Stu, perhaps you didn't read the following in my post by above written by Ken Boa. He holds a PhD from New York University, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford in England and states, "Those who discard the Bible as historically untrustworthy must realize that the same standard would force them to eliminate almost all ancient literature." Conclusion The Old and New Testaments pass the bibliographic, internal, and external tests like no other ancient books. Most professional archaeologists and historians acknowledge the historicity of the Bible, and yet many theologians still embrace pre-archaeological critical theories about the Bible. The evidence strongly supports the accuracy of the Bible in relation to history and culture, but in many cases it has been overlooked or rejected because of philosophical presuppositions that run contrary to the Scriptures. This leads to a double standard: critics approach secular literature with one standard but wrongly use a different standard when they examine the Bible. Those who discard the Bible as historically untrustworthy must realize that the same standard would force them to eliminate almost all ancient literature. https://kenboa.org/apologetics/how-accurate-is-the-bible/
You have me on ignore but you expect me to read your posts. Let me know when you want to start acting like an adult then we can discuss the issue.
LOL. I first began our dialogues from your posts trolling Expiated, who had you on ignore, so he wasn't bothered by them, but I was. So, apparently, it's not difficult at all for you to troll him, but you take issue with me for having you on ignore. If I take you off ignore that means you could put me on ignore. If I ever start a new thread and you have me on ignore, then I lose the ability to use the report button to report any posts that you might post that might be offensive. Sometimes you post material that I consider to be offensive. So, you will be left on "ignore." But as I said, the inconvenience you experience by being ignored by Expiated is not keeping you from trolling all of Expiated's non-trading threads, so I don't see why it's any different with me.
Instead of just leaving me on ignore to avoid being offended, you're taking me off ignore to look if you are being offended. Makes sense...if you're 6. May I suggest, if you don't want your unreasoned, hypocritical, self-serving, sanctimonious religious beliefs questioned, just keep them to yourself.
Stu- The reason you are on ignore is an issue with the way Elite Trader sets up the reporting ability and ignore function for a thread OP. You are not on ignore so that I can't read your posts or out of an effort to stop you from reading my posts. You made a statement, "If you don't want your"...."religious beliefs questioned, just keep them to yourself." I don't have a problem with anyone questioning my beliefs. I don't have a problem with discussion examining evidence for or against my beliefs. I do have a problem with those who use deplorable methods to mock what they disagree with. Many of your posts fit this description.
I don't know if that is true or not as I have never even put anyone on ignore, nor would I. I'm not that much of a snowflake. What you say certainly doesn't sound right. Nevertheless, if that ever happened you could easily report someone hijacking your thread that way and from what I understand, Baron takes a dim view of such things. I think people might have been banned for doing that . But if what you say is correct, now if I ever created a thread and you started bombing it with offensive stuff, I would lose the ability to use the report button. How very Christian of you to selfishly and self-servingly instigate a First Strike! shame on you Oh but you do have a problem dude, I assure you. Not examining evidence because the Bible is true because the Bible is true IS having a problem in any discussion. There are many responses I've put to you which you've ignored to throw more irrelevant religious text at. Me too. I find the way you feign discussion to throw the Bible at everything deplorable, just to claim it's all true because it's the Bible. Certainly a deplorable insult against intelligence and reasoning if nothing else. Show me what I've posted that's so deplorable. Let me guess, is it anything that disagrees with your blind, closed minded, religious sanctimonious argument that insists the Bible is true because.... it's the Bible?
First of all, I don't really feel like reposting the stuff you write that I find offensive. But I will mention that posting dead kittens on Expiated's thread was offensive to me and had nothing to do with intellectual discussion. And you have posted lots and lots of blasphemies against God. Is it your desire to honestly seek truth? I'm done with this conversation.
Same here. I wouldn't really feel like reposting the stuff you've swamped most of your responses with either. Apparently you are unable to even understand how being bombarded with pages of irrelevant and morally questionable Biblical text is "offensive". They aren't dead kittens. For goodness sake do you really have religion stuck so far up your ass you've no sense for the ridiculous. And your hypocrisy is utterly astounding. It is Expatiated who has nothing to do with intellectual discussion and everything to do with proselyting. If you can't see why that's "offensive" in itself, you really shouldn't expect me to see why posting a few silly kitten pics is. That is such a redundant word. Anything said against what anybody holds sacred can be construed as blasphemous. Go talk to a devout Muslim and you'll soon be uttering blasphemies against God before you even know it. Ask a question and walk away . At least you refrained from throwing scripture at me this time. Be more honest, you don't really want a conversation, just an excuse to thump a Bible. I'm not sure it's your desire to seek truth, rather more your desire to believe the unbelievable no matter what.
