Or plain lies? You decide.
Our apologist writes
To answer this now I would argue that history documents that Christianity is the only religion based on literally millions of people seeing God all at once when He descended on Mt. Sinai. In contrast, all other belief systems are based on one person witnessing God and then convincing people to follow.
and I immediately had to dust my bible to confirm this truth that I had missed, for I know of no other book of antiquity where such a thing could have been recorded except the bible. This story is in Exodus 19 and the relevant part reads thus
20 The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up 21 and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. 22 Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”
And I recalled the several passages where the same book tells us no one has seen the lord and lived and so much more. It can therefore be safely said the argument the apologist was relying on to support their belief is not valid. Many apologists (think Ken Ham) and goddites assure us Moses wrote the book, Moses met god and even in this particular verse, we have it written and Moses said to the people or the Lord said to Moses but no single instance where the god talks directly to the people.
So when our apologists writes
Based on my reading of the Bible this is the very definition of a false prophet.
I can safely conclude Moses is a false prophet.
The ontological argument is given to us as answering the question of whether god is man-made. The irony in this argument should be evident. Anselm in his argument makes existence a predicate. And when he argues god is the greatest beyond which nothing greater can be thought, I can’t for the life of me see how one can argue god is the greatest evil beyond which no great evil can be thought.
I think had this author just written
I can only say that I believe wholeheartedly because God permeated my fabric with doubtless belief, and now I just know who is right.
I would have treated them more kindly, for in this statement, is a statement of faith.
“I can only say that I believe wholeheartedly because God permeated my fabric with doubtless belief, and now I just know who is right.” These days, the only theists who have the balls to be this honest are Islamic jihadists, unfortunately. The OP’s author also mentions a truly crazy thing. He says God led him to Jesus. So, Jesus led him to Jesus? Or did “God” as a separate guy, lead him to “Jesus”? Christianity is THE most dishonest religion EVER! It is, without question, polytheistic. Yet, Christians claim it isn’t. Thus, Christians, besides being self-righteous, narcissistic, arrogant asses, are bat-shit crazy.
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Taking Jesus to be god, we can say god let him to god but if Jesus is a lesser being, then god led him to its minion. It is absurd whichever way you look at it
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“God permeated my fabric”
And here I thought that was the hot sauce from the Dan Dan Noodles I ate last Saturday.
My ex always used to say that Christians were cannibals because they ate their God. That might be an insult to cannibals.
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As a cannibal, I can tell you, it is. 🙂
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I appologize for any hurt or offense I may have caused.
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Thanks. Wadda ya doin’ fer dinner?
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Okay, but what kind of sauce goes with that?
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Awesome sauce.
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the Katlicks believe during mass, the wafer becomes real body of Jesus and still go ahead and eat it. They truly are cannibals
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Did the person say History records? Delusion
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Yes, you read that right.
I think the bible is historical records
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So did I at one time. Then I read real history and biblical criticism
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I actually taught that stuff
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How does it feel now looking at it from the other side
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I feel dirty and let than scum
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And there are people who teach this stuff and make apologies for it online
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Yuppers. It needs nuanced explanation to be intelligible in the slightest
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Or is it possible they just repeat they have heard said? If this person had read the particular verse, I am not so sure they would have used it as evidence
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We find the answers that suffice to support what we want to believe
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Hey, KIA – sorry for all of the crap on Wisp’s site, that’s the first time I’ve ever been proud of being banned from someone’s blog. I’ve only ever gone there to visit with friends anyway, among whom I have long since ceased to count Wisp. Just the thought of what her husband must go through to toe her line, could give me nightmares.
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It’s all good in the hood.
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Probably shouldn’t have even said anything
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Likely you would have done better to exercise your right to remain silent, but Clare had no justification for the kind of attack she launched on you.
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Well, it’s rather like an zealot defending when no one was attacking
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Then Clare threw a pity party as justification – her lover left her, her parents kicked her out – and the implication was that they did it because she was transgender. I suggested that there was a really great possibility that those things happened because she acted as much a jerk with them as she had with you. Being a jerk knows no gender.
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Lol
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I feel bad for her though. Not a great ti.e to be without family
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If it’s about transgenderism, I would agree with you; if it’s about being a jerk, then she has no one to blame but herself.
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Agreed
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Now that is where you go wrong. Speaking so much truth
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It’s ok. I’ll know better not to even engage her
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You have been banned by V? What could you have done?
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I called down Wisp’s bosom buddy for a vicious attack on KIA.
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Ah I see.
