Spiritual Evidence and Proofs of God’s Existence

[SkepticThinker]

How does that even matter?

Because it's an unverifiable story.

 

[dybmh]

A slave is a person who is the property of someone else, and like property may be bought and sold.

Can the betrothed daughter in Exodus be bought or sold?

If the skeptic wants to know what any holy book says, he'll go to the source,

Excellent! The source is in Hebrew!

Here's one of the verses in Exodus about the betrothed daughter:

אִם־רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר־לא יְעָדָהּ וְהֶפְדָּהּ לְעַם נָכְרִי לֹֽא־יִמְשֹׁל לְמָכְרָהּ בְּבִגְדוֹ־בָֽהּ׃

What's the literal translation of רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי? If you don't know, then you really aren't understanding the arrangement being discussed. Hopefully at least with regards to these verses, you will return to a position of skepticism?

 

[metis]

Top

What do you mean "they are usually depicted as being real"?

This should be obvious as I explained it.

It does make quite a lot of difference, because Jesus' followers referred to Adam - the first man, in correspondence to Jesus - the second man, and his death corresponding to Adam's sin.
So, if Adam is allegorical, or even his sin, then Jesus death is meaningless. Isn't it?

Again, they can be treated as being real characters and that is not out of step with what the narrative is trying to teach in regard to morals and values. Now, whether Jesus saw them as real characters I cannot say as I don't attribute omniscience to Jesus, such as when he said that he did not know when the end times would occur, plus he asked other questions as well.

Jesus was not teaching a moral by mentioning the creation of Adam and Eve.
What moral was he teaching?

So, you honestly cannot see the morals and/or values taught within the Creation accounts or the Fall narrative?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Excellent! The source is in Hebrew!

Here's one of the verses in Exodus about the betrothed daughter:

אִם־רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר־לא [לוֹ] יְעָדָהּ וְהֶפְדָּהּ לְעַם נָכְרִי לֹֽא־יִמְשֹׁל לְמָכְרָהּ בְּבִגְדוֹ־בָֽהּ׃

What's the literal translation of רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי? If you don't know, then you really aren't understanding the arrangement being discussed. Hopefully at least with regards to these verses, you will return to a position of skepticism?

I'm not so motivated to know what the words mean that I would learn Hebrew or even go to a concordance more than once every ten years if that. That's for people who consider those of divine provenance or otherwise meaningful.

What the words mean is what they say to readers in whatever language they are reading them in. Most people I know who read those words and decide what they mean are looking at English and telling others how they understand them. I have no reason to dig deeper than to go read those words myself and decide what they mean according to the English lexicon.

I did send that Hebrew sentence through a digital translator, and that translation is sufficient.

The literal translation of רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי was "Evil in my eyes."

For the full sentence, my translator yielded, "If she is evil in the eyes of her master, whom she did not know, and gave her to a foreign people, he shall not rule to sell her in his clothing" for the full sentence. That's already a little different.

The KJV translates Exodus 21:8 as, "If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her," which is altogether different, but what many or most believers are reading.

This what the people I encounter who use people I are reading or some similar translation, and their interpretation of the English is what defines their beliefs, which is often not the words mean to me. My point about going to the source pertains to going to the apologists' source.

And when they tell me that it means something other than what it means to me, unless they can provide a compelling argument in support of their own, I go with my understanding. I'm an impartial reasoner, and the believer is often a motivated (tendentious) reasoner.

 

[dybmh]

Joel Baden goes over the creation story and demonstrates the contradictions.

This is something you've brought before. We didn't get to discuss it. One of the contradictions mentioned several times is that the ground was wet in Gen 1, but dry in Gen 2.

Gen 1 has the ground dry, and Gen 2 has the ground dry. In Gen 1 it's listed twice, in two consecutive verses.

​

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so.​

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas; and God saw that it was good.​

Are you able to see this in the verses above from Gen 1?

 

[dybmh]

I'm not so motivated to know what the words mean that I would learn Hebrew or even go to a concordance more than once every ten years if that. That's for people who consider those of divine provenance or otherwise meaningful.


What the words mean is what they say to readers in whatever language they are reading them in. Most people I know who read those words and decide what they mean are looking at English and telling others how they understand them. I have no reason to dig deeper than to go read those words myself and decide what they mean according to the English lexicon.

I did send that Hebrew sentence through a digital translator, and that translation is sufficient.

The literal translation of רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי was "Evil in my eyes."

For the full sentence, my translator yielded, "If she is evil in the eyes of her master, whom she did not know, and gave her to a foreign people, he shall not rule to sell her in his clothing" for the full sentence. That's already a little different.

