Simple question?

Quote: Dalex64

Something like that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus

I hear the Odyssey is not 100% accurate, either :)

Seriously. Every last tribe with more than a handful of people in it has made up myths, and many have been preserve din one form or another ever since writing was developed (or invented by the one true god Thoth, it's a possibility). Some may be based on actual events, but even these are vastly exaggerated and distorted in various ways.

No one expects to discover the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, the tales of Gilgamesh, the various stories of Osiris, Isis, Horus and Seth, etc. to be truthful or historically accurate. Why would the myths set down on the Bible be any different? The Maya set down myths in books, too, in the Popol Vuh. Aside from being very different in form from Western mythology (pregnancies caused by spit, men turned into monkeys, people growing on trees, etc.), they are quite obviously myths. So are the Biblical myths.

BTW, since the Iliad concerns a war between Troy and a "Greek" coalition largely led by Sparta, why is it called "The Iliad"?

SPOILER ALERT:



Because the Greek name for Troy is "Ilium." Troy derives from the Latin name "Troia," possibly derived from the Hittite "Truwisa."

Quote: FrGamble

Alas, I have to go and be with a dear friend whose brother has suddenly died.

You're a good mench Padre.

Quote: Dalex64

Something like that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus

This has huge implications. The Jews spent
decades trying to prove the stories in Exodus
were true, they had a lot to gain and a lot
to lose. Now that it's a proven myth, what
does this say about the rest of the Bible?
You can't take a word of the OT or NT at
face value, some or all of it is myth also.

You have to assume it's all made up stories
and go from there, that's how this kind of
thing works. I'm already there..

I'm near the end of another audio book on ancient history. Recently we passed the late period of the Seleucid empire. This is the power often referred to as "The Greeks" in Jewish tradition when relating the story of Hanukah.

The author uses the Bible as a source, though not as the major one. Though not every paragraph cites sources, there is some citing of sources over every chapter. In this one I wonder how much is fact and how much myth. It doesn't seem farfetched for a decaying monarch to try to impose a cult with himself as the deity, but one wonders: How stupid and ignorant were Antiochus (the IV??) and his advisers?

When Caligula ruled a much bigger empire, he tried inserting himself in the cults of all his subjects, without quite making himself a god. Consider two things: 1) Caligula was quite, quite mad and 2) Judea represented a far smaller portion of the Roman empire than it did of the Seleucid empire. Meaning, if someone would be unreasonable in stepping all over the religious sensibilities of a small, unimportant province, it would be the mad emperor himself.

Yet Caligula retained enough of a grip to know better, after one of his advisers explained how that would go down in Jerusalem.

So I tend to doubt this. There is no doubt the Jews rebelled against the Seleucids. They rebelled against every power that conquered them, after all (and there were many, some worse than others). Sure, there were good relations with Persia when Cyrus, described in the Bible as "christos."(!!), ruled over the place. But eventually other kings rose after him, and then came rebellion.

This is not uncommon, BTW. Lots of other peoples did the same thing, over and over.

Quote: Nareed

There is an old ethical question, going back to the very dawn of civilization:

Are the gods moral because they only do good? Or is anything done by the gods moral because the gods do it?

I'm firmly convinced Christianity, and most other religions with deities, take an affirmative in the second question.

I think the answer is both/and.

Quote:

This means morality is not only subjective, but situational and personal as well. An action is not good or bad by itself, but depends on who does it and where one does it. While context is of paramount importance to morality, the factors that affect an action is why one does it and under what circumstances.

Morality is not subjective. The situation and who is acting cannot make raping a child a good no matter how hard she or he tries. Context and all these things are important to morality but only in determining culpability, not if an action is good or not.

Quote:

For instance, it's well known Winston Churchill did little to keep the Nazis from bombing Coventry, because he decided protecting the fact that the Allies had broken the Enigma code was far more important to the overall goal of defeating Germany. We can see the "why" of the decision, and we know the circumstances as well. It's not an easy judgment to make, but it would be judged the same way had Chamberlain been in charge, or whether a similar decision had been made to on an attack on France rather than Britain.

