Losing My Faith in YHWH

[crazzeto]

Yes, I had wondered if perhaps the flood happened at the Melt Down of the last Ice Age which would cause a major increase in the water levels. Thus be the reason for so many flood myths. But the Bible makes it clear it was a global flood. Example, why would the dove return if it were only a regional flood?

OK, but you have to consider what does “whole world” mean to an ancient author? It most certainly could be a very large regional flood, in which case a dove may very well have returned with the branch, the world is a big place for a bird to fly after all.

Lol, no. No atheists. Mainly the discovery and History channel and personal research.

Yeah, you’ve been getting your information from Athiest central. I believe history runs a series called bible battles, the entire point of the series is to debunk the old testament (and Christianity by extension). I deleted the series from my tivo after I realized every episode went on about ‘the bibles religious agenda’. I wouldn’t put too much stock in History and Discovery, I’d do real research.

God bless.

 

[Ahimsa]

Mr. Zetter,

Check out McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity.

 

[StrawberryJam]

“Real research” would be using what method of evaluation of claims exactly? Primary source documents are a start, but no end to our research.
Yes, I know the “drill” the supernatural can not be understood (special knowledge argument) God works in mysterious ways (special pleading argument) and, so many more arguments that simply do not hold up upon critical examination.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

A couple of quotes regarding a world wide deluge from the following.

layevangelism.com/advtxbk/sections/sect-10/sec10-5.htm

Dr. John R. Hornet in Digging for Dinosaurs stated,

"Judging from the concentration of bones in various pits, there were 30 million fossil fragments in that area. At a conservative estimate, we had discovered the tomb of 10,000 dinosaurs. There was a flood. This was no ordinary spring flood from one of the streams in the area but a catastrophic inundation. . . That’s our best explanation. It seems to make the most sense, and on the basis of it we believe that this was a living, breathing group of dinosaurs destroyed in one catastrophic moment."182/131

&&&&&

Fossilization requires rapid burial. Yet such burial is exceedingly rare today, and fossilization is almost non-existent in modern times. The existence of massive numbers of fossils worldwide is clear evidence of quick, deep, mass burial. A global flood catastrophe would offer conditions most ideal to the location of great numbers of fossils. The fossils give evidence that the animals were killed suddenly.

&&&&&&&&&

In an excavation done by Dr. Carl Baugh and associates,63 they came across for the first time in cretaceous layering a Lepidodendron. This is a plant today that grows sixteen to eighteen inches tall, but in the fossil record it grew to up to 120 feet tall. The Lepidodendron Dr. Baugh excavated was 48 inches at the base, compressed and still had the pods unique to that kind of fonda, and a root extension all in the same compressed sedimentary deposit. Eight inches of the lateral root that had been washed in along with the rest of the plant by fluid hydrology extended into the rock layer below. The rest of the plant compressed extended up through the marrow into the next rock layer above. This is called a Polystrate fossil. This is a tender plant extending between two layers of rock. According to evolutionary geology there are 2 million years between these two rock layers, but the visible tangible facts indicate clearly that there where only a few hours between these two rock layers.

&&&&&&

There are huge ancient whale fossils that can be found completely and quickly buried in sediment.185 Near Lompo, CA there was found in diatomaceous earth an 80 foot Valine Whale upright on its tale. In order to sweep a creature like that up on its tale, in order to sedimentarally incase it would require global catastrophic proportions.

&&&&&&&&&

Thousands and millions of fish fossils which retain all the body parts indicating very rapid burial. Under normal conditions, fish do not fossilize. Dead fish are torn apart by scavengers and disintegrated by bacteria. There are the existence of fossils with soft tissue like jellyfish and sponges. There are the preservation of animal tracts, fish odors, amino acids, proteins, epidermal bark in plants, cell details, chlorophyll, etc.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

On the business of a “flood”, a couple of years ago my wife and I went for a bit of a round trip by car, including Longreach in central Queensland. We went to Winton a bit further on and took in Lark Quarry as part of it. There is a record of a dinosaur stampede permanently imprinted in the rock. Click on the following link for a summary.

dinosaurtrackways.com.au/

It’s worth a look if you’re up that way, but you’ll have to drive a distance to get there. But then again, in Outback Queensland, you’ve got to drive a distance to get anywhere.

