mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Are you a gnostic or agnostic?
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There is no evidence for God, so why do you believe?
- Thread starter an anarchist
- Start date
Are you a gnostic or agnostic?
joelr
Well-Known Member
A miracle is something outside of the laws of physics. Although there are gaps in the process the science of self replicating chemicals has come very far. A 2020 paper found :
Spontaneous Emergence of Self-Replicating Molecules Containing Nucleobases and Amino Acids
e now show how the interplay between these compound classes can give rise to new self-replicating molecules using a dynamic combinatorial approach. We report two strategies for the fabrication of chimeric amino acid/nucleobase self-replicating macrocycles capable of exponential growth. The first one relies on mixing nucleobase- and peptide-based building blocks, where the ligation of these two gives rise to highly specific chimeric ring structures. The second one starts from peptide nucleic acid (PNA) building blocks in which nucleobases are already linked to amino acids from the start. While previously reported nucleic acid-based self-replicating systems rely on presynthesis of (short) oligonucleotide sequences, self-replication in the present systems start from units containing only a single nucleobase. Self-replication is accompanied by self-assembly, spontaneously giving rise to an ordered one-dimensional arrangement of nucleobase nanostructures.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.9b10796
Gaps in the process are slowly being filled in.
The reason science teams are doing research is because this was NOT a miracle and they are attempting to find all of the steps in the process. We do not accept things by "faith" in science, we need evidence. Seeing the past it is not always needed. We cannot see many things, what we need is evidence to demonstsrate it was possible by seeing a replication of the process in a lab.
It does not "fit into a belief system", the vast amounts of evidence demonstrate living organisms all came from simple single celled life and this came from simpler compounds. This is simply where the evidence leads. There are no Gods flying around to even propose as part of the theory?
How would you feel if all science decided that abiogenesis was begum by Vishnu? Oh, that isn't the creator God you think is the correct creator God? Well 1 billion Hindu think he is? The evidence for Vishnu and the evidence for Yahweh are no better. It's sucks. So don't expect science to jump at the chance to use crap evidence unless you are cool with it sometimes being Allah or Krishna. They all have equally bad evidence. The odds that this process happened by some natural means is 100%. Science will find it.
We have not yet observed abiogenesis however we have observed life and evolution. We have observed all types of self replicating compounds. We have observed zero Gods, demigods and supernatural beings.
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joelr
Well-Known Member
Well if a God wants to reveal itself than I'd say gnostic. I'm am agnostic atheist.
joelr
Well-Known Member
So does the Quran, The Vedic creation stories and every scripture ever. The Israelite myths include a ridiculous cosmology, a creation by a warrior deity and a mythical understanding of the world. As do all the religious creation stories.
Geniesis is known to be using Mesopotamian creation myths and adapting them to the Israelite beliefs. The wisdom doesn't compare to Greek philosophy of the time and is re-writes of common laws of the times found in Canaanite and Egyptian books. The Egyptians laws (also given on stone by a deity) were where the 10 Commandments are from.
The Hammurabi code of laws, a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. Hammurabi's Code was carved onto a massive, finger-shaped black stone stele (pillar)
In the OT heaven is Gods home. Humans do not go there with one exception, but he was alive. The Greeks invented the idea that a person has a "soul" that can be redeemed and get to the afterlife, usually through the passion of a savior demigod. Duriong the Greek occupation Judaism was Hellenized and began predicting that they too would get one of these saviors. This was what inspired the Jewish/Greek scholar Mark to write the first Gospel.
"
only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven.[8"
Sang Meyng Lee, Born 1963; 2005-2008 Adjunct Professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary
"
During the period of the Second Temple (c.515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[47] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[47] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[48][49] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[49] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[49] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[49] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[47] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[40]
(Sanders and Wright, Biblical historians)
How did Christianity help the "epidemic of Priests molesting children"? Most adults have many tools and role models including therapists, psychologists, mentors and even fictive characters who inspire people to be the best one can be. Joseph Campbell is very inspiring as is self help experts like Jocko Willink, and many inspirational people like Tim Kennedy and secular humanist groups who constantly discuss secular morals like Matt Dillahunty and the Athiest Experience and similar. Lust, perversions...that is focused on wives, husbands, girlfriends and so on, you find a partner, focus your sexual energy on that person and have a great time.
