I said it happened in Hebrew School. What the hell did you think that meant?

Sorry, my oversight.

Daniel, you’re regurgitating the stock answers; the same ones I used to use on people.

‘Stock’ doesn’t equal ‘wrong’. And I’m not sure if you are suggesting this or not, but in any case, I get the impression often that atheists see religious people as robots – repeating what they have been fed without a second thought. I do recognize that Christian apologists often use really bad or at least un-thoughtout logic, I don’t agree with my own church on every single point. But I also think it would be foolish to set myself up as the authority or as some independent deposit of all wisdom and ignore out of hand what elders who have earned my trust say. And that goes for scientists, historians, and theologians.

People like you (and me, back then) taught me that this kind of back-and-forth rarely does any good.

I know it doesn’t. Honestly I’m not expecting to change anyone’s opinion.

There’s plenty of evidence. None of it is compelling to you because you reject the possibility of the supernatural from the get-go and because for some reason you won’t accept ancient texts…

Well, maybe because when God mentioned that to the authors he was “Divineley Inspiring” he made a mistake or two. Like… in Genesis 12:16, there is mention of domesticated camels seven centuries before it actually happened (the domestication). Then, Abraham gets to meet Abimelec, king of the philistines at Gerar, (narrated in Genesis 26:1). But said people arrived said place at Canaan until 1200 b.CE, so trumpets would be having a difficult time turning into debris a wall of a non-existant city.

References?
Read The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts,Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Free Press, New York, 2001
The authors are Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Silberman, a contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.

Also you said about ancient texts that they…

…often is the only evidence we have for any historical event, biblical or otherwise

Then ancient texts surely explain the historical events from some cultures I just thought about: Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, Inca, North American Native Nations, Zulu, Swahili, Innuit, Rapa Nui, Maori, Kanaka, Torres Strait Islanders and the Aboriginal People of Australia, and so on. They surely do, as your statement is that an ancient text often is the only evidence, so what we know about said cultures must come from texts. After all, together they are people from all of Africa, America, Australia, and Oceania, leaving out only Europe, Middle East and Asia.

And surely, the Christian Church did not burn 95% (or more) of the texts of Aztecs, Mayan, and the like, so we have plenty of texts to read today, and antropologist do not have to figure things out of broken clay, sculptures, and almost every other rock at an excavation site.

And when you say:

the Bible at least has every mark of integrity and sincerity – the authors (especially of the NT) had nothing to gain and a lot to lose, and recorded lots of information embarrassing to themselves

I just want to know where did you get there was nothing to gain and a lot to lose… Easily said, hard to prove. I will not accept the possibility of divine inspiration in a book conformed from writitngs 50-100 years after the eventst took place (with the most direct witness supposedly writing the oldest document), and that was actually negotiatied and edited centuries after its supposed origin: While the Jews examined books to see if they were consistent with the main religious text (the Torah), the early Christians engaged in an argument about what constituted Christianity and especially about the nature of Christ, and then decided what books felt right. So it was not until 473 CE when we got an officially ratified New Testament. And it had nothing to do with God, historical accuracy or how close to the actual events the books were.

Quite a few collections of stories about Jesus circulated in the early church, among them The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Mary, and the Secret Book of John. Some argued that the resurrection was a spiritual event that anyone could experience. This latter “heresy” would have led the church away from an organized entity into a situation where anyone could judge the truth for themselves. And that was not profitable, either in money terms, or in the sense of the religious market.

Where are true miracles today? I don’t know, honestly. Probably almost nowhere if anywhere at all. But that doesn’t change good reason to believe they happened in the past. The resurrection of Christ being the prime example.

Then, even if I have seen water rain from the sky towards the earth, and every other human has seen the same for quite several centuries, it might be possible that in biblical times for water to rain from the earth towards the sky? Intresting logic.

…but biblically the Spirit is manifested in believers by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control

And my secular humanism is manifested by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, loyalty, gentleness, and self-control. And in my curiosity, determination, unrelenting will to live, friendshipness, and an unending desire for everyone’s happiness. Any failure by me to display those things will only harm my enjoyment of the only life I have, or the enjoyment of other people’s only life in this world. And that’s something I do not need anyone else to tell me it shouldn’t be, or that it’s wrong.

