Existence of God (split from old thread)

[Valka D'Ur]

We are still talking about how logical it is for a human to write about their own death....

Would assisted suicide be more palatable if there was some beneficial ritual applied to the process?

No, we were talking about how absurd it is for Moses to write about his own death - presumably after he died. At least that's what I'm talking about. I've about given up trying to figure out what you're talking about.

I have no idea why you're bringing assisted suicide into this. If you want to talk about the morality of assisted suicide, I recommend you ask the moderators first (as it's a very sensitive topic), and make a new thread if they say it's okay.

 

[Berzerker]

Oh, I'd love to read about that recent evidence.

http://www.livescience.com/7602-painful-labor-modern.html

But a recent announcement in the journal Science of a 1.2 million-year-old Homo erectus pelvis uncovered by University of Indiana paleoanthropologist Sileshi Semaw in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 2001 suggests that painful labor is a relatively modern affliction.

The birth canal of that female Homo erectus is, in fact, 30 percent larger than that of the typical modern woman. As a result, Homo erectus birth might have been a relative walk in the park (or on the savanna) compared with today. Those ladies might have simply stopped, crouched down, and pushed. They might have screamed, but surely there was no need for Lamaze, or midwives, or Cesarean sections.

The big news, for anthropologists anyway, is that painful labor is much more recent than anyone assumed.

Now, why would Eve be told she will experience increased pain in child birth? Compared to whom? Her ancestors... Hominids. The "leap" forward from Erectus to us came with larger brains, larger shoulders, and a relatively smaller birth canal with a different orientation.

 

[timtofly]

No, we were talking about how absurd it is for Moses to write about his own death - presumably after he died. At least that's what I'm talking about. I've about given up trying to figure out what you're talking about.

I have no idea why you're bringing assisted suicide into this. If you want to talk about the morality of assisted suicide, I recommend you ask the moderators first (as it's a very sensitive topic), and make a new thread if they say it's okay.

You are the only person I have ever come across who thinks Moses wrote about his death after he died. Then claim that as a reason there could never have been a Moses to begin with. If that is not the case, then why does this exchange happen every time the name Moses is mentioned?

Why state that Moses was not ready to die, but he went off by himself and did what exactly to cause his death and his body has never been found to this day.

The claim is that it was just made up and there may be no reason at all for it to be written down anywhere, except for a whole lot of post where people argue the sense in doing things without reason.

The story does not even turn out well for all parties involved. There is no redeeming value other than I suppose it gave some comfort to the slaves on Southern Plantations before and after the American Civil War.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

http://www.livescience.com/7602-painful-labor-modern.html



Now, why would Eve be told she will experience increased pain in child birth? Compared to whom? Her ancestors... Hominids. The "leap" forward from Erectus to us came with larger brains, larger shoulders, and a relatively smaller birth canal with a different orientation.

Let me get this straight: Adam was the first human and Eve was the second. Yet she supposedly had hominid ancestors?

If you're going to say that Genesis is true, you can't have it both ways. And if you accept human evolution, then the notion of Adam and Eve is absurd.

You are the only person I have ever come across who thinks Moses wrote about his death after he died. Then claim that as a reason there could never have been a Moses to begin with. If that is not the case, then why does this exchange happen every time the name Moses is mentioned?

This really should not be so damned hard to understand.

People who insist that Moses was a real person also claim he wrote the first 5 books of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy is one of those, and his death is part of Deuteronomy. So anyone claiming that he wrote that book is saying that he wrote it after he died, because people don't say "I died" while they're still alive, right?

This is absurd, and doesn't make me any more receptive to the idea that this character really existed.

Why state that Moses was not ready to die, but he went off by himself and did what exactly to cause his death and his body has never been found to this day.

I never said Moses wasn't ready to die. The reason why his body was never found is because he never existed.

The story does not even turn out well for all parties involved. There is no redeeming value other than I suppose it gave some comfort to the slaves on Southern Plantations before and after the American Civil War.

First you bring in assisted suicide, and now American slaves.

I don't see any connection at all between any of these things. When are you going to get around to explaining why you keep bringing in unrelated things?