Now the prints are clearly visible. If more rock were to be lifted up, I have no doubt they’d find more of them. But as I looked at them, I also noticed lines in the rock, like someone had dragged a stick or branches along mud, and these lines had then hardened along with the dinosaur footprints.

So I asked the volunteer guide what caused them. He just sort of shrugged and said, “I think it was the flood”. And that was about all he said. I didn’t pursue the matter, as I wasn’t interested in getting into a Genesis brawl with him or other sightseers.

Now I’ve seen enough footprints on mud, or sand, to know that they don’t last. Either the next tide washes them away, or the sun cracks the mud and they lose their outline, or rain comes down and obliterates them. But here were these hundreds of footprints, supposedly 75 million years old, and a guide ascerbicly commenting that the other marks there were due to “the flood”.

In fact, to find the prints, the excavators had to lift up a fairly thick layer of sedimentary rock.

So even in this case, those prints had been buried and filled by silt, and in short order.

Just how long ago this was is a moot point.

 

[crazzeto]

“Real research” would be using what method of evaluation of claims exactly? Primary source documents are a start, but no end to our research.
Yes, I know the “drill” the supernatural can not be understood (special knowledge argument) God works in mysterious ways (special pleading argument) and, so many more arguments that simply do not hold up upon critical examination.

StarwberryJam, would you be willing to start off by reading a book?

Life After Death: The Evidence

A little expensive as far as books I typically recommend go, but I think it’s worth a read. You seem to believe that all of faith relys upon “special knowledge” as you put it, I don’t think that’s the case personally.

 

[Pawel_J]

I am losing my faith in the Old Testament God. (…)

I am losing it, too, but due to different reasons. To me the OT God is a kind of alien. He is cruel, jealous, very severe, punitive and fearsome. He is instructing Israelites to do horrible things, including extermination of whole tribes or nations in the Canaan. This picture of God does not match the standards of the Divine Attributes we are used to in our Christian religion, standards based on the NT and statements made by Jesus. I personally see in the OT only a general concept of God, His preexistence and the creation of the universe. Analyzing the details presented in the OT and the chronicle of events does not make much sense to me. I think the concept of God proposed by Jesus and found in the Gospels is much closer to the people of to-day.

 

[MrZetterlund]

The abrahamic God was “liberal” in your understanding of belief?

I need to re-read all the babies skulls being bashed on rocks, incest, mass murdering, and well- a real whammy of a list of horrid sins condoned by the abrahamic God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Nothing “liberal” about these things, and so much more in there.

I am losing it, too, but due to different reasons. To me the OT God is a kind of alien. He is cruel, jealous, very severe, punitive and fearsome. He is instructing Israelites to do horrible things, including extermination of whole tribes or nations in the Canaan. This picture of God does not match the standards of the Divine Attributes we are used to in our Christian religion, standards based on the NT and statements made by Jesus. I personally see in the OT only a general concept of God, His preexistence and the creation of the universe. Analyzing the details presented in the OT and the chronicle of events does not make much sense to me. I think the concept of God proposed by Jesus and found in the Gospels is much closer to the people of to-day.

I’m really not angry at God for morral reasons. I understand God’s vengeful nature. Vengence is pratically His job. For example, the killing of the first born children of Egypt is the reeping of what Pharroh had sown when he killed all the Hebrew’s newborn babies. If you think “well why’s He punishing the kids and not the parents” having your children ripped from you is worse than death. The Bible also periodically reminds us that our sins don’t affect just us. When Adam fell from grace, his children suffered sweating the ground too, because of the position Adam was left in. It’s the same thing in every day life. My father was an alchoholic, therefore, I grew up in a poor trailer with no electricity and spent a good chunk of my life behaving very un-Christian.
Alot of people look at the extermination of the Cannonites as well and think God is horrid. But archeologists dug up this site and found the Cannonites to be a very brutal group of people. They participated in human sacrafice and probably would have spear-chucked the Hebrews as soon as they laid eyes on them. God was placing judgement, not ordering for a mindless genocide. Many look at the flood as a brutal unrighteous act of genocide. But I’ve heard legends even from the Native American culture about how evil men’s hearts were in those days. I’ve read this one story about these men who found an owl and ripped out all it’s feathers, and the owl flew to the heavens to show his pain to the highest god. Think about it, these men’s hearts were so hardened, they found it necessary to rip out the feathers of this owl that just happens to be unfortunate to cross their path.
Lastly, incest. Incest isn’t so much upheld by God but rather, by the primitive Hebrews prior to the Mossaic Law. If God had forbade incest before then, He would have destroyed some very close relationships! And incest is still common today, especially here in the south. I hear about it alot when I visit Alabama. They’re called red-necks.
If you think ancient Israel was barbaric, you should see their neighbors.

