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Armoth: I apologize for offending, but it is silly, from my perspective, how easily you will dismiss the claims of other traditions, while expecting me to see the validity of yours.
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I read it. I don't see what separating the groups does. Christianity and Islam relies on the truth of Judaism. They believe that Jesus and Mohamed are Jewish prophets. Their religions both have to harmonize with Judaism. They contend with and affirm the mass revelation.
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I don't think any of them have it right, so pointing out that they use the same book isn't very compelling to me.
You said that the point of mass revelation is that it makes more sense than the alternative.
The alternative I would give is that someone made it up some time after the fact, and pretended that it had always been that way.
We have always been at war with East Asia. You only have to fool people for one generation and pretty soon nobody is around who knows any different.
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quote:Rakeesh: Thanks for reminding me to go back to ignoring your tired bs.
OK, to recap:
I ask a question, you fail to answer, I point it out. That's 'tired BS' to you. Gotcha. I note with a total lack of surprise that you have still failed to provide evidence that religion cannot be believed in responsibly, that it is as dangerous and universally harmful as crystal meth. It doesn't appear to much matter if you ignore me or not-either way, you don't respond to challenges to make your own statements live up to your own purported standards.
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Armoth, what I don't understand is why you think it would be so hard for a small tribe of people to simply decide to lie to their kids. After all, you essentially believe that's what every other religion on Earth has done, to one degree or another.
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A better question is, "Why do you think it would be so hard for a small tribe of people to be mistaken about something, and tell that mistake to their children as the truth?" The answer, of course, is that it would not be hard at all. It happens all the time.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I read it. I don't see what separating the groups does. Christianity and Islam relies on the truth of Judaism. They believe that Jesus and Mohamed are Jewish prophets. Their religions both have to harmonize with Judaism. They contend with and affirm the mass revelation.
And yet, from your perspective, they have gone on and added fairy tales (divinity of Jesus, etc) to it to create an entirely new religion which then subsequently entirely overshadowed yours. they now use this 'super strong proof' of incorrect religions and false gods, and they didn't even have to be the religious group that made the claim in the first place.
Get what's happening? From your perspective, a religious group is taking a claim about something which apparently happened many generations before, and is co-opting it to teach a false religion. Then, other religions with mass revelations are, simply, ignored as false (records in the Heimskringla, etc).
in addition, the platform you are working on, the 'explanation' of the 'validity' of the mass revelation argument, opens up and acts as central to its argument a number of claims which are completely false! The whole thing is a litany of fallacious thinking and completely historically inaccurate claims. Are people supposed to give credence to the mass revelation argument because the Jews present a more audacious easily potentially fabricated claim than other religions apparently do?
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: A claim being potentially mistaken doesn't imply we should just assume it is mistaken.
In the link armoth provides, the argument for how the mass revelation is proof of the truth of judaism is accompanied by questions like this.
quote:How could such an event have occurred without anybody ever having mentioned it?
and
quote: How could such a claim ever be accepted if it did not occur?
the answers as to how this could easily find itself accepted are numerous and easily more plausible than the proposed statement that the 'evidence' is 'too strong' to be anything other than proof of the jewish faith being real.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I read it. I don't see what separating the groups does. Christianity and Islam relies on the truth of Judaism. They believe that Jesus and Mohamed are Jewish prophets. Their religions both have to harmonize with Judaism. They contend with and affirm the mass revelation.
I am no sure this is true in the way you seem to mean it. That Jesus was Jewish does not mean that I, as a Christian, need to believe the same things about the Hebrew Scriptures that a modern Jew might. It makes no difference to me if Abraham was a real person or a composite of people or a didactic myth.
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The issue with somebody making it up after the fact is that the claim of mass revelation is too big to plausibly spread. I need a story for the first dude who began to spread Judaism in your alt theory. It's a lot easier to convince someone God spoke to you, especially if you're very charismatic.
It's important to note that Christians and Islam were not born in a vacuum. They had realities to contend with - and that reality was the popularity of Judaism in their time. That's not a proof, something's popularity, however, it made it a lot easier for them to accept the fact that God was speaking to one man - the fact that God speaks to mankind was something that was already established in their time as convincing.
Judaism is founded on the mass revelation - not one man. You have to consider how HARD it is to convince people that it happened.
It was not a "small tribe" the text itself that you say they tried to get people adopt said that at least 600K men between 20-60 were present at the mass revelation, and scholars estimate that it amounted to something close to two million people. The claim that that many people heard the mass revelation when you walk up to a new small tribe and convince them of something? It's pretty huge. I don't think that the answers to how "such a claim" could be accepted are "numerous and easily more plausible" and I hope that you understand why I think that the mass revelation is easily distinguishable from Zeus and others.
It should further be noted that the obligations of the Torah are often ridiculous. Jews cannot work the land once in every seven years. They cannot wear wool and linen together. In addition to many other stringent commandments that have been dropped by Christianity, probably because it would have been too difficult to get people to accept, Judaism has to deal with explaining to people who were never there that a giant mass revelation happened and they never heard about it before.
