TerrorOfHistory

The aim of this thread is to give those individuals who believe literally in the Bibble the oppurtunity to address the criticisms highlighted and explained by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason. An example of such a claim, perhaps to get the ball rolling and to wet the appetites of Bibble believers, is that Moses could not possibly have written or compiled any of the five books that he is said to have fathered - Genesis etc. and that in fact they were written/compiled some 700 years later, by unknown authors to whom we need not lend any credence (read the text for the internal scriptural evidence). Please address ANY of the claims that he has made that you are able to refute. I think that this thread could be EXTREMELY interesting, as, to my knowledge (and i have read all of the published criticisms made by theists from his time) nobody has EVER successfuly refuted Paine's claims in this text. However, if I am wrong, i'll no doubt find out here.

RED DAVE

Age of Reason online

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...age_of_reason/

RED DAVE

TerrorOfHistory

Thanx Red Dave - should have thought of doing that :banghead:

NFLP

You must not have heard of J P Holding.

TerrorOfHistory

I'll google him right now, but could you be more specific as to how he has dealt with Paine's claims, and which ones?

TerrorOfHistory

I must confess that Holding is sidestepping all of the issues and being downright disengenuous in his criticisms. I would like to hear from people who believe that he has done an effective job.

TerrorOfHistory

"These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee," etc.

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the names of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but they must have observed it." Age of Reason.

Here is one of many inconsistencies that Paine points out - and i chose this one in particular because Holding's response is : Prophecy... and i think this is a farce. This is not to say that Holding dealt with other claims very well either, calling everything a footnote. Talk about hypocritical: He introduces an artical suggesting that when texts were canonized, they were no doubt done so with the permission of God, because God would not have let unrelated books into the bibble. He will, apparently, allow for so many footnotes (all over the work, embedded in the text) that Holding can't even address half of them, and skips over entire paragraphs of them, calling Paine boring and repetative. The only boring and repetative thing is hearing a hypocrite call Paine a hypocrite, and insult him over and over again rather than actually confront half of what he has to say. How many times can Holder call him a bigot? He insults Paine for ignoring the times in which the Bibble was written, and derides him for ignoring circumstances and such from the time, and then will not allow him any leniancy - saying that someone in our day would be called an antisemite for making the same claims. Hypocrite again?

AND i will say to Paine's credit (although this is common knowledge amongst people who know their American history) that when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, Paine included anti slavery legislation, which Jefferson removed. This says nothing of anti-semitism, i know, but in this regard at least he was ahead of his time.

NFLP

Welcome to the world of Holding. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.