Chili

History is nice but always with curious eyes as if they are looking for that missing piece in their own life.

Chili

Just becasue we cannot find physical evidence of the Exodus does not mean it was not real, but maybe our concept of real is wrong and Moses was real but we are not as bright as we think.

A good question to ask is if it dit not happen the way we think because we cannot find evidence for it, why is the story there, and are we maybe not the subject matter of the topic he wrote about.

Steve Weiss

If someone that you know reported that a flying saucer landed in his garden and that the aliens revealed their mission to your friend, what would your reaction be? "I don't know, maybe?" Would it be logically correct for your friend to say that it is up to you to prove him wrong? Truth claims, claims to factuality, must be verified according to rules of evidence and logic. The observer who says that a valid case has not been made that validates the truth of a claim is not required to rebut such claims. The observer merely has to point out that insufficient evidence and/or poor logic has been presented and that the case is without foundation and can be ignored.

On the face it the Bible is fictional and relates fantastic stories as if they actually occurred. It is not for the neutral observer to rebut these nonsensical claims but for the advocate to support them. One must make a choice, natural laws or arbitrary exceptions to them at the whim of an unseen and unverified something that defies description. It is a waste of time proving that a tooth fairy does not exist; it is for those who claim that they are real to do so or to remain silent.

Steve Weiss

I have tried to understand the point you are failing to make here, but I cannot. Are you attempting to assert that one should just accept fantastic stories at face value and exercise no critical thinking and that the lack of evidence of any sort outside an ancient story book is of no import in determining what happened and what did not?

It is a standard of evidence that extraordinary claims require extraordinary amounts of evidence. In the case of the alleged occurrence of biblical miracles no amount of so-called evidence (what would qualify) can validate these absurd claims. For instance, the earth never stopped rotating on its axis for 24 hours in order to please Joshua. It never happened. How do I know that? It's simple, the earth rotates on its axis due to a collision between it and another celestial body billions of years ago. If the earth did stop rotating on its axis by what means would it being to rotate again? Did the earth collide with another planet while we were all asleep, or what? Or is god playing some funny game starting and stopping the earth's motions on a whim? What is the greater probability: that the story is nonsense or that god makes natural laws only to break them when he feels like it?

The assertion that the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt may be a good storytelling gimick asserted so that the Hebrews were given underdog status, but there is zero evidence for the Hebrews being in Egypt or being held as slaves there. None. The additional plot line that follows the tribe around in the desert for 40 years, somehow sustaining hundreds of thousands of people for a couple of generations until they find the promised land that they then attack and destroy at their god's urging is not supported by any facts whatsoever. I remind you that the OT cannot be used to verify the OT. Any relation of bible stories to actual events are purely coincidental.

stephan huller

Why would the Jews and Samaritans embrace the idea of being slaves? Italians, Spanish and other Romantic people embrace the myth of being 'Latin lovers' quite willingly for obvious reasons. Why the attraction to the 'we suck' story line?

sotto voce

What might any reaction be. That might depend on what the mission was stated to be. If it was to tell everyone that the Bible was fiction, people might start believing in flying saucers.

Which of course, they don't. Though almost everyone seems to believe the Bible, whether they want to, or not.

He made the claim, he must justify it, or be ignored. Just as anyone who claims that the the Bible is fiction must justify it, or be ignored.

This is a spurious thread; if 'thread' is the right word.

Steve Weiss

Something that is passed off as genuine and real when it is fake or counterfeit is an example of fraud. The terminally gullible may believe the utterly absurd stories in the bible, and they may be as clay in the hands of propagandists whose mission is to deceive those who lack critical faculties, but fiction the bibel remains. A work is fiction until proven otherwise by objective rules of evidence. Those who are deceitful either are deceived themselves or are psychotic or they know that they are putting over a big lie and just want to see if people will allow them to get away with it.

