God and mass genocide

[Votto]

I'm reading a book written by Dennis Prager on Exodus. He has some rather interesting points in the book, one of which, involves the notion of how one man or woman can stand up to seemingly overwhelming evil.

"Exodus 1:9 And Pharaoh said to the people......

Samson Raphael Hirsch, a nineteenth-century German Jewish thinker, pointed out it was the Egyptian leader, not the Egyptian people, who initiated the campaign against the Israelites that ultimately came to include attempted genocide. This is a profound insight. The terrible truth is individuals are capable of inflicting massive evils -- because indivicuals are fare more capable of doing great evil than great good. Were it not for Lenin, it is unlikely communism would have taken over Russia and ultimately the Soviet Union, where it enslaved over 150 million people and murdered tens of millions. The same holds true for Mao Zedong in China. This one man was responsible for the deaths of over 60 million Chinese men, women, and children. The same can be said for Kim ll-sung, who created the most totalitarian state in human history, North Korea. And were it not for Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust would almost certainly not have taken place.
Understandably, people are very uncomfortable with acknowledging how much evil one individual can perpetrate. That is one reason people concoct and believe conspiracy theories. The assassination of the American President John F. Kennedy in 1963 is one example. The overwhelming evidence is that one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, and American Communist, murdered Kennedy. But the assassination had so many destructive consequences and was so emotionally difficult for Americans to accept that many came to believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. They simply could not believe so much damage could be done by just one person -- a pathetic misfit, no less. Oswald proves the unhappy truth that you don't even have to be particularly talented to do great evil.

 

[Votto]

Exodus 1:9 .....Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us

Pharaoh refers to the Israelites using the rare phrase am b'nei Yisrael, which literally means "the nation of the children of Israel." There are two words for "nation" in biblical Hebrew --am and goy. Am refers to a nation defined by blood ties, a common ancestry, history, and language as opposed to goy, which refers to a nation defined as a political unit. In using "am," Pharaoh Is saying, in effect, the purity of the Egyptian people is being threatened by an alien presence, the children of Israel, who are of a different bloodline.

Throughout history, blood beliefs have been a great source of cruelty: Those who are not part of the right group are deemed worthy of persecution. The Torah, in contrast, did not place much values on blood ties. As Joseph Telushkin points out, Jacob is regarded as the third patriarch of the Jewish people, but his twin brother, Esau, who did not share Jacob's beliefs, is not even regarded as a Jew. In Exodus 19:6, God tells the Jews to be a holy goy "national unit", not a holy am "blod group or ethnicity".

The Hebrew Bible holds, and later Judaism held, that anyone of any blood can become a Jew -- just like the first Jew, Abraham, who was not born a Jew but became one late in life. Likewise, centuries later, Ruth, a Moabite woman, becomes a Jew, and subsequently becomes the ancestor of Israel's great King David, the man from whom, according to Jewish and Christian tradition, the Messiah will descend.

 

[Votto]

Exodus 1:11 So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor......

The Torah indicates the Egyptians four times in the next four verses:
The Egyptians set taskmasters over the Israelites (verse 11)
The Egyptian ruthlessly imposed hardships on them (verse 13)
They make them perform harsh labors (verse 14)
They make life bitter for them (verse 14)
The Torah is emphasizing the collective guilt on the Egyptians. Even though it is Pharaoh who initiates the slavery and annihilation campaign, the Egyptian people are the ones who execute it. Individuals initiate mass evil, but they need collaboration of many people to carry it out. This explains the collective national punishment of the Egyptian people will experience.

 

[JoeB131]

'm reading a book written by Dennis Prager on Exodus.

We could have probably stopped the discussion right there.

Okay, here's the thing. There is no evidence the Hebrews ever lived in Egypt. None. And we've dug up Egypt pretty thoroughly.

But on to the ravings of Lunatic Prager...

