Smullyan-esque

Could be Morton's Demon. Although I myself have always placed a smidgen of blame on the person for encouraging and feeding their demon...

cjack

I sometimes think we underestimate the blunt force trauma that religious indoctrination can inflict upon a young mind. I mean, we've corrected him on a false notion about atheists - what? - like five times already? Yet I'm willing to bet he's been hammered on that point hundreds, if not thousands of times from the other side of the equation.

Sauron

I'm still kinda baffled here, as to what I could have done to make it any clearer.

Is my writing style disconnected, or hard to follow?

Were the examples poorly structured, or not well-connected to the points I was making?

I can't conceive that he doesn't understand the points. But I could be wrong. I can see that he just doesn't get it - but I don't understand *how* he could misunderstand. It's such a glaring disconnect on his part, that I'm backtracking to see if there was something I did wrong that got mdd344 confused.

zagloba

The absence of evidence in the Sinai of the Exodus sojourn proves that the biblical account is correct. God miraculously erased all the archaeological evidence so the armies of Satan wouldn't be able to track down the Israelites.

Besides, since a day to the Lord is as 1000 years, the Israelites were encamped only 0.038 days. It was easy for the omnipotent God to clean up after a rest stop of less than an hour.

RexT

I couldn't agree more, and great insight BTW. Yet, your assessment doesn't apply only to religious indoctrination, it can also apply to secular indoctrination; or, to any and every other worldview thats pounded into a young mind. Perhaps there is one worldview that is correct, but I seriously doubt that anyone has ever seen such a view. I could be wrong of course, but I also realize that worldviews evolve. They seem to be subject to survival challenges similar to living organisms. Is there a 'correct' organism that proves that all other organisms are 'wrong', or is it possible that there are countless ways to be a 'correct' organism? And could the same apply to worldviews? I don't know, just thinking out loud.

Of course, I think you and I both feel that Christianity, being a religious organism competing for its survival, is a worldview that appears slated for extinction as other more sucessful worldviews enter the marketplace of ideas. Nevertheless, I just wanted to compliment you for your insight and sensitivity to the feelings of others. Like you, I too know how mdd344 feels, at least on some level, for I have been there and done that, as they say, and I have not forgotten.

Rex

Sven

This means something. I don't remember you ever telling this.

Sven

I don't know who said this, but it's flat out wrong. And archeologists would be quite insulted

But not king Belshazzar! That was the fucking point! Your statement only vaguely resembles what really happened - <Edit>

As long as we are talking about kings and have complete lists of kings, of course it would.

Sven

If we change this to "Has all of the evidence that can be found, been found, in the middle east and Egypt which could decide on the reality of the Exodus story?", the answer is a resounding "Yes!".
Unfortunately for you, this evidence turned out against you. *shrug*

Since your original question made no sense, this is no wonder.

You again paint a very false picture of what Sauron did. He first explained why he is wrong, and only later explained this by him being an apologist! You make it look like as if Sauron went the other way. <Edit>

Sven, please don't accuse other posters of lying. Pointing out inconsistencies and errors is fine (and encouraged) but please try not to extropolate anything about intentional dishonesty.

Thank you,
DtC, Moderator, BC&H

Sven

No reference. Why I'm not surprised?
But here http://lordibelieve.org/arch/arch4/tsld014.htm we see that it's from 1956. Remember what we told you about recent references pages ago? Most of the work which showed that the Exodus did not happen was done during the past 20 to 30 years - it's no wonder that someone did not know about this in 1956!

Again, no reference.

Yes, I get the point that your quotes are worth a shit.

Why don't 2.5 million people leave anything over 38 years? How can this be not true?

They dug exactly where 2.5 million people supposedly rested for 38 years, dug through the strata (is this also used in archeology?) with the timing given by the bible, dug much better - but there was nothing. Do they have to dig until they reach the core of the Earth for you to accept that the evidence does not exist?

Wrong. Your ignorance = your inability to argue this point.

Johnny Skeptic

That is false. Consider following:

http://www.infidels.org/library/maga.../4danie96.html

The Book of Daniel is one of those "Oops" items in the Bible. It's partly a historical novel and partly an Arabian Nights fairy tale, with a disembodied hand writing on a wall (perhaps the prophet could see The Addams Family before it was made), a man surviving unscathed in a den of starving lions, and three men left unsinged after a trip through a blazing furnace.