We don't need an ancient myth with a character exorcizing devils out of pigs and worried about non-believers and eternal fire. Hate to tell you but there are many secular sources to remind one to forgive and judge less. Joseph Campbell covers all myths and breaks down many messages. There is also Deepak Chopra who I did follow for a while.
Sorry, the 2nd coming was happening in their generation. - Verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. Matthew 10:23
"Truly I tell you, this generation [greek: genea] will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."
"...there are some standing here, which shall not taste death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."
— Matt 16:28
He makes similar predictions in five other places in the Gospels; Mark 9:1, Mark 13:30, Matt 24:34, Luke 9:27, Luke 21:32. In religious sceptic Victor J. Stenger's view, when the coming did not happen within the life-times of his disciples, Christianity changed its emphasis to the resurrection and promise of eternal life.[
The prediction of a savior was written in response to Greek and Persion saviors that Hebrew leaders learned of during the occupations. The 1st Gospel was a fulfillment of the predictions. Still fiction. So that isn't proof.
Our world IS NOT racing toward one world government. You think North Korea, Russia or any other country is looking for a unified leader? That is so far removed from reality. Do you believe everything people in your church tell you?
ElishaElijah
Return
You don’t sound like you are very observant, even in the news you have world leaders talking about the reset, one world economy and monetary system. All the world won’t go for that and if you read the Bible there will be 10 nations partly iron partly clay as written in Daniel 2, Revelation 13 & 17. This will be the last Kingdom before Jesus Returns and out of these will come the Antichrist.
Also, it’s the generation that sees the signs that Jesus mentioned, not the generation that was alive at that time.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Yeah lets's look at Jewish Cosmology: We have a flat Earth, sun, moon, stars are inside the firmament and above that, in view, is heaven. Above that is the upper seas, those windows are how you get water for flooding the Earth. The sky was considered blue because you can see the upper oceans.
Wow, look what God created! So Christ holds all that together? Biblical cosmology - Wikipedia
Science has a hypothesis based on EVIDENCE? Meanwhile you believe an ancient myth that gives the above cosmology and claims of people having "revelations" with a God??? And you call science faith??? It doesn't matter how abiogenesis started, it had nothing to do with Zeus, Krishna, Vishnu or Yahweh. Those are legends that some people still believe. But some people also believe in Big Foot, alien abductions, haunted houses, fairies, ghosts and leprechauns. So that doesn't say much. You clearly have no interest in what is actually true. You are looking to evangelize an archaic story that you accepted as truth.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Speaking of observant? That is a conspiracy theory related to a conference called the World Reset, A global Covid recovery plan by the World Economic Forum. You should try and think for yourself and maybe look beyond what the cult members are telling you.
So all scholarship is 100% that Daniel is a forgery:
Daniel is a product of "Wisdom" circles, but the type of wisdom is mantic (the discovery of heavenly secrets from earthly signs) rather than the wisdom of learning—the main source of wisdom in Daniel is God's revelation.[35][36] It is one of a large number of Jewish apocalypses, all of them pseudonymous.[37] The stories of the first half are legendary in origin, and the visions of the second the product of anonymous authors in the Maccabean period (2nd century BC).[5] Chapters 1–6 are in the voice of an anonymous narrator, except for chapter 4 which is in the form of a letter from king Nebuchadnezzar; the second half (chapters 7–12) is presented by Daniel himself, introduced by the anonymous narrator in chapters 7 and 10.[38]
The author/editor was probably an educated Jew, knowledgeable in Greek learning, and of high standing in his own community. It is possible that the name of Daniel was chosen for the hero of the book because of his reputation as a wise seer in Hebrew tradition.[39] Ezekiel, who lived during the Babylonian exile, mentioned him in association with Noah and Job (Ezekiel 14:14) as a figure of legendary wisdom (28:3), and a hero named Daniel (more accurately Dan'el, but the spelling is close enough for the two to be regarded as identical) features in a late 2nd millennium myth from Ugarit.[40] "The legendary Daniel, known from long ago but still remembered as an exemplary character ... serves as the principal human 'hero' in the biblical book that now bears his name"; Daniel is the wise and righteous intermediary who is able to interpret dreams and thus convey the will of God to humans, the recipient of visions from on high that are interpreted to him by heavenly intermediaries.[41]
Book of Daniel - Wikipedia
And Revelation is just a re-write of an older Persian myth the Hebrews learned about during the 300 years with the Persians. They ended up adopting many of their myths.
Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism,[5] messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism,[
Revelation the original, 1600 B.C.
Zoroaster taught that the blessed must wait for this culmination till Frashegird and the 'future body' (Pahlavi 'tan i pasen'), when the earth will give up the bones of the dead (Y 30.7). This general resurrection will be followed by the Last Judgment, which will divide all the righteous from the wicked, both those who have lived until that time and those who have been judged already. Then Airyaman, Yazata of friendship and healing, together with Atar, Fire, will melt all the metal in the mountains, and this will flow in a glowing river over the earth. All mankind must pass through this river, and, as it is said in a Pahlavi text, 'for him who is righteous it will seem like warm milk, and for him who is wicked, it will seem as if he is walking in the • flesh through molten metal' (GBd XXXIV. r 8-r 9). In this great apocalyptic vision Zoroaster perhaps fused, unconsciously, tales of volcanic eruptions and streams of burning lava with his own experience of Iranian ordeals by molten metal; and according to his stern original teaching, strict justice will prevail then, as at each individual j udgment on earth by a fiery ordeal. So at this last ordeal of all the wicked will suffer a second death, and will perish off the face of the earth. The Daevas and legions of darkness will already have been annihilated in a last great battle with the Yazatas; and the river of metal will flow down into hell, slaying Angra Mainyu and burning up the last vestige of wickedness in the universe.
Ahura Mazda and the six Amesha Spentas will then solemnize a lt, spiritual yasna, offering up the last sacrifice (after which death wW be no more), and making a preparation of the mystical 'white haoma', which will confer immortality on the resurrected bodies of all the blessed, who will partake of it. Thereafter men will beome like the Immortals themselves, of one thought, word and deed, unaging, free from sickness, without corruption, forever joyful in the kingdom of God upon earth. For it is in this familiar and beloved world, restored to its original perfection, that, according to Zoroaster, eternity will be passed in bliss, and not in a remote insubstantial Paradise. So the time of Separation is a renewal of the time of Creation, except that no return is prophesied to the original uniqueness of living things. Mountain and valley will give place once more to level plain; but whereas in the beginning there was one plant, one animal, one man, the rich variety and number that have since issued from these will remain forever. Similarly the many divinities who were brought into being by Ahura Mazda will continue to have their separate existences. There is no prophecy of their re-absorption into the Godhead. As a Pahlavi text puts it, after Frashegird 'Ohrmaid and the Amahraspands and all Yazads and men will be together. .. ; every place will resemble a garden in spring, in which
there are all kinds of trees and flowers ... and it will be entirely the creation of Ohrrnazd' (Pahl.Riv.Dd. XLVIII, 99, lOO, l07).
Want your questions answered? Then read my previous post.
We Never Know
No Slack
Yes certain foods can sustain life in something already living but I wouldn't recommend you eating twigs, oak leafs or pine needles to see if you get the same result.
ElishaElijah
Return
So this is a false statement because some suggest Daniel was written by a Jewish author but others including Ezekiel, many times and Jesus Christ in Mathew and Mark.
The traditional view is that it was written after the Babylonian captivity due to manuscript dating evidence, supernatural events that took place in the inter testament period and prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled.
So Daniel is not a forgery.
joelr
Well-Known Member
No, that didn't answer anything. It repeated a claim which most religions have. God is eternal. You haven't proven God yet.