If you really want to blame Pharoah for what the Egyptians did to Hebrews who never lived there, then why does Yahweh murder all the children?

I want to emphasize this again... God's go to plan is to kill every first born child in Egypt to terrorize the Egyptians into letting the Hebrews go.

Why not just have Pharoah drop dead. If the next guy doesn't fix the problem, he drops dead... Eventually, you'd get to a guy who'd figure it out.

 

[Votto]

Exodus 1:11 .......and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Ramamses.

Exodus 1:12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.
1:13 The Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites.

Most Egyptians were not as evil as Pharaoh, just as most Germans in the 1930's and 1940's were not as evil as Hitler. There are relatively few truly evil people in the world However, you don't need a great number of truly evil people to carry out massive evil. You only need:
1) Ordinary people who have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated by the truly evil:
2) People who benefit from the evil (to cite two obvious examples, during WW2, not only were 6 million Jews murdered, but their assets were stolen as well; and these assets enriched large numbers of Europeans;
3) A paucity of courageous good people
I am convinced courage is the rarest of all good traits. There are far more kind and honest people than there are courageous people. Unfortunately, however, in the battle against good and evil, all the good traits in the world amount to little when not accompanied by courage. Two verses later, the Torah depicts precisely this trait -- courage.

 

[Votto]

Exodus 1:15 The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives,

The Torah emphasizes Pharaoh's direct order to the midwives to highlight their courage in defying his edict. The meaning of the Hebrew phrase m'yaldot ha'ivriyot is ambiguous; it may be translated either as "the Hebrew midwives" (meaning the midwives were Hebrews), or as "midwives of the Hebrews" (meaning the midwives could have been of any nationality). But there are several clues in the next text (which shall be noted) that clearly suggest that the woman were not Hebrews. The most obvious clue, however, is not rooted in the text but in common sense: Given that Pharaoh intended to murder every male Hebrew baby, it is unreasonable to expect he would rely on Hebrew women to murder their own

 

[Votto]

Exodus 1:15 .....one of whom was named Siphrah and the other Puah,

In listing the names of the heroic midwives, the Torah is making a powerful moral point. We tend to remember the names of villains, but not of the truly good. The Torah wants to correct that and to ensure the names of the moral heroes are also remembered. Thus, Shifrah and Pauh are mentioned by name, yet the Torah never mentions the name of the evil Pharaoh. To this day the names of two lowly midwives are better known than the name of the demigod Pharaoh. Moreover, Shifrah remains a common name for Jewish girls.

Exodus 1:16 saying, "When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birth stool: if it is a boy, kill him, if it is a girl, let her live"
1:17 The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.

The Torah does not say the midwives saved the babies because they could not bear to harm them, nor does it say the midwives saved the Hebrew babies because they loved God. They saved the babies because "they feared God".

