Evidence for God

This was your worst shot yet. It does not say the word "if." It actually says a Hebrew word that sounds like "key." This word can be translated as when. Also, this is a rule that is meant to be followed for generations to come as well. Did you notice the previous verses which talk about going out to war. It also says the word "key." Does that mean that they did not go out to war yet. It was not describing the people of that generation alone. Furthermore, you cannot give me any logic that will show that even the word "if" would lead to such a conclusion. Very very funny. Poor shot I must say. Two can be many, and I only picked this verse because it settled your other claim as well. You find me a source that says that they cannot have more than one wife. You will find none! David had how many wives? He had more than two. This was such a cheap shot, and I can't believe you would try this. Also, with regard your other claim, not all of the children are mentioned in the verse. The Torah is not a story book, and therefore it does not mention what is not necessary. The questions in that link look really foolish to say the least. The Jewish tradition has had explanations for all of these things for thousands of years. These people think they are smart, but they are actually showing their ignorance. The bottom line is, if you don't believe in G-d you will try desperately to falsify the Torah even if it means bringing up questions that would make you look like a fool to anyone who actually studied the religion.
Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

It really doesn't mater whether it says 'if' or 'when', both result in the same argument.This verse is explaning what should happen 'if' or 'when' this situation occurs, in no way does it suggest that all Hebrew men had two wives. But it still doesnt suggest that all Hebrew men had two wives. Two can be two, not nineteen or seven or five.I must say I thought fundy Christians were bad for clinging to straws but you take the biscuit. I never said they couldn't have more than one wife, I said there's no need to assume that EVERY man had two wives. But it is at least hinted at. 7 or 8 I'd say off the top of my head, but David 'lived' long after Deuteronomy was supposed to be written. You mean by referring to the Bible???? I wish you had studied it, we could have a fairly decent discusion if you opened your mind a bit and stopped acting like a crazy fundy literalist Christians.

It's evident that the majority of the people here don't think there is a God. Now bear with me and tell me if my reasoning is wrong:1. If anything has a beginning, it has a cause(creator).2. There is no evidence whatsoever of a cause(God or other power).3. Since there is no cause, there is no beiginning for the Universe.4. If there is no beginning, the material Universe must have existed before T=0(ever contracting and expanding Universe)?How does that sound and does this make sense? Where am I wrong? The ever-existing universe does not break rule 1 and so it doesn't need a creator. IMO this idea also has the added benefit of not making good sense to us(ever-existing universe), which of course is a plus, considering from what our puny human logic arised and the path it walked in the last 5 million years.
If we know what happened before T=0(that the Universe was contracting?) would this help us in any way better understand the nature of Singularity at T=0?The problem I could foresee is that I am applying human logic for the existence of rule 1, when there could be NONE. OMG.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

I am sorry but you are the one who has to prove that they did not have more than one wife. You are trying to disprove the validity of the story based on the numbers of first born children. Your problems go away if you assume that the Jews had many wives, and the first born child is only the first born from the single father. Not every women would have a first born child. Also, if you did analyze the beginning part of exodus which I already pointed you to, you would see that the pharaoh was very worried about the multiplying of the Jewish people. This indicates that the Jews had a very high birth rate to say the least. Also, it seems logical that there were more women than men since the pharaoh had decreed that all boys be tossed into the river, and the daughters should be let live. Who did all of these daughters marry? Also, in case you think that the names given in the Torah are a full description of all of the Jewish births, why are almost no daughters mentioned. One question, who did the 12 sons of Jacob actually marry? It is obvious that many names are left out of the text. This is because, as I have already mentioned, the Torah is not a story book. Everything that is mentioned in the Torah has a purpose.Your response continues to show how you are arguing a point solely for the sake of arguing. What if I told you: "If your car breaks you should buy a new one." You would say that this is proof that the person that I am talking to does not have a car at this point. This is not logical. Similarly, it states in the verse what the law is when a person has two wives and he dislikes one of them and loves the other and has a first born son with the disliked one. You then said that this shows that the Jewish people did not have two wives at that time. This is not a logical conclusion, and you are giving it purely for the sake of the argument. Please give me your source for this. I am afraid that you are the one who needs more study of the Torah. Also, please give me some of your places in the Torah where you think words were added that made the text not flow properly. Realize, that a heretic will always find problems with a religion. The Jewish oral tradition that was written down over 1500 years ago has already given answers to all of your questions. Bible critics are relatively new comers to these questions that have been discussed by Jewish scholars for thousands of years. Among Jews it is considered praiseworthy to be able to discover good questions in the Torah in order to shed some light on the interpretation of the word of G-d. Therefore, the Torah has been scrutinized more closely by Jewish rabbis than by any bible critic. Almost every valid question that you can come up with has already been discussed by a Jewish rabbi that lived about 1000 years ago. Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

