Did God Help the Hebrews?

“I’ve often thought that the Bible should have a disclaimer in front saying this is fiction” Ian McKellen

The Jewish people claim that Yahweh, Elohim, or God, pick whichever name you like, was the creator of the world …and humanity…and made himself known to Abraham as a God and protector of the Hebrew race. Not the human race, which was flourishing at the time, but the Jewish race.

Taking the numbers from the Bible, describing Huge battles involving thousands or hundreds of thousands of warriors, the population of earth had to be tremendous…in the millions and millions. ‘God’ picks Hebrews as ‘His’ people???

Now if you know anything about the history of the Middle East, Hebrews, Jews, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Judea, or any of the various tribal groups roaming around the Holy Land area, you know that the Hebrew tribes never were very successful as a country, or military power, or race for that matter.

They had three kings, all of three of which were hugely flawed. They were constantly revising their theology and beliefs. Many of them converted to other religions when they were dispersed at different times during their history. Now if you KNEW that your God was the only true one…how could you change your religion?

Time after time they go into battle and lose. They are conquered time and again, they are dispersed and exiled many times and finally the Romans conquer and destroy Jerusalem and what’s left of the Jews spread all over the world.

There is no real evidence of a ‘God’ helping them or being advantageous to their existence.

Do any of you ‘out there’ see some evidence of an omnipotent, omniscient being helping the Jews? I sure don’t.

Why would anybody want to carry on the worship of a God that so obviouly had no power over our world? Who would want to be associated with a ‘God’ that never helped it’s subjects? Why would you want to buy into that whole guilt and sin fantasy?

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Is God Omniscient and Omnipotent?

“Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages.”

Hi Dove124, thank you for your reply.

“The story lacking in Logic” That is your point of view concerning the bible. FYI, a) It is not the intention of God that Lucifer should turn up the way he is.”

Well, yes it is my point of view and I am not alone in that view. Your point (a) was answered in the body of the original post. Repeated here: Since God created the whole shebang, so to speak, I would assume he is also responsible for evil. People have told me nothing exists in this world, except by God. If in fact He is all knowing He would surely know right away that his creation of Satan was wrong…in point of fact, an all knowing God would have realized it immediately. He should have corrected it then, not allowed the melodrama to start.

“b) the word Trinity was not in the bible c) God is not all knowing d) God is not everywhere e) there are things that God can’t do ( as some people perceive to be )”

Your point (b). Yes I know that, I have argued that there is no Trinity. The post you were looking at was an answer to someone who was arguing for a Trinity
Your Point (c and d). Every Christian I have EVER talked to has said that God was omnipotent and omniscience. The general definition of a God is such.
Your point (e). The general definition of God is such. If you know something I don’t in this matter, I would love to hear about it.

“And your thought that human need no biblical source to tell them what is evil, and just follow the “Golden Rule” is contradicting yourself. Golden Rule is a biblical source. And another thing is, you can’t tell what is right and what is wrong if there is no law telling you.”

Well if it’s in the Bible, then men thought it up. Men go around all the time making up rules and laws…consider Murphy’s law. I could tell right from wrong when I was 5 years old…didn’t need Bible to tell me that.

“Because sin is the transgression of the law. The law in the first place was created for the wicked and not for the just.”

So, if I jaywalk…I’m committing sin? What is your definition of wicked?

“So, if your interested to know the answers of a-d , just ask me . Until next time.
God bless”

Answered in reply to point (e).
Thanks for your reply Dove124

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Trinity, Evil, Sin, Death

Hi Robaigh, Thank you for you’re input, and good to hear from you again.
For some reason I can’t get my reply panel to work properly, so you are also on main post window.

Robaigh, I am always confused 🙂
Really though, I just cannot seem to understand a lot of things in Christianity. And I find a lot of different interpretations of the same events. In my posts I am trying to draw out peoples viewpoints and their vision of the faith. I try not to sound too caustic, but I’m sure I am occasionally.

>>The Trinity (Father, Son & Spirit; perpetual “begotten-ness” of the Son; procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son)<<

I really don’t understand this trinity thing, and from all of my investigating it sure seems to be a made-up-by-man thing. More than a few have tried to clue me in, but have failed. It may be crystal clear to them, but to me it is mud. I think I have heard all the standard explanations.

>>Salvation history – Jesus incarnated among the Jews as fulfillment of God’s promise to redeem the world via the Chosen People<<

I understand that Jesus was of Jewish/Hebrew origin, but where did the promise come from and why do we need redeeming…are you talking of Paul’s Original Sin Hypothesis? Wasn’t Jesus preaching that the ‘Kingdom of God was coming soon and for people to be good Jews?