Fear of God---when that God is the moral God of the Torah, the God of the Ten Commandments, the God Who commanded, "Love your neighbor as yourself"----is necessary to make a society of moral individuals. Of coarse, there are moral atheists, just as there were moral pagans, and moral individuals in even the worst cultures. But you cannot build a good world with a handful of individuals who happen to be good people. You need a universal moral code from a universal God who is the source of that moral code, and this God must judge all people accordingly. Consequently, "fear of God" is as inevitable as it is necessary. If God judges how moral we are, of course there will be fear of Him---just as there is of a human judge. Consequently, if God does not judge people, there is no reason to fear Him.
There is another important moral aspect to the fear of God. People fear those who are most powerful than they are. Therefore, the only way not to fear powerful people is to fear God. Thus, in the instance recorded here, those who feared God saved the Hebrew babies, while those who feared Pharaoh helped kill the Hebrew babies.
Remember, it was not love of God that prompted the midwives' moral heroism. In our time, many people invoke the commandments to love God but ignore or even disparage the commandment to fear God. While many God-believers will engage in heroic self-sacrifice out of love of God, most God-believers are moral on day-to-day basis because they believe they will be judged by God. That is why, for example, in traditional Western societies, the finest people were routinely described as "God-fearing", not "God-loving".
It was the midwives' fear of God that liberated them from the fear of the Egyptian tyrant. This point is often overlooked: Fear of God is a liberating emotion, freeing one from a disabling fear of evil, powerful people. This needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.
This fear is what gave the midwives the strength to carry out what is, as far as we know, the first recorded act of civil disobedience in history. Indeed, fear (and sometimes love) of God explains why a disproportionately high number of dissidents in totalitarian societies have been believers in God. When I visited the Soviet Union in 1969, I smuggled out a Soviet Jewish dissident song whose lyrics included the words, "I fear no one except God, the only one"
Those words were all the more remarkable in that the vast majority of Soviet Jewish dissidents were not religious. But they understood the simple moral and logical fact that if one "fears no one except God," one can muster the courage not to fear a totalitarian state. And these simple words also explain why totalitarian states like the Soviet Union so feared and fought against belief in God. Because belief in God posits there is something higher than the Party, it constitutes a fatal threat to secular totalitarian societies (that's why North Koreans have been horribly punished for owning a Bible)
In the Torah, the term "fear of God" is generally used when describing non-Jews. For example, when Abraham worries Sarah will be mistreated in Gerar, he explains: "there is no fear of God in this place" Thus, the use of this phrase to account for the midwives' behavior provides yet another indication that the midwives were likely not Hebrews.
Finally, it is important to point out that the Torah's account of the moral heroism of the midwives is part of a pattern present throughout the opening chapters of Exodus--the depiction of both non-Jews and women as moral heroes. This is another of the many examples of the Torah's uniqueness. Other holy books rarely portrayed either people of other nations, other religions, or women----let alone women of other nations and religions--as the moral heroes of their epic stories. This unique aspect of the Torah--one of so many examples of such--is among the many reasons why I do not regard the Torah as man-made.

 

[JoeB131]

Most Egyptians were not as evil as Pharaoh, just as most Germans in the 1930's and 1940's were not as evil as Hitler. There are relatively few truly evil people in the world However, you don't need a great number of truly evil people to carry out massive evil. You only need:
1) Ordinary people who have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated by the truly evil:
2) People who benefit from the evil (to cite two obvious examples, during WW2, not only were 6 million Jews murdered, but their assets were stolen as well; and these assets enriched large numbers of Europeans;
3) A paucity of courageous good people

again, the Hebrews never lived in Egypt.

But let's actually look at the Bible Story. The Egyptians took in Jacob and his family. and then they had a truly unbelievable reproduction rate to the point where there were hundreds of thousands of them in a few generations. They weren't slaves, and in fact, the first thing they do when they leave Egypt is set up a bunch of laws making slavery okay.

Here was the thing. IN the story, Yahweh (I refuse to call him "God") hardens Pharoah's heart so he won't let the Hebrews go, so God has an excuse to inflict all these horrible plagues on the Egyptian people (which again, not one Egyptian chronicler saw fit to write about, even though they were a lot more literate than the Hebrews)

So doesn't that make Yahweh responsible for all the horrible stuff that happens?

 

[JoeB131]

Hey, I think we have another Political Chick who fills the thread with ramblings and doesn't really address any points.

 

[Votto]

Most Egyptians were not as evil as Pharaoh, just as most Germans in the 1930's and 1940's were not as evil as Hitler. There are relatively few truly evil people in the world However, you don't need a great number of truly evil people to carry out massive evil. You only need:
1) Ordinary people who have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated by the truly evil:
2) People who benefit from the evil (to cite two obvious examples, during WW2, not only were 6 million Jews murdered, but their assets were stolen as well; and these assets enriched large numbers of Europeans;
3) A paucity of courageous good people

again, the Hebrews never lived in Egypt.