In fact the Persian God is where they got many of these ideas from
"God
t Zoroaster went much further, and in a startling departure from accepted beliefs proclaimed Ahura Mazda to be the one uncreated God, existing eternally, and Creator of all else that is good, including all other beneficent divinities. "
Hmm, kind of sounds like yet another thing the Hebrew religion took from the Persians. You have latched onto a Jewish/Greek/Hebrew myth that some people told you was actually true. It isn't. It's a myth just like Islam or Hinduism. The historicity and archaeology completely confirms this. The apologetics put forth by C.S. Lewis, Gary Habermas, Mike Licona, WLC and so on, are completely crank lies that are always debunked by smart people.
So, I ask again, since you are so smug with your communications, please tell me, what does God tell you my and GF name is? Where am I, where is she? This isn't proof, I just want to make sure he knows it's the correct person. No big deal, he should be able to provide that no problem.
joelr
Well-Known Member
I'm talking about historians. I just quoted the Wiki authorship section. The consensus is it's fake.
Dr Carrier. How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery • Richard Carrier
"Is there any reason specific to that book to warrant our concluding it is a forgery? Yes. Quite a lot in fact. And here I’ll summarize that for you. Principal peer-reviewed sources I rely on in this article are C.L. Seow’s Daniel by Westminster Knox Press (2003) and John Collins’ Daniel by Fortress Press (1993), part of the excellent Hermeneia commentary series. See also The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, vols. 1 and 2 (Brill, 2002), edited by John Collins and Peter Flint. This is all mainstream scholarly consensus now. Only biblical fundamentalists and similarly desperate believers still hold out hope that Daniel was actually written by an actual Daniel when it purports to have been. Mainstream scholarship has long since left them behind.
Historical Problems
Daniel itself purports to be a 6th century B.C. record made by an actual Daniel, a Jewish prophet in exile, of events around and after 600 B.C. It even purports to contain epistles and decrees written by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar himself (Daniel 4:1-18 and 4:34-37) and the fictional Babylonian king “Darius the Mede” (Daniel 6:6-12 and 6:25-28), which are ridiculously ahistorical fabrications self-evidently in service of Jewish propaganda, matching no actual evidence from the period. These epistles and decrees simply don’t exist in Babylonian or Persian records, nor do any records of any kind support any of the events peculiarly related in the book of Daniel. More importantly, were any of this true, Daniel could not make fundamental historical errors about that very time and place. Yet the book we have, does. In fact, whoever wrote it, knew the actual history of the period very poorly.
For example, Daniel begins:
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.
DANIEL 1:1-2
This didn’t happen. “The third year of the reign of Jehoiakim” is 606 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar attacked and sacked Jerusalem in 598 B.C. which is the eleventh year of Jehoiakim, a fact confirmed not only elsewhere in the Bible but in contemporary Babylonian records. Technically Jehoiakim was killed before the sack and his son, Jehoiakin (a.k.a. Jeconiah), reigned a few months still holding out, but this passage is vague enough to encompass such a train of events (in ancient literary parlance we would call that a standard compression of events, which deliberately doesn’t distract a reader with pedantic trivia). It’s the rest of it that makes no sense. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t even ascend the throne until 605 B.C. (although disagreements of only a year can be due to the use of different calendars or other minor causes of error). In that year, though, when Nebuchadnezzar threatened to besiege Jerusalem, Jehoiakim, then a vassal of Egypt, pledged allegiance to the Babylonians instead, and served as their vassal until 601, when he allied with the Egyptians again, provoking Nebuchadnezzar to finally make good on his threat, ending Judah as a kingdom in 598 (or 597, depending on calendar, etc.). To confuse all this is an impossible mistake for anyone contemporary to these events.
Daniel then erroneously has Belshazzar succeed Nebuchadnezzar as his son (Daniel 5; cf. Daniel 7:1 and 8:1). But Belshazzar was neither his successor nor his son; and abundant contemporary records show he was never King of Babylon, but only served occasionally as regent under his father—but even that was a decade or so after several other rulers of Babylon had come and gone. Belshazzar’s actual father, Nabonidus, took the throne six years and three kings—Amel Marduk, Neriglissar, and Labashi-Marduk—after Nebuchadnezzar. There is no possible way any contemporary of events could have gotten this so horribly wrong. Whoever wrote Daniel was bad at history, and somehow mistook Belshazzar as a king of Babylon (he wasn’t), the son of Nebuchadnezzar (he wasn’t), and as succeeding Nebuchadnezzar (he didn’t; not even as regent).