>>the “problem” of death<<

>>the “problem” of evil (and the origins thereof)<<

I don’t see a problem with death. We’re born, we live, and we die. Most of the more complicated pagan gods promised life after death…I don’t think it’s a realistic promise or a realistic expectation. What’s the point?

Since God created the whole shebang, so to speak, I would assume he is also responsible for evil. People have told me nothing exists in this world, except by God. If in fact He is all knowing He would surely know right away that his creation of Satan was wrong…in point of fact, an all knowing God would have realized it immediately. He should have corrected it then, not allowed the melodrama to start. And why would a God be concerned with little human problems? Which we wouldn’t have had if He had left us alone and kept Satan out of Eden. The story is very lacking in logic.

From what I can see, it was the old Jewish men of the period around 1000 to 400 BCE who decided what was evil or sinful. We all have human traits, and yes, something’s are bad and we need to control them. But, I don’t think many of them are necessarily sins.

I also don’t think that humans need a biblical source to tell them what is evil. I think the ‘Golden Rule’ just about sums up all we need to be good/not evil.

>>>Are you actually confused (meaning: do you really want to discuss these things) or are you just “ranting” as your tags suggests?<<<

I think I have used the rant tag on all my posts. 🙂

I always enjoy your replies Robaigh…thanks for your time.

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Jesus is…God?

Hi Idugan, how very nice to hear from you. Thank you for your reply.

I had to put this on a regular post, I could not get the reply pane to copy properly.

>>>First, of all Jesus is Holy because He IS God.<<<

Now you see, that is one of the things that is very confusing. Jesus was a created being. If my mom and dad have a child…that child is a creation…of my parents. If God creates a being such as Jesus or Satan…these are “children” of God…as are we. We are not our parents. And why would there be no mention of trinity for a hundred or so years after the death of Jesus? This whole trinity thing really smells. I’m sorry to be so blunt. But, as you may have heard a hundred times already, I believe Paul, or the Catholic Church, or both, made up the trinity.

If this trinity turns out to be true (Jesus being God), does this seal-the-deal that God is male? Not to be Sacrilegious, but didn’t Jesus go around kissing Mary Magdalene?

>>>Satan and his followers (“demons”) were thrown out of heaven after trying to say they were “better” than God. Third, the Holy Spirit, also, IS God…not created by God…and that is why He is holy.<<<

Now why would an “Angel” go around saying or thinking (remember God knows your heart) stupid things like that? Apparently Angels are intelligent. Does it make sense that a created, most likely very intelligent, being would think he was better than his creator? Remember this is someone who is (or was) actually in the presence of God. An insider so to speak, one who…EVERY DAY…sees/saw the actual, LITERAL power of GOD in person.

This sounds to me, very much like a human creation. An attempt to create a dramatic scenario, describing something that WE have no possible idea or understanding of. Again, to be blunt…this is a bad story line. Holy spirit always seemed to me to be a phenomenon that humans experienced, not a ‘person or thing.’

>>>God is behind everything. He upholds and sustains EVERYTHING. So he is behind every birth, every breath, every storm, every step, every death. It’s all in His plan. (Paul, a mere human, cannot TELL God to DO anything…)<<<

If in fact God was intimately involved with us humans…I could believe…maybe…that this might be true. I see a possible God making the universe (ours) 14 billion or so years ago and moving on to other things. Why on earth would a GOD want to mess around on the scale of us humans and our petty disputes and killing each other? This is just logic. A God who creates whole universes has better things to do. He’s probably in another dimension, creating new universes? 🙂

We humans are way too egotistical in thinking a GOD would care about petty human problems. And the religious leaders have an imagination problem; they can’t seem to get a real image of a REAL GOD in their mind well enough to see what a God would actually be like. The story as told now…is childish…it envisions a very petty and small God.

The sin and redemption shtick is getting very old. Spirits in the sky and evil demons went out many, many years ago. Have you ever experienced one? None of the people I know or have known have ever seen one. I don’t expect to either.

Did you ever notice that God doesn’t go around killing men, women, and children in the New Testament? He, or whoever was writing about Him, stopped reporting on His bad temper and bad habits.

Again Idugan thanks for replying. I value your comments.

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Moses is Not Writer of Genesis

So, we all know that Moses wrote of Abraham as coming out from “Ur of the Chaldeans” in Genesis 11:31

“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.”

We also know that Moses wrote of Abraham coming to the rescue of his nephew Lot, in the city of Dan, in Genesis 14: 14-15

“When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 15 During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. 16 He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.”

So what we end up with in the timeline is this: Dates are ‘roughly’ and may vary slightly from sect to sect.