I find that when dealing with these claims, people are very happy to ignore history or the gravity of previous acceptance of claims. I think the chain back to Mohamed or Jesus is meaningless because I find the fundamental flaws in their first moments. But Judaism has no fundamental flaw in the first moment (unless someone can demonstrate a method of their origination more plausible than the truth of the claim), so the chain back to the first moment becomes very powerful.
Indeed, one of books of the Talmud begins by delineating who was the leader at every generation and who was the "master of tradition" in that generation. Maimonides in his principal work on Jewish law begins his book by giving the list himself - presumably because the validity of any truth we allege can only be as powerful as the previous link in the chain. Furthermore, knowledge of each member of the chain makes it that much harder to give an alternative theory to how Judaism was accepted. There is no foggy age - Whatever period Judaism was "made up" in would have to explain everything that was alleged to have happen up until that point in the chain to the next person in the chain.
Lastly, Samp - the fact that Islam and Christianity mistakenly believe what they believe because they rely on the mass revelation does not undermine the mass revelation, it strengthens it. Christianity and Islam have had to incorporate Judaism into their religions because they had no way around it. The flaw in both of their reasonings has a lot more to do with ignoring doctrine than ignorning revelation.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I read it. I don't see what separating the groups does. Christianity and Islam relies on the truth of Judaism. They believe that Jesus and Mohamed are Jewish prophets. Their religions both have to harmonize with Judaism. They contend with and affirm the mass revelation.
I am no sure this is true in the way you seem to mean it. That Jesus was Jewish does not mean that I, as a Christian, need to believe the same things about the Hebrew Scriptures that a modern Jew might. It makes no difference to me if Abraham was a real person or a composite of people or a didactic myth.
Maybe not to you. I am under the impression that you are a unique Christian in your beliefs.
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Btw, whether or not you agree with me, I'd encourage you to keep all this in mind should you ever choose to re-read the Hebrew Bible. A lot of verses stress that miracles are to be transmitted, and when the people complain that God talking to them terrifies them so much, Moses explains that God is only speaking to them so that they should know Him and for Him to prove Himself to them, so that they believe in him and not sin.
quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I read it. I don't see what separating the groups does. Christianity and Islam relies on the truth of Judaism. They believe that Jesus and Mohamed are Jewish prophets. Their religions both have to harmonize with Judaism. They contend with and affirm the mass revelation.
I am no sure this is true in the way you seem to mean it. That Jesus was Jewish does not mean that I, as a Christian, need to believe the same things about the Hebrew Scriptures that a modern Jew might. It makes no difference to me if Abraham was a real person or a composite of people or a didactic myth.
Maybe not to you. I am under the impression that you are a unique Christian in your beliefs.
I am a special snowflake but hardly unique except to the extent that each of us is unique in our beliefs.
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The issue with somebody making it up after the fact is that the claim of mass revelation is too big to plausibly spread. I need a story for the first dude who began to spread Judaism in your alt theory. It's a lot easier to convince someone God spoke to you, especially if you're very charismatic.
It's important to note that Christians and Islam were not born in a vacuum. They had realities to contend with - and that reality was the popularity of Judaism in their time. That's not a proof, something's popularity, however, it made it a lot easier for them to accept the fact that God was speaking to one man - the fact that God speaks to mankind was something that was already established in their time as convincing.
Judaism is founded on the mass revelation - not one man. You have to consider how HARD it is to convince people that it happened.
It really appears as though you're contradicting yourself here. On the one hand, it's very hard to convince people, on the other hand, it's quite a lot easier if you're charismatic. Not that I grant the premise, though, that it's hard to convince people of things unless they're true. That happens all the time. For the popular modern comparison, see Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda as an example.
As for Judaism's popularity, if I'm not mistaken, Judaism has never been more, numerically speaking, than a minority belief. A small minority when looked at from the perspective of the whole population.
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Christianity dropped Jewish law through justification by grace arguments from Saint Paul. Read Paul's letter to the Galatians. Being an Agnostic in a Catholic university can be fun as I am forced to take theology courses for my general eds, and due to that wonderful education I see some glaring holes in some of the arguments here.
For one, there are many ways to look at scripture and revelation. Islam certainly doesn't "need" Judaism as far as the truth of scripture as Muslims believe that God has revealed the truth to various peoples at various times in history. Islam is actually a universal religion as technically if you worship "God" they believe that you are worshipping "Allah." There are certainly many parts of their tradition that rely on the Judaic and Christian traditions, but the core beliefs really are not that tightly tied into it at all.
Most Christians do not believe in a fundamental interpretation of the Bible. Catholics take a middle view of inspiration and believe that word for word the Bible is not fundamental truth, and that revelation comes from tradition as well. What that basically means is that the philosophies of different thinkers, such as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, end up becoming part of doctrine/"truth". All I mean by saying that is Christianity does not require 100% accuracy in describing historical events or physical laws to still be a "true" religion.