 

[MrZetterlund]

OK, but you have to consider what does “whole world” mean to an ancient author? It most certainly could be a very large regional flood, in which case a dove may very well have returned with the branch, the world is a big place for a bird to fly after all.
you’ve been getting your information from Athiest central. I believe history runs a series called bible battles, the entire point of the series is to debunk the old testament (and Christianity by extension). I deleted the series from my tivo after I realized every episode went on about ‘the bibles religious agenda’. I wouldn’t put too much stock in History and Discovery, I’d do real research.

God bless.

Hm, that’s odd. I’ve always seen the history and discovery channel as sort of bias towards religion. They always seen to pend towards wishful thinking. I’m wondering if maybe you’re from the UK. I’ve seen idiotic documentories from there trying to debunk the Shroud of Turin with suedo-science bull ****. The skeptic’s only hope is the work done by Walter McCrone who was proven dead wrong thirty years ago. Their documentory about the Shroud of Turin was very different (and much less scientific) than the American documentory about the Shroud of Turin.
Either way, I just know that popularly, geologists usually don’t believe the flood because of the lack of sediment. But I’m much less worried about the flood than I am Moses and the Exodus in terms of not being true.

 

[momor]

In an excavation done by Dr. Carl Baugh and associates,63 they came across for the first time in cretaceous layering a Lepidodendron. This is a plant today that grows sixteen to eighteen inches tall, but in the fossil record it grew to up to 120 feet tall. The Lepidodendron Dr. Baugh excavated was 48 inches at the base, compressed and still had the pods unique to that kind of fonda, and a root extension all in the same compressed sedimentary deposit. Eight inches of the lateral root that had been washed in along with the rest of the plant by fluid hydrology extended into the rock layer below. The rest of the plant compressed extended up through the marrow into the next rock layer above. This is called a Polystrate fossil. This is a tender plant extending between two layers of rock. According to evolutionary geology there are 2 million years between these two rock layers, but the visible tangible facts indicate clearly that there where only a few hours between these two rock layers.

&&&&&&

There are huge ancient whale fossils that can be found completely and quickly buried in sediment.185 Near Lompo, CA there was found in diatomaceous earth an 80 foot Valine Whale upright on its tale. In order to sweep a creature like that up on its tale, in order to sedimentarally incase it would require global catastrophic proportions.

Very interesting!
What is being described sounds more like a tidal wave than a just a flood, doesn’t it?
Could it be from the asteroid hitting the earth that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs?

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Very interesting!
What is being described sounds more like a tidal wave than a just a flood, doesn’t it?
Could it be from the asteroid hitting the earth that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs?

I think there was a flood. After all just about every tribe and culture has a flood legend, in addition to the massive fossil deposits, laid down very quickly.

The chances are though that the cause was natural. Possibly it was a massive asteroid.

Judgment is built in. God knows ahead of time what is going to happen, and has other events lined up to deal with them. We’ve been warned there will be an anti-Christ for example, who will rule over a world wide empire, and we were told centuries in advance.

God will have His measures in place to respond. It won’t be pleasant, but He’ll have a response lined up.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Very interesting!
What is being described sounds more like a tidal wave than a just a flood, doesn’t it?
Could it be from the asteroid hitting the earth that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs?

