EdwardSmith

The following URL contains an article, titled 'The True
Location And Time Of Eden':

http://www.cotse.net/users/t3nj/edn.html

The article uses a large quantity of historical,
linguistic, and geographical facts to definitively deduce
the true location and time of the garden of Eden, as well
as the related lands of Cush and Havila, and that deduction
is done in the absence of religious fallacies and religious
biases. This article can therefore serve as the atheists'
theory of Eden.

Celsus

Not likely. If this this thread drifts some~where else, I'll take a humble shot at this article.

Joel

EdwardSmith

"[The theory will] Not likely [serve as the atheists
theory of Eden]."

-The very first paragraph of the article proves why Eden
was a true place, without supporting any of the obvious
biblical fallacies regarding Eden. Some atheists blindly
reject all or almost all beliefs of religion, due to a
blind bias agianst it, such that those people are blind to
some of the historical facts that are mentioned in the
bible. That blind bias is detrimental to the reputation of
atheists in general. I for one, am not one of such blind
atheists. It may be that in the future, those 2 different
types of atheists will segregate themselves from eachother,
as that would prevent such internal conflict and would
therefore be the wise thing to do.

Weltall

This looks like something written for a high school creative writing class.

Amaleq13

EdwardSmith,


That it can be argued the author of a fable had an actual geographic location in mind when creating the fable in no way establishes or even suggests that the events of the fable actually took place.

If I wrote a story about seeing a unicorn on a hill by a creek where a large tree had fallen over but remained alive because the root system was still buried, you would not be justified in concluding the events actually happened if you discovered this description corresponds to the vicinity of my childhood home.

Sven

I saw neither EdwardSmith nor the article he linked claim this.

As far as I understood the article (I only skimmed over it), it only tries to establish that a location named Eden once existed. One could of course answer: So what?

Amaleq13

That is essentially a two-word summary of my post. Who are you, Hemmingway?

Unless one is arguing the claims I note are not supported by the essay, your reply or "who cares?" are entirely appropriate.

dantonac

Let's keep this civil. The OP is making a point, please address it or ignore it as you see fit, but don't belittle the effort of someone else wanting to communicate on a forum appropriate topic.

Sven

OK, then let's turn this into a direct question at EdwardSmith:
What's the point if a place named Eden existed at some time in the past? Does this change anything in our thinking of the bible or what? Please explain.

Celsus

It does nothing of the sort. All it does is presume what atheists think, and I'll wager good money that none of the regulars in this forum believe that Eden is some mystical place in another dimension.
Say it isn't so! Actually, I reject anything in the Bible that is clearly mythical, and I do not do so "blindly". What you are doing is presuming that everything in the Bible that isn't supernatural is factual, which is a load of bollocks. So you step #1 should be to demonstrate that the nonsupernatural aspects of the Bible are factual, not presume they are factual and then attempt to deduce the location of Eden from that.
Rather, the question should be, "on what basis do you judge myths to have historical facts in them?" Needless to say, all the archaeology in there is bunk. Philistines and other Sea People are from Mycenaea, not Anatolia, for a start. Abraham was not the founder of Judaism. The Hebrews did not obtain their myths from the Sumerians the way you make it out to be (when did the Sumerian empire fall? When did Israel rise? hint: round to the nearest 1000). Cush is known as an anachronism, and several hundred years may as well have been ancient to peoples whose records were not known to survive for long. Just because Kussara (wherever that is) is more convenient is no evidence for the location. The funniest part has to be when Dan, Danoi, Danya, Danes, Dana, and everyone else whose name begins with "dan-" are determined to be the same people.

Graham Hancock, Zechariah Sitchin, David Rohl, Eric Von Daniken, any of these people sound familiar to you, Ed? I'd like to see some sources.

Joel