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Kathy Part 4

Nate

I may live to regret this, but I’ve decided to extend this never-ending conversation once again.

Kathy, this time, it would be a nice change of pace if you would actually address what William has repeatedly been saying to you:

I have. Not saying i’m perfect at it or that I’m right, but the “evidences” you listed arent real evidences. And since you refuse to look at things that are counter to your current beliefs, how can you honestly speak to me about evidences?

here’s all I’ve seen you provide:

1) martyrs, even though every religion and many non-religions have them.

2) our very existence – which no one knows how that started, but even if you must land on god(s), you must go back to that book of claims to get to jesus.

3) there were miracles, but as it turns out, those dont happen today, and end up being more claims by the same men who claim they speak for god.

4) the fulfilled prophecies we’ve discussed weren’t really prophecies at all, or had to be viewed so figuratively that it’s difficult to show anything precise about them other than location (maybe) in order to claim they’re actually fulfilled.

5) 40 authors taking 1500 years to write the bible. But there’s nothing miraculous about men writing books, editing books, and being inspired to write a book or letter after reading an older book.

About that last point, if the Bible had been written by 1500 people scattered across the globe, who didn’t know one another, and they did it in 40 days, then you’d really have something incredible. But 40-ish people, all familiar with the Jewish god, and writing over a long period of time with the previous writings as reference, is not that impressive.

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1,038 thoughts on “Kathy Part 4”

  3. I also remember the parable you speak of….admittedly it was vague, which kind of contradicts the rambling I was going on about above…but it expressed some of what I was feeling at the time.

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  4. Oops – new list time —

    Words that Kathy Doesn’t Understand

    1. Objectivity
    2. Proof
    3. Fact
    4. Evidence
    5. Compelling
    6. Debate
    7. Truth
    8. Hearsay

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  8. The beauty of science, Laura, lies in the fact that scientists aren’t afraid to say, “I don’t know,” they don’t feel the need to fill in the gaps in their knowledge with “magic.” Further, when new evidence emerges, they aren’t afraid to change their positions, or even reverse course.Evidence is one of those nebulous terms that’s difficult to define. There are many here who may have definitions for you, but I prefer examples.

    Let me tell you a story about an archaeologist – a scientist in his own right – William G. Dever – this, from the press release for his book:

    William G. Dever is the son of a fundamentalist preacher. From a small Christian liberal arts college in Tennessee he went to a Protestant theological seminary that exposed him to “critical study” of the Bible, a study that at first he resisted. In 1960 it was on to Harvard and a doctorate in biblical theology. For thirty-five years he worked as an archaeologist, excavating in the Near East, and he is now professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona. In his book What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It, he tells where scholarship regarding archaeology and the Bible has been in past decades and where it is now.

    Dever associates himself with what he calls the new archaeology, something more than thirty-years old and devoted to good field work, use of the latest and most reliable dating methods and interdisciplinary analysis. His conclusions about what this archaeology tells us about the Bible will not be accepted by fundamentalists. I gather that Dever and his colleagues of high standing dismiss fundamentalists who want to consider themselves scholars without accepting that which good scholars must do: engage in extensive critical analysis.

    Dever writes that the central proposition of his book is very simple. “While the Hebrew Bible in its present, heavily edited form cannot be taken at face value as history in the modern sense, it nevertheless contains much history.” He adds: “After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible ‘historical figures.'” He writes of archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as having been “discarded as a fruitless pursuit.”

    About the historical Moses he writes:

    “…the overwhelming archaeological evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness. A Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in southern Transjordan in the mid-late13th century B.C., where many scholars think the biblical traditions concerning the god Yahweh arose. But archaeology can do nothing to confirm such a figure as a historical personage, much less prove that he was the founder of later Israelite region.”

    Here’s a man of science, who was raised a fundamentalist, BY a fundamentalist, and whose early education was ENTIRELY religious, yet over the course of 35 years of living and working in the land the Bible describes, has come a full 180 degrees in his thinking, because he review the evidence he found and came to conclusions that do not support the Bible, as it was written. He is now an atheist.

    His life story, for me, is evidence that these people likely did not exist. Were these statements to have come from an atheist, I’d not be surprised, but to go from one entire pole to the other, especially for a fundamentalist, takes a great deal of persuasion, and I would believe what he has to say about his experiences and his conclusions.

    He’s not the only one, I could point you to Walter E. Rast, or Robert M. Best, but I wouldn’t want to be accused of directing your search. I’m only glad you’re searching.