 

[timtofly]

And here I thought you had watched the 10 Commandments. Moses' life was not over until it was over, and if Moses wrote the Pentateuch, then he did it before he dissappered. He could not have sent it back from wherever he went to. There was a 40 year period which was plenty of time to have written down several times, and also train others to write down what was in the text. There were 12 tribes and a few of the tribes were set aside to keep up the process of making copies and taking care of the duties that was specified in the text. It is fairly well spelled out what was supposed to happen. The most elaborate "made up set of instructions" in the ancient world. If that is indeed what people claim happened. I have no reason to doubt that it did happen, as I have nothing invested one way or the other, nor staking my life on it.

As for it's effects on slavery in the US, I may have just heard other made up stories about being delivered from slavery, and the inspiration of Exodus.

Moses was either executed or had some assistance in ending his life before it was supposed to, even if it was just allagorical. I am pretty sure some people take comfort in knowing they can participate in something that is not a taboo, even if it is just depicted in written form. We have been acclameted to billions and billions of years just by reading about it over and over again. It has definitely not been from actually experiencing the point.

 

[Berzerker]

Let me get this straight: Adam was the first human and Eve was the second. Yet she supposedly had hominid ancestors?

If you're going to say that Genesis is true, you can't have it both ways. And if you accept human evolution, then the notion of Adam and Eve is absurd.

I dont know who the first human was, the people made on the 6th day were told to be fruitful and spread out. Then God planted a Garden eastward in Eden and took a/the man he had made there to work. How can those people from the 6th day be fruitful and spread out if the man was taken to the Garden and why would God need Eve when male and female were already made on the 6th day? The 6th day people were a group, they were not two people... And Adam was taken from among them or from among their descendants to the Garden at a later point in time. These people from the 6th day had hominid ancestors, "let us make man in our image" echoes the Sumerian myth.

According to the myth the gods were upset at having to work and they rebelled. Enki proposed creating a race of primitive workers (there was no adam to till the land, God took the adam to work in the Garden). He announced that a creature roaming his Abzu (southern domain) could be given the image of the gods so he and Ninhursag set out to achieve that goal. This ties in with a Zulu myth, they have a legend about the artificial ones (their ancestors) waging a war on the ape men.

The Genesis story is also describing our transition from an earlier creature, one that was unashamed of their nakedness, one so 'primitive' a mate was first sought from among the other animals before Eve was made. This being was 'innocent', they did not understand good and evil, and apparently had not procreated yet. One that would suffer increased pain in child birth.

Thats another important clue, how would Eve know anything about how much pain was involved in child birth? Why would God tell her she will suffer even more? More than who? Her hominid ancestors. If its true anatomically 'modern' women saw increased difficulty giving birth maybe 200kya, and our genetic Eve dates to that time, the Bible may be a record of events that happened back then.

So what were the 6th day people doing while Adam and Eve were considering the Serpent's offer of knowledge? They were being fruitful and spreading out. From where? Ethiopia, westward of Eden. One need only follow the Arabian coastline to find Eden. Thats why Cain was able to find a wife and why he was worried about being killed, there were other people in the world.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

And here I thought you had watched the 10 Commandments. Moses' life was not over until it was over, and if Moses wrote the Pentateuch, then he did it before he dissappered.

You do realize that The Ten Commandments was just a Hollywood movie, right? Its classification is drama, not documentary.

The movie mentioned the names of two pharaohs that we know really existed, but there's no evidence that either of them really knew Moses or anyone like Moses. The board game that was played in the movie really existed, because archaeologists have found the boards and pieces.

The events of the movie, though? Fiction. Which brings back the question of how could someone write that they died, before they died? You'd need time travel for that, because nobody knows when they're going to die.

He could not have sent it back from wherever he went to. There was a 40 year period which was plenty of time to have written down several times, and also train others to write down what was in the text. There were 12 tribes and a few of the tribes were set aside to keep up the process of making copies and taking care of the duties that was specified in the text. It is fairly well spelled out what was supposed to happen. The most elaborate "made up set of instructions" in the ancient world. If that is indeed what people claim happened. I have no reason to doubt that it did happen, as I have nothing invested one way or the other, and staking my life on it.

You have nothing invested one way or the other, but you're staking your life on it? That's contradictory.