If you are seriously asking for an opinion on this logic, I will point out your flaw. There are actually two flaws in this logical argument. First of all, your second step is not backed up by logic or the first premise. You simply state that there is no evidence. What you really mean to say is that you have not found any evidence yet. The second problem with your logic is that you are missing a link from step 2 to step 3. You state that there is no evidence of a cause and then you start the next step by stating that there is no cause. A lack of evidence does not logically prove anythings nonexistence. Also, you mention the idea of an ever contracting and expanding universe. This idea has been thought of for years, and it is not widely accepted in the scientific community, namely because space seems to be expanding outward at an "increased" velocity. This implies that there is no known force that is capable of creating any contraction, and that there is a force that is still causing the expansion. Furthermore, even if such a contraction could theoretically take place, the following Big Bang would have less energy than the previous one. You have to think of what force would be strong enough to cause the expansion after such a strong contraction takes place. Also, I might add that there are problems with the idea of an infinite universe. If time is completely infinite, it is not possible for us to have moved through it at all.

Actually, what I was saying is that every religion gives testimony that there book was actually written by who they say wrote it. They all testify about their prophets, and this is proof that their prophets actually did exist. Do you believe that a man named Jesus actually did live on this earth? I believe that such a man existed and actually taught some sort of religion. I just do not believe that he actually spoke to G-d, let alone actually be some sort of son of a god himself. This is because even if you follow the story all the way back, nobody actually verified that he spoke to G-d. If you follow the testimony of every religion about each ones origin, you can still discount every other religion. Judaism is hard to discount if you would admit that Moses actually wrote the Torah and presented it to the Jewish people. This is because it says in the Torah that Moses informed the Jews that they had heard the voice of G-d themselves. If Moses was lying, it would have been verifiable by everyone who accepted the Torah. In the case of every other religion, the story of the founder is not verifiable. If Jesus said that he spoke to G-d, nobody can prove him wrong. But, Moses would have been proven wrong if it was not true that 600,000 people heard the voice of G-d. This is why everyone that argues against the Torah must claim that the Torah was not even written by Moses. The alternative would be a conspiracy involving over 1,000,000 people. I think the Jews that are around today are giving testimony about the author of the book the same way that any other religious followers gives testimony to the author of their books. I hope this makes my point a little clearer.Just to clarify, I have already answered the question at the beginning of this thread with my first post in this thread. I believe that there is sufficient proof to show that there must be only one G-d. The debate between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is about what G-d actually said (Christianity may actually not be monotheistic depending on who you ask). For this you cannot find any evidence outside of the Torah itself.According to Jewish tradition, the giving of the Torah was around 1200 BCE, and this is not a generous estimate. If you consider the whole Torah to be accurate, the story line goes back to 3760 BCE. Also, as you are well aware, Hinduism has been changing over time and it is not the Vedic religion. Judaism has not changed with regard to any of its fundamental laws and beliefs. Many traditions have been discontinued since the destruction of the temple, but the commandments are exactly that same as they were 3200 years ago. You do not have enough evidence to know these things so you are assuming that it did not happen. Furthermore, heretics always existed especially in the Jewish nation. Have you even read from the Tanach. There were many Jews that were serving idols. This is because there were many sinners even back then, this does not show that Judaism was any different years ago. Even today, there are reform and conservative Jews that are not practicing the religion the way that it is suppose to be practiced. These are not religious Jews, but they are heretics as well. I hope this helps you understand my points a little more clearly.