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  9. Arch,

    ““I’m pretty sure the author of Genesis was not a naïve child.” –

    no, he was a naive priest, living in captivity in Babylon, trying to make sense of things. He believed the BS all his life, that his god would protect his people, yet here he was, in captivity in a strange land, having witnessed his temple, the center of his life, being torn down, stone by stone, and he wondered why. Like you, it never occurred to him that he had spent his life following a fairy tale, and like you, in his mind, the god he believed in could do no wrong, so the fault, he decided, MUST lie with the Hebrews. So he (and others with him) decided to revamp the JE portion of Torah, that had been written down hundreds of years earlier by priests in both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, and to try and make the god depicted there appear more godly, more dignified, so that people would have more fear and respect for him and obey his commands, so that this could never happen again to his people. He knew nothing of science, of how the universe ACTUALLY came to be, so he used his imagination, and made up a scenario, as thousands of cultures before him had done, intending for it to replace the JE version, but the redactor instead, placed both versions, Gen1 and gen2, side by side.

    He may not have been a naive child, he was worse – he was a naive man who was making it up as he went along, which by itself, wouldn’t have been so bad, as writers have been composing fiction since the Epic of Gilgamesh and possibly even before, but he was passing his fiction off as truth, truth inspired by a god, and that was just wrong.”

    Fascinating Arch.. just FASCINATING! Now, could you please provide the evidence that supports this “claim”? thanks!

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  10. Kathy, I don’t know why you have such trouble understanding this. The evidence has been laid out several times now.

    I don’t know if arch is saying that it happened exactly as he laid out, but the evidence suggests it was something like that. The evidence certainly points against the idea that the individual Moses actually wrote all (or any) of it down.

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  11. Arch,

    “KC: “”Kathy, you are correct that Elohim has a plural usage in the OT. Show us where the Plural Usage points to a Son and a Holy Spirit ? This is certainly your intent by mentioning it at all.”

    Kathy: “You take into account the other passages.. you find the CONTEXTUAL meaning. And when you do that, you see the Trinity.”

    Could you line up those passages, Kathy, in some kind of order, and show us how to see the Trinity in the word, “Elohim”? Is it anything like seeing the face of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich?”

    http://biblestudyplanet.com/the-trinity-in-the-old-testament/

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  12. Nate,

    You (all) accuse me of rejecting evidence for the other side’s argument but when I ask for the evidence, you (all) never give it to me.. what does that tell you???

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  13. Nate,

    “I haven’t read the latest comments yet, but this isn’t good enough, Kathy. Is the child lying about the Tooth Fairy, or is the Tooth Fairy real? I’d like for you to answer this question.”

    I haven’t denied that people can believe something that is false. But I AM denying it of the authors of the Bible. I’m asking for specifics on how this theory holds up for the Bible, and especially the Gospels. And again, I would like actual specific text to work with.

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  14. I haven’t gone through the whole thing yet, but there are some real issues with the article you posted to support the idea of the trinity. A number of passages are being misused. I’ll point them out once I’ve gone through the whole thing.

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  15. “Fascinating Arch.. just FASCINATING! Now, could you please provide the evidence that supports this “claim”? thanks!” – kathy

    and early you asked for someone to give a scenario as to how someone could write something they thought was true, but was actually not true…

    you asked for this possible scenario and then complain there’s no evidence? You’re not making sense and you haven’t given any evidence for your position.

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  16. “You (all) accuse me of rejecting evidence for the other side’s argument but when I ask for the evidence, you (all) never give it to me.. what does that tell you???” – kathy

    tells me you’re either dishonest, stupid or blind, because lots if us have given lots of evidence. ignoring it doesnt make it go away you know.

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  17. I haven’t denied that people can believe something that is false. But I AM denying it of the authors of the Bible. I’m asking for specifics on how this theory holds up for the Bible, and especially the Gospels. And again, I would like actual specific text to work with.

    Kathy, please explain exactly what you’re looking for. What do you expect these texts to look like? I mean, we’ve already given you specific examples. Are you expecting the text to say “nah, none of this stuff has much evidence — I’m just writing it because I’ve been duped”?

    When Mormon tells you about the lost tribe of Israel coming to America, they don’t do it with a wink or with their fingers crossed. They honestly believe it. Therefore, it looks no different from something true that they might say, because to them, both things are true! Of course the writers of the Bible (or most of them) honestly believed what they wrote, but this doesn’t make them right.

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  18. Nate,

    “Okay, so I see where you’ve conceded the child just believes in the Tooth Fairy without the Tooth Fairy being real — no lying required.

    That’s exactly what I’m saying happened with the writers of Genesis. You don’t have to be a child to do this same thing — we’re all guilty of it from time to time.”

    I’m not saying that either.. Nate, you weren’t “testifying” to your children. Again, you fail to acknowledge the differences. The writers / authors are testifying.. based on first hand accounts.