But let's actually look at the Bible Story. The Egyptians took in Jacob and his family. and then they had a truly unbelievable reproduction rate to the point where there were hundreds of thousands of them in a few generations. They weren't slaves, and in fact, the first thing they do when they leave Egypt is set up a bunch of laws making slavery okay.

Here was the thing. IN the story, Yahweh (I refuse to call him "God") hardens Pharoah's heart so he won't let the Hebrews go, so God has an excuse to inflict all these horrible plagues on the Egyptian people (which again, not one Egyptian chronicler saw fit to write about, even though they were a lot more literate than the Hebrews)

So doesn't that make Yahweh responsible for all the horrible stuff that happens?

My attempt here is to explore the notion that being God fearing is necessary to stop mass genocide, not to prove or disprove the Israelite Exodus.

However, if you are interested, this is an article that deals with evidence that they did, in fact, live in Egypt.

Filmmaker Searches for Proof of Biblical Exodus

The issue is, Exodus mentions Ramsey's, thus the assumption was that they were there in the time of Ramseys after the time of that Pharaoh. As a result, this has been the time line for the search. However, there is evidence of them existing in the land prior to Ramseys, however, this is dismissed because the assumption it could not have been.

What is not considered, however, is the possibility that the time line for the Exodus was well before Ramseys, but the story was recorded after the time of Ramsey's, thus his name is included in the text.

 

[Votto]

In South America, there has been uncovered another mass genocide of young children.

Remains of 140 Children Who Had Their Hearts Ripped Out Suggests Largest Child Sacrifice Event in History

In fact, child sacrifice was a common ancient religious practice. It was the Torah that first stood up to this practice and declared it immoral.

When we read the story of Abraham being told by God to bring his son to a mountain top to sacrifice him, the opposite conclusion is often reached by people. Why would God do such a thing? However, if you take the story in the context of common ancient religious practice, the message is clear. God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son after telling him to sacrifice him. It was to explain to those ancient people that the God of the Torah was not about child sacrifice. In fact, child sacrifice was one of the main reasons God drove out the Canaanites from the land due to them sacrificing their children to the god Molech.

 

[JoeB131]

My attempt here is to explore the notion that being God fearing is necessary to stop mass genocide, not to prove or disprove the Israelite Exodus.

Um, yeah, guy, well, you see, you have to prove something happened before you can say whether it resulted in something or not.

More to the point, "God Fearing" people have done all sorts of genocides.

The Nazis wore belt buckles that said, Gott mitt uns" that means "God's with Us"

The British and Americans were totally God fearing when they exterminated native Americans and Aboriginal Australians.

In africa right now, you have religious nuts killing each other.

But you'll whine about how really bad the Russian and Chinese civil wars were, because you read how bad atheists are in some Bircher propaganda.

The issue is, Exodus mentions Ramsey's, thus the assumption was that they were there in the time of Ramseys after the time of that Pharaoh. As a result, this has been the time line for the search. However, there is evidence of them existing in the land prior to Ramseys, however, this is dismissed because the assumption it could not have been.

Um, no. The Bible NEVER mentions a specific Pharaoh by name in Exodus. Later writers and movie makers assumed it was Rameses II, because he was one of the cooler Pharaohs,and if you are going to make something up, you might as well go with the top name.

What is not considered, however, is the possibility that the time line for the Exodus was well before Ramseys, but the story was recorded after the time of Ramsey's, thus his name is included in the text.

Except that there is no specific Pharaoh mentioned in either Genesis or Exodus. Nor is there a date given for these events.

More likely, you had a shitty little bunch of people who had a Temple to their Sky pixie that was smaller than a barn, who decided that they had to show their sky pixie was tougher than the Sky Pixie from the large empire next door which had sprawling temple complexes.

Sadly, this became the backstory for one religion, and nobody questioned it for thousands of years, even the parts about talking snakes and donkeys.

