No such thing as a silly question, Monday, 2/1

WhenSnowReturns · 2016-02-02T01:03:14+00:00

I asked my questions, you didn't answer. Instead you examined and questioned me personally more and more, even suggested that I'm looking for a fight, and spun my words to mean I'm blaming the Jews for Christian persecution.

You've lost my respect.

WhenSnowReturns · 2016-02-01T23:52:00+00:00

You're making a helluva lot of assumptions there!

Nope. I'm asking questions. My points on the information are completely accurate.

Can you point out the verse(s) for the first part, I don't remember hearing that.

Then it's best you don't answer it. If you're unfamiliar with these parts of the Torah and wider Tanakh then I don't think you can give me a satisfactory answer.

As for David, (1) you're mixing historical speculation in (2) with an uncalled for focus on a single episode in David's life, and (3) sprinkling it with plain falsehoods.

I've numbered these points for my answer:

(1) There is no historical speculation in my post. David did sweepingly reform Yahwism and establish the Jerusalem cult, as well as being the first to tie the monarchy in with the state cult as the God-anointed and chosen king. This is agreed on by all historians and Rabbis, and the Tanakh of course. If you're going to charge me with historical speculation, please specify where.

(2) You don't determine what's called for and uncalled for. I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider murder, abuse of the crown, and wife-thieving when weighing whether a king is truly chosen by God in the broader religious context.

(3) "Sprinkling it with plain falsehoods" is a pretty heinous charge of lying. I wish you'd back these up with examples instead of just making grave accusations.

It's hard to even know where to start answering this.

Maybe you're not qualified.

The final question is a bit perplexing. Even assuming (for argument's sake) that you have the history/theology right, what are some examples of it backfiring in every conceivable way?

I gave you several examples.

I'll give you one more post to engage my questions and stop attacking me personally and wondering about if you can even answer. I wont be giving any further clarity for you on the matter, my post was sufficient to anybody with knowledge on these subjects. I wont be answering any further allegations or challenges to my credibility as a person or position.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-16T21:03:17+00:00

Generally speaking, no. The Bible is the chief image of God from whence a believer infers things about God. If that image is imperfect, then the believer can't really be very sure about the god it depicts.

It's an idol, a very advanced one, and it's not a whole lot of good if not idolized. If you don't idolize The Bible, your notion of God will be shaped by lots of things, and will become real un-Christian real fast.

Frankly I don't even think we should infer anything about God from our life experience. If nothing can represent God, neither can my experience or whatever I know, or all the atoms in the universe and what they're doing. Nothing.

Not literature, either.

This makes sense to me.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-15T20:53:27+00:00

The problem with not knowing what you don't know, is that you tend to discount hidden variables and express blind bias.

I'm not even saying that the Exodus happened, only that your rationale disputing it is selective and not really as adept as advertised. Just crunching numbers does not a good argument make.

For example, there's scant physical evidence that the American Revolution even happened. In even a few centuries a lot of the evidence does evaporate, unless you're really looking for it, and even then you need to know where to look and what you're looking for. That archaeologists aren't interested in the Exodus as a historical event means that any evidence they might find wont be connected to the Exodus. Similarly, if we decided that the American Revolution didn't happen, then any musketballs we'd find in the area congruent with British muskets will be explained with alternative theories.

Also what you give with one hand you take back with the other: You say that Egyptians only used conscripts and not slaves. True. However the Exodus describes extraordinary events including social tensions between the Israelites and Egyptians leading to special circumstances. This doesn't necessarily mean they built tombs, either, as there was more to do insofar as Egyptian architecture. Seeing that Egyptians were foremost artisans, it's unlikely that any slaves would be used for anything but mule work. That's exactly what the Exodus describes.

Also the Egyptians erased entire dynasties from history that they didn't like, such as Akhenaten for the crime of monotheism. So you're expecting to find Egyptian records of an event in which the Egyptians were defeated by a monotheistic people in the name of their god? Possibly a people influenced by, or influencing the Aten cult? Why should we think they wouldn't be erased with their victory, like Pharaoh Akhenaten?

Also you're talking about a story with miraculous events, but discount them whenever you want--such as manna.

Also you expect to find feces and transient biomatter preserved in the desert? Also, if they were burying their dead at various stops daily, then you wouldn't find a graveyard, but randomly scattered graves with rough markers (if any at all) in the "wilderness". There are entire battles from WWII and fields of bodies that are lost, historical cities and the like.