There’s more here about fossilised trees in coal beds.

icr.org/article/polystrate-trees-coal-seams-joggins-fossil-cliffs/

 

[StrawberryJam]

Hm, that’s odd. I’ve always seen the history and discovery channel as sort of bias towards religion. They always seen to pend towards wishful thinking. I’m wondering if maybe you’re from the UK. I’ve seen idiotic documentories from there trying to debunk the Shroud of Turin with suedo-science bull ****. The skeptic’s only hope is the work done by Walter McCrone who was proven dead wrong thirty years ago. Their documentory about the Shroud of Turin was very different (and much less scientific) than the American documentory about the Shroud of Turin.
Either way, I just know that popularly, geologists usually don’t believe the flood because of the lack of sediment. But I’m much less worried about the flood than I am Moses and the Exodus in terms of not being true.

What evidence do we have for the Exodus being true?

 

[Masters_Servant]

The abrahamic God was “liberal” in your understanding of belief?

I need to re-read all the babies skulls being bashed on rocks, incest, mass murdering, and well- a real whammy of a list of horrid sins condoned by the abrahamic God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Nothing “liberal” about these things, and so much more in there.

You see the result of what is known as sin; and God was, is and always has been always patient before bringing judgment. As for those babies you are concerned about; they are with Him, part of His mercy. God does not cause sin; He did allow sin, but without sin He would not be able to display His mercy and thus receive glory due to Him for His merciful character. God does not condone sin; He judges sin and acts accordingly.

Those that reject His mercy in Christ, will be happy to be without Him; they never believed nor liked him anyway so where they end up should be without complaint for that reason.

 

[Masters_Servant]

“Real research” would be using what method of evaluation of claims exactly? Primary source documents are a start, but no end to our research.
Yes, I know the “drill” the supernatural can not be understood (special knowledge argument) God works in mysterious ways (special pleading argument) and, so many more arguments that simply do not hold up upon critical examination.

What would it take for you to believe Him? Jesus virtually banished disease from Palestine and some of the same people He physically healed and those that witnessed it are the very ones that demanded His crucifixion. So what would convince you?

 

[Masters_Servant]

A couple of quotes regarding a world wide deluge from the following.

layevangelism.com/advtxbk/sections/sect-10/sec10-5.htm

Dr. John R. Hornet in Digging for Dinosaurs stated,

"Judging from the concentration of bones in various pits, there were 30 million fossil fragments in that area. At a conservative estimate, we had discovered the tomb of 10,000 dinosaurs. There was a flood. This was no ordinary spring flood from one of the streams in the area but a catastrophic inundation. . . That’s our best explanation. It seems to make the most sense, and on the basis of it we believe that this was a living, breathing group of dinosaurs destroyed in one catastrophic moment."182/131

&&&&&

Fossilization requires rapid burial. Yet such burial is exceedingly rare today, and fossilization is almost non-existent in modern times. The existence of massive numbers of fossils worldwide is clear evidence of quick, deep, mass burial. A global flood catastrophe would offer conditions most ideal to the location of great numbers of fossils. The fossils give evidence that the animals were killed suddenly.

&&&&&&&&&

In an excavation done by Dr. Carl Baugh and associates,63 they came across for the first time in cretaceous layering a Lepidodendron. This is a plant today that grows sixteen to eighteen inches tall, but in the fossil record it grew to up to 120 feet tall. The Lepidodendron Dr. Baugh excavated was 48 inches at the base, compressed and still had the pods unique to that kind of fonda, and a root extension all in the same compressed sedimentary deposit. Eight inches of the lateral root that had been washed in along with the rest of the plant by fluid hydrology extended into the rock layer below. The rest of the plant compressed extended up through the marrow into the next rock layer above. This is called a Polystrate fossil. This is a tender plant extending between two layers of rock. According to evolutionary geology there are 2 million years between these two rock layers, but the visible tangible facts indicate clearly that there where only a few hours between these two rock layers.

&&&&&&

There are huge ancient whale fossils that can be found completely and quickly buried in sediment.185 Near Lompo, CA there was found in diatomaceous earth an 80 foot Valine Whale upright on its tale. In order to sweep a creature like that up on its tale, in order to sedimentarally incase it would require global catastrophic proportions.

&&&&&&&&&

Thousands and millions of fish fossils which retain all the body parts indicating very rapid burial. Under normal conditions, fish do not fossilize. Dead fish are torn apart by scavengers and disintegrated by bacteria. There are the existence of fossils with soft tissue like jellyfish and sponges. There are the preservation of animal tracts, fish odors, amino acids, proteins, epidermal bark in plants, cell details, chlorophyll, etc.