I was hoping some of the physicists might reply to this message, but in the anbscence of such here are the 3 likely scenarios about the fate of the Universe(that I could find info on):"Big Chill vs. Big CrunchThe universe's fate is intimately connected to its shape which, in turn, depends on a single number, Omega: the ratio of the average mass density of the universe to the critical value required to just maintain equilibrium.An open universe, corresponding to omega less than one, will expand forever. Matter will spread thinner and thinner. Galaxies will exhaust their gas supply for forming new stars, and old stars will eventually burn out, leaving only dust and dead stars. The universe will become quite dark and, as the temperature of the universe will approaches absolute zero, quite cold. The universe will not end, exactly, just peter out in a Big Chill.The expansion of a closed universe, with an Omega greater than one, will slow down until it reaches a maximum size, when it begins its inward collapse. Like a video of the Big Bang and expansion run backward, the universe will become denser and hotter until it ends in an infinitely hot, infinitely dense Big Crunch--perhaps providing the seed for another Big Bang.If Omega equals 1 exactly, then cosmic expansion will coast to a halt infinitely far into the future. The universe will not end in a Big Crunch nor expand into an infinite Big Chill, but will remain at equilibrium.This last case is consistent with the inflation hypothesis, and also commands the most observational support. Not to mention the fact that, for most of us, it's an emotionally appealing scenario. Even though the universe's fate lies billions of years in the future, it's the only one we have."http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Cosmos/CosmosFate.htmlIn my original post titled "Before the Big Bang" i wrote "contracting" with a question mark, so that you could understand that I am not certain. Nor could probably be anyone else, unless we know the nature of dark energy. However that doesn't change the flow of the conclusions from 1 to 4. If there was no Big Crunch prior to the Big Bang, the singularity could have existed in another form. This "theory" just makes sense since it doesn't need a creator. You can't really ask "But who created the singularity?" because that'd make no sense in a ever-lasting Universe. Care to re-phrase?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Jesus was God. Anybody in the Bible that spoke to Him, is verification of someone speaking to God. Why does this not count? I know this. I mentioned it in the post you replied to. However 'Accept the traditions of my religion, as well as what its Holy Book says' is not evidence that YHWH is the creator.If you had evidence that Moses wrote the Torah, that he presented it to the Jewish people (and its circulation wasn't limited only to a small priestly class of people who were the only literate ones), and that it was written at the time of the events it purported to be reporting...your case would be a bit stronger.Unfortunately for you, you have no evidence of the above. Thus you must insist on ignoring that this thread is about evidence that exists outside of the Torah. If only you would believe that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by Achilles you would accept that the earth appeared once light and day had been born out of the chaos.You have a book, the earliest copy of which dates to much later than the time it claims to describe. There is evidence that the book could not have been written entirely at the time, by the claimed author. For all we know, the story about 600,000 people hearing the voice of God was added much later, when nobody was around to contradict it. We must also consider the literacy rate, as mentioned earlier. If the only group of people who had access to the texts and could read them, were the same people that changed it - then there is no verification at all.It seems at least equally likely that the story was concocted to illicit exactly the kind of thought process you are displaying here. And yet, ultimately, your 'sufficient proof' exists within the Torah, despite the topic being about evidence that exists outside of the Bible. Why would we consider Jewish tradition or the Torah as being impartial historians on this matter? I was using secular opinions on both as an equaliser. The evidence indicates that both religions have changed, despite what your traditions say. I don't assume that it did not happen, I conclude it is likely they did not. This thread is ideal if you want to present evidence outside of the Torah that might swing my conclusion. Yes, they weren't true followers of Judaism. What evidence, outside of the Torah, exists that Judaism was monotheistic from the outset? What is the earliest evidence for Judaism being monotheistic? Of even existing? Yes, any evidence that Judaism was not always monotheistic will illicit the 'no true Scotsman' response.

I have already told you that although you can technically think of many possibilities, the evidence does point to an infinite expansion. Also, I do not quite understand how you think the Big Crunch will lead into another Big Bang. If anything, the force of the contraction will cause the entire Universe to turn into a singularity and keep it that way. You also mention about an emotionally appealing scenario. I am sorry to say that the humans a doomed no matter how you slice it. We will survive until the Sun finally dies. At that point the Universe is gone from our species perspective. You may believe that life exists on other planets far away from our galaxy; however, this has no implication for human life.The idea that time is infinite makes little sense. This is because it is not possible to move through anything that is infinite by definition. If time will go on forever, you will never be able to say that you have reached the end of time. However, in order to reach a point in time it is necessary to move through all of the previous points in time. It is not possible to just appear in any moment in time that you see fit. Therefore, by the very fact that we are existing in this point in time indicates that we have already past through all of the previous points in time. Since you are considering to time be extending infinitely in both the past and the future, you are necessarily stating that the Universe has moved through an infinite amount of time. This is not possible. I have already explained what is wrong with your logical flow from 1 to 4.