As for it's effects on slavery in the US, I may have just heard other made up stories about being delivered from slavery, and the inspiration of Exodus.

You "may have just heard"? Did you, or didn't you? Of course some of the slaves were taught about some of the things in the bible. Most of them were illiterate, at least at first, and I doubt the slaveowners would have wanted stories passed around about slaves escaping. You don't need the story of Exodus to know that slavery is a bad thing and most sane people don't want to be slaves.

Moses was either executed or had some assistance in ending his life before it was supposed to, even if it was just allagorical. I am pretty sure some people take comfort in knowing they can participate in something that is not a taboo, even if it is just depicted in written form. We have been acclameted to billions and billions of years just by reading about it over and over again. It has definitely not been from actually experiencing the point.

What are you even talking about? Yeah, there's a scene in the movie where Charlton Heston makes some silly, convoluted speech, wearing on of the silliest wigs I've ever seen in a costume drama, and he goes off and disappears. But that's a movie. People don't really do things like that.

And why would reading Exodus "over and over again" have anything to do with "billions and billions of years"?

Why do you keep bringing in concepts that are completely unrelated to our conversation?

I dont know who the first human was, the people made on the 6th day were told to be fruitful and spread out. Then God planted a Garden eastward in Eden and took a/the man he had made there to work. How can those people from the 6th day be fruitful and spread out if the man was taken to the Garden and why would God need Eve when male and female were already made on the 6th day? The 6th day people were a group, they were not two people... And Adam was taken from among them or from among their descendants to the Garden at a later point in time. These people from the 6th day had hominid ancestors, "let us make man in our image" echoes the Sumerian myth.

According to the myth the gods were upset at having to work and they rebelled. Enki proposed creating a race of primitive workers (there was no adam to till the land, God took the adam to work in the Garden). He announced that a creature roaming his Abzu (southern domain) could be given the image of the gods so he and Ninhursag set out to achieve that goal. This ties in with a Zulu myth, they have a legend about the artificial ones (their ancestors) waging a war on the ape men.

The Genesis story is also describing our transition from an earlier creature, one that was unashamed of their nakedness, one so 'primitive' a mate was first sought from among the other animals before Eve was made. This being was 'innocent', they did not understand good and evil, and apparently had not procreated yet. One that would suffer increased pain in child birth.

Thats another important clue, how would Eve know anything about how much pain was involved in child birth? Why would God tell her she will suffer even more? More than who? Her hominid ancestors. If its true anatomically 'modern' women saw increased difficulty giving birth maybe 200kya, and our genetic Eve dates to that time, the Bible may be a record of events that happened back then.

So what were the 6th day people doing while Adam and Eve were considering the Serpent's offer of knowledge? They were being fruitful and spreading out. From where? Ethiopia, westward of Eden. One need only follow the Arabian coastline to find Eden. Thats why Cain was able to find a wife and why he was worried about being killed, there were other people in the world.

So people made on the 6th day had hominid ancestors going back 200,000 years? You do realize that this literally does not add up, right?

You've created a stew pot and are tossing just anything in, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense.

Or maybe a more apt analogy is that of a painting where globs of paint are thrown at a canvas and the result is a mess.

It's certainly not anything resembling history.

 

[Berzerker]

So people made on the 6th day had hominid ancestors going back 200,000 years? You do realize that this literally does not add up, right?

The 6th day people appeared ~200kya

It's certainly not anything resembling history.

On the contrary... The Bible depicts the Adam as a primitive creature who obtains knowledge while his mate is destined to suffer greatly in child birth. Adam's original homeland is westward of Eden, our known ancestral homeland is Ethiopia west of the Persian Gulf following the Arabian coast. The world was of one tongue, and if we originated 200kya in Ethiopia, we probably did have one language. The 6th day people are told to fill the earth, and they did fill the earth.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The world is considerably older than 200,000 years + 6 days.

 

[Agent327]

The 6th day people appeared ~200kya

Homo sapiens is a bit older than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Origin

On the contrary... The Bible depicts the Adam as a primitive creature who obtains knowledge while his mate is destined to suffer greatly in child birth. Adam's original homeland is westward of Eden, our known ancestral homeland is Ethiopia west of the Persian Gulf following the Arabian coast. The world was of one tongue, and if we originated 200kya in Ethiopia, we probably did have one language. The 6th day people are told to fill the earth, and they did fill the earth.

