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Goodbye Jesus

Logical reasons for ancient stories


Wertbag

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I was discussing logical reasons for the stories of the bible, and with a bit of research found that there are plenty of answers to lots of the claimed supernatural events. How many stories do you think lack of knowledge and supersitition have been the basis for?

Obviously one of the big ones is evolution as a modern answer to the question "how did we come to be here?" There were many stories from many religions talking of Gods, titans, spirits and monsters all explaining how the world came to be and how the human race came to be upon the earth.

There is also the story of Noahs flood, which if converted to a localised event suddenly makes sense and doesn't require the miracles to make it happen.

 

The story of Sodom was explained in a documentry I saw. In the day the main thing people looked for was fresh water. This was found in a depression in the ground and a town grew around it. Nowdays we would recognise the depression as a volcanic crater with water catchment, and sure enough the volcano eventually blew, but the people not knowing what had happened decided it must be God. To this day over the site that they claimed was Sodom there is a statue carved from basalt (not just a pillar of salt) called Lots wife, apparently carved in memorial to those who died.

I have heard that the sister city Gamorrah may have simply been built close enough to be caught in the eruption, or alternatively was torched by an army, either because they thought they were sinners (hence Gods anger through his rightious warriors) or simply the rule of history: the victors write the history.

 

The story of the tower of Babel. They made a big spike in the middle of a flat plain, then in the first lightning storm it gets struck. Modern knowledge would have seen this coming a mile off, but the ancients not knowing any better declared God did it. The alternative is that its obviously an impossible thing to build, so was bound to fail from the start it was just a matter of time.

 

Or when the Isrealites win a war, God is with them. When they lose, he isn't (or those tricky enemies have iron chariots)

 

One is the crossing of the Red Sea. There is a sand spit across a major portion, it was noted that the Israelites could have passed at low tide and the army came at high tide.

 

There are also stories in Egypt of turning the water to blood. There is suppose to be a river that can feed the Nile which is full of red algae. However, it only feeds the Nile in a flood. So if you know the conditions for when the river can flood, you can predict the water turning red like blood and do a ceremony first.

 

Then theres the story of Job getting his life destroyed, not sure it required anybody else to take part, just a unlucky bugger who lost his family, lost his health, lost everything he owned pretty much. Lots of people have lost everything but don't go around blaming otherworldly beings for their problems.

 

The burning bush is an event that can be witnessed, tested and confirmed to be natural. A certain type of plant secretes a light oil over its leaves which helps as a type of sun screen. Due to friction of the branches it is possible for the plant to reach ignition point and burn off the oil. Of course green leaf material doesn't burn so once the oil is used up the plant will remain fairly well untouched.

 

Does anyone know of similar logical explainations to the stories?

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Those are really good Wertbag.

 

I had thought, for instance, when the Tsunami stuck, how people who had lived in pre-history would have explained it. They would have said that it was some gods wrath. We know better now. (At least, most of the world knows better now. Fundy's still say Godidit!)

 

Taph

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"the story of Noahs flood, which if converted to a localised event suddenly makes sense"

 

Noah appparently had many decades to build the ark. If the flood were a local event, why didn't God just tell him to go somewhere else?

 

 

"the rule of history: the victors write the history"

 

The Bible is a little more honest about the history of the Israelites. They lost many battles and as well as wars.

 

 

"the tower of Babel. They made a big spike in the middle of a flat plain, then in the first lightning storm it gets struck....so was bound to fail from the start it was just a matter of time"

 

The tower didn't come down in the narrative.

 

 

"river that can feed the Nile which is full of red algae. However, it only feeds the Nile in a flood. So if you know the conditions for when the river can flood, you can predict the water turning red like blood and do a ceremony first"

 

This wouldn't really fit with the Exodus account. The other plagues do not lend themselves to natural explanations.

 

 

"the story of Job getting his life destroyed......Lots of people have lost everythin but don't go around blaming otherworldly beings for their problems"

 

Job endured a lot but did not really do much blaming. His response was "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him".

 

 

"The burning bush"

 

The more interesting part of the story was the Theophany in this account.

 

 

Literalists think that mythology is sometimes rooted in original events. For instance, Hercules, who was supposed to have a god as a father and a natural mother, could have been one of the Nephilim in Genesis 6.

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"the story of Noahs flood, which if converted to a localised event suddenly makes sense"

 

Noah appparently had many decades to build the ark. If the flood were a local event, why didn't God just tell him to go somewhere else?

 

Maybe the Story of Noah was taken from Gilgamesh. A popular story in Babylon when the Isrealites first wrote down their history during their captivity there.

 

"the rule of history: the victors write the history"

 

The Bible is a little more honest about the history of the Israelites. They lost many battles and as well as wars.

 

Actually, it was Constantine who was the winner and whose buddy "The Bishop of Ceaserea" wrote "Ecclesiastical History".

 

 

 

Literalists think that mythology is sometimes rooted in original events. For instance, Hercules, who was supposed to have a god as a father and a natural mother, could have been one of the Nephilim in Genesis 6.

 

Maybe myths are copied from older myths handed down in a culture that continually made new religions out of old parts.

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Noah appparently had many decades to build the ark. If the flood were a local event, why didn't God just tell him to go somewhere else?

I quite agree that the biblical account of the Noah and the flood make no sense. A local event fixes the problems with the size of the boat, number of animals, food and water, distribution of animals, amount of water, collecting the animals etc. A guy surviving a local flood in a boat is quite understandable.

 

"the rule of history: the victors write the history"

 

The Bible is a little more honest about the history of the Israelites. They lost many battles and as well as wars.