This is mere conjecture and a typical human perspective. In no way is this backed up by physics. There is no evidence or suggestion of a master time, T, that ticks its way from the the past to the future. Such a concept is in fact in direct contradiction to General Relativity. We exist at our own time in the Universe, and that is all we can say. But this is a deep topic and this is not the place for its discussion. Suffice it to say that your argument is insufficient to suggest that the Universe does not extend infinitely far back in time.

I see your point but I have to stress that we have in fact always existed in the Universe. Just in different form. The atoms that make up my body used to be atoms in molecules making up DUST 13 billion years ago. So yes, technically we have always existed in some form or another - dust, carbon, water, etc. so it doesn't invalidate the flow of conclusions 1 through 4.PS. God does not exist, I don't have to prove this, as negatives are un-provable. Besides, if there was God I would have been dead by now for all my god bashing. But hey, why is Osama still alive? He's breaking most of the commandments head-against-the-wall, is God blind?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

This idea of not being able to move through an infinite amount of time is not meant to break the flow of your arguments. The flow of your arguments was already broken by my first response. I am merely pointing out a problem with an infinite amount of time. I will give you the classic response to all of these kinds of questions (you seem to be stuck on these questions). You want to know why G-d does not punish evil with lightning, and reward good with money and paradise. The easy answer is that G-d created humans to have free will. He does not wish to have robots or puppets. This would not serve G-d's plan. In order to give free will, a human must not have direct knowledge of G-d's existence. If humans did have such knowledge, they would lose their free will. If I put a gun to your head and force you to give me all your money, how much free will do you have? With the choice between your money or your life, I don't think you have much of a choice (this is of course assuming that I know how to use the gun and that your death would be a given if you decide not to hand over the money). The same would apply with this Universe that G-d created. He wants humans to have free will to do good or evil. In this manner, humans will be able to be rewarded for the good that they do with their free will (notice I did not indicate any punishment). If G-d would be showing His mighty hand in His creation, the humans would have no choice but to follow all of the commandments. Since the humans are acting out of fear, and not out of free will, it is not fitting that they should deserve a reward for their actions. This is why G-d hides His presence in this world. I think this is very logical to anyone with an open mind.Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

Precisely. Things that are not optically visible (or detectable via the other senses) are nonetheless evidenced and detectable. Ones "God antennae" rendered open to reception - so to speak. Abraham received evidence of something not seen and acted upon that evidence. This.. ..says precisely the same thing. Blind faith on the other hand, is usually intended to mean believing something without evidence undergirding that belief. A leap in the dark perhaps. Wishful thinking perhaps.- He was talking about the likes of me. I haven't seen yet I believe. But I believe because of faith :the evidence of...- We might agree the faith (in terms of trusting God) is not blind - the person has every reason to trust what God says. But that where they are being sent and what they are being sent into remains unknown as you say. They go where they are sent because they trust God sufficient not to worry about not knowing where anBlind as far a Gods purpose perhaps but that' As pointed out, Christianity doesn't involve blind faith of the unevidenced type. I'm not sure what OM's version of blind faith would be.

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Any ideas? Other than internal feelings which you have put forward as a possible line of evidence (with all its associated problems), is there any other evidences that YHWH is the one?

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I would have more likely said that non-empirical evidence convinced me. I wouldn't have described it as internal feelings - although you can carry on considering it as such if your philosophy regarding evidence demands that you do so. It is but your philosophy Mod, not sticks and stones

Yes, well, hate to burst your bubble but.....That was a little prank played on the jewish people by Trask. He''s like that you know. He thought it'd be fun to create a fictional god and see how many people would buy it, seems he's been very succesful.How do I know this? Trask told me, so it has to be true.

You are the one claiming that they did, and you name ONE man as an example.You are the one making the positive claim so let’s see. It makes no difference to the absurdity of the claim, try thinking about it. I know the reason given by the authors of Exodus, I also know that this is a number that has been shown to be absurd for the time and place. We also know that the 600 000 gives a Hebrew population in Egypt of 2-3 million Now to anyone with even the most basic grasp of ancient near eastern history knows that this number is inaccurate, science, archaeology, history, and common sense have shown that we need to reinterpret what the Book of Exodus says about the population because it is absurd to accept 2-3 million based on the evidence. No, it indicates that the authors of this folk tale gave a reason for the Exodus.Outside of the Book of Exodus, the Hebrews in Egypt are invisible in history. This makes your claim even more absurd then. Why would they have to marry?Did all the different gods they worshipped really insist on marriage? Do you expect the authors to name the 2-3 million in the Exodus group because I didn’t? But everything we know does indeed point to it being a story book, a fairystory book in fact. Everything mentioned in every book has a purpose. This is not what I said though. I have never stated that some Jewish people mentioned in the Tanakh didn’t have more than one wife, you are imagining this.What I did say regarding this verse is that it refers to men with TWO wives, one they love and one they hate, one plus one is two, not MANY as you would wish it to be.One plus one = two.