The KJV translates Exodus 21:8 as, "If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her," which is altogether different, but what many or most believers are reading.

But this what the people I encounter who use people I are reading or some similar translation, and their interpretation of the English is what defines their beliefs, which is often not the words mean to me. My point about going to the source pertains to going to the apologists' source.

And when they tell me that it means something other than what it means to me, unless they can provide a compelling argument in support of their own, I go with my understanding. I'm an impartial reasoner, and the believer is often a motivated (tendentious) reasoner.

"Evil in the eyes of the master..." is correct. Thank you. That was obtained from a digital, brainless, non-apologetic source.

What does it mean to you "If evil in the eyes of the master"?

 

[CG Didymus]

Virtues are largely evolved traits I believe, no proof of God there.
So called "Great Teachers" largely only popularised pre-existing man-made philosophy, their own unique contributions were not so significant as to make them greater than the men who came before them and whose shoulders they stood on in my belief. So no proof of God there either.
In my opinion.

Yes, like with how Jesus is taught by some Christians... The person is taught to believe they are hopelessly lost sinners and only Jesus can save, so they get saved. Then they are told to prove that they truly believe to lead a sinless life, to be good, honest, humble and they'll be rewarded in heaven.

Similar with Baha'is, they are promised to be closer to God if they become more loving and kind. But how different is that than a motivational speaker telling people to change their behavior and they will get some benefit and reward out of it?

 

[blü 2]

Can the betrothed daughter in Exodus be bought or sold?

If she's already betrothed? I'd guess no, she'd be no longer merchantable. Does the Tanakh deal with that specific point?

 

[dybmh]

If she's already betrothed? I'd guess no, she'd be no longer merchantable. Does the Tanakh deal with that specific point?

Yes! That's the point. It's specified in Exodus 21:8. She cannot be sold. So she's not treated as property. At least not to the extent that one would expect for a slave.

 

[CG Didymus]

Lester L. Grabbe
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, England

10:21 Abraham is probably a fictional character, a foundation myth/character developed for theological and philosophical reasons. The Biblical text was not written down until 7/8th century from oral stories. Abraham was an envisioned character who did things but likely is a literary invention. Anachronisms in his story show they were developed later on.
His story was likely developed with the oral history. Hebrew language was developed around the 7/8th century.
21:34 we have enough historical information to know there was no Exodus and early Israel was in Canaan.
33:43 Genesis uses what we would call plagiarism from Mesopotamian literature.
Plagiarism as an idea was not around back then.

So many threads and so many posts about proving God is real and that he sent messengers. But without Abraham being a real person, several religions crumble. That is... if they insist that Abraham was real.

 

[dybmh]

Lester L. Grabbe
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull, England

10:21 Abraham is probably a fictional character, a foundation myth/character developed for theological and philosophical reasons. The Biblical text was not written down until 7/8th century from oral stories. Abraham was an envisioned character who did things but likely is a literary invention. Anachronisms in his story show they were developed later on.
His story was likely developed with the oral history. Hebrew language was developed around the 7/8th century.
21:34 we have enough historical information to know there was no Exodus and early Israel was in Canaan.
33:43 Genesis uses what we would call plagiarism from Mesopotamian literature.
Plagiarism as an idea was not around back then.

Joel, there's several problems here. I'll just focus on one.

You have attributed this to a Professor, but the quote at 33:43 is the host speaking. This is a misquote. There's other issues too, but this is the most obvious.

I doubt we will be able to have a productive discussion of this or the other problems. But I am enjoying watching the video. Thank you for bringing it, none the less.

 

[dybmh]

47:35 Yahweh possibly borrowed from Egyptian text (Yahweh from south)

I'll post this for those that care. This ^^ is a misquote. The professor doesn't say this. He say's there's a Y, and an H, and a gutural sound, but it's not Yahweh.

 

[PureX]

Because it's an unverifiable story.

Nearly every story ever told throughout history is "unverified". That has nothing at all to do with the story's ability to convey truth.

 

[blü 2]

Yes! That's the point. It's specified in Exodus 21:8. She cannot be sold. So she's not treated as property. At least not to the extent that one would expect for a slave.

 

[blü 2]

My RSV gives Exodus 21.7-8 as:

7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.​

8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt faithlessly with her.​

That doesn't seem to prohibit the sale in any way ─ apparently just a prohibition on the purchaser on-selling in this particular case.

Does your version read differently?

 

[joelr]

Do Creation and Flood Myths Found World Wide Have a Common Origin?