 

[Votto]

My attempt here is to explore the notion that being God fearing is necessary to stop mass genocide, not to prove or disprove the Israelite Exodus.

Um, yeah, guy, well, you see, you have to prove something happened before you can say whether it resulted in something or not.

More to the point, "God Fearing" people have done all sorts of genocides.

The Nazis wore belt buckles that said, Gott mitt uns" that means "God's with Us"

The British and Americans were totally God fearing when they exterminated native Americans and Aboriginal Australians.

In africa right now, you have religious nuts killing each other.

But you'll whine about how really bad the Russian and Chinese civil wars were, because you read how bad atheists are in some Bircher propaganda.

The issue is, Exodus mentions Ramsey's, thus the assumption was that they were there in the time of Ramseys after the time of that Pharaoh. As a result, this has been the time line for the search. However, there is evidence of them existing in the land prior to Ramseys, however, this is dismissed because the assumption it could not have been.

Um, no. The Bible NEVER mentions a specific Pharaoh by name in Exodus. Later writers and movie makers assumed it was Rameses II, because he was one of the cooler Pharaohs,and if you are going to make something up, you might as well go with the top name.

What is not considered, however, is the possibility that the time line for the Exodus was well before Ramseys, but the story was recorded after the time of Ramsey's, thus his name is included in the text.

Except that there is no specific Pharaoh mentioned in either Genesis or Exodus. Nor is there a date given for these events.

More likely, you had a shitty little bunch of people who had a Temple to their Sky pixie that was smaller than a barn, who decided that they had to show their sky pixie was tougher than the Sky Pixie from the large empire next door which had sprawling temple complexes.

Sadly, this became the backstory for one religion, and nobody questioned it for thousands of years, even the parts about talking snakes and donkeys.

Here is where Ramseys is mentioned in the Bible.

Exodus 1:11 So the Egyptians put slave drivers over them to crush their spirits with hard labor. The Israelites built the cities of Pithom and Rameses to serve as supply centers for the king.

The assumption is that the city was named after the known Pharaoh of Egypt. The further assumption is that the Biblical account of the Exodus must, therefore, be during or after the time of the Pharaoh.

As for genocide and religion, the one man who subverted the Christian faith was Constantine. He was a pagan who adopted the fledgling religious faith for political purposes. He was not even a Christian, although, rumor has it he converted on his death bed.

What later followed was horrific. You had mass oppression of the Jewish people, Inquisitions, Crusades, etc. By in large the people were kept ignorant about the Bible and were told by the church to buy their salvation, something Martin Luther later stood against because it was not scriptural. The invention of printed text and the people educated about the Bible helped change all that.

As for the Indians being rounded up and killed, you assume that these were "Christians". Why is it when discussing the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, people like you swear up and down that the US was not founded as a Christian nation, that it was, in fact, a secular nation. However, when it comes to killing Indians all of a sudden they become Bible thumpers?

It's the same exact reasoning you Left wingers try to use by telling us that Trump is Hitler in one rally, but then say to give up your guns to the government in another rally.

Really? Give your guns to Hitler?

LMAO!

 

[JoeB131]

Here is where Ramseys is mentioned in the Bible.

Exodus 1:11 So the Egyptians put slave drivers over them to crush their spirits with hard labor. The Israelites built the cities of Pithom and Rameses to serve as supply centers for the king.

The assumption is that the city was named after the known Pharaoh of Egypt. The further assumption is that the Biblical account of the Exodus must, therefore, be during or after the time of the Pharaoh.

Well, that was the name of a place, not a person. Besides the fact that there were NINE Pharaohs named Rameses,

As for genocide and religion, the one man who subverted the Christian faith was Constantine. He was a pagan who adopted the fledgling religious faith for political purposes. He was not even a Christian, although, rumor has it he converted on his death bed.