Isn't it interesting that the most agressive religions are the ones that survive? Muslims and Christians both have a bloody history, all the way from threats of eternal torment, through israelites butchering thousands of people, to global destruction at Gods whim, to the crusades and inquistion. Cut yourself a slice of history...

 

The tower didn't come down in the narrative.

The scattering of the people and confusing of the languages appears to have been another question the priests couldn't answer, so they lept to the default answer "God did it!". Must have been that tower, doesn't make any sense, the tower was bound to fail anyway, but if we blame that the supersititions people will take our word for it.

 

This wouldn't really fit with the Exodus account. The other plagues do not lend themselves to natural explanations

There are many plagues in many myths, most of which do have obvious answers, eg disease, rain of fish/frogs, red rivers, hail storms, insects, volcanoes etc. Again its usually ancient people who did not understand how the natural world works who look for someone or something to blame for their problems... must be God/Satan/demons/aliens or whichever supernatural being is flavour of the month.

 

Job endured a lot but did not really do much blaming. His response was "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him".

Of course that is blaming. He didn't say "what a bad run of luck, several co-incidental natural occurances have really screwed up my life", he instantly jumped to "God did it!". All of his problems were claimed of supernatural origin when there doesn't appear to be a reason to think so.

 

Another one I was told about is the story of the breaking of the walls of Jeraco (spelling?). Guy prances around for a week blowing a trumpet and the walls collasp. Of course one of the standard ways to break defences was with the use of sappers. You dig a tunnel underneath supported by wooden beams, then either pull or burn the beams out when you are ready to undermine the wall and bring it down. The guy with the trumpet was simply a distraction.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I figure a lot of what's in the Bible is the same kind of thing that you find in any other mythology: metaphor. Metaphors and suchlike, of a people trying to understand and explain things they saw that perhaps at that point they didn't really have the language for.

 

Somehow the OP reminds me of something about the mythology of my own chosen pantheon, which is Greek: Hephaestos, the divine smith, by tradition was lame. His legs were atrophied and supposedly he created a pair of androids to help carry him around.

 

When we think of smiths today, we think of blacksmiths, who work with iron; during the Bronze Age, though, smiths worked with - duh - bronze. Bronze is made nowadays of a combo of copper and tin, both fairly inexpensive and easy to get ahold of. 3000 years ago, however, tin was very hard to come by in Greece. The Myceneans managed to send traders all the way to what's now the British Isles to obtain it, but at great cost.

 

Fortunately, you can make bronze out of other combos of copper plus some other mineral. One of the other minerals you can use was more easily obtainable in Greece at the time - and that was arsenic.

 

Arsenic poisoning can, of course, cause atrophying of the limbs.

 

I can imagine that a common problem of career bronzesmiths in Bronze Age Greece was arsenic poisoning. It makes sense to me, at any rate. It also makes sense that out of that time would come the tradition of a smith god who had atrophied limbs himself.

 

Heading over to Sodom & Gomorrah for a moment, the volcano theory is interesting. I've heard others too. One of my faves about the general destruction of the 5 Cities of the Plain (which include S & G) is that the whole area is rich in bitumen, which ignited and generally messed up the whole region. Causes for it igniting are varied - maybe a volcano, maybe fragments of a very large Earth-crossing asteroid (which later deteriorated into Hale-Bopp), etc. etc. etc.

 

It's the overall study of mythology which I find allows me to include the Bible as another book of mythology. I can't simply dismiss it as utter rubbish; I think its value lies in the fact that it's a reflection of the world of the people who wrote it. But I won't for a Manhattan minute ever believe again that it's the inerrant, god-breathed handbook of the one true universal god.

 

Fwiw.

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S&G sounds more like a nuclear war to me

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S&G sounds more like a nuclear war to me

 

Of course it does. It was the Annunaki from the planet Nibiru, silly!

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when does Nibiru come near Earth again?

 

they seem to have found a dark star with Nibiru, that's how it can be so far from our Sun, it has it's own energy source with it

 

http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/

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For me, just because we know more about science and the physical world, and causes and effects, does not negate God. I've always thought that the worst misunderstanding people had about God/Goddess/Whatever is that people associate Him/Her/It with religion.

 

if God has no boundaries, how can one expect God to be confined within a particular religion's boundaries? If I know my ancestors were apes, does that negate God? Perhaps it negates the Christian story of creation, so you might say it negates Christianity's God. But if we know Christianity to be false, does that dismiss the idea of a God altogether?

 

I do not believe in the God of the Gaps; I believe everything can be scientifically explained. But who is to claim that God would not approve of science? Perhaps science itself is a gift of God, or science is the prescence of God. When I see the marvels of science, I see the physical manifestation of a Universal Order.

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if we know Christianity to be false, does that dismiss the idea of a God altogether?

 

I do not believe in the God of the Gaps; I believe everything can be scientifically explained.

I've heard it described as God's ant farm. If God doesn't actually affect the world in anyway, doesn't communicate or have any purpose in our lives, then all he becomes is an observer. Its like hes watching us live and die as a kind of sick science experiment. If you truely believe everything can be scientifically explained then there is no need to have a god in your beliefs at all.

Thats where religion differs, they all claim supernatural effects by god/devil/angels/demons on the physical world. If these claims were true we should easily be able to test for them, and prove god with very little effort ("Hey god would you light my BBQ for me? ... thanks mate!"). We can't see interaction, we can't communicate with 'em, they refuse to prove themselves, and all of the miraculous claims made by religions are being shown to be garbage as our knowledge of the natural world increases.

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