Jerry Bergman, PhD in human biology.​

Not an expert in Mesopotamian mythology, not an expert in geology.
But while we are on the subject, let's look at the consensus of modern geologists on a world flood. Why you care so little for what is actually true and rather for radical scholars with zero support who happen to align with what you want to be true - which means your world views are likely false?


Modern geology and flood geology


Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines use the scientific method to analyze the geology of the earth. The key tenets of flood geology are refuted by scientific analysis and do not have any standing in the scientific community.[5][6][7][8][9] Modern geology relies on a number of established principles, one of the most important of which is Charles Lyell's principle of uniformitarianism. In relation to geological forces it states that the shaping of the Earth has occurred by means of mostly slow-acting forces that can be seen in operation today. By applying these principles, geologists have determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. They study the lithosphere of the Earth to gain information on the history of the planet. Geologists divide Earth's history into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and faunal stages characterized by well-defined breaks in the fossil record (see Geologic time scale).[111][112] In general, there is a lack of any evidence for any of the above effects proposed by flood geologists and their claims of fossil layering are not taken seriously by scientists.[113]



Erosion
The global flood cannot explain geological formations such as angular unconformities, where sedimentary rocks have been tilted and eroded then more sedimentary layers deposited on top, needing long periods of time for these processes. There is also the time needed for the erosion of valleys in sedimentary rock mountains. In another example, the flood, had it occurred, should also have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains differ significantly


Geochronology
Geochronology is the science of determining the absolute age of rocks, fossils, and sediments by a variety of techniques. These methods indicate that the Earth as a whole is about 4.54 billion years old, and that the strata that, according to flood geology, were laid down during the Flood some 6,000 years ago, were actually deposited gradually over many millions of years.
Paleontology
If the flood were responsible for fossilization, then all the animals now fossilized must have been living together on the Earth just before the flood. Based on estimates of the number of remains buried in the Karoo fossil formation in Africa, this would correspond to an abnormally high density of vertebrates worldwide, close to 2100 per acre.[85] Creationists argue that evidence for the geological column is fragmentary, and all the complex layers of chalk occurred in the approach to the 150th day of Noah's flood.[115][116] However, the entire geologic column is found in several places, and shows multiple features, including evidence of erosion and burrowing through older layers, which are inexplicable on a short timescale. Carbonate hardgrounds and the fossils associated with them show that the so-called flood sediments include evidence of long hiatuses in deposition that are not consistent with flood dynamics or timing.



GeochemistryProponents of Flood Geology are also unable to account for the alternation between calcite seas and aragonite seas through the Phanerozoic. The cyclical pattern of carbonate hardgrounds, calcitic and aragonitic ooids, and calcite-shelled fauna has apparently been controlled by seafloor spreading rates and the flushing of seawater through hydrothermal vents which changes its Mg/Ca ratio.[117]
Sedimentary rock features[edit]
Phil Senter's 2011 article, "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology", in the journal Reports of the National Center for Science Education, discusses "sedimentologic and other geologic features that Flood geologists have identified as evidence that particular strata cannot have been deposited during a time when the entire planet was under water ... and distribution of strata that predate the existence of the Ararat mountain chain." These include continental basalts, terrestrial tracks of animals, and marine communities preserving multiple in-situ generations included in the rocks of most or all Phanerozoic periods, and the basalt even in the younger Precambrian rocks. Others, occurring in rocks of several geologic periods, include lake deposits and eolian (wind) deposits. Using their own words, Flood geologists find evidence in every Paleozoic and Mesozoic period, and in every epoch of the Cenozoic period, indicating that a global flood could not have occurred during that interval.[118] A single flood could also not account for such features as angular unconformities, in which lower rock layers are tilted while higher rock layers were laid down horizontally on top.[119]
Physics[edit]
The engineer Jane Albright notes several scientific failings of the canopy theory, reasoning from first principles in physics. Among these are that enough water to create a flood of even 5 centimetres (2.0 in) of rain would form a vapor blanket thick enough to make the earth too hot for life, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas; the same blanket would have an optical depth sufficient to effectively obscure all incoming starlight.[120]

 

[joelr]

Do Creation and Flood Myths Found World Wide Have a Common Origin?

scholars sourced in article about impossible world flood

Isaak, M (1998). "Problems with a Global Flood". TalkOrigins Archive. Retrieved 29 March 2007.Sandberg, P.A. (1983). "An oscillating trend in Phanerozoic non-skeletal carbonate mineralogy". Nature. 305 (5929): 19–22.
Wilson, Mark A. (5 April 2001). "Are hardgrounds really a challenge to the global Flood?". answersingenesis.org. Archived from the original on 4 October 2001. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
Phil Senter (2011). "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology". Reports of the National Center for Science Education. 31 (3).

