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(August 21, 2015 at 5:05 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Necro... oh well...
The other day, a thought came across my mind.... it's a dangerous thing, but it happens, once in a while!
For a catholic, what is the relevance of the OT?
Also, assuming that the OT contains some truth, and there has ever been only one god and this god presented itself to the first humans, then how did people come up with all the others? Specially, knowing that the one single god popped up every once in a while...
How long would that have taken? Maybe we can look into the book for that? How many generations passed in between Noah (the sole survivor, along with his family, of the flood and someone firmly convinced of the single god notion, which his family should also be) and Moses? I seem to remember the NT having one or two genealogies of J.C. with a mandatory passage through Noah.
Are there enough generation to produce the whole population of Egypt? And the religion of Egypt and convince every egyptian of those other gods? And also produce some 2 million hebrews and enslave them?
The difference between Noah and Moses was although Noah did formulate some laws they were relatively minor and Noah wasn't classified as a God. Moses wrote all kinds of BS and he forced people to comply upon penalty of death. Moses was therefore classified as a god but not the God. Jesus was classified as the son of God because he claimed that people who didn't follow his new rules would be tossed into the lake of fire.
So for religious purposes a god is some character who formulates a system of behavioral rules and will kill everyone who violates them. In primitive societies if someone breaks a taboo he's tossed into the nearest volcano or he gets his heart cut out.
James Madison could have been considered a god since he wrote the Constitution but he didn't toss in a couple dozen religious commandments and impose the death penalty for people who violate them. If he had he would be known as the first American prophet if not the American god. That's the way it worked in ancient times.
August 22, 2015 at 8:36 pm (This post was last modified: August 22, 2015 at 8:37 pm by Huggy Bear.)
(August 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: The difference between Noah and Moses was although Noah did formulate some laws they were relatively minor and Noah wasn't classified as a God. Moses wrote all kinds of BS and he forced people to comply upon penalty of death. Moses was therefore classified as a god but not the God.
Moses was a god in the sense that he spoke directly for God, not in the sense of being an "object of worship".
Quote:Exodus 7:1
And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.
The KJV does not capitalize the g in "god" showing that there is a distinction between "god" and "God".
Quote:John 10
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
(August 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: The difference between Noah and Moses was although Noah did formulate some laws they were relatively minor and Noah wasn't classified as a God. Moses wrote all kinds of BS and he forced people to comply upon penalty of death. Moses was therefore classified as a god but not the God.
Moses was a god in the sense that he spoke directly for God, not in the sense of being an "object of worship".
Quote:Exodus 7:1
And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.
The KJV does not capitalize the g in "god" showing that there is a distinction between "god" and "God".
Quote:John 10
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
Thanks for proving that anyone and everyone could be gods in ancient times. The title "God" was simply reserved for the ruling empire's emperor. It passed from man to man.
(August 22, 2015 at 8:46 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Thanks for proving that anyone and everyone could be gods in ancient times. The title "God" was simply reserved for the ruling empire's emperor. It passed from man to man.
How did you draw that conclusion after i just just explained that there was a distinction between "god" and "God", nowhere in the bible is a man referred to as a "God" with a capital G.
(August 22, 2015 at 8:46 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Thanks for proving that anyone and everyone could be gods in ancient times. The title "God" was simply reserved for the ruling empire's emperor. It passed from man to man.
How did you draw that conclusion after i just just explained that there was a distinction between "god" and "God", nowhere in the bible is a man referred to as a "God" with a capital G.
Are you really serious? Do you think some invisible celestial character went around the Middle East babbling to the local yokels about how he was going to kick their butts if they didn't obey him and how he loved the smell of roasting meat?
Please get competent people to help you make important decisions because your reasoning abilities seem to be suspect. Con men could easily flimflam you.
(August 22, 2015 at 9:08 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Are you really serious? Do you think some invisible celestial character went around the Middle East babbling to the local yokels about how he was going to kick their butts if they didn't obey him and how he loved the smell of roasting meat?
Please get competent people to help you make important decisions because your reasoning abilities seem to be suspect. Con men could easily flimflam you.
And this is usually the direction the conversation goes when atheists are shown they have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the bible...