Nobody, especially Churchill would ever say it was a good thing to do. We might argue if we thought it necessary but I guarantee you that Churchill didn't go to bed that night saying, "Boy I sure am glad I let Coventry get bombed." He and many others probably racked their minds about other possibilities. Letting a place get bombed is not a moral good not matter what the circumstances might be. It might seem to be the only way and the circumstances might mitigate the moral culpability, but you can't make an evil into a good.

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Do not confuse trust with faith.

And do not confuse faith with blind acceptance.

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I'm certain if that were so, you or someone else would have presented an airtight argument conclusively and definitively proving the existence of the one true god Vash (why not use my own made up deities?)

Please see faith/trust above.

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Are there any positions of the church you disagree with? Or that you don't implement because you don't understand them?

Yes, but at no point do I think I fully understand all the issues, theology, and history at play. My default position when I disagree with the Church is that I am more likely wrong than the hundreds and thousands of theologians and saints that have spent their whole lives studying this things that I have not. So I continue to research and learn. More often than not I discover that I am indeed wrong or that I have misunderstood the Church's teaching.

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If something exists, regardless of its source, then it can and will be discovered and, when applicable, be put to use. Good exists regardless of whether there is a god or not.

God does exist and can and is discovered all the time. Good or evil for that matter cannot exist universally without being grounded in something that is universal itself.

Quote: Nareed

Of course there's a possibility of some god existing. There's also a possibility that random particles will spontaneously assemble into a lump of gold sitting right beside me. I simply do not think it wise to base one's life on extremely remote possibilities.

Good so now the next question you need to ask yourself is which has a more likely possibility? Instead of asking the ridiculous, why not begin with asking yourself if it is more probable that there is a beginning to the universe or not?

Quote:

You have presented one: ignorance. Briefly, because we don't know why the universe exists, there must be a Jehovah/Jesus/Spirit triple deity who created the whole thing and did everything described in the Bible exactly as portrayed.

Ok. Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but that's the essence of the argument.

Exaggeration is the tool of the illogical or an unfair and unjust debater. You will recall that I am only saying that for there to be a universe at all logically requires the existence of God. You will also recall that I explicitly have said many times that the Bible is not a science textbook and that creation did not happen exactly as portrayed in either of the creation stories of Genesis.

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Perhaps with the added, unproven assumption that energy cannot be eternal, fro some unspecified reason (if the reason were specified, the assumption could potentially be tested).

Just ask yourself can energy come from nothing? Can energy spontaneously exist without any source?

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See above. See any of my posts at random, and I think you have at least a 30% chance of coming up against such an argument.

I think I was hoping for a logical argument against God's existence and that narrows my chances to 0% of your posts.

Quote: Dalex64

I agree, it is a question I have asked repeatedly.

Why don't we see miracles like the ones documented in the bible?

I think we might also want to ask why do we need miracles like the ones documented in the Bible to believe? Many times Jesus warns us against believing just because of the signs He is performing.

Quote: rxwine

Also, what's with the disciple Judas? How could he be around Jesus and not be overwhelmed by the presence of his holy master? Is it possible he just hanged himself out of guilt for selling out a man, and later they made up a story how he realized Jesus was Lord just because it was convenient spin. Plenty of people have killed themselves over lesser things. You certainly don't need to sell out god to become suicidal.

If Judas wasn't convinced at the proximity to Jesus, surprised anyone can be.

Thanks for your concern.

Good question about Judas. I think it shows very clearly that God is not going to force us to believe. We have our free will to reject Him, especially if He isn't doing what we want Him to do. God is pretty famous for that.

Quote: FrGamble

I think we might also want to ask why do we need miracles like the ones documented in the Bible to believe? Many times Jesus warns us against believing just because of the signs He is performing.

Sure, let's ask that also.

Why do you need the miracle of Jesus' resurrection to believe?

Quote: FrGamble

Exaggeration is the tool of the illogical or an unfair and unjust debater.

Whereas name-calling is the sine-qua-non of the mature, fair rhetorician.

Good to know.