Rice, Stanley (July–August 2020). "Creationist Funhouse, Episode Four: God Plays In The Mud". Skeptical Inquirer. Amherst, New York: Center for Inquiry. Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
Albright, Jane (22 July 2016). "Vapor Canopy and the Hydroplate Theory (Albright's Flood Models Controversy Series) (text and audio)". Real Science Radio

Lutgens, FK; Tarbuck, EJ; Tasa, D (2005). Essentials of Geology. Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-149749-8.
Tarbuck, EJ; Lutgens, FK (2006). Earth Science. Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-125852-5.

Young, Davis A. (1995). The Biblical Flood: a case study of the Church's response to extrabiblical evidence. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans. p. 340. ISBN 978-0-8028-0719-9. – History of the Collapse of Flood Geology and a Young Earth, adapted from the book. Retrieved 2008-09-16

Isaak, Mark (5 November 2006). "Index to Creationist Claims, Geology". TalkOrigins Archive. Retrieved 2 November 2010.

Morton, Glenn (17 February 2001). "The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood". TalkOrigins Archive

Flood geology - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You don't understand the difference between allowing something and wanting something?
Okay. To allow something does not mean to want something.

The Bible describes many of those things as directly commanded by God.

For example, you may not want all your teeth taken out of your mouth, but you may allow the physician to do so, because it may be necessary.
Does that help?

Yes: sounds like your God is either weak or incompetent.

Tolerating undesirable side effects of necessary things is something that limited human beings often have to do, but this is only because we lack the power to reshape our circumstances so that we can get the necessary thing without the undesirable side effect.

To use your example of having to have all your teeth pulled: this might be necessary at a certain point, but it always would have been possible to avoid the need if other actions were taken in the past (better nutrition, early dental care, whatever).

I get that you would want to try to rehabilitate your God's image, but the logical implication of God's omnipotence is that anything that God tolerates and allows to happen is something that God approves of. There can be no undesirable-but-necessary side effects for an omnipotent being.

Edit: now... I'm pretty sure I've seen you agree that God is omnipotent. If this is a bad assumption on my part and you actually think that God is not omnipotent, that would change things.

 

[joelr]

You have too much faith in men who agree with you.
Hopefully that has not blinded you to the fact that they are not the epitome of truth.
I fear that may be the case though.

Here is how that works. Dr Bowen is a PhD in language of the period. He has credentials for understanding the biblical Hebrew. The 2 apologists he is debating do not.
HOWEVER, if you disagree or are inclined to find truth rather than just the confirmation of your beliefs which you normally limit your mind to, then you can do several things.

1) check the word in question with a Hebrew source. I did. He isn't wrong. (do you even know what that post was about?)

2) find another PhD in historical Hebrew who disagrees on the interpretation.

3)assume that a scholar in ancient language who has been applying his education to understanding the Old Testament Hebrew is probably correct.

4) before you even make a ridiculous statement about men who agree with me, stop and ponder for a minute. Reflect.

Do these PhDs agree with me? Did they get their Dr. by finding out my opinion? OR are they well studied on the subject and spent years studying, reading scripture in Hebrew, reading papers and working with other scholars. Why, yes they did. And they express the consensus opinion, which I bother to find out, because I care about what is actually true.

Now first, have I not also sourced and consulted the work of (in just the past few threads) about 15 PhD's just on this subject? Yes.
So am I "blinded" by the work of one scholar? No.
Yet you "fear" this is the case?
Shall I list all the sources I've used just on this one issue?
And you have sourced.........one scholar on a different issue (flooding) who doesn't specialize in anything his paper was about. Yet you still linked to his paper.
And you think it's ME who is blind. That's rich.

If your choice is to not research things and rely on superstitious folklore and fundamentalist amateurs that's fine. Stay in a bubble of fictive legends. But your attempt to turn it around and act like it's me who holds faith in false doctrine is as shallow as it gets.

No faith, I use facts and knowledge. There is faith here, and blindness in stories that have nothing to do with truth. Probably the reason you wrote that is because you are unconsciously speaking about yourself.

 

[joelr]

Absence of evidence argument?

Abraham
The stories thus portray a process of gradual peaceful settlement by separate groups, each represented by a different patriarch. The combination of the traditions reflects the subsequent amalgamation of the groups with their traditions, which led to the creation of the genealogical chain of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This whole process of tradition development is viewed as taking place at the oral tradition stage, before it reached the written form.

This approach has not gone unchallenged (Van Seters, 1975). The degree to which the stories of Abraham reflect a long process of oral tradition is debatable.