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Please give me your source for this.

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Well, I’ll give you a few, take a couple of days to chew them over because I have an important assignment to complete for Friday.First off, the Adam and Eve folk tale tells us that the first marriage was intended as monogamous.Genesis 2:24For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.United to his wife , singular. So a real opportunity for old Yahweh there to lay out the polygamous ideal if he wanted to.I’ll give another 3 then we can argue over these towards the end of the week.Even one of the Commandments insists that monogamy is expected:Exodus 20:17 [i] "You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."So, another monogamy hint, and a nice little dose of sexism to boot.Leviticus 20:10 And a man who commits adultery with a man's wife -- who commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour -- the adulterer and the adulteress are surely put to death. The wife of his neighbour, NOT one of his neighbours wives.Numbers 5:12 “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ”If any man’s wife goes astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him.
Singular again. NOT one of a man’s wives.Proverbs 18:22 He who finds a wife finds a good thing, And obtains favour from the LORD. Again, singular and NOT finds ”wives’.I’ll post more if you wish, but these are sufficient to prove my point to any slightly objective observer. But I look forward to your rebuttals and rewording of the Torah, as you will surely do. Well there’s two bits of paper on my wall from two unis that disagree with you, so I’ll stick with the people who know what they are talking about. There’s so many.Here’s an obvious one from the Book of Judges that we chatted about here before.The reign of a Judge follows a prescribed formula.If we look at some of these we can see that how it goes.Israel doing evilYahweh is angryThen Yahweh delivers them into the hands of their enemies.Then they repent.Yahweh raises up a Judge.Yahweh helps Judge conquer enemies.Peace in the land.Statement of how many years of peace.Death of Judge.Israel does evil, yada, yada, yada . . ..Quotes all from Judges obviously.3:7 [i] So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD . .3:8 [i] Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia3:9 When the children of Israel cried out to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel, who delivered them: Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. 3:10 . .. He went out to war, and the LORD delivered Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; . . 3:11 So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died. /The reigns of the Judges all follow a similar formula.But the interesting interpolation can be found at the end of Judges 3 and at the beginning of Judges 4.Obviously these passages were not originally put into chapter and verses, the Christians took it upon themselves to mutilate the Tanakh in this way, but it helps for referencing.If we notice that when Othniel died, the children of Israel immediately did evil in the sight of Yahweh.3:11-12a 11 So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died. And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD. This led to the Israelites being conquered by Eglon the Moabite, and we can see a repeat of the formula 12b-15 So the LORD strengthened Eglon king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the LORD. Then he gathered to himself the people of Ammon and Amalek, went and defeated Israel, and took possession of the City of Palms. So the children of Israel served Eglon king of Moab eighteen years.
But when the children of Israel cried out to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for them But it is when we get to the end of Ehud’s reign, the part between chapters 3 and 4 that the interpolation is obvious.If we look at it as it appears we read:3:30-4:1 So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest for eighty years.
After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed six hundred men of the Philistines with an ox goad; and he also delivered Israel.
When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD. The mention of Shamgar is out of place here, the text is horribly disjointed with it, and if we remove it we have: So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest for eighty years. When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD. The text reads much smoother without the removal of 3:31.Just to reinforce the point we can look at more Judges and their
formula.Just to recap we had Othniel: So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died. And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD. Then we have Deborah.Judges 5 is the Song of Deborah, and after the song (and into chapter 6) we are told: So the land had rest for forty years. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD. So the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years, Then we have wee Gideon: Now Gideon the son of Joash died at a good old age, and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father, in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

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So it was, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel again played the harlot with the Baals, and made Baal-Berith their god. So, the formula is broken by Shamgar, and not only that, Shamgar is not even treated in the same way as the other Judges.The Shamgar interpolation is a very famous one, and it is just one of many well-known additions. I don’t have a problem with Judaism. I enjoy studying the tanakh so much that my masters is related to it, albeit in historical rather than a theological context. Well there are answers and there are answers. Anyone who has read the garbage that Christian apologists write when they try to make Jesus into the Messiah that He clearly wasn’t knows that not all answers are satisfactory.Edited by Brian, : formatting