Well, say you have a parent with a gay child and the parent wants to kick the child out of the house because of hte parent’s religious convictions. If someone said, “Don’t put your god ahead of your family!” would you counter that the parent can’t put something that doesn’t exist ahead of something that does?
Oh, and I’ve seen people get jealous over things that don’t exist, too!
I agree with you that the wording is suspect. For me, though it’s that it doesn’t say, “Don’t worship other gods” or even “Other gods don’t exist.” No, it says, “Don’t worship those gods more than you worship me.” I should come first implies something else comes second.
There’s no doubt in my mind that there were polytheistic/henotheistic cultures in the ancient Middle East, and surely archaeology would unearth evidence of them. In fact, I’ll even grant that there were people who worshipped idols alongside worship of the currently-acknowledged Biblical diety…the residents of the Northern Kingdom of Israel certainly had done so. Whether one actually grew out of the other, or whether they were independent ideologies which competed with one another until one finally won out is a point I would dispute, and I have yet to see any convincing evidence of an evolutionary relationship between the two.
However, that’s completely irrelevant to what I was saying anyway. All I was addressing is that does not necessarily mean that the line “You shall have no other gods before me” imples an acknowledgement of polytheism/henotheism as a valid world view. It acknowledges the existence of other powers at work in the world (ultimately, the Hebrew “Elohim” means power, and while it’s often used to refer to G-d, it also often refers to humans or other entities with power), but does not in any way imply that these other powers are equal to or independent of G-d. Just because you can write this explanation off as “apologetic” does not make it invalid.
Irrelevant. The question is whether Exodus 20:3 is a tacit acknowledgement that these pagan deities did indeed exist. It is not. Even if these gods did indeed exist, that would not change the meaning of the verse in question.
Nonsense. Apologetics is a form of reasoning. If I said that Chaim was wrong because he is Orthodox, that would be a genetic fallacy. Pointing out that an argument is based on certain a priori faith assumptions rather than a critical analysis of available evidence is not fallacious in the least. I was addressing the argument, not the source.
Nobody says that it isn’t. The point is that saying “You’re just using apologetics!” is an invalid line of reasoning. So what if the person is employing an apologetic argument? As cmkellar said, that doesn’t make his reasoning invalid.
What if someone were to offer an argument for atheism? The theists could respond by saying, “You just don’t want to believe in God,” and they could be right. That would not invalidate the atheist’s argument, though. Not in the least.
That isn’t exactly what I said. I was pointing out that the apologia in this case is rooted in a priori faith assumptions and that those assumptions in this case are contradicted by physical evidence.
The so what is that it assumes facts not in evidence and in this case, ignores facts which are in evidence. Even so, I did not actually say that cmkeller’s argument was “invalid,” I was pointing out only that it did not take every fact into evidence and that it was rooted in different assumptions.
This isn’t analogous at all. Your example does not address the argument itself. Mine did.
Well, if the early Israelites were, like their neighbors, generally convinced of a polytheistic worldview, AND the reality was closer to Zoroastrian dualism, this might have been a good way for One True God to introduce himself. That is, if there is only one true god, but many shades capable of pretending to be gods, that one god not only still could have been perceived through a henotheistic lens for a long time, but might have encouraged it. In any case, it’s conceivable that the reality of God is a form of monotheism, while a race with a partially legitimate prophetic tradition thinks in henotheistic terms. Hence the references.
Your Sarcasm Detector in your Humor Circuits needs tweaking.
I also think your Cynicism Detector’s out.
Well DUH!
I mean, c’mon! How much more credible is “quantum superstring whatchamacallims” than “Apollo pulls sun across sky in flying chariot?”
Gimme good ol’ fashioned flying Gods, who get pissed on the vino and fight one another, and smite uppity mortals with plagues and curses (and plagues of curses!)