Uh, so this is saying the Patriarchs were CREATED during the oral stage of the myth creation?
How does this help your position? It's saying they were created during oral storytelling.
Van Seters disagrees because he believes the stories did not have an oral tradition but rather were just created as myths FIRST.
He believes Genesis was written by one person who was a historian and familiar with older mythology.

Abraham
Hebrew patriarch
Several theses were advanced to explain the narratives—e.g., that the patriarchs were mythical beings or the personifications of tribes or folkloric or etiological (explanatory) figures created to account for various social, juridical, or cultic patterns. However, after World War I, archaeological research made enormous strides with the discovery of monuments and documents, many of which date back to the period assigned to the patriarchs in the traditional account. The excavation of a royal palace at Mari, an ancient city on the Euphrates, for example, brought to light thousands of cuneiform tablets (official archives and correspondence and religious and juridical texts) and thereby offered exegesis a new basis, which specialists utilized to show that, in the biblical book of Genesis, narratives fit perfectly with what, from other sources, is known today of the early 2nd millennium bce but imperfectly with a later period. A biblical scholar in the 1940s aptly termed this result “the rediscovery of the Old Testament.”

Thus, there are two main sources for reconstructing the figure of father Abraham: the book of Genesis—from the genealogy of Terah (Abraham’s father) and his departure from Ur to Harran in chapter 11 to the death of Abraham in chapter 25—and recent archaeological discoveries and interpretations concerning the area and era in which the biblical narrative takes place.

Yes in the 1940s. Modern archaeology has made Moses and the Patriarchs myth. Thomas Thompsons work has made that very likely.
William Dever is the most prolific biblical archaeologist in modern times.

William Dever: From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. [William Foxwell] Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.


Dever: One of the first efforts of biblical archeology in the last century was to prove the historicity of the patriarchs, to locate them in a particular period in the archeological history. Today I think most archeologists would argue that there is no direct archeological proof that Abraham, for instance, ever lived. We do know a lot about pastoral nomads, we know about the Amorites' migrations from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and it's possible to see in that an Abraham-like figure somewhere around 1800 B.C.E. But there's no direct connection.

For the earlier periods, we don't have any texts. Abraham might have lived around 1800 B.C.E. This is the dawn of written history or prehistory, when the archeological evidence can't easily be correlated with any external evidence, textual evidence—even if we did have it.

EVIDENCE OF THE EARLY ISRAELITES​

Q: The Bible chronology puts Moses much later in time, around 1450 B.C.E. Is there archeological evidence for Moses and the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Israelites described in the Bible?

Dever: We have no direct archeological evidence. "Moses" is an Egyptian name. Some of the other names in the narratives are Egyptian, and there are genuine Egyptian elements. But no one has found a text or an artifact in Egypt itself or even in the Sinai that has any direct connection. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. But I think it does mean what happened was rather more modest. And the biblical writers have enlarged the story.
Forty years ago it would have been impossible to identify the earliest Israelites archeologically. We just didn't have the evidence. And then, in a series of regional surveys, Israeli archeologists in the 1970s began to find small hilltop villages in the central hill country north and south of Jerusalem and in lower Galilee. Now we have almost 300 of them.

THE ORIGINS OF ISRAEL​

Q: What have archeologists learned from these settlements about the early Israelites? Are there signs that the Israelites came in conquest, taking over the land from Canaanites?

Dever: The settlements were founded not on the ruins of destroyed Canaanite towns but rather on bedrock or on virgin soil. There was no evidence of armed conflict in most of these sites. Archeologists also have discovered that most of the large Canaanite towns that were supposedly destroyed by invading Israelites were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by "Sea People"—Philistines, or others.

So gradually the old conquest model [based on the accounts of Joshua's conquests in the Bible] began to lose favor amongst scholars. Many scholars now think that most of the early Israelites were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites, displaced from the lowlands, from the river valleys, displaced geographically and then displaced ideologically.

So what we are dealing with is a movement of peoples but not an invasion of an armed corps from the outside. A social and economic revolution, if you will, rather than a military revolution. And it begins a slow process in which the Israelites distinguish themselves from their Canaanite ancestors, particularly in religion—with a new deity, new religious laws and customs, new ethnic markers, as we would call them today.

"It's interesting that in these hundreds of 12th-century settlements there are no temples, no palaces, no elite residences."

Q: If the Bible's story of Joshua's conquest isn't entirely historic, what is its meaning?

Dever: Why was it told? Well, it was told because there were probably armed conflicts here and there, and these become a part of the story glorifying the career of Joshua, commander in chief of the Israelite forces. I suspect that there is a historical kernel, and there are a few sites that may well have been destroyed by these Israelites, such as Hazor in Galilee, or perhaps a site or two in the south.