The history portions center around King "Nebuchadnezzar" of Babylon, who captures King Jehoiakim of Judah and carries off some Israelites. Nebuchadnezzar becomes a patron to Daniel, presented in the story as a prophet.

Nebuchadnezzar later undergoes a period of insanity before his death. He is succeeded by a "son," Belshazzar, presented as the last king of Babylon. The "thing" [disembodied hand] appears writing on the wall to warn Belshazzar of doom. Daniel 5:30 says Belshazzar died that night when "Darius the Mede" captured Babylon.

Daniel may have survived meat-hungry lions, but fact-hungry historians have ripped him into shreds. Very little is left of him. Archaeologists have pieced together the genuine history of Babylon from records recovered in the last century and a half. The following account is drawn from Babylon by Joan Oates; The Bible as History by Werner Keller; The History of Ancient Israel by Michael Grant; articles on Daniel, Babylon, Belshazzar, and Nebuchadrezzar in The Oxford Companion to the Bible; and chapters 23-25 of The House of Seleucus by Edwyn Bevan. Nebuchadrezzar -- the historians' spelling -- reigned from 604 to 562 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). He was succeeded by his son, Amel-Marduk, who ruled one year, then Neriglissar, who ruled three years. Labashi-Marduk ruled next, for less than a year.

The last king of Babylon was Nabu-na'id, commonly called Nabonidus. He ruled from 555 to 539 B.C.E., when Babylon was captured by the Persians under Cyrus the Great -- not Darius and the Medes. Nabonidus fled, although he apparently was later captured and killed in Babylon.

Nabonidus had a son -- Belshazzar (or Bel-shar-usur in Babylonian)--who apparently ruled for a decade as crown prince while Nabonidus was in Arabia. What Nabonidus did in Arabia is unknown, but the story of "Nebuchadnezzar's" insanity may be a reference to a bout of insanity or lengthy depression in Nabonidus, who apparently was very unpopular in Babylon -- or so the victorious Persians later claimed.

But Nabonidus returned to Babylon before its capture by Cyrus, so Belshazzar was not the ruler as the Book of Daniel claims, and he was never king.

Scholarship points to the reason for Daniel's bloopers. It was written during the period of the Maccabees, in the middle of the 2nd century B.C.E., or about 400 years after the events it describes. Its origin is betrayed in chapter 11, when Daniel supposedly prophesies about the future. He refers in verse 3 to a "mighty king," identifiable as Alexander the Great. The "king of the south" in verse 5 is the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, while the stronger prince -- "king of the north" -- is the Seleucid dynasty of the Middle East. Both the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings (the "Syrians" of the Book of Maccabees) were descended from two of Alexander's officers.

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tz/critic.html

Christian fundamentalist Josh McDowell has become quite rash in one of his latest books Prophecy: Fact or Fiction. For he is pinning his whole faith in Christianity on the "historical evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Daniel" (frontispiece).

Here's his argument: "Such amazing accurate predictions (in the Book of Daniel) defy the possibility of merely human origin. If these prophecies were composed in the lifetime of the sixth century Daniel, they would compel our acceptance of special revelation from a transcendent, personal God. No anti-supernatural position can reasonably be defended if Daniel is a genuine boof of Prophecy composed in 530 B.C. or the preceding years" (p. 5).

Keep that 530 B.C. in mind. It's crucial to McDowell's thesis that Daniel's prophecy of 70 weeks (Dn 9:24 ) started from that date and therefore accuratle predicted the coming of the Messiah (Jesus Christ), the death of this Messiah, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (pp. 22-23).

To continue McDowell's argument: "In Matthew 24 , the Olivet Discourse, Christ gave a list of events of the end time. As part of this chronology of future events, He explicitly referred to the prophecy of Daniel (the 'abomination of desolation' passage...). But beyond this one clear reference it is also vitally significant that interspersed throughout the Gospels are Christ's references to Himself as the Son of Man... There can be no doubt, from all these references to Daniel's Son of Man vision, that Christ clearly viewed it as authentic prophecy referring to Himself.