A lot of monotheism can be seen as a return to animist roots, that is simply respecting the forces that inhabit everything. That is, the physical world. Although I am rather sure all of the monotheist traditions would argue with me on that point, I still think its true.
That and the whole notion of divine revelation is the idea that it cannot be reached by rational thought and that rational thought should be used to extrapolate ideas from divine revelation.
In a nutshell, saying that some part of the Bible is not 100% or even that it contradicts itself does not go so far as to prove the belief system false.
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Rakeesh - there is no contradiction. It is easy to convince people of something small. That God spoke to one person. It is very difficult to explain something huge - that God spoke to an entire nation, who are by the way are your ancestors, and here's a whole lot of crazy religious law that you have to adhere to.
Black Fox - I'm not sure what your post is coming to say. That Christianity and Islam don't rely on the Mass Revelation?
Christianity certainly seems to have a concept of an evolving truth, and because of that, it is a lot more fluid as to what people nowadays believe or don't believe. But Christianity in its original form relied on Judaism.
Maybe that can be explored further - I'd be curious to know the official position of the Catholic Church or other major Churches on whether or not they believe the mass revelation occurred.
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quote:Rakeesh - there is no contradiction. It is easy to convince people of something small. That God spoke to one person. It is very difficult to explain something huge - that God spoke to an entire nation, who are by the way are your ancestors, and here's a whole lot of crazy religious law that you have to adhere to.
People get entire nations to believe things all the time, things that might not be true. Tens of millions more people today, for example, believe in a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda than ever had to be convinced of a mass revelation millenia ago. I'm not likening the two except to point out that your notion, that people cannot be convinced that something like a mass revelation happened unless it actually happened, is false. It's just patently false, Amroth.
It would be very difficult for you or I to convince people of such a thing. Very difficult, impossible in fact, for most people. But it can be done by some people. That's just a fact. We see it happen all the time, and down throughout history. People can be convinced of things that are wrong. Even huge things, sometimes even especially huge things.
Second, of course, you're omitting some of the packaging. It wasn't just 'some crazy religious law', it was 'some crazy religious laws' that must be abided by because you are God's chosen people. That is not quite as tough a sell. How many people could read, back when huge groups of people were being persuaded of these things? How many people really had to be convinced? The people who were convinced, how were they convinced? How accurate are our records on the answers to these questions, where we even have them?
The answer to that last question is the most important of all, actually, and it leads me to conclude that the issue is not nearly the slam dunk you're portraying.
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quote:Lastly, Samp - the fact that Islam and Christianity mistakenly believe what they believe because they rely on the mass revelation does not undermine the mass revelation, it strengthens it. Christianity and Islam have had to incorporate Judaism into their religions because they had no way around it.
It can't strengthen it when it is a classic example of incorporation of earlier myths. it's not about 'having no way around it,' its about how myths constantly change and need no underlying factual basis. It all completely ties in to how what we know about myths and human gullibility (to say the least of how people were back then in a world devoid of mass media) voids the idea that the mass revelation is somehow required to be a plausible, likely event that is proofed because of the audacity of the claim.
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It is the idea that there have been other precedents that state that you don't have to adhere to crazy religious ideas due to Saint Paul stating that all you really need to do is have faith, hence why Christians eat pork and do not have to be circumcised.
That and Christianity in its early form amongst the Gentiles did not rely on Judaism, case and point being Saint Paul and his letter to the Galatians. The religion quickly moved from Judaic law into simply requiring there to be faith in Christ and God. Of course those aren't "all" Christians, but they are the ones that you could say won out in the end.
That and knowing the Catholic Church they would probably say that it occured in some capacity or another. The Catholic Church still recognizes the Jewish people as having a special covenant with God.
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It's really not that hard to get an entire ethnic or religious group to buy into fiction. It's happening right now. Scientology, for instance, perpetuates an obviously and clearly fraudulent history of, among other things, its chief prophet. He's come along recently enough that there exists numerous reliable documentation sources disproving all of the things that the religion claims as fact about him, but this is completely irrelevant to the movement's faithful for the same reasons why it is plausibly possible to perpetuate a myth about mass revelation. You just claim it on behalf of people who are now dead.
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Armoth: I once attended a church camp, and late at night, when we were all tired, after two hours of sermonizing, the preacher asked the two hundred teens if they felt the presence of God in the room.
People started to stand up and shout. He asked again if we felt the presence of God, come down to share his love. We quickly realized that if we stood up and shouted, we could leave and go to bed, so we all quickly "felt God speaking to us."
Some of the people may have felt something, but many of us just wanted to go to bed. If the few true believers told their kids about it, they would say that all two hundred people felt God's personal presence, and while they would not be lying, they would be wrong.
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