[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Steve Wright *
Well, not quite… God does not intervene in ways that would compel belief.
Point taken. I should have characterized your belief as God not intervening in ways that are detectable by objective means.
But he did, if one believes the bible. Why did he stop? People are still in need of guidance. And nowhere in the bible (to my knowledge) does God state that he will hand in the miracle business when people begin to learn about the natural world.
To suggest this is to consign your God to the gaps.
O.K., they are told about an individual, a small group of people, or a large group of people. Did you have a point?
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/radio/bastards.htm
Here’s one example, just off the top of my head. Thousands of people have sworn they personally heard the quote in question live on the radio, when in fact it NEVER HAPPENED. What they heard was a fabrication that was done for a “blooper” record, yet people remembered it as happening on the radio. So that would be just one example of the person telling the story claiming that it happened to THEM, not someone else. I could find tons more examples, but I think you get the point.
It’s called a myth. They are common to almost every human culture throughout history.
Before what?
But you are assuming your conclusion - that the story was other than allegorical. Perhaps nobody questioned it because they realized that it didn’t literally happen. Nobody questions whether the Cat in the Hat is real, but that doesn’t lead me to believe he is. Religious tenets do not receive the same level of scrutiny as historical treatises, because people realize that they are expressions of faith, not literal descriptions of events. (Besides which, there wasn’t really such a thing as a historical treatise back then, anyway). Exactly what kind of evidence of people questioning the story would you be expecting to find? The fact is that there is almost nothing outside of the Bible from that time period that mentions it at all. What do you want, an Egyptian tablet that says “Hey, that Exodus thing is total bullcrap!”? There’s probably not a lot of ancient literature saying that Vishnu didn’t have the body of an Elephant, or that Cupid didn’t fly around shooting arrows into lovers either, but I don’t accept that as proof of anything.
I find it very probable. People tend not to ask for confirmation on matters of faith. If you have faith, and you believe that your god worked miracles for your people, it’s uncommon to go around questioning it.
I don’t even have to check the snopes link. I remember reading it in the past. Good call. I’m gonna have to mull it over…
Assuming a conclusion is a big no-no if you’re trying to demonstrate a rigorous proof, but I’m satisfied to see that the whole business is consistent and not self-contradictory.
In this era, sure. But people in the first generation or two after an event supposedly occured to a whole nation, I can’t imagine that people wouldn’t respond with something like, “Wow, that’s an amazing story! And it happened to all of us? How come I never heard it before?”
I guess that’s where we differ, then. I tend not to just assume things; I like to actually see some evidence before I believe something, especially a story that’s thousands of years old, with nothing to corroborate it, and for which we don’t even know who wrote it. For me to say that this story, out of all the religions that have their own stories of the supernatural, happens to be a true historical supernatural event, and to believe this simply because it says so in the story, is just too much of a leap of logic for me.
I wasn’t around then, but here’s one possibility: They didn’t question the story because they KNEW it was only a parable. Kids don’t question whether the cow really jumped over the moon, because they know it’s just a story. You’re looking at it thousands of years later and saying “it really happened that way”, but how do you know that’s what they were saying back then?
As I think I’ve said before, I’m not a fundamentalist or a Biblical literalist. To me, the Bible is a historical document (arguably unreliable, but then that’s true of most historical documents), a work of art, a record of how other people have perceived God and their duty to him, and a source (though not the only source) of moral guidance. That’s a lot to ask of one text; it seems churlish to demand absolute literal truth as well.
To follow up on some of Keeve’s points: I could conceive of some of the tales of miracles arising, say, from situations like this:-
Scene: a battlefield in ancient Judaea.
Joshua: Blimey, that was some fight, wasn’t it?
Joshua’s lieutenant: Sure was, boss, we certainly smote them unbelievers, didn’t we?
Joshua: Hip and thigh, mate, hip and thigh… Took all day, though, didn’t it?
Joshua’s lieutenant: Yes, we were lucky there, polishing the last of them off just before it got too dark to fight.
