(December 9, 2015 at 9:48 am)Evie Wrote:There is no such thing as an invisible celestial deity who created everything.(December 9, 2015 at 9:37 am)Aractus Wrote: You can't just use catch-all claims like that. What you can say though is that they ignore other evidence that has firm academic support (such as Egypt was not as depicted in the Old Testament, and neither were Canaan cities).
I'm not the one making the claim. Do you understand the burden of proof? When Christians claim that God exists, the burden of proof is on them. Proving a negative isn't necessary, Christianity isn't even worthy of refutation, and the same goes for other forms of theism.
In the Bible the God character was simply the series of men who ruled the dominant empire in the Middle Eastern area. The word "god" was simply a user-friendly title for the guy.
In a very real sense our rulers and governments are our gods today. They still have the power of life and death over everyone. They dispense benefits and misfortune. They control us with countless laws. They limit our access to knowledge and forbid us access to the tree of life (cloning, etc.). A good writer could rewrite the Bible story-for-story using incidents and characters from our own time period.