I didn’t realize you were speaking from a Jewish background.

I said it happened in Hebrew School. What the hell did you think that meant?

The Israelites saw miracle after miracle in the wilderness, people saw Jesus’ miracles day after day, and most of them rejected Him anyway.

You’re an imbecile. You wouldn’t understand empiricism or allegory if they came up and bit you on the ass.

I won’t continue with this. If anyone else wants to engage this moron, have at it.

Leaving that aside – we were Jews. We didn’t see the Bible in Christological terms, and expecting us to is just silly, and, frankly, insulting. I’ve said this here before – I am sick to death of Christians telling us how to read our texts. It represents the height of hubris for you people to tell us that we have spent the past two millennia misinterpreting and misunderstanding texts that we wrote in the first place – with or without divine inspiration. I know rabbis and Jewish scholars who have forgotten more than you and your Christian apologists will ever know; to tell me that they “didn’t know the Bible very well”… . I mean, really. Grow up, young man.

I didn’t say they didn’t know it well, I said they may not have if they didn’t give a good answer. The only point I was making is that a particular person not having the answer doesn’t mean that no answer exists. And, I didn’t realize you were speaking from a Jewish background. The answer I gave takes the New Testament into account.

And I’m sorry – but your explanation most certainly is “something concocted to explain present facts”. Reverse engineering – that’s all it is. Call it whatever you like.

Ok, well if you put it that way every explanation of anything, biblical or otherwise, is a kind of reverse engineering. That doesn’t make the explanation wrong. And don’t say you’re sorry if you’re not

The problem with your “past” is that none of it is left–there’s no evidence it ever occurred. Look at all the miraculous pasts of the world’s religions–why should we think your past is any more factual than theirs?

There’s plenty of evidence. None of it is compelling to you because you reject the possibility of the supernatural from the get-go and because for some reason you won’t accept ancient texts (which often is the only evidence we have for any historical event, biblical or otherwise) even as evidence, much less as an authority. Even if you want to say the writers were mistaken, the Bible at least has every mark of integrity and sincerity – the authors (especially of the NT) had nothing to gain and a lot to lose, and recorded lots of information embarrassing to themselves.

Besides, if the present is not like the past, why not? Saying your interpretation of the Bible can withstand the practice of Christians, or “the Church,” is pretty empty, isn’t it?

Well, ‘empty’, I don’t know. I mean, the Bible tells me to be holy as God is holy and to perfect as God is perfect, and I’m not either of those things. Does that mean it’s ‘empty’?

A God that doesn’t act in this time, a Holy Spirit whose actions are only known to Christians in their hearts and never displayed in miracles. You don’t have to convince me that all those Pentecostal healing services are bogus–I know that–but where’s the real Holy Spirit? Where are the true miracles that attend the true faith?

Where are true miracles today? I don’t know, honestly. Probably almost nowhere if anywhere at all. But that doesn’t change good reason to believe they happened in the past. The resurrection of Christ being the prime example. But my faith does not rest on miracles anyway – it rests on the word of God. The Israelites saw miracle after miracle in the wilderness, people saw Jesus’ miracles day after day, and most of them rejected Him anyway. If you or I don’t believe the word of God on its own merit, we won’t believe because we see a miracle either.

Old words on a page just don’t cut it. Show me your power. That’s all I ask: show me your power. Once you can accept that mere words won’t get you to heaven, then maybe you’ll see things differently.

If I had ‘power’ and showed you a miracle, like, turning water into wine, would you confess and turn from your sins and submit to Jesus as the Son of God and your Lord and Savior? Because if not it’s a moot point. I can’t do any miracles, and I know mere words don’t cut it, but biblically the Spirit is manifested in believers by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Any failure by me to display those things is owing to my sin and not to the Holy Spirit.

Maybe that would be a simple explanation of the present – but it is not at all a simple explanation of the past.

The problem with your “past” is that none of it is left–there’s no evidence it ever occurred. Look at all the miraculous pasts of the world’s religions–why should we think your past is any more factual than theirs?