I will check that thread tomorrow
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I think you’ll find it at http://violetwisp.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/4328 – a number of respected commenters I know have indicated their belief that Wisp has gone off the deep end. Tildeb spends the last half of the post, not defending me, per se, but speaking out against the policy of banning, especially coming from one that maintains she never censors.
I certainly don’t expect you to involve yourself, I merely present the URL for your perusal. You don’t really know a person until you see all sides of them.
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I have visited the thread and I wouldn’t contribute to those raging flames. I may have my fingers burned
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Also, Wisp accused me of flirting – “shamelessly,” I believe was her term – with the ladies. Yes, well, in all honesty, this charge I cannot deny, as lovely ladies have always been my Kryptonite, but also in all honesty, I don’t recall that any of those lovely ladies ever complained. In fact, the only one who complained was Wisp, and I can’t believe it’s a coincidence that she is the only one with whom I’ve never flirted.
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“lovely ladies have always been my Kryptonite” – Especially Carmen and Selena Gomez, but in all semi-honesty, I have a difficult time telling them apart.
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In my village, they call this having grandiose ideas about oneself :0
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What can I say?
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That you agree with my villagers
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maybe you shouldn’t flirt shamelessly, but flirt anyway
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Apologetics is not to answer objection from those who question, it’s to give believers answers to stop questioning
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Well said.
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Now I know
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What an idiot I was
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at least you freed yourself from it, many are those who never leave
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KIA – you see yourself as a former idiot; I see you as a person who is now in a perfect position to offer expert guidance to others who are still under the spell of religion. You have much to offer. Don’t sell yourself short. Judging from your comments here and elsewhere, I probably would never have taken you for an idiot. 🙂
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Thank you. I appreciate the support
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You have always been very kind Carmen
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Mak, there are some fellas I kept in for detention today who would not be in agreement with your statement. .. 😉
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I’m one of ’em. Carmen, can I please go out now!?
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They may agree with me I think
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Christianity is the only religion based on literally millions of people seeing God all at once when He descended on Mt. Sinai.
B’wahahahaha… Yeah, and so impressive was this that they all started worshiping Baal! LOL!
The Stupidity is strong in this one
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Maybe it is Baal they saw. Christians leave me unimpressed each time I read their posts
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Baal, and few know this, was a god with only one ball. It was a HUGE ball, but alone in his scrotum. He used to bounce it on the heads of those who doubted his existence. Often you’d hear shouts of, “Baal just hit me with his ball! Baal just hit me with his ball!” It was a crazy, whacky time back in the day. Crazy.
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Could that explain the misspell?
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Depends on which Baal apologist you read.
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I forget they never agree which is the correct reading of Baal or interpretation
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Hence the term: Teste of faith.
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Oh Ron, I sure miss your wit
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B’wahahahaha… Yeah, and so impressive was this that they all started worshiping Baal!
LOL — those were exactly my thoughts when I read the OP.
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Ex 20:18 —
“And all the people saw the thunderings [atop the mountain] and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood far off.”
Ex 20:19 —
And they said unto Moses, speak thou with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
Now this section of Exodus was written by the Priestly Source, a group of Aaronid priests in captivity in Babylon in the 500’s BCE. Can anyone see how cleverly they insinuated themselves into permanent employment? They write that the people are too fearful to have their god speak to them directly, but would rather that an intercessor do that for them. Volunteers? Why yes, how kind of you to ask –! And that priestly job security has been in place ever since.
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As Jeff would say, $Amen$
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The Priestly Source wrote nearly all of the laws and regulations found in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, and put them in the mouth of their god – one group of people, likely not a very large one at that, in one fell swoop, decided how people should act and how they should live, and made their beliefs into holy edicts, never to be violated.
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And sealed them by simply adding thus says the Lord!
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When dealing with humanity, their notions and machinations, it always does pay to ask the little question ‘who benefits?’
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Or as was suggested in the movie, “All the President’s Men” – “Follow the money” —
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Yes, indeed. Being a prehistorian, one of the first things I noticed years ago as a student, was that once the first peasant societies started developing their agriculture and producing a surplus, the next thing you get is priestly castes, who do a damn fine job of consuming it all. ‘Not me, gov, using up the loot. It’s all for the deity.’ And we believed it through the ages. Of course this process also gave rise to accountants, and also writing…So there you are: good with bad, as with most human conditions.
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I would love to get a peek at the Vatican’s stock portfolio.