"nuh-uh because it's not real!"
must I remind you that I was responding to YOUR comment Specifically
(August 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: The difference between Noah and Moses was although Noah did formulate some laws they were relatively minor and Noah wasn't classified as a God. Moses wrote all kinds of BS and he forced people to comply upon penalty of death. Moses was therefore classified as a god but not the God. Jesus was classified as the son of God because he claimed that people who didn't follow his new rules would be tossed into the lake of fire.
Are you trying to have a discussion or not? Personally I don't waste time on forums discussing things I don't believe in....but that's just me.
(August 22, 2015 at 9:08 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Jesus was a man. Is Jesus God?
He was God in human flesh. Surely you must know that Jesus did things a normal human couldn't do.
(August 22, 2015 at 9:08 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Are you really serious? Do you think some invisible celestial character went around the Middle East babbling to the local yokels about how he was going to kick their butts if they didn't obey him and how he loved the smell of roasting meat?
Please get competent people to help you make important decisions because your reasoning abilities seem to be suspect. Con men could easily flimflam you.
And this is usually the direction the conversation goes when atheists are shown they have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the bible...
"nuh-uh because it's not real!"
must I remind you that I was responding to YOUR comment Specifically
(August 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: The difference between Noah and Moses was although Noah did formulate some laws they were relatively minor and Noah wasn't classified as a God. Moses wrote all kinds of BS and he forced people to comply upon penalty of death. Moses was therefore classified as a god but not the God. Jesus was classified as the son of God because he claimed that people who didn't follow his new rules would be tossed into the lake of fire.
Are you trying to have a discussion or not? Personally I don't waste time on forums discussing things I don't believe in....but that's just me.
(August 22, 2015 at 9:08 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Jesus was a man. Is Jesus God?
Quote:He was God in human flesh. Surely you must know that Jesus did things a normal human couldn't do.
Jesus did a lot of things normal humans do. He lied, ate, fished, cursed. He wasn't too big on personal hygiene.
(August 22, 2015 at 11:28 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Jesus did a lot of things normal humans do. He lied, ate, fished, cursed. He wasn't too big on personal hygiene.
Where did he lie and curse? This ought to be good....
(August 22, 2015 at 11:28 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Jesus did a lot of things normal humans do. He lied, ate, fished, cursed. He wasn't too big on personal hygiene.
I feel like I read a book once that said he was married and had a couple kids too...
August 22, 2015 at 11:41 pm (This post was last modified: August 22, 2015 at 11:43 pm by Whateverist.)
(August 22, 2015 at 7:17 pm)pocaracas Wrote:
(August 22, 2015 at 6:57 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
Sorry, my bad.
I'm afraid I can't be of much more assistance; this is not my field of expertise.
Awww... buggers!
Anyway... the point I wanted to drive home was that there probably weren't enough generations to account for all those peoples... and all the disparity in beliefs.
I say "probably", because we're left without an answer as to how many generations there were.
And if that is so, then either the OT is way off... or Luke was way off...
But Luke researched everything he wrote thoroughly, right? So he couldn't be wrong...
We can always broaden the scope of this question.
Considering all we know about human evolution and history; knowledge acquired through archaeology, linguistics, biology, anthropology, etc...; as is accepted by the catholic church, and considering the tales in the OT are fiction and mainly for rough guidance, then - if there has ever only been one single god, how did people come up with polytheism far before monotheism?
Not to mention that they came up with shamanism well before polytheism ("The earliest known undisputed burial of a shaman (and by extension the earliest undisputed evidence of shamans and shamanic practices) dates back to the early Upper Paleolithic era (c. 30,000 BP) in what is now the Czech Republic", in wiki)
I guess what I'm asking is more - how come mankind had to invent tons of entities, before the actual real one deity deigned itself to confirm its existence to a few select chosen people in a particularly theologically active time and region of the globe?
So much so that there had to be a commandment to prevent people from worshiping those other gods.... that didn't work.
I think the simplest answer is that there is no one, actual God that historically did all that is claimed. Rather, there is a god sized hole in the human psyche which looks for and sees evidence of the unseen. And it has done so always and everywhere. It accomplishes nothing seeking to make historical sense of whatever is written in the babble. It is simply one of many expressions of the god hole, no more or less special than any of the others.
Personally I see no harm and admit curiosity as to what good might come of a serious examination of all the religious traditions with the sole purpose of understanding the tendency of our species to produce gods.