Daniel then invents a king who never existed: Darius the Mede. Daniel claims he “took over the kingdom” after Belshazzar was killed (Daniel 5:30-31). In fact the actual king of the Babylonians was not killed. The Persians (not the Medes) took over Nabonidus’s kingdom, and spared his life (the real fate of his son and sometimes-regent Belshazzar is not recorded). Daniel’s author was clearly quite confused by the political chronology of this period, mistaking the famous Darius the Great as the Persian king who freed the Jews, when in fact all records show—including other books of the Bible—that that was Cyrus the Great, who reigned several kings previous in succession (Darius succeeded only after Cyrus’s sons had their turn at the throne, first Chambyses and then Bardiya). Daniel even confused who fathered whom, getting the line of succession exactly backwards: Daniel says Darius was the son of Xerxes (Daniel 9:1); in fact Xerxes the Great was the son of Darius. Darius’s father was Hystaspes, a distant relative of Cyrus the Great.
There was no other Xerxes nor any other Darius the author of Daniel could have mistakenly meant. Surviving Babylonian and Persian records of the era are sufficiently extensive that any speculation contrary to this bears little probability; and is outright impossible: because Daniel’s author(s) clearly did mean Darius the Great, as they describe his division of Persia into provinces called satrapies, each under the care of a provincial governor called a satrap (Daniel 6:1-4), even though here again there is confusion: contemporary records show that Cyrus actually created the satrap system; Darius only reformed its organization, though in result was often mis-credited by outside observers as “creating” it (nevertheless a mistake no contemporary official of his court would make); and Daniel incorrectly says he created “120” satrapies, when in fact it was only twenty or so (in the Behistun Inscription, Darius declares his rule extended over 23 provinces; according to Herodotus, it was 20; and though some sources claim as much as 36, that’s still nowhere near “120”). And needless to say, no record exists of “one of [these satraps] being Daniel” (or anyone outranking them being Daniel; or any Persian official whatever being named Daniel). Compounding the author’s error, this Darius was also definitely not a Mede, either, but an Achaemenid. So they have confused even different sub-kingdoms and ethnic groups within the Persian Empire, mistook the number of satrapies under Persia, and completely hosed the actual historical chronology......
Next, Historical context, debunking apologetics, 2 examples, conclusion
How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery • Richard Carrier
joelr
Well-Known Member
All of these mistakes together are simply impossible for an author at the time, much less a high ranking Babylonian and Persian official, as Daniel is incredibly portrayed throughout. The actual author of Daniel was simply very ill-informed about the Babylonian and Persian eras, and is struggling to make up anything he can using famous names vaguely known here and about, and also to “fix” failed prophecies in Jeremiah (who predicted the “Medes” would vanquish the Babylonians; it ended up being the Persians instead, but this can explain why Daniel has “changed” Darius into a Mede). Which all indicates Daniel was most likely written centuries later than it purports. This was so obvious that it was noticed even in antiquity: the 3rd century philosopher Porphyry famously pointed it out long ago. It’s thus very telling that, though it purports to be written in the 6th century B.C. foretelling events in a later century (in Daniel 9-12), it becomes quite accurate for that later century. As Seow aptly puts it, “the book is remarkably precise in its allusions to certain events in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid periods down to the time just before the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes” at the end of 164 B.C. After which year it gets everything about the course of history disastrously wrong. Two guesses then when Daniel was written.