What later followed was horrific. You had mass oppression of the Jewish people, Inquisitions, Crusades, etc. By in large the people were kept ignorant and were told by the church to buy their salvation, something Martin Luther later stood against because it was not scriptural. The invention of printed text and the people educated about the Bible helped change all that.

okay, a couple of things here. The first is that you engage in the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, of saying that when a crime is committed by your group, they aren't showing the values of your group.

Secondly, the Protestant Reformation probably made things worse. Ever hear of a little something called the "Thirty Years War", where Catholics and Protestants went around killing each other over Europe because of minor theological disagreements like transubstantiation?

It was the bloodiest war in history until WWI came along.

As for the Indians being rounded up and killed, you assume that these were "Christians". Why is it when discussing the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, people like you swear up and down that the US was not founded as a Christian nation, that it was, in fact, a secular nation. However, when it comes to killing Indians all of a sudden they become Bible thumpers?

Because those are two separate things. Regardless of what the Founders believed, some of them too intelligent to believe in Bronze Age Fairy Tales about Talking Snakes) the people who genocided the Native Americans before and after the American Revolution certainly did believe in some Jesus.

 

[hobelim]

Sadly, this became the backstory for one religion, and nobody questioned it for thousands of years, even the parts about talking snakes and donkeys.

lol ... Has anyone ever searched for archeological evidence to confirm the story of the boy who cried wolf?

I never heard someone who read the story of the three pigs question how wolves could talk or how pigs could build houses. I never heard anyone demand evidence that bears eat porridge.

Not even a child..



You could start a new thread and be the first!


You can call it... Talking pigs are for the birds, fairy tales are lies...or, I'm too smart to believe in the big bad wolf.

lol


.

 

[JoeB131]

Sadly, this became the backstory for one religion, and nobody questioned it for thousands of years, even the parts about talking snakes and donkeys.

lol ... Has anyone ever searched for archeological evidence to confirm the story of the boy who cried wolf?

I never heard someone who read the story of the three pigs question how wolves could talk or how pigs could build houses. I never heard anyone demand evidence that bears eat porridge.

Not even a child..

You could start a new thread and be the first!

You can call it... Talking pigs are for the birds, fairy tales are lies...or, I'm too smart to believe in the big bad wolf.

.

Naw, we don't have people telling folks what kind of birth control they should use or who they can marry because of actual fairy tales.

We do have that used as an excuse for these things with the BIble.

"You can't have an abortion... the bible says so!"

 

[hobelim]

Sadly, this became the backstory for one religion, and nobody questioned it for thousands of years, even the parts about talking snakes and donkeys.

lol ... Has anyone ever searched for archeological evidence to confirm the story of the boy who cried wolf?

I never heard someone who read the story of the three pigs question how wolves could talk or how pigs could build houses. I never heard anyone demand evidence that bears eat porridge.

Not even a child..

You could start a new thread and be the first!

You can call it... Talking pigs are for the birds, fairy tales are lies...or, I'm too smart to believe in the big bad wolf.

.

Naw, we don't have people telling folks what kind of birth control they should use or who they can marry because of actual fairy tales.

We do have that used as an excuse for these things with the BIble.

"You can't have an abortion... the bible says so!"

The talking serpent is a metaphor for a human archetype that misrepresents the will of God.. There never has been any other talking serpent in existence on earth. Ask a scientist.

Why not argue the veracity of the claims they make on their terms? If they say that abortion is murder, it should say so in the bible. Right?

The bible is the word of God. Right?

According to Moses and Jesus "to murder" is to teach people to set aside the law of God. I can even cite many chapters and verses that confirm this. Only a talking serpent would do this according to the fairy tale.

That would make every christian who ever sent their kids to sunday school where they are taught to worship a human being by a talking serpent a murderer who aborted the life of their own children who were already born.


It says so in the bible so I believe.


They want to prosecute people for murder based on the teaching of the Bible with Jesus as the ultimate authority??

Let them have their way.

 

[Votto]

Here is where Ramseys is mentioned in the Bible.

