Thread: Is it possible for us as men to have a discussion on God

Originally Posted by Bruno

Ok let's assume for a moment that JC and Moses existed. I have no specific reason to doubt that.

Moses leads his people away, there has been a drought and the river is partially dry. Dry enough to make it across. Sometime later the pharaoh decides he wants those escapees back, and -having a substantial distance to make up- mounts horses and chariots, and sets off.
Horses and chariots get stuck in the swamp/mud, some people die in the ensuing chaos.
They decide to call it a day and return home, determined to come back when they are better prepared.
Meanwhile, the water is coming back so after 2 weeks, the pharaoh decides to cut his losses.

Have you ever doen the experiment where 10 persons sit in a circle, and the first one whispers something to the second, the second to the third, and by the time the tenth person says out loud what he heard, it has nothing to do with what the first person said?
Do you also know that eye witness reports are the most unreliable in a court case as solid proof?

Now lets inject 50 years of telling the previous story by the campfire before it is written down. It then gets transcribed and translated at least a dozen times before the story finally finds its way to the texts that the OT as we know it was compiled from.

From a rather bland story we end up with magic. The bible (OT and NT) are books, compiled by people with a strong bias, including texts that have been based on decades or centuries of hearsay and several translations and transcriptions. And the texts that didn't meet the bias were discarded and destroyed, further coloring the final story.

So assuming that the bible is a factual description of events is unrealistic, and there is not real reason to believe that the sea parted the exact moment Moses raised his arms, and that the water subsequently rushed back to swallow the pharaoh like that scene in Lord of the Rings where the nazgul are wiped away when Arwen summons the water.

Other evidence to support such conclusions with regards to the passing down of folk tails are commonalities with regards to various religions throughout time, a prime example is the virgin birth, the vast majority of religions contain a virgin birth. The ancients seem to have a real thing for virgin births back in the day, amazingly they don't seem to happen now that we have a scientific understanding of reproduction.