In furtherance of this conclusion it has also been pointed out that the Aramaic of Daniel (in Daniel 3:4-15) weirdly contains loan words from Greek—in the words it chooses to use for zither, sambuka, harp, and a multi-piped flute. It is strange even that Greek instruments should appear here at all (if such instead is meant), in a proclamation about what people should expect to hear from a Babylonian imperial marching band. Indeed, Greek loan words don’t otherwise appear in Aramaic texts or inscriptions until the late Persian period (hundreds of years after Daniel purports to have been written). This does not alone prove the conclusion, but it does increase its probability. Though apologists will argue that Greek loan words in Daniel are possible for an early Persian-era text (e.g. Benjamin Noonan, “Daniel’s Greek Loanwords in Dialectal Perspective,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 28.4 [2018]: 575-603), that ignores the actual point which is that this is improbable. An official “Babylonian herald” such as Daniel claims to be quoting, or a high official in the Babylonian (and then Persian) court, as Daniel is depicted, would far sooner have employed much more recognizable Babylonian, Persian, or (as the text usually attempts) Aramaic words for those same things (or have correctly described an actual Babylonian orchestra). Thus, that the obscure and largely impertinent language (or even actual instruments) of the Greeks would be chosen for them instead is really weird. It thus does not matter if it is “possible.” What matters is that this is not at all what we expect, and thus is not at all probable; whereas an author writing under Antiochus who had little knowledge of Babylonian or Persian court vocabulary for such things (or even the actual musical instruments of that era) would be entirely likely to grab then-more-familiar Greek words for the purpose instead (especially for instruments that would by then be entirely familiar to a people who had been serving under a Greek empire for decades or even centuries). It is this difference in probabilities that makes this observation evidence for forgery. This cannot be rebutted by arguing for a mere “possibility.” The point carries. No apologetics can escape its impact.
Finally (per Collins, pp. 24-38 and Seow, pp. 7-11), many serious proposals have been made (and evidence adduced) that earlier parts of Daniel (much or all of Daniel 1-6) might date to around the 4th century (still, thus, forged), but that obviously does not include chapters 9-12, which can only date to the 2nd century, yet are the chapters Christian apologists most desperately need to be authentic. But their having been forged in the 4th century wouldn’t make them authentic either; and we don’t know how much any earlier material may have been altered or edited for the 2nd century edition (indeed additions kept being made even after that, e.g. Bel and the Dragon as chapter 14, Susanna as chapter 13, and the Song of the Three Children was added to chapter 3). So none of these scholarly arguments are of any help to apologetics. (I should also add that even in the small fraction of the text of Daniel recovered at Qumran are many variant readings and scribal corruptions, which means the total number of corruptions across the whole text of Daniel must have been much larger even by then; and therefore considerably more must have crept into any manuscripts from centuries later.)
Historical Context
Daniel 11:1-4 is not so accurate, but Daniel 11:5-39 is spot on, and that chapter gets progressively more detailed and precise as it follows history along from the Persian to the Alexandrian and then the Seleucid eras, until it spends the most verses, and with the most verifiable detail, on the ten year reign of Antiochus, all the way up to just before his death (and the Jewish recapture of Jerusalem) in 164, during the Maccabean Revolt. As Seow observes, therefore, “the interests” of the “author and probably its audience are focused on that decade.” So the book of Daniel is really about that period of history, and was written for Jewish readers going through that decade. It was thus clearly written as an inspirational tract for the people fighting for the Jewish rebellion under the Maccabees; it was probably passed off as a forgotten book “serendipitously rediscovered” at just the right moment when increased resolve was needed to finally vanquish the enemy Antiochus (the convenient “discovery” of long lost books was a known way to pass off forgeries promoting going political movements; one can suspect it for Deuteronomy, the Linen Rolls and Sibylline Oracles, and the original Ascension of Isaiah).
So when we notice Daniel then starts to get history totally wrong (Daniel 11:40-45), incorrectly “predicting” a war between the Ptolemies and Seleucids that never came to pass, and that Antiochus would conquer most of North Africa (he didn’t capture even a single province there, due to the unforeseen intervention of the Romans), and die in Palestine (he was nowhere near), we can directly tell when the book was written: sometime in or shortly before 165. Because any earlier and its inaccuracies would start sooner, and any later and it wouldn’t have circulated successfully so as to gain a strong position as scripture, since its predictions would have been too rapidly falsified; instead it clearly gained such fanatical support that even when its prophecies eventually did fail, people’s faith in it was strong enough to motivate them to do what they did with all beloved but failed prophecies: try to reinterpret them as referring to yet a further distant time (exactly as Daniel 9 does with a failed prophecy of Jeremiah). And notably, it is precisely the effort to do that that caused Christianity.
