The Exodus Lie & Hitchens

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empacae

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I’ve been knocking around You Tube for a bit and came to some videos starring everyones favorite anti-theist, Christopher Hitchens. For years I wouldn’t acknowledge his writings or rantings, thinking he his something akin to a child angry at his father. And so thus wouldn’t waste my time reviewing anything by him. Though it was my pleasure to view the Hitchens vs Hitchens debate he had with his brother Peter and the Kings College dabate with D’Sousa. It’s not the narcissistic drunken ramblings of the egomanical popinjay hellbent for his own adulation that troubles me, but those that are so easily swayed by his targeted scoffs and emotional pleas to people’s own self pride that have got me alarmed. His venemous attacks on Mother Teresa I think are his own and of no consequence to me, as I think every Christian honestly questions their own faith to even doubting it from time to time. But I want to know what his attack on Exodus and Moses is and how he bases it by saying “even archeologists will agree”. He claims to be someone who is a proponent for enlightlenment, reason and truth, while hypocritically displaying very little himself of these virtues.

Please help me with dispelling what he claims about Exodus, the Ten Commandments and Moses, or enlighten me if there is a shred of truth to what his claims are.

Yours in Christ,

emp
 
You bring up an important point by asking this: Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we believe our parents or our teachers in school? We trust them. We trust them because we believe they want what is best for us.

Regarding the Exodus, I think this Rabbi provides the answer you need:

aish.com/ci/sam/48938472.html

Mr. Hitchens is an example of a person who appears to believe what he says. Is he sincere? I don’t know. The problem is a few people will listen to him and a few might believe him. And for Catholics who want to know the truth, about everything, I think we find it confusing when someone goes through so much trouble to lead people astray.

God bless,
Ed
 
Thank you thank you thank you!

I just finished reading the piece sent to me by edwest2 to the point that my eyes are tired and my vision is now blurred. Tomorrow I’ll get to **Is Jebel Musa the CORRECT Mt. Sinai? **that buffalo has linked to. But I think it brings up the important point that we can never win debates or hearts over with trite sound bites as has been employed against us. I for one would never want conclusive proof of God’s existance as it would for me destroy the mystery of belief. I just want to express my gratitude again, and hope that this question and answer will benefit others as well.

Well I’m off to bed. G’night.

Forever with you brothers,

emp
 
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the D’Souza debates. He makes some good points against the present day atheists. One of my favorites is that the atheists are operating on faith just as much as we are - but they are hiding behind science and pretending to be basing what they say on evidence. What evidence do they have that there is no life after death? None. They take it on faith that it doesn’t exist.

My favorite debate was D’Souza against atheist Dan Dennett at Tufts University. Dan Dennett never knew what hit him - he was totally unprepared and couldn’t respond to anything D’Souza said.
 
Mea_Culpa said:
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the D’Souza debates. He makes some good points against the present day atheists. One of my favorites is that the atheists are operating on faith just as much as we are - but they are hiding behind science and pretending to be basing what they say on evidence. What evidence do they have that there is no life after death? None. They take it on faith that it doesn’t exist.

My favorite debate was D’Souza against atheist Dan Dennett at Tufts University. Dan Dennett never knew what hit him - he was totally unprepared and couldn’t respond to anything D’Souza said.
Click to expand...
I’ll check that one out right now. I’ve locked horns with a particular fellow who is adament and keeps running askew of the facts. I’m going to have to give up as I see it nothing more than pearls before swine.

cheers, thanks for the point to the dennett and d’sousa.

emp
 
empacae said:
I’ve been knocking around You Tube for a bit
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Well there’s half the problem 🙂
But I want to know what his attack on Exodus and Moses is and how he bases it by saying “even archeologists will agree”.
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(1) What archeologists is he talking about?
(2) He is largely correct that there is pretty much no archeological evidence of a man named Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt. But what do you expect to find on Moses; Moses’ bones? A heiroglyph saying “Moses was here”? A photo of Moses with his friends at Mt. Sinai? The problem of trying to find one man who spent most of his life wandering the deserts of Sinai is that…well, you have to search the desert for signs of a wandering nomad from several thousand years ago.
(3) Hitchens is not a historian, archeologist (2 different fields of study by the way), biblical scholar, or exegete and he doesn’t use the methods any of those fields.

There isn’t really a consensus in academia as to what to make of Moses and the Exodus. Most would conclude that the numbers in Exodus are exaggerated, but much beyond that is disputed. Some would say Moses and the Exodus were entirely fictional. Some will say there was a Moses and an Exodus, but that the numbers of the fleeing Israelites weren’t as large as the book of Exodus would have us think and that the account has been embelleshed. (for a small list of people across a frew fields who have approached the issue: William Dever, Albrecht Alt, Gehard von Rad, Finklestein, Noth, van Seters, Robert Alter, Julius Wellhausen, Blenkinsopp, Kenneth Kitchens)
 
**Just some FYI
**

**
**

How I found God and peace with my atheist brother: PETER HITCHENS traces his journey back to Christianity

**During his teenage years and early 20s, Peter Hitchens lost his faith and rebelled against everything he had been brought up to believe in. Here, in a moving and thought-provoking account from his controversial new book, he describes his spiritual journey back to God - and the end of his feud with his brother **

I set fire to my Bible on the playing fields of my Cambridge boarding school one bright, windy spring afternoon in 1967. I was 15 years old. The book did not, as I had hoped, blaze fiercely and swiftly.

Only after much blowing and encouragement did I manage to get it to ignite at all, and I was left with a disagreeable, half-charred mess.
Most of my small invited audience drifted away long before I had finished, disappointed by the anticlimax and the pettiness of the thing. Thunder did not mutter.

Read more: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255983/How-I-God-peace-atheist-brother-PETER-HITCHENS-traces-journey-Christianity.html#ixzz0hmlM6X0e
 
JimmieD said:
Well there’s half the problem 🙂
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Agreed. But it’s more than that. As I see The God Delusion on friend’s coffee tables, someone has just heard/saw the awesome debat by Hitchen and so-and-so, and athiests win. I wanted to find a debate where and articulate, reasoned Christian counters them. So far I’ve been pretty unimpressed with our results. Oh sure we have well formulated arguments and a dpeth that surpasses the 4 horsemen. But nobody is listening. At this point I have to concede and figure that is is pearls before swine.

emp
 
Mea_Culpa said:
Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the D’Souza debates. He makes some good points against the present day atheists. One of my favorites is that the atheists are operating on faith just as much as we are - but they are hiding behind science and pretending to be basing what they say on evidence. What evidence do they have that there is no life after death? None. They take it on faith that it doesn’t exist.

My favorite debate was D’Souza against atheist Dan Dennett at Tufts University. Dan Dennett never knew what hit him - he was totally unprepared and couldn’t respond to anything D’Souza said.
Click to expand...

Unfortunetly you read the comments like, “Why is he shouting?” And people completely oblivious to D’Sousa’s intellect as he point for poiunt crushes Dennett. I guess he was just going too fast for their minds to crunch the gravity of the things he was saying.

emp
 
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