Joshua: Hmmm… well, you know, we were on God’s side… maybe it wasn’t just luck… it’s as if, you know, He made the sun stay in the sky just long enough for us to get the job done…
Joshua’s lieutenant: Sounds like you’ve been out in the sun too long, boss.
And so, the story of the sun standing still for Joshua was born. And there’s no need to restrict such stories to the Old Testament:-
Scene: a hillside in ancient Palestine, around tea-time.
Jesus: Blimey, there’s a lot of them out there, aren’t there?
St Peter: Yes, boss, and they’ve been listening to you all day, they’re getting pretty hungry. What are we going to do?
Judas Iscariot: Well, we can’t afford to feed them, not with what we’ve got in the kitty right now, I’ve told you time and again about proper budgeting, but you never bloody listen, do you?
Jesus: Oh, we’ll work something out. Call for volunteers, that usually works. (addresses multitude) OK, I know you all want some supper, well, we’re going to check who’s brought some food, or who can get hold of some, and we’ll divvy it up, right? Who wants to get the ball rolling?
Disciple: Umm… I’ve got five loaves here, and a couple of fish…
Jesus: Ta, mate, that’s a start. (addresses multitude again) OK, my mate here will start us off, anyone else got any ideas?
First Ancient Palestinian: I brought some cheese.
Second Ancient Palestinian: I know where we can get some dates.
Third Ancient Palestinian: I could do a run to McDonalds, if it wasn’t a blatant anachronism Steve just threw in to get a cheap laugh.
(process continues until all the five thousand are fed)
Jesus: See? I told you we’d work something out.
St Peter: You know what you are, boss? You’re a bloody miracle worker, that’s what you are.
So… did these things happen as I tell them, or as the Bible tells them? And does it matter? So long as God’s will is done, is it important how it gets done?
I believe God is too important, too fundamental to the whole of existence, to be captured in a logical proof. To my mind, belief in him requires my whole being: not just my reason, but my faith as well. So: am I consigning Him to the gaps? Or enthroning Him in my heart?
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I like it when opposing views stay level-headed long enough to figure out which one detail is the real crux if the disagreement.
On the other hand, I agree that it’s not enough to have a story that’s internally consistent. I do see evidence also. But it is of the highly subjective and personal “the world is so orderly and beautiful that there must be a Creator” kind of evidence, which I didn’t bother mentioning because it is such a “preaching to the choir” sort of thing.
Regarding the Joshua And The Sun story brought by Steve Wright, and the Cow Over the Moon mentioned by blowero, the point I have trouble visualizing is the point where such stories and legends got accepted as facts. Can anyone suggest a way where it might be possible for a culture to arise where even the adults believe in Santa Claus? I don’t see how it can happen. You can fool the kids, because they have limited informational contact. But eventually they meet someone who tells them the other side of the story. A really totalitarian government can do a lot of information suppression, but if there already exists a myth in the whole population, how does one go about convincing people that it really did happen? Wouldn’t they respond with something like, “Ummm, we know that story. It’s on the fiction shelf.”
If I understand you correctly, you are asking: if Exodus started as a parable, how did it morph into a story that is universally believed to be literal?. Well, first of all, I don’t agree that everyone believes it to be literal. I think many people, (like Steve Wright, for example) consider it possible that it’s an exaggeration, or even an outright fabrication. Remember that we’re talking about a story that’s thousands of years old, and probably started out as an oral tradition. It most likely wasn’t written down until later, and we don’t even know who wrote it down. That seems like more than enough time for the story to morph into a literal one for some people.
But the fact is, we just don’t have enough information to know what happened. It was just too long ago, and there’s no corroborating evidence. My suggestion that it started as a parable was just one possiblity. Another possibility is that someone made it up way after the fact, and it was accepted as true. Or maybe it’s a true story except for the parts about the miracles. I just don’t find the argument: “It must have been true because nobody questioned it”, to be very convincing.