they were also experiencing a split-sea?
I am not as convinced as you are. Most importantly, there is SOME - not much - archeological evidence for the exodus. That weakens your “absense of evidence” argument a great deal.
Non-response, so let’s try again: Is it more or less likely that a coin flip will result in a “tails” landing, than that an elephant will sprout wings suddenly and fly?
Do other countries possess a “national, commemorated history”?
No, there isn’t. The Bible’s say-so is not evidence. That’s the claim, and the evidence we would expect to find to support it (pottery shards, clothing, dead bodies, evidence of “millions” of people existing in the desert for a long time) does not exist.
Here is what you are doing: you are telling me that things I can’t observe, and which don’t in any way relate to my experience, are every bit as likely and plausible as things that I see every day. The likelihood that I am sitting here is as likely as the presence of a sentient being that can violate the laws of nature and physics by acting on the universe from outside it. The chances that I ate cereal for breakfast are equal to the chances that millions of people living in a small geographical area for decades would not leave a single observable traces (and I should accept that miracles made that possible because, well, I should just accept it). And I should adjust my behavior based on things that are fantastically unlikely because I can’t prove they don’t happen. And your evidence for this is that large numbers of people wouldn’t believe something that is wrong. Do you see why this strains credibility for some of us?
Are you actually claiming to believe that I meant another country with the exact same “national, commemorated history”? This has got to be one of the the most pathetic stall tactics in SDMB history, and I would ask that you not insult our intelligence in this manner again.
If everything is equally unlikely, does it not follow that everything is equally likely?
No one could honestly hold such a position. Should I cross the freeway with my eyes closed, since the chances of my getting hit by a car are exactly the same as if I had walked on the sidewalk instead? I doubt that a person that really believed this could last a full 24 hours.
I don’t have to admit is unlikely and I do not. Unless we agree all “mythical” events are real or they are all not real we can’t explain how every culture has had event that as a large group of people believed. And as I stated before this is exactly how urban myths arise.
And surely if, say, Stephen Hawking were lying about black holes a god would punish him in some way, right?
Maybe a horrible disease…
CMC fnord!
Just because you don’t believe in God doesn’t mean you can’t work real hard on getting a better seat on the bus to hell!
It’s not like the mythical events. The mythical events could have easily gotten off the ground. A guy says, “Poseidan lives on the bottom of the sea.” I could easily understand why someone would believe him.
HOWEVER, when someone comes and says “millions of your ancestors were commanded by God to observe the ‘seventh’ day forever,” it seems unlikely that people would believe him.
NEXT, we look around. We try to see if any other society has ever believed a false, national, heavily-commemorated event. We don’t find any.
So, it may very well be that it’s impossible that nationally commemorated history can be fallible.
As the Talmud says [in a different context], “those without intelligence cannot diffrenciate.” You can call anything a “myth.” The point is too look at the DETAILS of the story.
Czarcasm: When I said that we should suspect that the scientific community was lying about their experiments, I was making a totally different point. Diogenes was implying that he finds testimonial evidence to be NON-EVIDENTIAL. He only values scientific evidence.
My response was that if you don’t value testimonial evidence, then how can you know whether the scientists are lying about their scientific experiments or not.
And someone could say our people were lead out of Egypt by moses and I can see how people would be enthralled by the story and want to believe it and so do. A lot of the stories that I know that are in the history of my family were told to me when I was an adult and others had never heard it. Stories are often like that.
Why?
The fact that it is national or heavily-commemorated is really insignificant. Currently most of the world is less inclined to believe in such myths so readily. In the past I imagine that most nations believed numerous stories of that nature. The myth of thanksgiving is one such story.
Nonsense. Your arguments are flimsy and inadequate to support anything.
And you can call anything the truth and usually that is the problem. An intelligent person will differentiate and say if there is no evidence then we can not simply assume the truth.
Actually you can, because they can be verified. They make clear claims and publish those. Other confirm and in some cases disprove.
In the case of pure testimony where the testimony is of someone from thousands of years ago, we can’t even cross examine them, let alone reproduce them.
Not only will science not accept, neither will a court of law.
Smiley, the reason why it is unlikely that people would believe it is because people would have said, “If millions of our ancestors were commanded to observe an everlasting sabbath, why haven’t we ever heard about it.”
That you think people were once non-skeptical and gullible is of no interest to me. Show me that they were non-gullible enough that they believed a national-heavily commemorated history.
Your mentioning of the Thanksgiving myth resembles a style of the atheists. They throw out random comments, as if the truth is something that we should flee, something sinister.
Please, for God sake, tell me the details of the Thanksgiving myth. Tell me, for example, how many people were believed to have been there. Were there a thousand people at the meal. Were there a million. What was the myth. Details, for god sake, details. Smiley, the truth won’t kill you, although I can’t promise that it won’t hurt.
I was not talking about the sinai history, in that context. I was talking about a single prophet who claims that God spoke to him.
The scientists can make clear claims, but that can be lying about them. I, of course, don’t think that they are lying. However, I see no reason why diogenes thinks that they are not lying, since he holds that testimonial evidence is of zero value.
Got to run. See you 2morrow. Although I will stick around until you reply.
And yet people do. You do.
This is a kind of special pleading. You try to concoct something you believe to be a unique facet of your particular mythology and then claim that unique aspect proves it’s true. Your premise is also wrong in that Jewish miracles stories are not universally believed by Jews (and Jews are not a “nation” anyway). It’s also wrong in that plenty of othet religions and cultures do indeed believe in, celebrate and commemorate historical events that never happened. We have one major such event coming up a week from saturday (at least so far as the details of the historical event are celebrated).
This is patently ridiculous. Easter Sunday is a nationally commemorated event in many countries. Does that prove Jesus came back from the dead
All myths have details. The details of the Exodus myth don’t hold up to scientific and historical scrutiny.
Alright. And when did this happen?
They can be and then when those claims were tested they would be shown as false. Scientific claims are not accepted until they are verified in general.
Because they were not told. Things get forgotten. In real life people neglect to tell stories. Initially it might not have been millions. When I was told the story about my uncle crashing into a river and rescuing his son for the first time, I didn’t say - hey this must be a lie as I have never heard it before.
Once? Most people are non-skeptical and gullible now. I don’t understand the last sentence at all. What do you want me to show you?
Why does it matter how many the story says were there? The facts show that the story didn’t occurred the way it is told and believed. The pilgrims didn’t eat a meal with the aboriginals.
"It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.
Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.
This piece is intended to be shared at this holiday time. Pass it on. Serve a little truth with the usual stuffing."
From: kasamaproject.org
I maintain my example of the War of the Worlds broadcast, which not only fits your criteria but shows that a society can continue to believe a false, national, heavily-commemorated event even in a time of widespread ability to get information. Not only that, but it is something that was up until recently still within living memory, adding further ability to discover its falseness. And yet, people still believe millions paniced.