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and then lawyers followed immediately after, I suspect to settle the disputes concerning who has whose money
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A multiplier effect of money-grubbers
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follow the money is such a good maxim
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And the priests have been doing this since. Telling the people they will speak to them about god and speak for them to god as long as they keep the offering basket flowing
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Victoria, I think the OP has not read that part of the bible
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Can you blame them? Baal’s “pay as you go” calling plan offered coast-to-coast coverage with hundreds (if not thousands) of convenient customer service reps standing by to take the call. Yahweh’s “limited coverage” plan, on the other hand, locked you into a lifetime contract (riddled with punitive restrictions and cancellation fees) made available through only one authorized sales agent. And don’t even get me started on the customer complaint handling procedures.
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Not to mention his rooted “free navigation system”… 40 years to get 300 km across Sinai?!!
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Well, they did have only one buoy and an oar. It takes a LONG time going back and forth like that. Two people over, one back; pick up another, two people over, one back. Repeat.
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LOL!
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Hahah Jeff.
Reminds me of the quiz of how do you cross a river when you can only carry one load and you have a goat, potato vines and a leopard.
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Word has it this failure was largely attributable to Zipporah’s poor map reading skills and Moses subsequent refusal to go back and ask for directions after discovering they made a wrong turn at the rock.
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that navigation system was broken. Looks like those maps Capt. Jack Sparrow uses
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“And don’t even get me started on the customer complaint handling procedures.” – And then there’s the ‘On Hold’ music —
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Air Supply’s “I’m All Outta Love” on continuous loop.
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That, or this guy:
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Nooooooooo!!!!!
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I think I’d rather listen to Donnie and Marie. Or maybe a couple of hours of nails on a chalkboard.
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If that was the tone played while on hold, one can die
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I was thinking more along the lines of “Highway To Hell”
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This is really funny
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Man, even I know that’s not right and my mains source is Charlton Heston. Even if your appologist is right, wouldn’t it be tens of thousands, not millions? How many people could fit at the foot of the mountain anyway?
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There was a command not to touch the feet of the mountain in the same chapter. If it was true, it could only be hundreds of people and they would first have to clear the bushes around the mountain, cut trees and so on
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I think it’s a desert, so there’s not too much of an underbrush problem.
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and how was Moses addressing such large crowds at once? Sending text or did he have a projector in the skies
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It’s all in the diaphram my actor friends tell me.
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maybe we should get one of them to try to address 1000 people without pas
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They were told not to touch the foot of the mountain cause the mountain had a bad case of foot fungus. Having deities crawl around on you will do that.
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Haha. That could be a possible explanation
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Ex 19:9 – “And the Lord said to Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee.”
So a million people saw a thick cloud – how unusual is that?
Ex 19:21 – “And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.”
So we have a thick cloud that surrounds a mountain top, and a god who tells Moses NOT to let the people climb the mountain to see him, lest they die – so exactly who was it again, who witnessed the appearance of Yahweh?
Pay no attention to the man behind the cloud —
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Could it be god is a cloud?
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God only appears as wind. Jesus appears as light, and the Holy Spirit appears as a bird. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS!!! 😀
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Is that an African or a European Swallow?
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Well…I’m not quite….AAAAAA!!!! Love Holy Grail!
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sorry teacher, I forgot
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You’re forgiven.
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Funny what people can read into such a section from the Bible. For example, where does it talk about “Millions” of people. The Israelites, at this time, might have been a small group of a few hundred to a few thousand people.
I also find it funny that such people take the Bible as a source of true information. Christianity must be the true religion because the Bible contains this and that. Why do they regard the Bible as a source of true information?
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Exactly. Finally somebody is seeing the truth!
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Well, I’ve been around a little longer than most —
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that’s not a little longer, that’s really long
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That’s what she said —
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Is it my mind that is in the gutter or yours?
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Because the bible says so.
He made the millions up
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I would like to know where the Bible-believers get the belief from that the Bible itself says it is true. I don’t know the Bible so well so I don’t know where in the text this is written.
However, to my knowledge, the collection of books we know as the Bible (“biblia” is a plural of “biblion”, meaning “books”) was agreed uppon on the Synod of Hippo in 393. Before that, there was no Bible, there where only individual books. Any statement in any of them that this particular book contains the truth or is the word of god (whatever that might be) cannot refer to the whole collection. No additional book was added that claimed such a status for the whole collection. There cannot be a rererence to the whole collection in any of these books since they predated the collection.
So to me it looks like this is a myth (in both senses of that word, as mythology and as a falsehood).
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That has been the work of apologists. They have selected a few verses from the bible and used them to convince themselves and the unsuspecting public that the bible is divinely inspired and true
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Only partially accurate, Nannus – the Old Testament had been finished by about 200 CE – that is to say, the Jewish ‘Tanakh.’ But you’re right about the New Testament.