    You are using a child as an example of how an adult, who lived and died for his beliefs, would be fooled. It’s not comparable. Just like telling your children about God is comparable to those who actually lived it telling us about God. It’s not the same. You aren’t looking at specifics.. you’re trying to tie it all up in a neat rational bow.. but it doesn’t work when you look at the specific details.

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  19. “You are using a child as an example of how an adult, who lived and died for his beliefs, would be fooled. It’s not comparable. Just like telling your children about God is comparable to those who actually lived it telling us about God. It’s not the same. You aren’t looking at specifics.. you’re trying to tie it all up in a neat rational bow.. but it doesn’t work when you look at the specific details.” – kathy

    allah, then. Or zues. or any god people believed in past, present or future. Do you really not get analogies?

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  20. “You (all) accuse me of rejecting evidence for the other side’s argument but when I ask for the evidence, you (all) never give it to me.. what does that tell you???” – kathy

    tells me you’re either dishonest, stupid or blind, because lots if us have given lots of evidence. ignoring it doesnt make it go away you know.

    Like it or not, Kathy, but William is absolutely right.

    Since you’ve apparently missed it, here are just a FEW of the evidences we’ve given you just from THIS thread:

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17518

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17501

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17464

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17440

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17439

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17420

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17416

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17407

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17395

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17389

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17387

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17386

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17384

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17383

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17380

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17326

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17312

    https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/kathy-part-4/#comment-17311

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  21. Nate,

    “When Mormon tells you about the lost tribe of Israel coming to America, they don’t do it with a wink or with their fingers crossed. They honestly believe it. Therefore, it looks no different from something true that they might say, because to them, both things are true! Of course the writers of the Bible (or most of them) honestly believed what they wrote, but this doesn’t make them right.”

    You keep avoiding/ evading the specifics Nate. Again, Mormon theology fails miserably.. they DON’T have the evidence to back up their beliefs.. just like the child with the tooth fairy.

    You want to give me examples that are not comparable.. instead of just addressing the specifics of what we are discussing.. the Truth of the Bible… not the tooth fairy or Mormonism.

    “Kathy, please explain exactly what you’re looking for. What do you expect these texts to look like? I mean, we’ve already given you specific examples. Are you expecting the text to say “nah, none of this stuff has much evidence — I’m just writing it because I’ve been duped”?”

    I’ve told you what I’m looking for.. you are attempting to obfuscate again Nate. I want specifics.. you gave page 1 of the Bible, I’m asking for your theory on how the author of THIS text.. not a child’s belief or a fooled Mormon’s belief.. but how the author of Genesis could be writing those detailed “false” claims while believing it.

    I’m trying to tell you that your claims don’t fit when applied to scripture.

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  22. ok, the first 2 links above are to Laurie.. not me.. I’m struggling just to keep up with the comments to me. You now want me to read all those comments to get the answers that you COULD have just posted (reposted?) and it would have taken less time/ effort.

    Game playing (and insults).. that’s why this blog is such a waste of time.

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  23. I’m not saying that either.. Nate, you weren’t “testifying” to your children. Again, you fail to acknowledge the differences. The writers / authors are testifying.. based on first hand accounts.

    You are using a child as an example of how an adult, who lived and died for his beliefs, would be fooled. It’s not comparable. Just like telling your children about God is comparable to those who actually lived it telling us about God. It’s not the same. You aren’t looking at specifics.. you’re trying to tie it all up in a neat rational bow.. but it doesn’t work when you look at the specific details.

    Kathy, how are you not getting this? Did Moses live at the time of creation? Did he live during the time of the flood? Did he live during Abraham’s life, or Jacob’s, or Joseph’s? No. Even if Moses had really been the one to write all this he couldn’t have known it firsthand either. Just as I would have died for my (erroneous) Christian beliefs when I was a believer, I’m sure Moses would have died for his beliefs as well. That doesn’t make either one of us right.

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  24. I just wasted MORE time clicking on a random link at the bottom.. to Rata!

    Just give the SPECIFICS of your claims.. the EVIDENCE to back up your claims and the specific text that you are making the claims about.

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  25. ok, the first 2 links above are to Laurie.. not me.. I’m struggling just to keep up with the comments to me. You now want me to read all those comments to get the answers that you COULD have just posted (reposted?) and it would have taken less time/ effort.

    ???

    Maybe you haven’t gotten to those particular posts yet, but it shouldn’t matter who they were addressed to. The information is just as problematic for your view.

    The point is that plenty of evidence has been laid out here that you’ve completely ignored or dismissed. Only a very few points have you bothered to respond to, and you usually do that by just posting links. Which is fine — we don’t mind checking them out. But at least we check them out.

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