Abraham Born 2020 BCE-Died 1845 BCE
Moses Born 1595 BCE-Died 1475
City of Laish–renamed Dan 1200-1100 BCE
Chaldean tribe comes into existence 1000-900 BCE
Chaldeans take over the city of Ur c.627-625 BCE. Ur then became known as “Ur of the Chaldeans”
Moses died a few hundred years before the city of ‘Dan’ existed.
Moses died about 800 years before “Ur of the Chaldean” existed. Not the city, but the Phrase.

How did he write about it? He didn’t. The Pentateuch was rewritten and redacted well after Moses died. From this evidence, there is no real doubt about the Documentary Hypothesis.

The Catholic Encyclopedia pretty much admits this. Look up the whole thing here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01051a.htm

“Quite a different view on the section of Genesis treating of Abraham, and indeed of the whole of Genesis, is taken by modern critical scholars. They almost unanimously hold that the narrative of the patriarch’s life is composed practically in its entirety of three writings or writers called respectively the Jahvist, the Elohist, and the priestly writer, and denoted by the letters J, E, and P. J and E consisted of collections of stories relating to the patriarch, some of older, some of later, origin.”…

…”Finally, the moral to be drawn from the various events narrated is more clearly set forth in this third writing and, according to the critics the moral standpoint is that of the fifth century B.C. Lastly, after the time of Ezra, this last history, P was worked up into one with the already combined narrative J.E. by a second redactor R. JEP, the result being the present history of Abraham, and indeed the present book of Genesis; though in all probability insertions were made at even a later date.”

So, what all of this is saying, is that Moses couldn’t have written the parts that are ascribed to him, and whoever did write it, had to be from a time much later than Moses. Therefore parts of the Bible are false.

If someone can prove parts of your religious belief are wrong; why should anyone believe your religion is true? What else could they be wrong about?

For later: Do Christians believe that God made us immortal, and Adam & Eve caused us to die because of their sin?

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Did our Universe Always exist?

Did matter always exist in the universe?

Did God always exist in the universe?

Was there ‘nothingness’ everywhere that was filled up with a sentient cloud of electrons or atoms? Or was there absolutely nothing there…but, somehow, something…was a God?

Were we, and our universe as we know it, purposely created to ‘glorify’ a cloud of sentient nothingness?

Are we even real? Could we be a dream that a cloud of nothingness is dreaming? Shades of Matrix 🙂

Why would a God set up a paradise, with a snake/Satan that he knew would cause Eve to “Sin”?

Why was Satan…the sinner…even around then, or allowed to be in the garden?

How was Satan even considered evil or sinful, when there was no evil or sin existing at the time?

Why was Satan even allowed to be around later in this fairy tale?

Why would an intelligent cloud of nothingness set up the trap for his creations (us), knowing what the outcome would be? Isn’t that kind of like leaving a very sharp butcher knife in front of your one-year-old kid?

Why would a God even create an evil being?

Why is God so directly involved with the killing of so many humans?

Who tempted Satan to sin…why…if there was no sin before what was the sin?

If there is no sin in heaven how did Satan sin? Do sins just pop-up, so to speak?

What happens if we get to heaven and, God forgive…have a sinful thought?

Since there is no visible heaven, will we be among the stars, on earth, another planet, or in our own imagination/minds?

Where exactly do you think hell is, and why would a ‘loving God’ want to burn and torture people in it for eternity?

Did you ever examine your belief that Santa Claus is not real, and why you think that way? It’s because of the evidence…right?

Do you Really believe that a ‘Universe Creating God’ would make up this little story of sin and redemption you claim we are all living?

Why do you still believe the Bible is the real inerrant word of a God, when you have been shown the many errors in it?

Jesus was, without a doubt, preaching of the second coming of the ‘Kingdom of God’ in the near future, and here we are two thousand years later, still falling for it. Why?

Evidence that believers cannot reach a consensus on the Bible (or the Koran for that matter) is found all over the Christian and Jewish communities. They disagree with each other…sometimes violently…over interpretations of their so-called Holy Script. That alone, is testament to the non-holy status of the Bible, and their sects founded on it. If the Bible and religion were true…the divisions would not even be there. The whole world would be under its sway.

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Answer to Life

Hi Mathew Paul,

I’m going to answer your reply in a column instead of in the leave-a-reply section because I need to blow off steam. Nothing personal, have just heard all of these platitudes before, and never really answered fully. I hope you don’t mind.

You wrote: I submit that the earth as created by God was an ideal place to live in with every blessing in it.