How long would it take for a leaf to fossilize? It would disintegrate prior to reaching that point unless something catastrophic happened, which it did as you know. The wisdom of men is foolishness before God…amen.

 

[Masters_Servant]

StarwberryJam, would you be willing to start off by reading a book?

Life After Death: The Evidence

A little expensive as far as books I typically recommend go, but I think it’s worth a read. You seem to believe that all of faith relys upon “special knowledge” as you put it, I don’t think that’s the case personally.

Offer to buy it and send to her if she would agree to read it.

 

[crazzeto]

Offer to buy it and send to her if she would agree to read it.

Wow, that’s really generous. Hopefully they’ll take you up on the offer.

 

[MrZetterlund]

What evidence do we have for the Exodus being true?

Appearently, nothing in Egyptology. As someone pointed out earlier, it could be possible that Pharroh destroyed any record of it’s happenings because it wouldn’t look good on a deity’s record. I suppose the best evidence we have is in the Bible itself. I once watched a documentory about how the Exodus could be understood the same way through Egyptian military tactics. Also, they found houses similar to typical ancient Hebrew-styled houses east of Egypt where the Bible claims Joseph gave to his family. I’ve also heard they found charriot wheels and axels similar to Egypt’s charriot wheels and axels incorralated at the bottom of the Red Sea (south) out of Egypt (like the Bible says.) There’s a sort of curve-in where you could see the one side of the Red Sea from the other. Also, the golden calf in the Bible is a god known to be worshipped by the Egyptians and Cannonites.

 

[JimmieD]

I am losing my faith in the Old Testament God. I would never consider myself a fundamentalist in the first place, but some things in the Old Testament Bible do seem fundamentally important to the entirety of the religion. Take for example Noah’s Flood. A flood like that would have left a major foot-print.

If you’re going to do history there are certain criteria historians look for when determining whether or not an event was historical. One important criteria to look for is independent attestations. The more sources that report an event, the better. In the case of the flood there are an unusual number of sources spreading over several cultures to include but not limited to: Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Indian, Aztec, Native American, Myan, … This sort of attestation of an event is highly unusual in historical terms. So the question becomes, is there something deep within our collective psyche that causes multiple cultures in multiple geographies to make up flood stories? And why a flood and why a unanimous consensus on the occurance of a flood? Why not fire, or wind, or earthquakes, or falling stars, or some other extreme mass destruction? And why do all of these mention a flood?

The only conclusion that is really available is that some sort of flood happened.

And Jesus said “the days of the coming of the Son of Man would be like the days of Noah.”

I think read in context it means that people won’t be expecting the coming of the Son of Man. That’s at least the thrust of Jesus’ message there.

What does that mean? It won’t really happen?

No. It means what the story says it means. The coming of the Son of Man will be unexpected and sudden, just like the coming of the flood in Genesis was sudden and unexpected for everyone but Noah. Jesus isn’t making a declaration of the historicity of Noah’s flood; he’s using it as an illustration.

Or what about when God led the Hebrews out of Egypt? Why is there no evidence that the Hebrews were even in Egypt, or the Exodus, or the seven plagues?

There is some very limited evidence that semetic people’s were in Egypt (see/investigate: Hyksos, Apiru and Shasu). If I had to hedge a guess, I would say that the Hebrew were probably among the Hyksos, Apiru, and/or Shasu. Egyptian records even mention the Shasu worshiping Yahweh. The difficulty lies in the fact that finding concrete evidence a particular group of wandering nomads or semi-nomads (especially if it’s a small group) in large desert and several thousand years after the events, is extremely hard. In any case, the name “Israel” appears on Egyptian inscriptions (the Merneptah Stele) where they are treated as a nation by the year 1213 BC. So whatever theory is conjured up, Israel has to be in the land and formed as a nation by that date. The biblical account of how Israel got into Canaan is just as likely as any other theory, and I would say much more likely since it’s the only account of antiquity.

In any case, the biblcal record should not be ignored as giving us historical information. Saying the account is just all fictional is going to raise more problems than conceding that it (or at least some of it) is historical.