Exodus 1:11 So the Egyptians put slave drivers over them to crush their spirits with hard labor. The Israelites built the cities of Pithom and Rameses to serve as supply centers for the king.

The assumption is that the city was named after the known Pharaoh of Egypt. The further assumption is that the Biblical account of the Exodus must, therefore, be during or after the time of the Pharaoh.

Well, that was the name of a place, not a person. Besides the fact that there were NINE Pharaohs named Rameses,

As for genocide and religion, the one man who subverted the Christian faith was Constantine. He was a pagan who adopted the fledgling religious faith for political purposes. He was not even a Christian, although, rumor has it he converted on his death bed.

What later followed was horrific. You had mass oppression of the Jewish people, Inquisitions, Crusades, etc. By in large the people were kept ignorant and were told by the church to buy their salvation, something Martin Luther later stood against because it was not scriptural. The invention of printed text and the people educated about the Bible helped change all that.

okay, a couple of things here. The first is that you engage in the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, of saying that when a crime is committed by your group, they aren't showing the values of your group.

View attachment 190414

Secondly, the Protestant Reformation probably made things worse. Ever hear of a little something called the "Thirty Years War", where Catholics and Protestants went around killing each other over Europe because of minor theological disagreements like transubstantiation?

It was the bloodiest war in history until WWI came along.

As for the Indians being rounded up and killed, you assume that these were "Christians". Why is it when discussing the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, people like you swear up and down that the US was not founded as a Christian nation, that it was, in fact, a secular nation. However, when it comes to killing Indians all of a sudden they become Bible thumpers?

Because those are two separate things. Regardless of what the Founders believed, some of them too intelligent to believe in Bronze Age Fairy Tales about Talking Snakes) the people who genocided the Native Americans before and after the American Revolution certainly did believe in some Jesus.

You dope, even the Hebrew nation began to sacrifice their children to the god Molech once they lost fear of God and began to worship pagan idols. God then judged them and cast them out of the land.

And your point is?

 

[Votto]

Sadly, this became the backstory for one religion, and nobody questioned it for thousands of years, even the parts about talking snakes and donkeys.

lol ... Has anyone ever searched for archeological evidence to confirm the story of the boy who cried wolf?

I never heard someone who read the story of the three pigs question how wolves could talk or how pigs could build houses. I never heard anyone demand evidence that bears eat porridge.

Not even a child..

You could start a new thread and be the first!

You can call it... Talking pigs are for the birds, fairy tales are lies...or, I'm too smart to believe in the big bad wolf.

.

Naw, we don't have people telling folks what kind of birth control they should use or who they can marry because of actual fairy tales.

We do have that used as an excuse for these things with the BIble.

"You can't have an abortion... the bible says so!"

It's funny you should mention abortion. As I have pointed out, ancient religions used to routinely sacrifice their children to the gods.

And why did they do it? They did it for better crops, better fertility, a win in battle. Anything to enhance their daily lives.

Conversely, in today's world the average person has an abortion due to financial concerns.

The more times change, the more they stay the same.

 

[JoeB131]

You dope, even the Hebrew nation began to sacrifice their children to the god Molech once they lost fear of God and began to worship pagan idols. God then judged them and cast them out of the land.

And your point is?

That we don't have the side of Moloch's worshippers to know if any of that actually happened.

Kind of like if Hitler had killed all the Jews, all the Nazi Propaganda would be considered true today.

It's funny you should mention abortion. As I have pointed out, ancient religions used to routinely sacrifice their children to the gods.

No, they probably didn't. A more accurate statement would be "People claimed the OTHER guy's religion sacrificed children to their gods". Because that's what you do with religious propaganda... you make claims that the other guy is evil.

Conversely, in today's world the average person has an abortion due to financial concerns.

Um, yeah. Gee, it's too bad we don't make sure people get living wages. Oh, wait, no, we can't do that. Abortions are probably cheaper.