Besides, if the present is not like the past, why not? Saying your interpretation of the Bible can withstand the practice of Christians, or “the Church,” is pretty empty, isn’t it? A God that doesn’t act in this time, a Holy Spirit whose actions are only known to Christians in their hearts and never displayed in miracles. You don’t have to convince me that all those Pentecostal healing services are bogus–I know that–but where’s the real Holy Spirit? Where are the true miracles that attend the true faith?

Old words on a page just don’t cut it. Show me your power. That’s all I ask: show me your power. Once you can accept that mere words won’t get you to heaven, then maybe you’ll see things differently.

I’m not going to get into it here, but the bottom line is that Jesus wasn’t the fulfillment of Old Testament “prophecy”. There are superior counterarguments to every apologetic argument you’ve been taught, even if we do accept, for the sake of argument, supernatural authorship of the OT (which I do not).

Leaving that aside – we were Jews. We didn’t see the Bible in Christological terms, and expecting us to is just silly, and, frankly, insulting. I’ve said this here before – I am sick to death of Christians telling us how to read our texts. It represents the height of hubris for you people to tell us that we have spent the past two millennia misinterpreting and misunderstanding texts that we wrote in the first place – with or without divine inspiration. I know rabbis and Jewish scholars who have forgotten more than you and your Christian apologists will ever know; to tell me that they “didn’t know the Bible very well”… . I mean, really. Grow up, young man.

And I’m sorry – but your explanation most certainly is “something concocted to explain present facts”. Reverse engineering – that’s all it is. Call it whatever you like.

To have to come home at the end of a day and read nonsense like this… I mean, that’s right, Daniel – take it; take the whole thing. We were just keeping it warm for you. We’ll just go into anachronism mode now.

Really? Nothing? No more messages from God? Really? Then why do Christians the world over constantly claim that God speaks to them? Why does the Pope claim to speak for God? No more miracles, no more messages, no more visions of burning bushes, pillars of fire, God speaking out of a whirlwind, nothing?

I don’t know why a lot of Christians claim that. Some I’m sure are just careless with language and call an impression they get “the voice of God”. Some call a gut-feeling “God telling me”. Some lie. But the explanation I gave was restricted to what the Bible says – not what “Christians the world over” say or what the Pope says.

Hmm . . . You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the simpler, more likely explanation is that there is no God to reveal himself, and that’s why we never hear from him.

Maybe that would be a simple explanation of the present – but it is not at all a simple explanation of the past.

That answer does leave something to be desired, I know – but is it any less informative or satisfying than answers to questions like “where did the energy/matter for the big bang come from?”

Well… To say that any god is eternal, uncreated, etc… is actually less informative. Because even if you answer with that, then I’d have to ask HOW?

How something/someone may be eternal, uncreated?
We can explain how the big bang might have occurred, we can explain how enery and matter are like they are, and trough those questions we understand the universe far better.

Answering “God did it” is just negating others the use of their brain cells in the understanding of their place in the universe of things we can understand.

Also Mark said:

Seriously though, my point is that there are very few actual atheists. There is however a much larger group of people who in fact do believe in god but are angry and want to punish someone big and important and god is handy and available so what better way than to commit the ultimate snub against the ultimate authority figure(…)

As somebody said, citation needed here, please. Also…
Have you thought the other way around? That maybe there is this huge group of people who can’t get used to grow up and not to depend on otherse save for themselves, so that they need a big, eternal, uncreated, full-of-love and all-mighty parental figure to serve as an “ultimate authority figure”, because they are unable to think out of the box, or to stand by themselves. Quoting you again:

Pretty clever huh??

There is a biblical explanation for why God doesn’t speak face to face with us anymore . . . Basically, when God spoke face to face with people, those people then generally acted as prophets . . . The apostles are dead, Jesus the revelation of God has come and gone – and we now have the written testimony in scripture and should expect no new revelation until Christ comes again . . .

Really? Nothing? No more messages from God? Really? Then why do Christians the world over constantly claim that God speaks to them? Why does the Pope claim to speak for God? No more miracles, no more messages, no more visions of burning bushes, pillars of fire, God speaking out of a whirlwind, nothing?

Hmm . . . You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that the simpler, more likely explanation is that there is no God to reveal himself, and that’s why we never hear from him.