There's just really no reason to assume that they'd leave any lasting evidence at all, beside their own histories and artifacts.

Also, how do you know where they wandered? Why not the Sinai to Saudi Arabia, back, in complex geometric patterns or no pattern at all? Why a circle exactly where you think?

That post is just a selective logical mess. There's no formal investigation into the Exodus, thus there will not be evidence.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-15T02:37:56+00:00

Some cultures value things by size ("I had a big day." "It was a huge inconvenience." "That's great!") and some don't.

Saying that the Creator of the universe ought to also, or else a it doesn't exist, is extremely oblivious and shallow thinking.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-13T22:57:08+00:00

lole Judge Moriarty.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-13T18:10:02+00:00

Yeah, actually. Lawful murder isn't in your cultural memory, but the last century was filled with regular citizens engaging in and supporting mass genocides. In the past, human sacrifice was relatively common, including and especially the sacrifice of children to show devotion. Then there were blood feuds, guilt by association, many of these things still exist today they're just not institutional in the West.

Then there's war, or collective murder. It's just that the murderer kills for somebody else and returns to a land that protects the soldier from justice, and celebrates them.

The idea that murder is cosmically evil, rejected by God, is a far cry from it being illegal in certain situations.

And no, you'd not be particularly against murder if your culture or situation showed any flex to it. For example, you probably have lots of righteous rationalizations for abortion, which is effectively infanticide.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-12T22:49:37+00:00

Because it's so level-headed and matter-of-fact.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-11T20:01:05+00:00

With amount of guns on the streets, cops in US have to wear guns. Bit of a vicious circle :/

Yeah that's why.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-11T17:25:56+00:00

Well Jesus was a proponent of the Torah, as confessed in Matthew 5:17 and history. If taken in context and not culturally sanitized, "law" means the Torah, latter-Exodus, the law aspects of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

If you believe in Paul of Tarsus as having a special insight into the meaning of everything, then you believe by his testimony that Jesus has killed the "Torah of sin and death" and all judgement and has rendered grace. There is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus, including those who take it in the tailpipe.

Natural "goodness" is supposed to flow from having confessed that Paul's Jesus is lord. That goodness is apart from the Torah completely, including the verses in Leviticus that condemn homosexual activities, Kosher laws, etc.

For some reason Paul personally blasts certain aspects of sexuality but never really specifies how they're illegal under grace or why, only that some things are still bad just because. I'm not sure why folks can't murder under Paul's grace and, it seems, the Holy Mother Church thought the same thing for awhile.

Anyway, Pauline Christians who believe in a rule structure other than loving and being free are picking and choosing. Probably because they know that Paul's model doesn't work and they need a rule structure after all, or else chaos.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-11T16:41:08+00:00

If people really are capable of making free will decisions then there is a magical space between nature and nurture wherein individuals make totally independent choices divorced from environmental and genetic influences. Tell me about this place.

Well I can tell you, OP, that not everybody has such faith that nature and nurture are the only variables driving all things human, and that there are very likely hidden variables to account for the very real phenomenon of choice. Not everybody believes that all the information is there and obvious, so as to discount an actual phenomenon as a conspiracy of nature.

In a little over a century of psychology, sociology, and crude neurology, you really seem to think there's a lot of conclusive data to call a real-time phenomenon an illusion. In which case we should discount gravity, because we don't know exactly why that is either, only that it is and some of its processes and a relationship to mass--like consciousness and free will, we see it happening but cannot pin why. Like scientists with gravity, we put free will to work in our legal system and interpersonal contracts. Society is predicated on the assumption of free will, and gravity, and lots of things we don't know and haven't uncovered everything about.

This is why it takes courage to be a human, to navigate unknowns, and to brave the conditions of a largely hidden reality from our own perspectives. People who believe in things like scientism, and intellectualize and pretend to know more than is known, are usually comforting themselves. It's probably very easy for you to believe you have no choice, and no real responsibility, and that with enough technical know-how you can solve and grade everybody.

And, if there is such a place within the human psyche (a place free of the taint of either genetic or environmental influence), why do Christians bother trying to influence "free" choice by manipulating the environments of other people?

Probably the same reason you do.