If, as most Christians claim, the bible is the word of their deity, if even one of its stories is found to be false, the entire work fails to pass muster as non-fiction. The number of impossibilities related in the bible as if they are factual must number in the hundreds, but the entire structure fails when even one of its supports fails like a collapsing house of cards.

Now, I'm going to tell you the story of a superman/god. He was born in Nazareth, or was it Bethlehem, on an unspecificed date, and he was created from the union of an unmarried woman and a deity. The story skips most of this demi-god's life story with a few exceptions until he reaches the age of about 30 and starts a series of speaking engagements and holds magic shows. To make a long story short, the authorities catch up with him, he gets crucified, dies but is reborn and saves humanity, but not from wars, diseases and famines. Those continue as if the man/god never appeared at all. Lots of predictions were made by said man/god, but none of them actually happen, but ignore that; it's a best-selling story nonetheless. Call the NT a fable, a novel, a myth, or a legend, what have you, none of it happened, but many have taken it seriously by suspending judgement like people do when they go to the movies. Just like the super-heroes of cinema, there are lots of memorabilia, t-shirts, trinkets and other objects sold by churches which make lots of bucks embelishing these phony stories, but that's the free market, isn't it? Truth? That's besides the point.

sotto voce

67, and still no evidence.

Chili

It is not an extraordinary claim, but they could have made it easier for you and just say that 'they handicapped the sun,' to say that the light of common day is an illusion that while in exile they were impaired to see, which so them means that they handicapped the sun as the light of common day in them.

Be it known first that we convert sun-rays with our mind when the open our eyes and then convert these rays into ligth so that we can see. If you cannot follow this just close your eyes and see, and now consider that for those exhiled in the promised land before God's own time, they could still see a light when they closed their eyes, which is not a light, per se, but the 'thinginess of their own thing,' --if that is still English to you,-- which in reality means a partial understanding of who they were, or alternately, see partially into their own nature, or essense, if you like that better, as the Son of Man here now awakened prematurely that therefore will not increase but will remain in the same proportion they have drank of the cup of Gods wrath by way of fornication. We can now say that the divide between their own left and right brain is torn, and so lost their virginity as child of God and hence are 'from their mother's womb untimely ripped,' and so were torn forever between the light of common day and the light they see within.

So by awakening the celestial light to interfere in their life they partially reduced the efficency of the light of common day, wherein they now are driven in part by the light of common day 'with urgency' to quench their pain inflicted upon them by the celestial light that will not go away, and hence their pain is real as is shown in Rev.14 :11 "there shall be no relief by day or by night" and so the sun does not illuminate their day not even on high noon of a sunny day, and conversely, the night would not bring them felief from the 'fog' they see by day. Kind of like 'zombi-ism' or 'on fire for the Lord' as they call it today, and closed to home, it is what charismatics are all about.

So obviuosly, those Archelologists did not know what they were looking for and the Historians just reported what they found.

I here then say, just look at the sun yourself and see and that would not help you either, but if you understand the 'knowledge is equal to light' you will soon be able to see with your eyes closed and that is what this is all about. In, fact you might actually cose your eyes to see better at times.

So then when the sun stopped for Jushua, it just means that evening never followed for him that night, and so he entered upon eternal life where there is no need for the sun or even lamps to see, and you can read about this in Rev. 22:5, let's say, so you might find some confirmation there.

As for Joshua, in Catholicism proper both Christmas and Easter are celebrated for two days to signify that the sun stopped for those two days and so the night for them did not come to make a second day. At Christmass it signifies the darkest point in life which so has nothing to do with the actual light of common day but is a mindset where the sun-rays are less portable and so then is the night on which Christ is born to the visionary of this night, and following that the Easter night that always is celebrated on Sunday for 2 days signifies that evening will never come again for him as occupant in eternal life, which then is what Ascention is all about.

So yes, the Exodus was real and still is today.

Chili

I think you have been duped by Hollywood and it is time to close your eyes.