It is generally agreed by mainstream experts now that the “Messiah” who is “predicted” to be killed (Daniel 9:25-26) was actually meant to be the “rightful” high priest Onias III, illegitimately deposed and replaced by Antiochus but revered as something of a saint at the time (e.g. 2 Maccabees 3-4), who then was assassinated while in exile in Syria before Daniel was written (making this a classic, and indeed altogether typical, example of “prophecy” being written after the fact and then purported to have been written before the fact, a common device in prophecy as a literary genre). That this makes the strange math in Daniel 9 work perfectly only confirms this conclusion. Since Daniel was actually written centuries after the restoration of the Jewish Temple under Cyrus, 59 years after its sack (by Babylonians in 598, who were overthrown by Cyrus in 539), and thus the prophecy of Jeremiah that this would not happen for seventy years was proved false, that “seventy” year timetable had to be “reinterpreted” so Jeremiah could be rescued from the charge of being a false prophet. Accomplishing this by reimagining Jeremiah as “actually” referring to the Maccabean revolt was then propagandistically exactly what its authors needed. So they did some weird math to make it come out that way.
joelr
Well-Known Member
This is why apologetics is so untrustworthy on all Biblical subjects. Daniel....
Apologetics
So, genuinely critical scholars. Now enter the gullible scholars: Christian apologists who need Daniel to be authentic. Attempts by fundamentalists and unrelenting believers to “rescue” Daniel’s authenticity are of course abundant. None follow any credible historical method. Real historians apply the same standards to the Book of Daniel, and to Daniel as a person, that we do to all other ancient books and persons. And we attend to what’s more probable, not to what’s convenient or merely possible.
When we attend to the actual evidence we have and to what’s the most probable, we see there is no evidence attesting to there being a Book of Daniel, or any specific stories in it, in any source prior to the Maccabean era. Red flag. The earliest reference to Daniel as a person, in Ezekiel, appears to imagine him as a foreign wise man in distant mythic time, not as a Jewish prophet, much less of the Persian court; and makes no mention of his writing books, much less of his being Ezekiel’s contemporary. Red flag. Daniel makes too many mistakes that are impossible for an eyewitness and leading Babylonian and Persian official as its author is portrayed to be. Red flag. Daniel only produces detailed and correct historical data for the last ten years of King Antiochus. Red flag. It then gets completely incorrect everything that happened just before and after his death. Red flag. These coincidences are absurdly improbable on any other theory than that Daniel was written shortly before 164 B.C. as propaganda promoting an ongoing war and cultural program. And exactly in line with that conclusion, and thus supporting it as evidence, the content of Daniel thoroughly supports the political and cultural interests of the Maccabees at exactly that time. There is no evidence for any other conclusion.
In response to this, apologists just hand-wave away all that evidence by making up “just so” stories as to why we should “assume” all of that evidence is misleading. They present zero evidence for any of those “just so” stories. They are just made-up speculations, that they push as “probable facts,” on no rational basis. They will ignore all current and leading peer reviewed scholarship, and dig around for centuries-obsolete scholars to quote instead. They will gullibly quote as “established fact” any ancient source that says what they want—even when they would admit that trusting such obviously self-interested, unsourced statements would be wholly foolish if they supported, say, the truth of Islam, or the falsity of Christianity. They will invent elaborate theories to explain away the evidence or to bolster the gullibly-trusted sources they cite, and then insist those theories are true—after presenting no evidence at all that they are true. And they’ll leave out all data that undermines any of this—such that when we bring that omitted data back in, everything they are saying collapses back into the improbable.
