It’s not just one national event that you are forced to discount. There is the national event when Joshua wrote the Torah on twelve stones - in the presence of the entire nation of Israel (according to the Oral Tradition, these stones were still legible in the time of Eli the Priest, a contemporary of King David).
Do you believe that the Torah was written by Joshua on twelve stones in the presence of the entire nation? No. Why? Because, and only because, it’s a miraculous history.
Think about the commandments of the Torah. Every seventh day: no work (and the counting of the weeks was believed to have been in effect from the time of Moses). Every seventh year: no agriculture (and the year cycle was believed to have been started in the times of Moses). Phylacteries. Passover. The commandment to “teach your children about Exodus.” The commandement “never to forget the day you stood before God in sinai.” Each one of these commemorations should have taken Herculian efforts to get a nation accept it.
Nothing similar has ever happened. I have neither the need, not the ability, to disregard the evidence. I must surrender to the evidence. Kicking and screaming, I must surrender to the evidence.
Where is the overwhelming “evidence” that something else did happen? I am still waiting for the number of digs that were conducted in the sinai desert? Give me a number – because I know in major town-centers, their digs are extremely small-scale, and still very expensive.
Or do you put all your trust in authority. One guy says “they searched the sinai high and low and they found nothing. Game over.”
Not so fast Marley, not so fast. I am a bit more skeptical than you are, it appears.
It’s already been discussed at length. The evidence says the Jews were never in the Sinai and never in Egypt. It’s not quite an alternative theory the same way the planes and explosives are alternative theories, but that’s what the evidence says. There’s no physical evidence that millions of them were in Egypt and then wandered around a small area for decades. There’s no evidence for the plagues or your miracles, or that your made-up category of “commemorated national history” has any particular bearing on the issue. All groups of people have origin stories, many are fabricated in various ways. The Jews are not unique there.
You’ll have to ask Diogenes the Cynic.
You think I made up my mind on this issue based on a couple of posts by a guy on a message board?
You’re not a skeptic at all. You’re just resistant to anyone who doesn’t accept your conclusions.
Based on that logic, no one would ever dig anywhere. I mean there is no evidence, we just randomly dig holes and hope for the best. How was evidence ever found of things longer ago with far fewer people?
People have searched. people who wanted to find things. No one is saying there is no evidence and it didn’t happen. We are saying there is no evidence at the moment. Talk to us when it is found.
We don’t randomly dig holes. We dig holes in cities; where people have lived for millenia. We dig in places that people build structures, and where people throw things out.
No one built anything in the sinia desert. And no one threw things out in the sinia desert. They went emptyhanded, to a large extent.
Marley. It’s all about categories. Your category - miracles - is utterly arbitrary and self-serving. I, however, look at the facts and the details. I am open to evidence.
However, I don’t just guess things. I don’t say, “If I don’t have physical evidence, I have nothing.”
No. We trust reports of miracles, or any events. We don’t say, we trust the Egyptians propoganda (all history was written as propaganda at that time, except the bible.)
Marley. All you have just informed me is that you are either too lazy, or too careless, to look at the details. It’s all about categories.
You can’t survive for 40 years empty handed. You eat food. Your clothes wear out and you make new ones. People die and you put up markers, people get injured and you make crutches and canes, people make art.
How is it arbitrary? It has a clear meaning, and the events you are describing would qualify as miraculous by any definition.
And then add a couple of miracles to explain the nonsensical details.
But you don’t have anything.
No, we don’t. I explained why a couple of pages ago.
We don’t need to.
This is ridiculous. The Bible includes a number of stories that are demonstrably not true, and propoganda is exactly what they were.
No, Voyager. There clothing did not whither. Deuteronomy 4:8.
You don’t eat food, Marley. You eat manna, which, again according to the biblical record, would evaporate when the next day came.
Marley, when I say propaganda I mean that the ancient egyptians and everyone else in fact, were exactly like Saddam Hussein. Do you think Saddam Hussein would write negative material?
THE BIBLE, HOWEVER, is overeager to report all the negative events, all the Kings’ sins. The BIble is remarkable in this sphere. You don’t expect the Egyptians, however, to report negative behavior.
I don’t mean to compare the Holocaust to the Exodus, but I think the Holocaust teaches us an important lesson, when the Germans began burning all the files. DON’T TRUST THE BAD GUY ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU KNOW HE NEVER SAYS ANYTHING BAD ABOUT HIMSELF.
I don’t know. I really don’t know if they left anything in the desert. The number of objects they left in the desert may indeed be zero.
However, there is no way to know that there aren’t millions of objects under the desert floor. Why? Because we haven’t checked. Even Bill Gates couldn’t check.
Do you understand why I said it is ridiculous that you are demanding the number of holes that were excavated in the desert when you except this garbage without even questioning it?
Also impossible. (Although I guess they also didn’t need plates to eat it.)
Some of the negative stuff isn’t true either, of course. They are stories told to make a point, and it’s not unique that some of those stories include negative behavior by the Israelites. Modern children’s stories often work the same way.
The Egyptians aren’t the bad guy here. You’ve falsely accused them of enslaving the Jews. This is akin to trumping up charges against someone, and, when he defends himself, saying you can’t trust him because he’s an accused criminal.
Think about King David. There is one measly archeological find that backs up his existence. Based on this one piece of evidence, (most) archeologists believe that he existed. Do you see how risky it is to work based on an “absence of evidence.” Had they not found that one piece, they would have SWORN that David never existed.
Archeology, I have been told by experts, is the most depressing profession. Why? Because you can search your entire lifetime and find NOTHING. So archeologists have no choice but to write books ABOUT THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE.
That’s the way it goes. Read The Bible Unearthed. Every single argument is based on “we haven’t found this. We haven’t found that.” Then, when he finds data which supports the Bible - e.g, that from the time of the Exodus and forward, we no longer find pig bones - he concocts a theory that it had nothing to do with solidarity to the Torah, but rather because they wanted to be culturally unique. That’s called putting all the chips on the side of absence of evidence, and nothing on actual EVIDENCE. First, we find pig bones. Suddenly, we don’t. (I have other examples, but I have to run. See ya sunday).
Yes there is. You make a thorough search, and if you don’t find them, you can conclude it’s unlikely they are there. Your version is “you have to turn the desert upside down grain by grain, and until you do, I am justified in believing 2 million people might have lived there for a generation and stashed all their stuff under one rock.” By definition it’s not a reasonable objection. You’re accepting a pile of miracles while demanding people do the impossible before you entertain any doubts.
Says who? In any case, you’re not talking about the existence of one person here. You’re saying a group of 2 million people lived in one place for 40 years (that’s around 80 million years of life) without leaving a trace. And before that, they lived in Egypt for an extended period of time without leaving a trace. I have a lot less difficulty accepting the existence of one person on scant evidence than I have with accepting that 2 milion people - that’s more people you will find in all but the few biggest cities in the U.S. - never changed their clothes, never made anything, didn’t die, and didn’t drop anything.
That’s exactly where I was going with that, actually. Based on those numbers, they would have been a pretty significant percentage of the population, if not a majority. Why wander the desert for 40 years if you could just take over? Especially if you’ve got a god on your side willing to mercilessly slaughter children just to make a point.
But I sort of dropped it, since it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t an actual logical argument, but is instead a candy coating to help otherwise rational people swallow irrational ideas.
I’m disappointed that this thread got hijacked away from Pascal’s Wager. I like Pascal’s Wager, even if it doesn’t really work, since it can be an interesting lens with which to look at human perception of gods and godliness.
Though at the same time, I hate Descartes ‘perfect being’ argument. That one is awful. Though I can’t really explain why I don’t mind the one and hate the other. Irrational, I guess.
abele derer, in science, you examine a theory by proposing it and asking “if this proposition is true, what would we expect to find?” For example, if you believe the Israelites wandered in the Sinai peninsula for 40 years, you ask what you would expect to find. And you would expect all kinds of remnants including clothes and dead bodies and tools. Why? Because people need those things to live. It’s universal. And those things haven’t been found in the Sinai desert. You have an alternative explanation for some of those issues - they miraculously didn’t eat food, their clothes were miraculously protected - although you’ve yet to explain others. (You’re making the same claims over and over about the food but not explaining why they didn’t make tools and didn’t bury their dead.) What’s the evidence for your explanation? Well, you don’t have any. You say the Jews wouldn’t tell stories about themselves that are not true even though every other civilization in the world does just that. Of course, there is no Biblical claim that the Jews did not eat or change their clothes while they were in Egypt before they were in the desert, and yet we still don’t have evidence they were in Egypt. So far the only thing you can say about this is “The Egyptians wouldn’t have written about them.” That’s irrelevant because we don’t have to rely on their writings. That’s about where your case is.
I am not the one who brought up digging holes. The reason we dig holes in cities is because cities form layer after layer due to human refuse. We dig to see what is underneath. To see what they did below - in the past. Now outside of cities things happen and we do learn about it. If 2 million people were to reside in a desert for so many years there would be many traces and holes would not need to be dug.
People die. Toys and things are dropped. people build fires. Even with nothing and living on manna 2 million peoples would leave obvious signs.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence that 9/11 wasn’t based on rigged towers? Seriously, that’s your argument? I mean, we have video footage of planes hitting the towers, hitting the pentagon. Plane debris was found at the sites. We have eyewitness testimony. This is not a case of people looking at a lack of evidence and saying “Well, we can’t really be sure either way”. This is a case of people genuinely and honestly believing, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that the WTC was rigged to explode.
I tend to disagree with this one, actually, though it depends on how you define evidence. I am sure that people who believed in all those ancient myths had lots of evidence for it. It was, presumably, either flawed or inaccurate evidence.
But “A” has taken place elsewhere. I have given you two example; the War of the Worlds false hysteria, and 9/11 truthers. I don’t even believe that the Jews needed to be “extremely” irrational; it might simply be mistakes and errors creeping into the account over the years. It’s like the telephone game; mistakes, over time, build up naturally even with normally rational people.
