MarketAndChurch wrote:
Who says we can't question God?
How about John 20:24-30?
Quote:
http://nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/john/john20.htm24
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
25
So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them,
"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."26
Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you."
27
Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
28
17 Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29
18 Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."30
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book.
In essence, those who have not seen and believe anyway are somehow more blessed than those who have seen and gotten some sort of empirical evidence. A curious inversion of the scientific method, if nothing else. (BTW, and apropos of nothing, does anyone know of any other passage in the New Testament where Thomas is specifically identified as a speaker? I can't think of any, myself.)
Quote:
The people who gave you the ethical monotheistic God had the name Israel: "To Struggle With God" --
Not that I know beans about Hebrew, but where do find that translation? My reading of Genesis 32:28 makes it sound more like something akin to "Struggles with Angels," since it is was the name given to Jacob after he wrestled with an angel
http://nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/genesis/genesis32.htmAnd how "ethical" is any being that turns a mass-murdering race purity nut like Joshua loose on the "sub-human" Canaanites? I'll quote the relevant passages, if you like. (Curiously, I've read at least one claim by an archeologist that their was no invasion of Cana by the 12 Tribes, that it was more like a peaceful commingling. Possibly the entire book is nothing but propaganda, a re-written history done after the Babylonian exile to keep the returnees away from the [again] racially impure Samaritans. In any event, what we got on paper is not a peaceful commingling but an extermination of the Untermensch by the Übermensch. This is "ethical?")
Oh, and AFAIK the first person who actually "gave" the world a monotheistic religion that can be substantiated to some degree was the Egyptian [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten"]Pharaoh Akhenaten[/url]. That he failed spectacularly to stamp out the traditional polytheism, and that his successors went to great lengths to wipe every trace of his existence out, there's still a lot more historical evidence for him than for, say, Abraham or Moses.
Quote:
Abraham questioned God, Job questioned God, Moses questioned God, Jacob questioned God... I have no idea what you're talking about unless you are talking about an eastern religion or something other then the abrahamic faiths.
I think you're more than a bit confused here. They never questioned the
existence of their God, indeed, at least Abraham seemed to be talking to him every third day or so, didn't he? They questioned some of their God's actions, yes, but not Its existence. (And my use of the possessive is deliberate. In their view, their God was their God and nobody else's, though those odd bits about Melchizedek are a bit of a head-scratcher.)
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"The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken." ? Bertrand Russell
15 Nov 2012, 10:25 am