This article makes a good argument for the validity of God's interaction with the Israelites at Mt. Sinai and the trustworthiness of the Torah. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/mass-revelation-at-sinai/ Ask most Jews–layperson and scholar alike–what happened on Mount Sinai, and the response is usually something to the effect of “Moses was given the Ten Commandments.” Heston as Moses I have often wondered whether this mistake comes from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic movie The Ten Commandments. If you remember, Charlton Heston, with brown robe and staff in hand, makes his way up the mountain and reappears, not too long after, with that “spiritual glow” only old Charlton could have after having a conversation with the Supreme Creator of the Universe. The ’s version however is distinctly different. In a number of places, the Torah mentions that it wasn’t only Moses who heard God speak. The entire Jewish people–man, woman, and child–experienced a direct communication from God at Mount Sinai.Deuteronomy 5:1-4)” The question you may be asking yourself is: What’s the difference? So what if only Moses heard God speak at Sinai, or whether it was three million men, women, and children? The issue has relevance for two areas: 1) Believability 2) Responsibility The Power of Mass Revelation Let’s begin with believability. No other religion sect or cult, from the beginning of time until the present day, has even made the claim that the Torah makes: that more than one person heard God give them their divine mission here on earth. Whether it be Guru Nanak (Sikhism), Siddhartha Gautama (Buddhism), Mohammad (Islam), Joseph Smith (The Mormons) they all “heard” God tell them that they were the “chosen” to deliver God’s message when they were alone. They then spent the rest of their lives convincing others that God had actually spoken the true gospel to them. Judaism has never taken such a claim seriously. If I told you right now that last night God spoke to me, and anointed me as His chosen prophet here on earth, and abiding by my word would give you access to the world to come, would you believe me? You may think not, but if you look at the birth of every religion, people have accepted such claims of authenticity. But not Judaism. Our claim does not come from one man, or fifty men, or even a thousand. It comes from an entire nation hearing God speaking to them, and that same God appointing Moses as their prophet and giving them the Torah en masse. Let me give you another analogy. Imagine for a moment that you read in the paper this morning that a tradition has been passed down claiming that one hundred years ago, in San Francisco, gold trees covered the landscape for one day, and this incredible phenomenon was witnessed by three million people. Would you believe it? I would assume not. Why? Because even though you were not alive then, if such a wondrous event were to have occurred, you and everybody else would have heard about it. How could such an event have occurred without anybody ever having mentioned it? If I told you that the story is false, and only one person, my Aunt Sheila, saw a single gold tree appear in her back yard, could you ever deny it? Who knows? There were no witnesses. The Jewish Claim We the Jewish people make such a claim: Millions heard God speak. How could such a claim ever be accepted if it did not occur? At what point in history could any person ever come forward and say, “Hey, Jews your ancestors heard God speak!” Our national response would have been: “I think we would have heard about it had it really occurred.” This is true whether it happened a hundred, five hundred, or three thousand years ago. The claim is too strong–which may explain why no other religion has ever even attempted to make such a claim of the truth. If you’re suspicious of this argument, and feel as though such a claim could be made by any person in history at any time, you’re not alone. The Torah itself is worried about charlatans coming along and making false claims about having spoken to God. “Ask now regarding the early days that preceded you, from the day that God created man on earth, and from one end of the heaven to the other end of the heaven: Has there ever been anything like this great thing, or has anything like it ever been heard? Have a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire as you have heard, and survived? Or has any god ever miraculously come to take for himself a nation from amidst a nation, with challenges, with signs, with wonders, with war, with a strong hand, and with greatly awesome deeds, such as Hashem your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? You have been shown in order to know that Hashem, He is God! There is none other beside Him (Deuteronomy 4:32-35).” What’s incredible about these words is that God is saying: “If you ever find anybody who makes such a claim that they also heard God speak to them, then our claim is obsolete.” Let’s say for a moment that the Torah is just a cute collection of stories written down by humans, with one of those stories being that this book is written by God. Who in their right mind would ever be foolish enough to add that if this claim is made again, the original claim is obsolete? If the human authors fooled so many people, what makes them think that in a few years somebody else wouldn’t come along and do the same, thereby making their original claim worthless? Revelation Implies Responsibility Now we have another issue to negotiate: responsibility. If the Torah has no divine imprint, then I, as a Jew, have no metaphysical responsibility to perform its laws. Why should I? If the Torah, however, was given by God to the Jewish people, then I as a Jew am responsible to uphold its laws and precepts as I am best able. If God gave it to us, it must be true. Interestingly, for thousands of years it was accepted in every biblical religion and culture that God, indeed, gave the Torah to the Jewish people. It is only in the last several hundred years that people began claiming that the Torah was really written by humans. For many Jews, this has directly impacted the sense of what responsibility to God’s commandments means and entails, and unfortunately, for these Jews, observance has taken on much less significance because the commandments are not seen as deriving from a God-given Torah.