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Well, I am not an expert on this stuff. But the date you give also shows there was a historical process that led to this collection of books. It did not fall from heaven. Its a man-made compilation of man-made books and a product of historical accidents.
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Oh, absolutely. I have apologists say that there is no way so many varied authors could have written such a consistent epic, but if you’ll notice, each episode of most TV dramas are written by different screenwriters, yet the consistency is there because the writers are following what went before.
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LOL 🙂
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See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon. Obviously, the content of the Bible(s) is a matter of historical processes. And initially there was even more variation. Some of the earlier churches where later declared heresies (obviously a matter of power made possible by one of the sects becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire). Where this power did not reach (e.g. Ethiopia) the canon looks different.
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In what I have read so far, in the first century of our era, scripture referred only to the books of the various books of the OT. The new testament did not at that point exist as a we have it now and in its compilation, there are several books that were left out.
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Oh, there were all kinds of Christianities floating about the early churches – The Gospel of Peter, for example, a pseudonymous work, bits of which were discovered in Cairo in 1898, but mentioned by Eusibius. It was a work with Gnostic leanings that was popular among the Syrian churches for many years. It was approved by Serapion, the Bishop of Antioch (who had never bothered to read it) for use in the church of Rhossus, until someone pointed out it’s Gnostic properties – Serapion then dashed off a letter forbidding its use, or as Gilda Radner used to say, “Never mind.”
The Gospel of Peter was the only gospel to actually describe the resurrection. It seems that the heavens opened up and two men descended “in great splendor.” The stone rolled away by itself and the two men entered the tomb, then emerged, supporting Jesus. The heads of the two reached up into heaven, while the head of Jesus reached up beyond the heavens. They were followed by a floating cross. A voice from heaven then spoke, “Have you preached to those who are sleeping?” – the cross answered, “Yes.”
I swear I’m not making this crap up. L. RON HUBBARD couldn’t make that crap up!
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Haha.
We must give them credit for imagination
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I was thinking specificalle of the gnostics, sects like those documented in the Nag Hammadi books, for example.
I am also not so sure Judaism was so uniform. I would suspect there where a lot of different directions, so I am not so sure about that canon either. The relatively uniform talmudic direction developed later (and even there, there is a Jerusalem Talmud and a Bagdad Talmud) during the time of the Islamic Kalifate, when Bagdad became the main center of Judaism. The Jews were under Babylonian rule, Persian rule, Greece rule and Roman/Byzantine rule subsequently (I might miss some historical detail here), so there was no central Jewish political power who could have made sure there was only one orthodoxy.
In any case, one must look at those holy scriptures from a historical (and regional) point of view.
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“(I might miss some historical detail here)”
Close enough.
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This apologist is an idiot who doesn’t even know their own religion. Where do morons of this caliber come from? Are they grown in dank, dark underground chambers like mushrooms? It’s mind boggling.
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Stop insulting mushrooms. 🙂
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Oops, I sorry. 😦
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Maybe I should donate my bible to this apologist
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Great idea!
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damn, millions of people? Funny how these “millions” didn’t leave one single trace in a space the size of half my state, Pennsylvania. Not one latrine, no piles of quail bones, etc.
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Apologists will tell you that that’s due to the shifting, whispering sands of the Arabian Peninsula – they cover everything.
William G. Dever was a biblical archaeologist, raised in a religious atmosphere, educated in religious institutions, went to the Levant, intending to prove archaeologically the truth of the Bible. He came out, 30 years later, a confirmed atheist.
In his book, “What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It,” he writes of the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as having been “discarded as a fruitless pursuit.“
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Arabian peninsula? my they were busy weren’t they and not ever seen by anyone already there, eh? 🙂
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Jordan/Northern Saudi is the most likely desert they wandered in. Granted, the Sinai is closer, but the Sinai Peninsula has remained a part of Egypt from the First Dynasty of ancient Egypt (c. 3100 BC) until the 21st century, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense that, running as they were from the Egyptians, they would spend 40 years wandering around Egyptian territory.
Of course if you remove the entire Exodus from the equation as being a myth, the location becomes moot.
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they couldn’t have left anything since food was from heaven and everything else they had to carry
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well, per the bible, they did dig latrines since they didn’t want their god to step in their poo. 🙂
kinda sad when omniscience will not tell the entity involved “don’t step in that”.
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Omniscience has to be redefined whenever you are talking about religion
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