I submit to you…that when the earth came into being that it was (and still is, mostly) a beautiful place…but also deadly. The earth harbors deadly diseases, deadly animals, and is a cruel environment for puny humans. Man/woman have fought, for a million years (out of over 4 billion) or more, to establish their control of the environment they live in. In all those years we endured unbelievable suffering. For hundreds of thousands of years, 50% or more of our children died before they were 2 years old. People that made it to adulthood probably only lived into their 30’s, or 40’s. Near starvation was probably the norm for humans up to, probably the 1600 to 1700’s.

The earth has in its lifetime supported well over 40 billion souls, and it’s only recently that there has been some security in people’s life. This, of course, does not count Africa, which is probably a lost continent.

Where was God when the Neanderthals were fighting to live on a European continent that was largely covered with ice, 75,000 years ago? Where was God when our ancestors were barely surviving by hunting and scavenging in the African veldt, over 100,000 years ago? All of the DNA evidence, both mitochondrial, and Ychromosomal, points to Africa as humanities original home.

The fact that humans and Neanderthals have inhabited this earth for hundreds of thousands of years is not even remotely questioned in the scientific community. It is accepted fact. All, and I repeat, All, of the available physical, natural evidence on this earth supports this fact. The fundamentalist and evangelical religions, mostly in the US, are the most numerous doubters of these facts, but it doesn’t really matter…they are true facts nonetheless.

I will repeat something I think I spoke of elsewhere on this blog. As our society and science advances on this earth, religion is more and more being disproved. God is only left in the gaps, and those gaps are quickly being filled with natural facts.

You wrote: I submit that man chose to obey the enemy (rather?) than God and the present world is the result of the same.
Also: I submit that the world is under the power of the Evil One and all the sickness and mysery that we see all around are his making.

I submit to you…the world we live in has…always…had both good and bad people. There are millions or billions of people alive today, that are every bit as good and loving as are a lot of Christians, and they believe in no God, or Buddha, or any of the Brahmin Gods, or a thousand and one others. Believing in a “God” does not guarantee goodness. Witness the Catholic priest scandal of recent times…and I’ll bet you it’s gone on for 2000 years, and all over the Christian world. I have some limited personal experience with people high in the Protestant community, that is not good, and not Christian. As to the “enemy” all I know is that I do not obey any “Devil or Satan.” Any misdeeds I do are strictly my own responsibility, and I KNOW that. The “devil does not make me do it.”

I’m reminded of (are you in the US?) the recently defrocked preacher in Colorado who preached on and on about the evil of homosexuality, all the while having a homosexual relationship with a male prostitute. “The devil took hold of me.” He says. “No, lust took hold of you.” I said. We are a society that tries to shift any responsibility for our wrong actions to others. The Devil or Satan is one of those “others.”

You wrote: I submit that God in Christ came as a man and redeemed the world and the process of redemption is going on now as people choose to believe God in Christ over against the devil.

I also submit that the myseries of sin will soon come to an end and a king will rule in righteousness and peace on this earth soon.

I submit to you that Paul invented that myth of original sin, and the early Catholic priesthood invented the “trinity.” Why does God say in one breath: the son inherits the sins of the father.” 2SA: 1,19 and IS 14: 21-22, and EX 20:5 and in another; the son does not inherent the sins of the father. DE 24:16, and EZ 18:20. Why does Jesus reference his Father in Heaven, and say that only the Father knows the time of the end. MT 10:32,33 and MT 7:21 and MT 24:36.

You said: Now I wish you would give me an explanation of the existence of the earth and mankind and their present predicament. Is it going to continue endlessly without a hope or what is to be expected for the future? Please give me in black and white as to what you believe about the given issues and your reasons for doing so. I will truly appreciate your reply and jokes apart, if you give me a better expanation than what I hold which can show practical results as I produced in my life, I will whole=heartedly accept your position. Waiting earnestly for your immediate reply. Thanks in advance!

I…don’t know the explanation of the existence of us…and I wish I had the answer to the predicament of man/woman kind. But, I also do not give up reasonable, logical thought processes and submit my brain to a magical creature of myth.

My own prediction for the future is: Who knows? I suspect that man will continue to strive on. There will probably be a revolution or two in the western world, millions more will die and be born. The wealthy and the politicians of the world will continue to F__k over the rest of us. Life will go on, as it has for over a million years. Whether the world/earth will continue to be healthy for life, is up in the air, but will probably continue to deteriorate; as it always has.

What you are doing in your life is obviously working for you. Why would I want to change that for you? I have a hard enough time being responsible and caring for my own wonderful family.

No, you continue to do what gives you joy, and occasionally we will chat and gently berate each other’s lifestyle or beliefs. Peace out to you.