For example, in a recent discussion I had on this subject (see my conclusion below), it was insisted that “no one” in 2nd century B.C. Judea would forge an ancient scripture in any other language than Greek; at which I listed half a dozen examples of works that some Jews of that era were treating as scripture that were composed or forged in Hebrew or Aramaic in or around exactly that period (in Hebrew, this includes Jubilees, the Book of Noah, the Testament of Naphtali, the Vision of Samuel, an Apocryphon of Joshua, an Apocryphon of Moses, an Apocryphon of David, an Apocryphon of Malachi, a Second Book of Ezekiel, a Hebrew edition of Tobit; and numerous commentaries, alternative scriptures, and other contemporary texts—so Seleucid and Hasmonean era scribes were perfectly facile with Hebrew). The omitted evidence put back in, and Daniel looks exactly like a going trend of the time, and not as the inexplicable novelty they were trying to claim. Never mind that it doesn’t even make a priori sense that someone who wanted to pass off a text as an ancient document written in an era of Hebrew and Aramaic dominance would compose it in any other language than that. (Likewise, any belief that the “canon” was “closed” as of the 5th century B.C. would be precisely why this was forged to resemble a 6th century text.) This is the kind of illogical, evidence-neglecting rationalization that passes for “critical methodology” in Christian apologetics. Which is why apologetics is not legitimate history. It is what it is called: just a self-satisfying rhetoric built to defend a pre-conceived conclusion, not a critical means of ascertaining what actually is true. A genuine means to that end has to be immune to these very kinds of falsity-defending mechanisms, not based on them.......
How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery • Richard Carrier
And it is interesting to ask why not. The cellulose in the twigs is made from the same sugars that make up starch. they are chemically very similar.
But, the sugars in cellulose are put together in a slightly different way than the sugars in starch. And, it turns out, our bodies don't have the enzymes that can break down cellulose into those sugars. So, all that energy is simply not available to us.
Animals that have that enzyme, however, *can* eat wood and it is nutritious for them.
Take away the food, the baby dies.
The baby's body is formed from the materials in the food.
I notice that you are moving from 'non-living things can't become living' to 'life doesn't form on its own'.
Do you agree that the non-living food becomes the living baby?
KWED
Scratching head, scratching knee
Nope sorry. No idea what you are trying to say there.That is subjective and you are not an universal we for all humans. If you were you would be God. OMG, you are God and you have proven God. You can speak for all humans for all times and only God could do that, so you are God.
That was nonresponsive, but thank you for acknowledging that you saw the words. I didn't claim of imply that God had a beginning, or make any mention of defying the laws of science. There were questions for you to answer which you did not - do you consider God life? - and a comment that however one answers that, he is still left with the fact that he believes that there is like that did not come from prior life. Can I assume that you concede that point?
Nor do I. But I do have the advantage of recognizing that the only source of knowledge about the world comes from its study (empiricism), and have avoided the disadvantage of believing that faith is a path to truth.
Naturalisitc abiogenesis is extremely likely. Confining oneself to strict empiricism - staying "within the field of scientific possibility" - is not a defect, but a virtue, and the only path available to understanding the advent of life. If science cannot answer that question, it cannot be answered. Remember, my definition of answer includes empirical knowledge, not guessing.
As the video emphasized, uncritical belief is not open-mindedness. In fact, the critical thinker has a duty to reject insufficiently supported claims. He is not only willing to consider evidence and argument impartially, he is only willing to accept the sound conclusions that process generates. His mind is open to considering all ideas, but not to accepting them all. They have to pass muster.
And yes, preferring sound conclusions exclusively over insufficiently supported claims is a bias - a rational and valuable one.
This is an idealized schematic, the older Rutherford atom, which shows electrons in orbits rather than orbitals, but the nuclei are the point of the diagram, and this works for present purpose. Which of these three nuclei do you think formed first? Hint: protons and neutron form when quarks combine.
Would you know which elements they were if you had a count on the protons and neutrons in their nuclei? Hint: the atomic number is the number of protons in the nucleus.
Strictly speaking, we should be asking which atomic nuclei formed first, because neutral, stable atoms, meaning nuclei surrounded by electrons, came about 400,000 years later, and as this diagram implies, all of the nuclei became neutral atoms together with the creation of the cosmic microwave background. Incidentally, this diagram is of the Rutherford atom, which had electrons in orbits. It has been supplanted by the Bohr atom, that has them in orbitals (clouds of negative charge). Anyway, the hydrogen nucleus, a bare proton, came first. The early universe was so hot that hydrogen began fusing into helium before it cooled enough for fusion to stop:
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
What is the evidence that you are a we?
KWED
Scratching head, scratching knee
I suspect you may be an illustration of the maxim "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing".