Choices

[Sheldon]

Take care not to confuse "evidence" with your presuppositions.

Irony overload...

 

[joelr]

Ah, you are referring to orthodox Christianity, and not "Jesus".
I would agree with you re dying/rising savior demigods..
..but not regards an afterlife.

When you say "afterlife" it's a strawman. I already said in Judaism the theology was there was a type of afterlife where spirits hung around Sheol/gravesites. The concept of all souls going to heaven, originating in heaven and returning to heaven is a Hellenistic belief the Hebrew religious leaders adopted through religious syncretism.

Again, I will source wright and Sanders, their book has conclusive evidence:

"During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[47] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[47] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[48][49] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[49] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[49] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[49] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[47] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[40]"

..doesn't answer my question..
Who was Daniel, and when was he SUPPOSED to have lived?

Actually the answer is right there?

..important to you, but not me.
It offers little in the way of spiritual guidance.
I much prefer the Bible !

a red herring. I didn't say a book on archeology and history has wisdom, philosophies and such? It simply contains definitive proof that Moses and the Patriarchs were literary characters created by educated writers.
Just because Moses is fiction doesn't mean it cannot impart wisdom? All fictional stories from Greek epics, Hindu scripture and modern hero's journeys like Star Wars have wisdom and people dealing with adversary and such.

As I say, you can't prove Moses did not exist.
I am 100% sure of that .. because he DID exist, imo

No you cannot prove a negative? I cannot prove Santa Clause or Superman doesn't exist. But we do have evidence. The overwhelming evidence is that the stories about Moses are created to inspire the Israelite people but it's fiction. For one most of the stories of Moses life are myths from older cultures but there are many other reasons why scholarship considers him just a literary creation.
Most of the stories in the OT are re-written Mesopotamian myths also.
Feelings do not provide evidence a deity is real. Hindus "know" in their heart Lord Krishna is real, some even feel they are in a special relationship with him. It's the same in all religions. When we are told a myth is real and we internalize it we get inspirational feelings and people mistake that for something external. People had it for all Gods and demigods.

 

[joelr]

Right .. Bart Erhman is an expert in Christian texts, and early Christianity.
I agree with what you say here to a large extent.
However .. you are making assumptions about ancient history, and extrapolating your atheistic beliefs to include the many centuries BEFORE early Christianity..
..much like your claims of non-existent prophets in the OT etc.

There is no such things as "atheistic beliefs"? Atheism is a lack of beliefs in some Gods. You have the same lack of belief about Krishna or Thor most likely.
Bart Ehrman specializes in NT studies but he's also studied older religions. In a lecture he explains that before Hellenism religious beliefs were not focused on the afterlife. Judaism was only somewhat concerned and heaven is only mentioned as the place where God lived. Getting into heaven from belief in a savior is a Hellenistic concept. In Mesopotamian, Egyptian and other older religions the relationship with Gods was about living a good life on Earth.
The OT is largely a religious fiction. Archeology demonstrates that the early stories are definitely not as written and were created from older myths. The Israelites did not come from Egypt, they came from Canaanite culture. There was no conflict.
I'm not following "atheistic beliefs" I'm following evidence.

What is the title of the OP? CHOICE?

I make my choice, and you make yours.
Take care not to confuse "evidence" with your presuppositions.

No the thread is asking if faith IS a choice? As in it might not be or it might. My choice is to believe things that have evidence to support them.
I do not need presuppositions. Although you have clearly implied by saying I look at history with atheist beliefs that you are in fact looking at biblical history is the presupposition that it IS TRUE??
You clearly have no evidence for Moses except a myth yet believe it's true because other people presented it as true?

"
But the problem with historical evidence goes much deeper. “Moses himself has about as much historic reality as King Arthur,” British archaeologist Philip Davies famously concluded. A more moderate conclusion comes from the historian Tom Holland: “The likelihood that the biblical story records an actual event is fairly small.”
And the story of Moses has a strange echo in the life of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, the first monotheist known to history.

 

[muhammad_isa]

When you say "afterlife" it's a strawman. I already said in Judaism the theology was there was a type of afterlife where spirits hung around Sheol/gravesites. The concept of all souls going to heaven, originating in heaven and returning to heaven is a Hellenistic belief the Hebrew religious leaders adopted through religious syncretism.

We are going around in circles now. You can't categorically prove that "the Israelites" originally believed there was no afterlife in the time of Moses. All you are doing is showing that the Israelites had "mistaken beliefs" in an historical era which you are highlighting [ Sanders & Wright etc. ]
You say Moses didn't even exist, and you cannot categorically prove that either.
..I think we are done here.

 

[muhammad_isa]

The OT is largely a religious fiction. Archeology demonstrates that the early stories are definitely not as written and were created from older myths..

Right, I agree with you that the OT is not accurate.
..and as regards "older myths", I agree with you there too.
However, myths can be true or false. You assume that they are false

My choice is to believe things that have evidence to support them..

Same here
..but you deny many things that I consider as acceptable evidence, which is your choice

You clearly have no evidence for Moses except a myth yet believe it's true because other people presented it as true?

Correct. There is the Bible and the Qur'an. We have a heap of historical evidence as well, that confirms that Jesus and Muhammad actually existed, and that they confirmed the narratives in the OT.
You don't accept that. You think that they were deluded in some way .. I assume.

 

[joelr]

We are going around in circles now. You can't categorically prove that "the Israelites" originally believed there was no afterlife in the time of Moses. All you are doing is showing that the Israelites had "mistaken beliefs" in an historical era which you are highlighting [ Sanders & Wright etc. ]
You say Moses didn't even exist, and you cannot categorically prove that either.
..I think we are done here.

The circles are because you continue to answer with strawman arguments? Why do you keep doing this? How many times have I said the Israelites believed that the afterlife was hanging around in Sheol? That is not "no afterlife"?
I say this every post. We know this because the ENTIRE OT only speaks of this and the entire OT NEVER mentions heaven as a place where people go after they die?
Are you being this way on purpose or is it a subconscious mechanism that won't allow you to recognize your beliefs may not be supported?

And again, for the record, the belief that heaven is a place where souls originate and seek to return is not a belief the Israelites had until after the 2nd Temple Period. This belief WAS part of Greek religious beliefs. So the Hebrews adopted it as part of their theology?
Seriously, how hard is this to understand?
They did have some beliefs about the afterlife prior to this but they were different and not as flushed out. Why don't you just look it up yourself?


"The afterlife is known as olam ha-ba the "world to come", עולם הבא in Hebrew,[4][5] and related to concepts of Gan Eden, the Heavenly "Garden in Eden", or paradise, and Gehinnom.[6][note 1] The phrase olam ha-ba does not occur in the Hebrew Bible. The accepted halakha is that it is impossible for living human beings to know what the world to come is like"

So they claimed they didn't know.

"In the late Second Temple period, beliefs about the ultimate fate of the individual were diverse. The Essenes believed in the immortality of the soul, but the Pharisees and Sadducees, apparently, did not.[10] The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish pseudepigrapha and Jewish magical papyri reflect this diversity."

More ideas adopted during 2nd Temple Period:

"A number of messianic ideas developed during the later Second Temple Period, ranging from this-worldy, political expectations, to apocalyptic expectations of an endtime in which the dead would be resurrected and the Kingdom of Heaven would be established on earth.[33] The Messiah might be a kingly "son of David" or a more heavenly "son of man", but "Messianism became increasingly eschatological, and eschatology was decisively influenced by apocalypticism," while "messianic expectations became increasingly focused on the figure of an individual savior.[33] According to Zwi Werblowsky, "the Messiah no longer symbolized the coming of the new age, but he was somehow supposed to bring it about. The "Lord's anointed" thus became the "savior and redeemer" and the focus of more intense expectations and doctrines."[33] Messianic ideas developed both by new interpretations (pesher, midrash) of the Jewish scriptures, but also by visionary revelations."
Jewish eschatology - Wikipedia


More -

"
Hellenistic thought is evident in the narratives which make up the books of the Bible as the Hebrew Scriptures were revised and canonized during the Second Temple Period (c.515 BCE-70 CE), the latter part of which was during the Hellenic Period of the region. The gospels and epistles of the Christian New Testament were written in Greek and draw on Greek philosophy and religion as, for example, in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in which the word becomes flesh, a Platonic concept."

You say Moses didn't even exist, and you cannot categorically prove that either.
..I think we are done here

No way? I just explained that we cannot prove a negative? I cannot prove Superman didn't exist. I cannot prove Thor didn't exist? Are you even reading the posts?
What we can do is look at evidence. Archeological, historical, comparative mythology to see if the stories match up to older stories, if things they say match up to events mentioned.
There is conclusive proof from all 3 areas that the Moses tales are fiction.
You can ignore evidence and pretend whomever you want existed whenever you want. But coming back with a new post with the same strawman arguments (even after being corrected), I can only assume you do not care in the least about what is true.

 

[joelr]

Right, I agree with you that the OT is not accurate.
..and as regards "older myths", I agree with you there too.
However, myths can be true or false. You assume that they are false

Yes myths are generally fiction used to teach wisdom and lessons. I'm pretty sure Zeus, Heracles, Thor, Isis, Romulus, Krishna, and so on are fiction. Yahweh and Jesus also have the same level of evidence. The Moses stories are not even original, they are re-used Egyptian stories. There are many lines of evidence we know the stories are fiction.

Same here
..but you deny many things that I consider as acceptable evidence, which is your choice

I don't think you understand the evidence?
"The Moses story did not "really happen." Like the vast majority of biblical tales, it is a myth based on older tales, changed to revolve around characters of a certain ethnicity or cultural programming, if you will. The Moses tale is, in fact, a plagiarism taken from Egypt and its satellite, Canaan, among others. Moses, then, is not the "Prince of Egypt" but a "Theft from Egypt." Since the ancient Egyptians obviously cannot address this calumny against them for millennia, I will do it for them. The following is an excerpt from my book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold."

"
Potter sums up the mythicist argument regarding Moses:
The reasons for doubting his existence include, among others, (1) the parallels between the Moses stories and older ones like that of Sargon, (2) the absence of any Egyptian account of such a great event as the Pentateuch asserts the Exodus to have been, (3) the attributing to Moses of so many laws that are known to have originated much later, (4) the correlative fact that great codes never suddenly appear full-born but are slowly evolved, (5) the difficulties of fitting the slavery, the Exodus, and the conquest of Canaan into the known chronology of Egypt and Palestine, and (6) the extreme probability that some of the twelve tribes were never in Egypt at all."
"
Jacolliot traces the original Moses to the Indian Manou: "This name of Manou, or Manes . . . is not a substantive, applying to an individual man; its Sanscrit signification is the man, par excellence, the legislator. It is a title aspired to by all the leaders of men in antiquity."

Like Moses, Krishna was placed by his mother in a reed boat and set adrift in a river to be discovered by another woman. The Akkadian Sargon also was placed in a reed basket and set adrift to save his life. In fact, "The name Moses is Egyptian and comes from mo, the Egyptian word for water, and uses, meaning saved from water, in this case, primordial." Thus, this title Moses could be applied to any of these various heroes saved from the water.

Walker elaborates on the Moses myth:

"The Moses tale was originally that of an Egyptian hero, Ra-Harakhti, the reborn sun god of Canopus, whose life story was copied by biblical scholars. The same story was told of the sun hero fathered by Apollo on the virgin Creusa; of Sargon, king of Akkad in 2242 B.C.; and of the mythological twin founders of Rome, among many other baby heroes set adrift in rush baskets. It was a common theme."

Furthermore, Moses's rod is a magical, astrology stick used by a number of other mythical characters. Of Moses's miraculous exploits, Walker also relates:

"Moses's flowering rod, river of blood, and tablets of the law were all symbols of the ancient Goddess. His miracle of drawing water from a rock was first performed by Mother Rhea after she gave birth to Zeus, and by Atalanta with the help of Artemis. His miracle of drying up the waters to travel dry-shod was earlier performed by Isis, or Hathor, on her way to Byblos."


And Higgins states:

"In Bacchus we evidently have Moses. Herodotus says [Bacchus] was an Egyptian . . . The Orphic verses relate that he was preserved from the waters, in a little box or chest, that he was called Misem in commemoration of the event; that he was instructed in all the secrets of the Gods; and that he had a rod, which he changed into a serpent at his pleasure; that he passed through the Red Sea dry-shod, as Hercules subsequently did . . . and that when he went to India, he and his army enjoyed the light of the Sun during the night: moreover, it is said, that he touched with his magic rod the waters of the great rivers Orontes and Hydaspes; upon which those waters flowed back and left him a free passage. It is even said that he arrested the course of the sun and moon. He wrote his laws on two tablets of stone. He was anciently represented with horns or rays on his head."
Offline Illumination

those are a few things Thomas Thompsons work goes in a different direction using archeology and history to demonstrate the stories are fiction.

Correct. There is the Bible and the Qur'an. We have a heap of historical evidence as well, that confirms that Jesus and Muhammad actually existed, and that they confirmed the narratives in the OT.
You don't accept that. You think that they were deluded in some way .. I assume.

Actually no, the historical evidence for Jesus is almost zero. You have been lied to. It's just the gospels which were all revisions of the first gospel Mark. All extra-biblical evidence is just people talking about Christians who follow the gospels or forgery as in Josephus TF. Paul never mentions a historical Jesus just a transcended being who already dies and was resurrected and came to him in visions.

Muhammad may have existed but the claims that the angel Gabrielle came down and gave more instructions is no more likely than Joseph Smith claiming the angel Moroni came to him with new instructions.You are just going by things people told you without investigation into what scholarship actually has to say.

The first gospel is Mark. As NT historian points out we know almost nothing of the actual life of Jesus and our earliest copy of the first gospel is 1 century later after countless re-writes.

"our earliest copy of the Gospel of Mark was P45 (called this because it is the 45th Papyrus [hence “P”] manuscript to be catalogued), which dates to around the year 200 CE – i.e., 140 years after Mark was first written. That’s our earliest copy. Between the original of Mark and our earliest copy there were something like fourteen decades of copying, and recopying, and recopying of Mark. Year after year it was copied. And the copies were being changed at every point. And then later copies were copies of the earlier changed copies. Then those earlier changed copies were lost; as were the copies based on them; and the copies based on them. Until our earliest surviving copy, P45 – which itself is not a complete copy of Mark, but highly fragmentary. Our first complete copy of Mark dates to around the year 360 – nearly three hundred years (count them 300 years) after the “original” of Mark."
First-Century Copy of Mark? - Part 1 | The Bart Ehrman Blog


The Quran just says what the OT says except it thinks it's actually real then adds new revelations from Gabrielle. I see why you need to believe Moses because it's part of your theology and it would all fall apart if Moses was a fictional character.
The evidence shows he is indeed fiction and the OT wasn't even written to be historical. They were stories for inspiration. The literalist movements started way later.

 

[rational experiences]

Newly born. In and with new life. Human babies.

New life brings new realisations about old beliefs.

Jesus the man advice of all men in every nation life sacrificed the advice.

My brother.

I cry about my brother in any nation harmed by gods change.

Stigmata is witnessed as Multi national today also. Just as it was before.

Journals human evidence by the Jewish Christian movement titled Jehovah.

Roman language named the evidence Jesus. As they did a new comprehensive data statement in modern times.

Part medical part temple science advice and part community practice.

But referenced old data also as evidence to correlate support the new evidence.

You could not produce a lawful paper unless you had stated journalled witnesses by law agreement.

 

[muhammad_isa]

The circles are because you continue to answer with strawman arguments? Why do you keep doing this? How many times have I said the Israelites believed that the afterlife was hanging around in Sheol? That is not "no afterlife"?
I say this every post. We know this because the ENTIRE OT only speaks of this and the entire OT NEVER mentions heaven as a place where people go after they die?

Sorry, I don't agree with you.. Are you an expert in the study of the OT and Judaism?
I don't think so.

And again, for the record, the belief that heaven is a place where souls originate and seek to return is not a belief the Israelites had until after the 2nd Temple Period..

That is your belief. You confuse the issue about "an afterlife" by talking about souls originating in heaven etc.
Are you an expert in Hebrew, as well?
I doubt it..

"The afterlife is known as olam ha-ba the "world to come", עולם הבא in Hebrew, and related to concepts of Gan Eden, the Heavenly "Garden in Eden", or paradise, and Gehinnom. The phrase olam ha-ba does not occur in the Hebrew Bible. The accepted halakha is that it is impossible for living human beings to know what the world to come is like"

I have no problem with that. Nobody knows for sure what will happen to them after they die.
What we are sure of, is that our souls don't die along with our bodies.

What we can do is look at evidence. Archeological, historical, comparative mythology to see if the stories match up to older stories, if things they say match up to events mentioned.
There is conclusive proof from all 3 areas that the Moses tales are fiction.
You can ignore evidence and pretend..

I'm not "pretending" anything. I believe that the narratives in the Bible and Qur'an are based on truth.
It is impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that Moses never existed. How can you do that?
I assume that you are saying that "it is unlikely" that Moses existed in a certain place and a certain time.
Places and times are often not identified correctly, and/or OT accounts may not be accurate.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Actually no, the historical evidence for Jesus is almost zero..

Oh, please..
You are wasting both of our time.

Historical Jesus - Wikipedia

 

[rational experiences]

Laws were imposed in the past after the fact of evidence.

If men said humanity became a slave in civilization status they did.

If civilization changed in destructive God O planet causes because of temple pyramid science then family were set free from civilizations slavery.

Obvious they were. Many migrated to European countries.

If they named it a status then they had.

A teaching meant that it gained acceptance as we were taught by the newly born child. Therefore the Egyptian family began to accept the sacrificed human families status.

They hence adopted it's teachings.

How the Egyptian priesthood were overcome and changed by spiritual god aware teachers.

Like Rome men of science learnt they were wrong.

Yet there is always the group who ignore the relative warnings predicted the advice was put in a journal and given.

Journals were kept as it proved science was told it was wrong. So that correlation proof by law was then accepted by community.

M in English was letter 13. 1000 given to M.

Therefore 1000 was inferred as a counted evaluation in natural history.

BC was before CH had changed.

13000 years would be a long count back in time to an event.

The event would be in the East as wise men came to teach from the east.

Therefore evidence relating to science and technology would place an event as nuclear about 13000 BC. To placate yes science had caused an event.

And the atmosphere has been raining by flood ever since.

Instead of just natural droplet water evaporation.

 

[Sheldon]

Oh, please..
You are wasting both of our time.

Historical Jesus - Wikipedia

Did you read that link?

The historical Jesus scholarship is bound by the following limitations:

• There is no physical or archaeological evidence for Jesus; all existing sources are documentary.
• The sources for the historical Jesus are mainly Christian writings, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles.
• All extant sources that mention Jesus were written after his death.

Most scholars do agree Jesus probably existed, but only as a human historical figure. This lends no credence whatsoever to any of the supernatural claims associated with him of course.

 

[Sheldon]

It is impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that Moses never existed.

Actually as joelr said, the archaeological, and historical evidence has fairly conclusively demonstrated that the Moses tales are fictional. The idea you can "prove" someone didn't exist is preposterous of course, not to mention an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. If Exodus is a fiction then how likely is it that Moses existed, and of course the supernatural claims are not remotely evidenced at all.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Most scholars do agree Jesus probably existed, but only as a human historical figure. This lends no credence whatsoever to any of the supernatural claims associated with him of course.

No problem. I was told there is no evidence that he even existed.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Actually as joelr said, the archaeological, and historical evidence has fairly conclusively demonstrated that the Moses tales are fictional. The idea you can "prove" someone didn't exist is preposterous of course..

You have just contradicted yourself. Congratulations !

 

[rational experiences]

Science the liar gave the judgements about science the title their own man self. Taught everyone men of science had murdered their holy spiritual brothers healer life. Greedy men.

Stating from Moses event it was predicted. I then applied maths counting. I counted back. It was not predicted forward. To prove science caused it.

Said from past to present heavens mass had returned. As bio genesis had healed for newly born babies.

Mutation gone. Babies healthy. Murdered firstborn life human genetics healed.

Lived healthy until adult life then demonstrated removal of life from healthy DNA. Once again temple pyramid irradiation fallout.

So man of science Stephen Hawking said see me leaving DNA. Fault of science.

Ignored warning as usual.

Jehovah owned medical genesis journals medical practice. Jewish Christian community. Who by orders of knowledge used various titles of wisdom.

What doctoring always did used namesakes to denote wisdom.

Used the journals of the healers. As shamanic doctoring was first. Science machine doctoring in rich man's control secondary.

Healers today prove Shamanic practice is real. Phenomena in science studies a special branch also proven it real.

Not of science though just studied by science. So you should stop lying yourselves.

Science says it details describes gives wisdom to phenomena. His science brother says it's after effects of causes only and not science.

The argument.

How about no science no phenomena no argument?

Rome named it Jesus as scientific secret symbolic evidence. Knowing what liars scientists were. Inscribed the detail as knowledge to argue when challenged again.

He as looking back to ie. To je.

HIJ. Leaving....to Z end 2000 evaluation.

Said ie. The example is Sus.

Sus scrofia wild pig wild boar Sanskrit Aveda UFO attack.

Sus the nose. Pig meant animal type body that changed meat was infested.

Sus nose in science ∆ pyramid changed ground state that holy life walked upon with God into minus -.

Leaving just nose ^. Pyramids collapsed at its feet just like Moses mountain had.

Why they left the evidence. Pyramid standing collapsed. As sink holes opened sin of man caused radiation fallout.

Knowing as holy men did what self destructive liars men in science are. And how they lied about science representing all things.

All things naturally are all things before any human.

The human teaching. All things existed first. You hence are last. Given Dominion over all other bodies.

First does not mean so now destroy them all by your machine.

 

[Sheldon]

No problem. I was told there is no evidence that he even existed.

Were you, are you sure? That was not the way I read the statement.

 

[rational experiences]

Men In oxygenated water consciousness theorising time shift.

Asteroid moon larger body of gases removed ice melted in attacked earth precinity flowed poured onto earth. Water flood mass.

Earth had owned water also.

Water mass given by star and Ice first thesis. The flood wisdom of O earth God.

Time shifted by science then destroyed all life on earth. One season owner. Machine parts found in deep earth snap frozen fusion. Machine put back where he theoried it's beginning's.

Suns nuclear radiation snap frozen in earth mass. No longer sun owned. A machine.

Ice moved from star mass onto earth mass. Inherited. After dinosaur attacked. Giant life. One season.

He had shifted the saviour mass himself. Theories about wandering star earth history. ICE the saviour on earth had shifted. He knew.

I C E. IE. C supported 100 years human life. Knew. Proved he knew.

Told his own self why dinosaurs living without the water mass were in one season only and not any meek lifeform. O on gods earth.

Meaning meek who I was personally originally. I personally Cannot time shift.

So thesis began with the sun and suns wandering star. Time shift restarted by my want. Modern day occult time shifter scientist.

Today theist want of historic time shift causes for the star asteroid. Asteroid was much bigger than a moon to come close to earth. By forces in space. First.

Gravity would change by its presence. To lift off its water to put it back onto the star for the star to re inherit ice.

Whole completed natural history time shift the saviour mass. By theist human.

Beginnings thesis of natural history just about God earth. And the liar machine human scientist theorising masses owned no God O earth natural history.

Why. The question he asked answered.

Satanism all about the saviour wandering sun asteroid star thesis.

Time shifting by man's notified water consciousness the liar.

God owned star flood naturally.

Theist claim I can copy natural masses history. Began the copying. By machine causes.

Knows exactly why it happened as he is telling me by AI machine causes he owned built controls by his mind human.

 

[Sheldon]

You have just contradicted yourself. Congratulations !

I see no contradiction, can you explain it?

 

[CG Didymus]

The overwhelming evidence is that the stories about Moses are created to inspire the Israelite people but it's fiction. For one most of the stories of Moses life are myths from older cultures but there are many other reasons why scholarship considers him just a literary creation.
Most of the stories in the OT are re-written Mesopotamian myths also.

The OT is largely a religious fiction. Archeology demonstrates that the early stories are definitely not as written and were created from older myths. The Israelites did not come from Egypt, they came from Canaanite culture.

Are you being this way on purpose or is it a subconscious mechanism that won't allow you to recognize your beliefs may not be supported?

Yes myths are generally fiction used to teach wisdom and lessons. I'm pretty sure Zeus, Heracles, Thor, Isis, Romulus, Krishna, and so on are fiction. Yahweh and Jesus also have the same level of evidence. The Moses stories are not even original, they are re-used Egyptian stories. There are many lines of evidence we know the stories are fiction.

Awesome stuff. I've gone from believing all religions were true, to one sect of one religion being true, back to all of them being true, but that one new one was truer to believing most all of them were based on myths. So, I agree with everything you're saying.

What's important is that there are archeological findings that can back it up. But then what to do about religions that have a "manifestation" or "prophet" of God that is known to have existed? This would include for sure Muhammad, but mainly Baha'u'llah? Lots of truth and possibly a "God-given" plan to move humanity towards being at peace and harmony with each other. Unfortunately, he claims Moses, Abraham, Noah and even Adam were real. And, that at least some of them were "manifestations" of God.

I'm more in line with what you're saying, especially when it comes to the Bible. The stories had truth in them. They had meaning for the Israelites. But... the stories were fiction and based on myths. The Baha'is come close. They believe the people, like Moses, were real, but that some of the stories about them were symbolic. And something else that is very important... they believe in the importance of science... and that science and religion must go hand and hand... that without science, religion can get into superstitious beliefs. But I get the feeling that if their Scriptures say Moses, Abraham and the rest were real, then that is "proof" enough for them. And that would go for most believers of Islam and Christianity also. They all need some things in the Bible to be true, like Moses being real, to support their beliefs.