"Now if Christ were mistaken about the Book of Daniel, then He must also have been mistaken about his own identity. And if this be so, it follows that the Christian faith may be called into question. At stake is they very trustworthiness of Christ's statements concerning our own faith and salvation through Him."

"... If the book is a fraud, then Christ was mistaken concerning it, and much of the basis for our faith in His integrity and authority must come under severe questioning" (pp. 5-6).

This is about as reckless a statement as I've ever read. No one but a fanatic would base his whole faith on just one book in that library of books called the Bible. It reminds me of the ever more frantic efforts and thrashing of a swimmer in terrible trouble just before he drowns!

In order to be as fair as possible in my rebuttal, I will refer to those scholars whom McDowell considers favorable to himself.

Since the discussion centers on this biblical book, it's necessary to first ask: "Who was Daniel?" McDowell insists that "the Book of Ezekiel gives further evidence that Daniel was a historical figure" (p. 27). To refute this, I'd like to quote from Millar Burrows whom McDowell uses twice to back up part of his thesis (pp. 26, 124), as well as supplies a succinct and complementary biography in his "Biographical Sketches of Authors," (p. 137), which points up this scholar's excellent credentials.

In his What Mean These Stones? 1957, paperback edition, Burrow's admits to exactly what McDowell says: "... the references to Daniel in Ezekiel might be cited. In 14:14, 20 (of Ezekiel) Daniel is named with Noah and Job, the three being clearly chosen as supremely righteous men..." (p. 262).

Sounds like Burrows definitely agrees with McDowell as to the historicity of Daniel - right? Wrong! For this "friendly witness" then goes on to say: "Naturally readers of the Bible have supposed that in these passages the hero of our book of Daniel was meant... Now, however, we have from Ras Shamrah (tablets which are giving us `an enormous mass of new knowledge regarding the religion and mythology of northern Syria in the age of the Hebrew patriarchs') a poem concerning a divine hero who name is exactly what we find in Ezekiel. He sits at the gate, judges the cause of the widow, and establishes the right of the orphan... In any case one can hardly doubt that the Dan'el referred to in Ezekiel is the same as the Dan'el of the text from Ras Shamrah. Here is a group of biblical passages which have been put in an entirely new light by a recent archaeological discovery" (p. 263). And this refutation is from a "friendly witness."

In his From Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, paperback edition, Albright tells us: "And yet, the book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and other works of the same general age show that a positive doctrine of the after-life had already gained the upper hand as early as 165 B.C...." (p. 351).

The farther along, on page 362, this archaeologist states: "It is highly probable that the idea of seven archangels was taken from Iranian sources. In the earlier books of the Old Testament and the earliest apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature there is nowhere any suggestion that certain angels formed a specially privileged group in the celestial hierarchy, nor do the angels receive person names identical with those of human beings. In Daniel (cir. 165 B.C.) Michael and Gabriel appear..." (p. 362, underlining mine).

Notice that Albright uses the date of 165 B.C. in the above two quotes. This late date of 165 B.C., not 530 B.C. as McDowell would have us swallow, is repeated by a great many other scholars. All of which flies in the face of the extreme claim of McDowell, who quotes from one of his sources: "Therefore, since the critics are almost unanimous in their admission that the Book of Daniel is the product of one author" (c.f. R.H. Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 761, 762), we may safely assert that the book could not possibly have been written as late as the Maccabean age" (p. 14).

Now if we turn to the very same book by Pfeiffer (Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948 - and cited by McDowell in his own bibliography on page 132), we find that if we look back just one more page - to 760 - we will see that Pfeiffer himself lists twenty major scholars who deny that the book was written by one author, Daniel, and that they mostly agree that the book is much later than 530 B.C.!

In his From Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, paperback edition, Albright tells us: "And yet, the book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and other works of the same general age show that a positive doctrine of the after-life had already gained the upper hand as early as 165 B.C...." (p. 351).

The farther along, on page 362, this archaeologist states: "It is highly probable that the idea of seven archangels was taken from Iranian sources. In the earlier books of the Old Testament and the earliest apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature there is nowhere any suggestion that certain angels formed a specially privileged group in the celestial hierarchy, nor do the angels receive person names identical with those of human beings. In Daniel (cir. 165 B.C.) Michael and Gabriel appear..." (p. 362, underlining mine).