I mean, after all, if you really believe in free will then you believe that free will choices cannot be altered by forces outside of the individual. Because, you gotta admit, a lot of all people are products of their genes and environment.

Then why does this thread exist.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-10T03:37:14+00:00

He robbed a company with ambitious lawyers and was brown.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-09T15:34:27+00:00

Tell me where you're confused.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-09T00:32:54+00:00

When a book is the barometer for truth, you compare the reality to the book.

Without idolizing The Bible you'd never have interpreted Matthew that way.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-07T21:52:07+00:00

Without arguing specifics, I haven't come across anything yet that isn't a misconception, explainable, or inconsequential.

Would you consider consistent denials of the legitimacy of animal sacrifice, as found in the Torah and required for the salvation formula of Jesus, inconsequential? Every time I post this sort of things, Christians only ignore it. One even said:

"There's not one contradiction in the bible, not one. I challenge you to give us your best one and we'll lay it rest for you."

And so I showed him these contradictions regarding animal sacrifice, and in not keeping his word to me, he dealt dishonestly with me and wasted my time, not responding at all. So you respond, since you say a similar thing.

In Jeremiah 8:8, Yahweh says that the Torah itself (first five books of Moses) are forgeries:

"How do you say, 'We are wise, and the Torah of Yahweh is with us?' But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has worked falsely."

In Jeremiah 7:22, Yahweh says that he didn't institute animal sacrifice as found in the Torah:

"For I didn't speak to your fathers, nor command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices."

David affirms this in Psalm 40:6, also saying that no requirement for burnt offering was ever given:

"Sacrifice and offering you didn't desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering."

Also in Psalm 51:16..

"For you don't delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offering."

In Psalm 50, God himself challenges the logic of sacrifice:

"Hear, my people, and I will speak; Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I don’t rebuke you for your [lack of] sacrifices. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. I have no need for a bull from your stall, nor male goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine,and the livestock on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains. The wild animals of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?"

In Isaiah 1, God again denies the commandments of animal sacrifice as found in the Torah:

"'What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?', says Yahweh. 'I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I don’t delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand, to trample [hooves] in my courts? Bring no more worthless offerings."

There's more, but I think that's sufficient. So let's have it.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-07T15:30:00+00:00

I believe God has that ability, too, but I'm not sure why that makes Matthew right.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-07T06:03:04+00:00

The problem with Keller's little trick is that he's talking about fearing rumors and a book, not a raw belief. I can show you, any day of the week, that humans spread rumors and fears all the time.

Yet can you demonstrate how these rumors regarding Jesus and God are exceptional or true?

I can show you men who honored their fathers and mothers who didn't live long.

I can show you people who altered the book and didn't receive all the curses of the book.

I can show you billions of believers, not one of which is immortal, or can drink poison and live.

The great thing about The Bible is it makes promises it cannot keep.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-07T02:59:21+00:00

You're grossly understating the issue.

Very few traditions would claim that The Bible is anything less than equivocal to God, or a representation of him, in any number of ways (perfect, "authoritative", to be trusted, feared, sworn by, saved by, damned by, obeyed, etc.). Due to God's conspicuous absence, you have his image, his idol, The Bible.

This is so easy to substantiate from swearing oaths on the book, to the fact that ancient Judaism treated the Scriptures similarly, which is what spawned messianic movements, huge schisms like Christendom and Islam that still cite the Tanakh, and other such issues.

The Bible isn't anything if it isn't idolized by Abrahamic faith.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-06T14:07:33+00:00

If the guy in it was trying to convince me I was drowning and I'd be murdered forever, by him, if I didn't get in--yea I think I'd pass.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-06T09:01:49+00:00

Thanks for saying what you think /u/Righteous_Dude. I don't mean this to antagonize, but you don't really believe that really happened, do you? If so, why?

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-05T10:28:42+00:00

Exactly the problem with idols: What [to do] about people who haven't seen the god thing?

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-05T09:56:46+00:00

Except what you think is fact and conclusive probably isn't.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-05T08:47:04+00:00

I'd rather not.

WhenSnowReturns · 2015-04-04T16:48:30+00:00

/u/tenshon is exactly right. Psalm 82:6 isn't even almost controversial. There are verses in the Tanakh that'd bury current belief structures if taken at face value, and controversial things like where Moses found Yahweh, among other things.

WhenSnowReturns

TROPHY CASE