There are some issues with these statements:

- Eden is not an actual place (as with Noah's ark, people have been looking, but never actually found it)
- there never was any moment in human (or pre-human) history when there was only one language (you might presume, of course, that the ca. 10,000 people of whom every human on Earth originally descends had one language, but that's impossible to prove, given the discrepancy between the first evidence of languages and the period when these ancestors actually existed)
- humans descend from hunter-gatherers; the first evidence of agriculture is currently estimated at ca. 10,000 BC; it would seem then that Adam and Eve's descendants took quite some time before actually starting to till anything.

 

[Angst]

<enters thread on page 18>

Proper Christians are like Kierkegaard.

<ignores everything>

 

[Berzerker]

The world is considerably older than 200,000 years + 6 days.

Homo sapiens is a bit older than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Origin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Origin

But anatomically 'modern' humans are not

From your link:

According to genetic and fossil evidence, archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, with members of one branch leaving Africa by 60,000 years ago and over time replacing earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.

Now whats interesting is these earlier peoples (neandertal/erectus) were replaced, they didn't evolve into us. We have evidence of both long after anatomically modern humans appear in Africa. The "Hobbit" (dwarf erectus) lived much more recently and may even appear in local legends.

There are some issues with these statements:

- Eden is not an actual place (as with Noah's ark, people have been looking, but never actually found it)
- there never was any moment in human (or pre-human) history when there was only one language (you might presume, of course, that the ca. 10,000 people of whom every human on Earth originally descends had one language, but that's impossible to prove, given the discrepancy between the first evidence of languages and the period when these ancestors actually existed)
- humans descend from hunter-gatherers; the first evidence of agriculture is currently estimated at ca. 10,000 BC; it would seem then that Adam and Eve's descendants took quite some time before actually starting to till anything.

Eden might be located under the Persian Gulf which was an exposed river valley during ice ages. As for one language, linguists are debating the notion of a mother tongue but if it existed, we'd find it as the language of the people living 200kya in Ethiopia before they migrated away. The dating of the earliest farming keeps getting pushed back, but according to Genesis God planted the Garden and assigned the Adam to till it. Once the Adam was expelled his food supply became much more difficult to acquire. As I said, we dont know how much time passed between the 6th day people and the Garden story, but if the Persian Gulf is its location, then the events happened during an ice age.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You're still trying to use Genesis and Babylonian myth as science texts. They're not.

 

[Berzerker]

not really... its just a description of past events

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Nope.

 

[Berzerker]

yup

 

[Valka D'Ur]

So now your claim is that Eden is under the Persian Gulf, and this paradise existed during an ice age? How far back are you claiming for the origin of farming? Note that if you claim 200,000 years and/or 6 days after the world was supposedly created, I will post as many smileys as the forum allows. Because that's is so far beyond ridiculous as to be ... basically indescribably ridiculous.

I'm all agog, just waiting for Saturn's rings pointing at Pluto to come into this. You're still just peddling your fantasies from the last thread where you trotted out your mythology that masquerades as real science and real history.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm all agog, just waiting for Saturn's rings pointing at Pluto to come into this. You're still just peddling your fantasies about Marduk.

By Marduk you mean the ancient extraterrestrial visitor, right?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

By Marduk you mean the ancient extraterrestrial visitor, right?

Please note that I edited the post. I'm referring to an earlier thread that's still painful to remember (as in it gave me a headache more than once - thank goodness for the smiley so I didn't really have to do that).

Yeah, I figured the argument would circle around to this sort of thing eventually. It's all just part of the repertoire of insisting that ancient myth is real science/history.

 

[Lexicus]

Please note that I edited the post. I'm referring to an earlier thread that's still painful to remember (as in it gave me a headache more than once - thank goodness for the smiley so I didn't really have to do that).

Yeah, I figured the argument would circle around to this sort of thing eventually. It's all just part of the repertoire of insisting that ancient myth is real science/history.

I remember that thread well, I was just piling on some ridicule